Backlash

Last week our writer found herself in dire straits. She imagined herself flying home for Xmas or some other break and never coming back. It didn’t matter that the house was rented out and she didn’t have anywhere to stay. She even said these things aloud…to people. It was the truth you see. The painful truth of how miserable it had been. Oh yea, that’s me, dammit. This person sounds like a loser. I mean if she’s going to give up the first time it gets a little scary and she has to go to a hospital that everyone here says is really nice.


The chemo drugs that were given for infectious diarrhea worked didn’t they? Oh yea, baby they worked so well my body backlashed against them. My hunt for Monistat began at the local Chemist Shaheen.

“What’s it for?”

“A yeast infection,” I said.

Long hard stare with black eyes that do not blink.

“We don’t have.”

“Do you know who does?”

“No.”

Next chemist, Watson… go fish

“Hey, do you have Monistat?”

“We have another brand.”

“Show me.”

“You want oral or cream?”

“I’m going for the cream.”

“It will take 10 days.”

Are you kidding me? I’m thinking, it should take 3 days. The commercial says 3 days! “How much?” leaves my lips….so desperate.

“200 rupees.” $2.50 more or less

“Okay, sold”

I hope this works.

Really, I hope it does. Its just a yeast infection. No I pray that it is. I don’t want to even think about it. It can’t get any more humiliating then this right?

I google the cream. Its called GynoTravogen and I read over the results on Wikipedia.

Pseudodoctoring on myself is scary, but I’m desperate and they can fix anything in the states if I really hurt myself right? Please tell me they can fix it! How on earth am I going to explain that I thought gyno-travogen made absolute sense to me ? Maybe, I should ask the chemist for some morphine too. Hmmm. Doesn't this sound like a fabulous Sunday night?

The work week began with a chocolate bar on my desk and a nice card saying sorry from my technician. Whatever happened with my tech last week had cleared. I hold my breath waiting for the follow-up infection, but there isn’t one.

So now my main worry becomes the papers on my desk. They are supposed to be and put into something called Edline or Gradequick. These pesky people called students keep asking me about their grades. Seriously? You want me to grade these, but I’m so grouchy.

"Miss, you have a rubric!" they whine

"You think there’s a rubric in life? Let me tell you about the rubric of life. Let's discuss this in my office."

"No, that’s okay, don’t worry about our papers this very minute."

The good part about reaching your limit is that the word no emerges. Heck the word hell no is going to emerge if I’m not careful. The good part is that I’m real careful. 

Crappin

We are at the hospital. Rilee has been sick for a week on and off maybe longer. I've had a nasty bout with a stomach ailment. Nothing but water comes out if anything at all. My intestines are in knots that crease and tighten on top of each other. Cramps, nightsweats, a passing chill and nausea are my constant companions. Did I say nothing but water is excreted from my body?

At one point, I told myself that food sickness & diarrhea were going to be a realistic evil. I thought we'd suffer a few times going into this adventure. Now it's every single day and the minute I decide to pretend it doesn't exist, to operate in spite of it, has only made what was bad worse. Eat whatever the hell you want has been my Bourdain like motto. It has been a recipe for disaster.

Sibte the financial advisor sat me down and said I need to inspect the nails yes, fingernails of my staff. I'm thinking over all the meals I've eaten. I may never ever eat again.

Elaine the nurse listens with a sympathetic ear. Her lovely British accent has a calming effect on me. She has now decided to send us to the hospital. She hands me a lime green sticky in the shape of an apple with a name and a time. She speaks with facilities so that a driver can take us.

Leaving school in Pakistan to go to the doctor is an exercise. It's not like we want to go to Disneyland. Just to the doctor. We don't want to excrete water from our behinds. Auub has the misfortune of being our caretakers. He parks outside of Shifa hospital. Rilee and I try to maintain our composure, but just going there, meaning the car ride makes us both queasy.
Following behind a seven foot man in light blue pajama pants and a free flowing shirt is tedious in the repressive heat & humidity. We walked half a block and I want to collapse.
We stay behind Auub like two baby ducklings. Rilee and I hold hands. He protects us from oncoming traffic and we do our best to stay with him. He's probably 50 years old, but daddy long legs strides once or twice and we take 2.5 little steps to his one.
The hospital is full. There are people swarming everywhere. Rilee and I stand out in our t-shirts and jeans, but I don't care. Too sick to care. Auub is patient with us. We go through reception...we see more people. Old, young, frail some unfortunately disfigured, some with wounds, some coughing. We circle around looking for a place to sit. Unfortunately, there are people far worse off than us, so I give them our seats. Auub circles around and says "Two together, you sit." We sit.

We see the doctor and the nurse. They weigh us and take our blood pressure. We hear a man throwing a fit at the front counter. He's yelling appointment in English. The rest is in
Urdu, but everyone stops to witness an adult temper tantrum. Even his sandals are unbuckled.

The doctor wears western clothes and has thick glasses . He speaks fluent English. He asks what happened. I explain to him that I've never been sick with this kind of illness. No illness other than the birth of a child has taken me out for a week.
He examines our tummies and asks more questions. He thinks we have food poisoning. We will have blood drawn, stool samples, and medicine. Auub makes a mad dash for the pharmacy line while Rilee and I collapse into the lab line. In two blinks of an eye Auub the magical creature is back.

He gets yelled at and told to leave, but he never leaves us. The lab tech double gloves and sticks the needle in. I say ow, it's a mean little pinching sensation. Auub laughs, but in a friendly way. It's over.

Rilee isn't as lucky. The lab tech misses her vein and once again she's jabbed. Tears roll down her cheek. Auub pats her head and for the first time Rilee is actual tough. The lab tech probes the needle in to my daughters arm. I'm watching her flinch.

Shortly after this we are shuttled back to school. Back in my office, there is a mound of paperwork to do, papers to grade, and then I notice my iphone alarm going off. Crap. What must I do now?

I pack up my stuff to head to sports event software training with Kashif, Junaid, and Kai. My girls burst in about half an hour in to the training. Realizing Rilee is dehydrated and sick we go home. My stomach grumbles and it seems to me, if eating were optional I'd pick that option.
On the way out, I stop by an office of a colleague having problems with our drive folders. I check his permissions and see they are all wrong. Tomorrow, I tell him the kids want to go home.
The day, which started off grim has been in a word "crappin". In adventure? Yes. A fairy tale with magical sprites and unicorns? No. It will continue because tomorrow is a new day my friend. A whole new day.

It was Arranged

The combination of clear blue water, pure sunshine, and lunch should make me happy. An obnoxious bird literally honked and a few wasps dive bombed us, but these events were laughable. So, are you married? Three pairs of hard brown eyes stared at me as I said, "No, divorced. " "How many divorces?"Just one," this question made me kinda smile actually. "So, are you looking?" "Huh?" That came from nowhere. So many questions. I carefully and politely said, "I'm happy."
"Well then", he said..we have a saying here in Pakistan. "What's that?" I asked. He then began to explain something about Pakistani men, but I clearly didn't understand it. This whole conversation was really perplexing. "I don't get it," I said. He sighed.

He explained lots of things to me. The concept of having more than one wife for instance. I'm not sure why, but it took me by surprise. He told me that it was quite common. Actually, I had no occasion to think about it one way or another. He said that there should be an age difference between a wife and a husband of 10-12 years. The husband should be older.

He then began to talk on arranged marriages. I have an arranged marriage, he announced.
You do?
Yes, I do.
I had been working and I remember my mom asked me if I liked this beautiful girl she had introduced me to. Just recalled that she was beautiful and that was it. So, I told my mom, yea sure.
Next thing I know we were engaged and then married.
All I did was work and she was also working, but then she got sick..an appendicitis. I had to sit with her at the hospital. That's when I fell in love with her.
One of the men is shaking his head. Its the unmarried one. He is always telling me, he does not want to get married. We move on to discussing other things and finishing up our lunch.

I'm not reminded of this conversation until I'm checking out at the grocery store three days later. There is a family, which consists of a young woman with an older man and their daughter. He is not happy with their purchases. He puts half of them back on the counter. She looks as though she does not care whatsoever. He has thick rimmed glasses and grey chest hair popping out of his polo shirt. He's wearing blue jeans and a fancy watch. His wife is fashionable and their child is wearing cut off jeans and a t-shirt. It didn't seem to me that there was anything out of the ordinary, but my mind immediately jumps back to our little conversation at the pool.

I immediately look around the store with a pair of new eyes and a whole new set of questions builds for our next lunch meeting.

Saviour

Don't you understand? The server spits nothing, but errors at me as though I've poisoned it. Walking into the server closet brought a UPS explosion. I thought a small bomb had gone off. There were stabilizers on the electrical lines and removing these seemed to help, but how would I have known that? The only thing I knew was that the wiring wasn't to any kind of US electical code. Wasn't there an international code? Why bother looking, why? The equipment that comprises the infrastructure threatens suicide on a daily basis. There are days when I advocate for assisted suicide, but I persist nonetheless. There seemed to be a pound of spaghetti on the floor twisted every which way. No, no that's my cabling. How can this be? The CAT 6 is twisted onto the electrical cords and I just want to scream mostly. Rip it all out. Oh wait, a power supply has died. We have a duplicate TCP/IP. We have overheating. Do we have another switch? Wait, I have to teach a class. Nothing works.

There is a beautiful woman with long hair in the bathroom. I'm convinced she may actually live in the bathroom, but I'm not going to ask. She is going to yell at me, because I'm not sure what I ate. It takes 8 flushes to get everything to clear. There is a 4th of July fountain pouring right out of my rear. Everything is taking so long. No one else is freaking? They just ask when its going to work again, as though someone tripped on a power cord.

Take a deep, deep breath just get through the day if nothing else. One foot in front of the other foot. Closing my eyes to participate in uncooperative sleep brings on a world where everyone is wandering around in black. There is a miscommunication because under our beds there is a hole so deep...it has no bottom. Somehow, a woman was thrown under a bed. The jokester thought he would hear a thud, but there was nothing. It wasn't what it appeared to be at all. There appeared to be a cluttered mess under the bed, just like normal. There were even soft items that accumulated and hovered on the top like clouds. He threw her under there to scare her. Now she was gone. My firefighter is telling him, she is gone. He definitively says, "There will not be a thud." I wake up confused, realizing that it was a nightmare. We dream our fears. We will not be saved.

First Weeks

A brand new day is like a fresh sheet of paper, clean and unspoilt. I tell myself that I may be psychic and have been trying to predict the outcome of the day based on any number of irrelevant facts. While lying in bed, I envision my outfit for the day. Black dress, purple grey scarf, and sandals.

Surely, if I actually manage to follow the plan,it is going to be a great day. If I can't even follow my own stupid directions clearly, it will lead to a lousy, bad day. For some reason I've come to realize that I'm quite naughty. Purposely, I'll reject the premonition thinking I can change the outcome of the day, by doing just the opposite of what my mind has come up with.Why would I want to reject my own premonition? Well let me tell you, secretly I suspect what I've envisioned is completely wrong and will lead me to a bad day. Who wants a bad day? That's when I pick the opposite route of my prediction. On a confident day, a day where I feel like following directions, I'll follow my premonition. Today is one of those days.

I've been playing this ridiculous game in my own head for a few years and realize that it is completely irrational, but I persist.

The first day of school - we all managed to get ourselves dressed and ready on time. The morning call to prayer was heard and sounds like a low hum. Its as though all the men in the world decided to sing a song in a low melodic voice at the same time. Its such a beautiful sound. That's what happens when you wake up at 4am. You have time to enjoy the morning hours.

I'm also happy to report that jet lag works in our favor with the 12 hour difference. Being late isn't a problem. I wake up 3 or 4am. The fact that it is decently hot maybe 85 or 90 and sunny also helps.Rilee has easily adjusted to the routine. She is difficult to wake. I've taken to jumping in her bed and saying good morning in her ear using a voice that is half muffled and imitates a muppet creature. She will usually wake smiling and laughing. I really wish that I had thought of this waking method before my youngest child turned 12.

Awake, alive and dressed the trip downstairs begins. I now make a conscience effort to have actual clothes on my body before going downstairs. Tanveer and Friek will be downstairs making breakfast and cleaning . I'm greeted with coffee, warm milk, sugar, toast, pancakes, cereal, and fruit. Taylor has already eaten.

I sit at the long, long table and eat my breakfast solo. It still does not feel quite right, kinda like a bad British film where everyone has a lot of help in their homes. Usually, I'm checking out McDonalds or eating an apple and trying to fly down Paseo Del Norte, so I'm not late for my own class. I tell myself to relax and consume a decent well prepared breakfast.

Huukumdad arrives for the driving lesson. I begin yelling at the girls as we sprint around the house at warp speed trying our best to have what we need for the day. Tanveer and Friek probaby think we are crazy. "Why oh why can't we put everything together in the evening so we don't have to rush? "

The trip to school begins. First of all, everytime I get in the car I go toward the drivers side, which is the passenger side. "Oh right." We manage to make it to our proper seats in the car. The driveway is long and narrow. Taylor points out that the guards have purposely placed their vehicles alongside the house because they know what a lousy driver I am. "Thanks for the vote of confidence!"

Cruising at 30mph on the left now. I tell myself to stay in the center of the road. To use my mirrors. That taking a left is the same as taking a right. That taking a right is like taking a left and making sure you go over to the furthest lane. Motorbikes pass all over the place. Try not to hit anyone. Be aggressive. Drive slow at intersections. No lights because the power could be disconnected. This is called load shedding.

The mountains are forest and jungle green. There is lush beauty everywhere. Lots of flowers in a beautiful suburb. There are beggars. There are trucks stacked with people. There are parks. There are street signs I try to remember and figure out. I'm developing a sense of familiarity and can recognize my neighborhood.

We make it to the school gate alive and well. I realize that today will be repeated over and over for the 200 days that comprise the school year. Its only the first day of the first week. Will my premonition come to pass? I've followed and done precisely what I'd planned. Perhaps, there are no good and bad days. Maybe I should just view it all as experience.

First Day of School

Today, August 11, 2011 is my first day of school in Pakistan. Crazy, but exciting. Ten days ago, we arrived in a hot, muggy airport @ 2am with six black roller-bags. Right outside the airport, we were greeted by many staff members and a smiling superintendent. I followed a school driver who took half the bags. He seemed at least 7 feet tall like a tall willowy tree. His luggage cart seamlessly glided over uneven pavement for him. Meanwhile, my cart darted in every direction and fell into every possible pothole. He told us his name, which I immediately mispronounced because I could hear my daughters laughing at me. Oh well. We were briefed and given packets of information, which filled us in on the most important basics. We were dropped off and fell into made beds. Sleep glorious sleep.

Two weeks have passed, and we are at yet another milestone. In a few hours, the driver will arrive and we will make the trek to campus. I'm still learning how to maneuver the streets & highway of Islamabad. The school driver also functions as my driving coach. Mostly he makes sure that I don't switch back into right sided driving mode. I drive too fast and need to develop the calm, smooth patience my driver has modeled.

Each trek out is like a mini adventure to me. Alongside the surbuban streets you will see vendors selling fruit. People are dressed in delicate, loose fitting pajama pants and long drapey tops called shalwaar kamiz. They come in a dizzying array of colors and styles. On the highway, there are donkey pulled carts alongside traffic. Its amazing to see women riding side saddle on motorbikes. Some of them even wear burkas with only their eyes visible. There are colorful trucks that are painted in bright wild colors sometimes filled to the brim with people who manage to cram and stick out every which way.

The call to prayer is a hum that fills the city. It brings me a sense of peace to hear it.

Right now, the house is quiet and still. Everything is unpacked and we are settled. We have eased into having a cook, housekeeper, and gardener who do most of the day to day chores. We are still becoming acquainted, but moving here has been mostly easy. There are some things which are different of course. Power outages, warnings of terrorism, and intermittant diaherrea.
My first day outfit is pressed and awaits me. The last minute work that needs to be done will be crammed in somehow.

I'm excited nervous and ready! Hopefully, its fun.

You Left The City of Angels?

Today is our last day in the states. The day started crazy, hectic and insane.

LA, LAX & LA Canada....The original plan was to get up early, pack up the car (with luggage) and head to West LA to avoid the traffic. We planned to buy snacks, travel toothbrushes, blankets, and other highly unecessary items. We packed up a rental car and followed auntie aka"Dr. OneBite" whose been navigating the mean streets of LA for many years. The nickname is a sad reality. Dr. Onebite is truly a medical doctor. My younger daughter gave her great aunt the unfortunate nickname for a churro incident that happened at Disneyland. My aunt asked for a bite of a churro and must've been hungry and ate over half. The name sticks with her today.

As we merged into traffic, my youngest daughter came up with a fabulous suggestion. Teleportation would virtually eliminate the need for traffic and the snaggled mess of chaos known as rushhour. "Do it!" I encouraged her as I felt my foot actually cramp up from resting on the break too long. My eldest daughter chimed in on our short-cited plan and told us that we probably couldn't teleport with our belongings. A minor drawback, traveling absolutely naked. Especially in an Islamic country. Well, there had to be something.

Out of nowhere, a black Mercedes appeared. It spewed out the equivalent of a 500 pack a day cigarette habit in the form of black, billowy clouds of smoke. Once the smoke cleared, we all screamed as if we were on a Magic Mountain Roller Coaster. We had lost sight of our beloved Onebite. I forgot to merge and ended up heading toward Pasadena. That merge is exactly two curvey lanes of hell. Somehow though, I found my way to something known as the "Carpool Lane Airport". No traffic at 85mph is a good thing. .

I'm almost positive that LAX needs to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch. When you drive in the area you'll see a sign that says "free shuttle." Do not think to yourself, but its so far away. Who on earth would want to park so far? Just take it. Do not park at the gate. Trust me. After circling the lot like a hungry hawk four times, I finally was able to park. The girls were dropped at the gate and waited with the luggage. Unfortunately, parking in Air China meant walking with a few bags to Delta. How hard can that be? Somehow time morphed ahead two hours, we were severely late for our flight. My leisurly walk to my kids from Air China turned into the sprint of a lifetime, which in the end included a bus.

The kids choose to sit with their bags outside. Why on earth hadn't I called them? The Delta line looked simply like a nightmare. Someone was told to, "monitor the situation" as we attempted to check luggage. We were overweight and did a crazy clothes toss in the airport to make everything fit. We made our first flight. That was only the beginnning. The excitement continued in the Texas airport. We arrived in Texas and transferred to Qatar. Edit copy paste. Well, it was totally the same thing. Craziness.

Once we got on the actual Qatar airline flight though, it was a pleasure. It was comfy. The flight attendants gave us lots of food and icecream at 2am. They even provided us with travel socks and the world tinest toothbrush and paste. I kept it. On board they had an entertainment system called Onyx. We all plugged into Onyx and the stress melted away.

Besides eating ice-cream, I found myself chatting with my neighbor who would fall in and of consciousness during the flight. He told me his name was Max and that he was going to Bangladesh. He had moved to the States for college, but had a family of his own now. He told me he traveled back and forth to see his family every year or so. The fact that he had a southern accent from Mississippi and was truly southern inspired me. We talked about the Andy Griffith show. He said that was his ideal living scenario. He liked small town rural living! "Different than your home?," I asked.

"Yes, way different." he responded.

I closed my eyes and placed my head on the tray table. "Goodnight Max from Bangladesh."

He chuckled and said, "Goodnight" while plugged into Onyx.

We'd wake up in Doha.

The adventure had begun.

A New Journey

For the past 3 years, Central New Mexico Community College has been my home. For the most part, I've enjoyed it. I thought that I'd retire here, always live and work here, there was little doubt about that. Now, I'm not so sure. I have absolutely loved living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had a really wonderful grad experience at University of New Mexico and its been great watching my girls grow up.

Now, a new journey has presented itself! I've always wanted to teach abroad. It was a dream that I gave up after the girls were born. Now, that I'm a single mom post divorce everything has changed. The girls are not babies and we are free to do as we please. After attending my first ever International Job Fair we are packing up our things and moving to Pakistan.

I know Pakistan is not for the faint of heart. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think that I'm doing something a little crazy. We are excited, we are nervous, we are thrilled. We have never lived or been anywhere non-touristy, so why not? Why not take a chance and do something adventerous? Why not, allow the girls to have a cultural experience that will make them richer in perspective and experience? Feel free to share in this experience with us! Any words of wisdom, words of caution, words of advice are welcome. Enjoy.