November 06, 2005
Operating Theater
For four days in a row the team would start trickling into Animal Care Payam ‘Station 1’ at about 0730. Either Paul, Maggi, or both spent the night at the critter-infested station waking up on a regular basis to look after the post-operative animals. I showed up early to get the sterilization center prepared and ensure operating instrument sets were ready for the vets as they required them. As the 0800 or so the rented scooters starting to bring in people a few at a time and animals were entering the second of four phases: pre-op. (First phase was capture/intake.) In pre-op they were examined, tagged, documented, shaved and given some anesthesia. At about this time an operating table would be prepared for the animal. Then the veterinary team would bring over the clearly stoned animal and tie them down to the tables. (The tables, desks and dining tables, were too low for our Danish vets and had to be raised with 20cm or so of bricks.)
The length of an operation depended on the animal and if there were any complications. Male dogs and cats were quick. Females were slower because castration requires major internal surgery. The lighting conditions in Station 1 were terrible so the operations took place near the big door or even out under the roof overhand where the sterilization center was located. I distinctly remember witnessing three complications.
- A female cat came into the station in what was believed to be a pregnant state. The plan was to abort her pregnancy and then fishing up with a castration. When the vets opened up the cat they realized that her uterus was totally inflamed to the point of bursting and that there were no live fetuses to abort. It was very fascinating, in a detached, clinical sort of way. The Swedish television camera men got it all on tape. Removing the feline’s incredibly large and inflamed uterus left her about 20-30% lighter by days end. One vet told me that if that cat had gone on just a few more days she surely would have died.
- One puppy’s intestinal track filled with gas after receiving the anesthesia. This apparently happens if there is a specific sort of infection within the canine. The vet (head vet, forget his name) solved the problem by poking a hole in the pup and the gassy, smelly contents volcanically burst into a bucked held by Tenna like a zit popping on a greasy-food-eating teenager. The entire scene was really fucking gross.
This cute grey puppy’s lungs filled with fluid after receiving the anesthesia. No surgery for this pup. The vets were initially skeptical about him even pulling though…but fortunately for us all he did. He really was adorable.
The human resource logistics surgeries were move varied that I would have expected. Some times a single vet seemed to work the animal alone, some times half the entire team would be gathered about. Occasionally there were veterinary students taking direction from someone on how to ‘cut this’, ‘tie that’, and other basic surgical techniques. And lastly, but most disturbingly, even the vet’s young children got into the act.
After surgery the animals entered the post operative phase of their ordeal. Here is where we tattooed their ears with a number and chained/boxed them up for recovery. Some animals ‘came to’ quickly, and some not so quickly. My sterilization center gave me an all-to-close view of the secondary post-operative waiting area. I saw animals coming out of their drunken stupor that would make any Brit proud. I saw dogs having doggy nightmares, fights amongst drunken dogs (again, to make a Brit proud) and some that seemed to sleep and sleep and sleep so much that we became concerned.
Once an animal was recovered, it was either picked up by its owner or returned to where we had first captured the ownerless animal. There were a few animals that wondered back across half the island in search of more attention and food. These returning dogs, despite my involvement with cleaning puppy guts off of surgery kits, was one of the most emotionally painful experiences for me of the twelve days on island.
We would work until about 1600. By the, people started to trickle away just as they had arrived. The only constant was Maggi and Paul and the animals.
I understand that not a single animal died during or immediate after our efforts. But there are sure to be fatalities as we discovered after the Danish veterinarian team left. For example, Paul found a dog that had opened it stitches and her intestines were starting to fall out. Paul took the dog to the Thai Ranoong-based vet but he was not so interesting in helping out…for political reasons: he had issues with Maggi early on because she was organizing a major veterinarian effort in his back yard without his leadership.
Posted by stu at 09:55 AM | Comments (2)
November 04, 2005
Koh Payam Photos
So I've spent the past several hours uploading select, shrunk and cropped photos from my trip into the photo gallery so please enjoy. By Sunday evening I hope to have put to ASCII another story or two from my experiances.
Currently, I'm back at the Royal Guest House in Chiang Mai. The plan is to get some more stuff done for Child's Dream, head for Hong Kong and spend the weekend with Alice, Gene and Hoi, and then head down overland to Hanoi were Pam is doing some new Child's Dream work. After that I'm off to Laos and then back to Chiang Mai for some more work.
Posted by stu at 07:59 PM | Comments (1)
November 03, 2005
Volunteers
The first few days of volunteer work with Animal Care Payam was a wee bit disheveled. Without going into naming names and other details, the initial group of volunteers revolted against Maggi, the founder of the charity. Spoiled little shits. Anyway, Maggi recruited this Belgian guy Paul who is way too full of energy. He in turn rounds up from the streets of Ranong a group of recruits to help fill the newly created resource gap. Paul also worked day and night until the project was complete—making cages, rounding up animals, propping up Maggi’s soul and caring for post operative dogs and cats through the night in a snake, rat, spider, scorpion and mozzie infested shack. Good on him.
For some reason or another, all the new recruits and I ended up staying at the Bamboo Bungalows together without any of the other volunteers. This includes the married ‘professional travelers’ Mars (Kiwi) & Jessica (Swede), two absolutely hilarious English ladies named Boo and Rachel finishing off a year long trip together, and the three-weeks-in-Thailand Swiss Misses Christine and Jasmine of Biel. Because we were all staying at the Bamboo Bungalows, were for the most part well traveled, and also not participating in the above mentioned political mess, we sort of bonded.
After a few days, the Danish veterinarian group showed up piecemeal over three days. They were more than a team, though, and included vets, nurses, students, girlfriends, children, and a Swedish camera crew. The lead nurse, Harpa from Iceland, brought a degree of organization and leadership that we really needed to seriously get going. By the time we finished there were 160 spayed or neutered animals wondering the island! We all thought this a great accomplishment considering the primitive conditions, limited resources and blazing hot weather. Tenna at one point described the situation as ‘kindergarten surgery’.
Once the Danes arrived, the asked for a few ‘reliable’ volunteers to help out with specific tasks. Initially I was assigned to Jessica who was in charge of the instrument sterilization process. The idea was that we would take used instrument sets (which I called ‘utensils’ for the first two days) with blood and guts on them, clean them up, rinse, place in a sterilization bath of Tang-colored Hexaclordrine (?) and then server them back up for use. As this process can easily lead to a bottle neck in operations, it is considered vital.
Jessica, to her masochistic credit, was there helping out despite her deep underlying fear of dogs—she had twice been attacked by a group of dogs in the past. While intellectually she knew there was little risk, especially cleaning tools, it was brave of her to be there. Unfortunately on the second day a dog got aggressive and completely out of control. Jessica panicked on a low level and made a hasty exit. She could be heard muttering to Mars, her husband, “just get me off this island”. So, our hero Stu moves in to take over the sterilization operations alone for the rest of the day.
(All teasing aside, Jessica and Mars made a huge contribution to the overall effort despite their early exit. Seriously, they were slaving away from the first moment when I was having doubts about the entire operation, stepping back and contemplating exit strategies. Cheers to them.)
The next day Christine became my dedicated help for the day. We quickly developed and optimized our cleaning system to allow for more instruments and operating tables. There was a good rhythm flowing so we had enough time to occasionally break for food and take some pictures. It was fun. We made a good team. To bad for me that Christine was heading back for home the next day. What was somewhat exciting was that that afternoon I was interviewed by Swedish Television 4 for a documentary that will apparently air in February in Scandinavia. I described where we were, what I was doing, where I was from, and why Chang beer is better than Singha. Important stuff—we’ll see if I make the cut.
The third day was hotter than usual, and I was alone on the sterilization center. This Japanese woman was supposed to help me out but she seemed busy helping out with pre-op stuff so I let it be. Also, many of the non-bamboo volunteers completely flaked on us leaving the team short-handed. A vet had brought along two extra surgical kits which gave me the confidence to continue alone. After five hours of work, I was hot, tired and ready for a break. That’s when Christine and Jasmine showed up to say goodbye and catch their 1400 boat back to Ranong. I helped them shuffle themselves and their packs to the pier and distinctly remember Christine putting her hand to my head and noting how red and hot I was. An hour later I sunk into the beginnings of a not-so-mild case of heat stroke.
Lucky for me, Sari (Danish daughter of the head vet) who had helped me out the first day a bit came to my aid. She’d grown up with all these little tools and processes and took over for me. I went back to my little grass hut, ate a sandwich and totally crashed out. This was the first night of four where I suffered from a nasty headache and an intermittent 39-40C fever. Apparently, three of the Danes also took ill about the same time. Sari ended up filling in for me the following day even though I promised her that I would show up. Oops.
In the end, it was a good effort. Not only Maggi (the founder and my original recruiter) thanked me, but also many of the Danish team which was a relief. You see, I had gotten a bit stroppy with two of them. The first was a male vet whom I mistakenly thought was the father of this 14-year-old spoiled brat prancing around on a scooter (which Maggi rented in her own name) like it was his personal death wish toy. It turns out the kid is the son of the girlfriend of the head vet. Oh, ah…fucking royalty. Anyway, the dude thought that I overstepped my bounds as a lowly volunteer. We later made up. Next was a Danish vet that I chastised for breaking one of my process rules: she turned in an incomplete surgical set, which is a real problem for my process. Seriously! She wouldn’t even say goodbye to me. Bitch. No Valhalla for her.
Posted by stu at 01:01 PM | Comments (3)
Paradise
Koh Payam is a small island of the coast of Ranong, Thailand immediately south of the Burmese coast line. At approximately 6km by 13km, it is a little on the small side. No air port, a single dock for boats and only a few hundred Thai and Burmese inhabitants. There are about ten or some bungalows and resorts, many of which are closed during the low season: later summer to end of fall.
There are basically two paved roads on the island, one of which is considered the main road as it runs out of ‘town’. The secondary road is pretty messy and not so fun to navigate...especially in the dark. Legend has it that there are two cars on the island although I only saw one during my entire twelve day stay. Otherwise, the left-side-of-the-road drivers are all on scooters. I shared a Honda Econoline scooter with Christine (of Biel, Switzerland) most of the time. As she likes driving, has a mild Type A personality affliction, and most importantly actually has a proper motorcycle license, she did most of the driving. She’s also got a thirst for speed—-we topped out at 80kph once, which is amazing in hindsight considering the state of the roads and the size of the island.
It is about a 2.5 hour boat ride from Ranong. (150 Baht for Farang, 100 Baht for Thais.) The twice a day 15m wooden boats are slow and very ‘rustic’. Weather and cargo permitting, one can climb up to the front and just sort of hang out and take in the sights, which I did on my return along with this friendly dog that I got along with. There are two piers in Ranong from which the ferry departs and returns to depending on the tides. I had to climb up onto a fishing vessel and then the dock with my 15kg pack wearing only flip flops under very dodgy circumstances on my return trip.
My lodgings consisted of a leaky grass hut on the beach (250 Baht/night) at the Bamboo Bungalows run by this Israeli guy (Uli), his wife (Nok), his brother (Ronnie), and a mixed Thai and Burmese staff. They’ve got this wonderfully relaxed way of running things there: no passport, credit card or other deposit was required on check in...just choose your favorite bungalow. There were more upscale huts to choose from, but none of those where a mere 10m from the beach like mine was. Several evenings there were spent on my front porch watching the sun set in the warm ocean breeze.
The food served there, when available, was usually fantastic and never dipped below good. The Thai was predictable excellent. The 80 Baht spaghetti plate was surprisingly good. They make their own home made bred for sandwiches that all the other guests and I were very impressed with.
At one point we had this strange Bamboo-Hawaii connection: I’ve lived there for 7.5 years on Oahu, Ronnie lived on Maui for a few years, and three other guests (Jason & Kara (Kauai, Big Island, & Molokai) and Caroline (Big Island). Maybe they could rename it Kamaina Bungalows? Since there was not even a dozen guests at the time, this seems somehow significant...in a probably pointless sense.
Bamboo Bungalows is located on Aow Yai Beach along with a few other joints. At the end of the ~3km long beach is a place called the Rasta Baby Bar which lights up a bonfire every evening at sun set. The drinks are a little pricey but many people seemed to be hanging out there. (Well, a dozen or so last time I went...it is low season after all.) They’ve got this big swing out front which is pretty cool. Christine took a liking to it right quick. They guys working there are really nice and seem to smoke lots of grass.
Koh Payam is a cozy little island and I am thinking about spending my mid-December to early January time there. It is high season for the Bamboo Bungalows, but they half promised to let come back at a discount. As Ronnie pointed out my last day: “Stu, you’ve sort of become part of the scenery already!”
A note on the ‘Koh’ prefix for islands: apparently the translation from Thai to other languages is not so systematic and this results in some variety of spellings. Specifically with ‘Koh’ (island in Thai), it is frequently translated as ‘Ko’ and ‘Kho’. For some reason or another native German speakers love to use ‘Kho’. Many of my fellow Animal Care Payam friends referred to the island in writing as ‘Kho Payam’. Interesting, huh? I learned all this on a Lonely Planet Thorn Tree discussion board a while back.
Posted by stu at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2005
Koh Payam
I've been here on Koh Payam for a while now, but a) have been busy working with Animal Care Payam, and b) Internet connections here are scarce, unreliable, and expensive. But whatever. Tomorrow is my last day of work. Afterwards I plan to kick back here, post some blog entries, go swimming, get some sun, read some books, and generally enjoy myself.
Oh, and Pam is not so happy about the last post so I'll either have to edit it or maybe post some flattering pictures. :D We will see...
Posted by stu at 01:33 PM | Comments (2)