.

I thank my mother for donating $100 on behalf of her siblings for the purchase of books for Baguio Gold Elementary School’s library. I thank JoAnn Porter and Lisa Edwards for donating $40 for purchase of books. And I thank Shannon Fairlie for donating $25 for books for Baguio Gold Elementary School’s library. That total is $165, but I only spent $162. But I gave a 500 peso ($10+) donation to the head of the parent-teacher association for the preschool feeding program for impoverished kids.

.

.

Two bookstores in the big Baguio mall sell used books.

I bought How Things Work,

Jag’s New Friend (story by LeAnn Rimes),

The Ugly Duckling,

and Clap Your Hands by Lorinda Bryan Cauley.

I also bought Professor Potts Meets The Animals,

Dr. Seuss’s I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!,

Miss Spider’s Tea Party by David Kirk,

and Things That Go.

]]> http://tenpesos.com/2009/01/books-delivery/feed/ 0 http://tenpesos.com/2008/10/sick-kids-in-baguio-gold/ http://tenpesos.com/2008/10/sick-kids-in-baguio-gold/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:01:46 +0000 Brian McKay http://www.tenpesos.com/?p=2314 Charlotte and Rose have been ‘sick for days while I was in Sagada.  Six-year-old Rose had chicken pox weeks ago, and missed a week of Kindergarten.  Then her eight-year old sister contracted chicken pox.  I would have thought that it’d run its course and that they’d be well, but Charlotte’s immune system was weakened, I suppose, and she got influenza then passed that to Rose.  Both have been miserable, and I haven’t known.

This morning I got up early and waited three hours for Mack to bring his sisters to Monterrazas Village so that we could journey together to Baguio City and I could pay for a pediatrician to diagnose and treat the girls, however belatedly.

Mack left his cell phone last evening to charge it in my home overnight, so this morning I couldn’t send text messages to him to ask, “Where are you?” or “Are you coming?”

I sincerely hope that their grandmother ‘makes’ the girls take their three medicines three times per day for a week!  One medicine is grape-tinged syrup, and one is cherry-flavored, I think.  I should pray that Nanay can entice the sisters to ingest their medicines when they should so that they’ll feel better and be well and return to school next week.  †

We missed getting a jeepney ride uphill out of Baguio Gold by ten minutes, so we walked up the steep Baguio Gold Road. Then we waited more than several minutes to get a jeepney ride into Baguio City. In the city, I took the sisters to UFC Taekwondo studio to show them where their brother Nick trains. We saw him high-kicking for a minute or two before we resumed walking toward Burnham Park.

In the park, I rented tricycles for the girls then sat on the grass while they enjoyed recreation with the other kids. Afterward, we hiked back up to the Porta Vaga Building to meet with Nick after his class. Minutes after ascending the staircase toward the cathedral and UFC Taekwondo, we went down them to Session Road, crossed it and entered Gobi Mongolian Grill to eat chicken mami.

After dinner we bought student supplies in all four CID stores along Session Road and got cold medicine before returning to Tuding. I walked with the kids in the darkness on Main Avenue and Baguio Gold down to their shack in Baguio Gold, carrying Rose over the rough, unpaved segments, as we had no flashlights. In their home, I talked with Mack, Pat, Nick and Nanay of Sagada and about schools in Tuding and Baguio City while the girls played with a new toy that I’d bought.

Around 8:45 I got up to begin my hike uphill to my home. Dominic came home from Leah’s and Mike’s home a minute after me.

Because the weather was so glorious, unlike other days in the monsoon season, I wanted to go walking (farther) in the valley rather than just return uphill to home.  Of course the kids wanted to accompany me, so we set-off without a destination in mind, just walking and talking. Jameson, Justin, Dennis, Nick, Charlotte, Rose and I ambled along.  I bought juice pouches for us in a sari-sari store on the trail and we sat for a few minutes.

When we got up, I thought that I’d like to see the rushing river that we could hear.  I imagined that it was be swollen with rain water.  So we walked down to a hanging footbridge to cross the river.  The river appeared the same as usual.

After crossing the bridge, Nick asked if I wanted to go down to the river. I said okay, so the boys scampered downhill through tangled brush to a vegetable field then skirted its right border as the girls and I followed more carefully.  Rose, riding on my back, had an easier journey than the rest of us! By the time the girls and I walked along the edge of the plowed and planted field, the farmhands were watching.  I suppose that they don’t often see a white man trailing Pinoy kids beside their field.

Past the field, we descended again through tall grasses, weeds, trees and trash to the river’s edge.  The boys and I waded into the river.  The girls kicked off their flip-flops but were hesitant about joining us in the cold, rushing water.  At first, I thought, “Yikes; it’s cold!”  But the water wasn’t very cold, and I became accustomed to it after a while.

We waded, and submerged, and swam against the current, and splashed each other, and threw rocks at boulders, and climbed over rocks to find pools of water downstream that were less turbulent.  In the quieter places the girls waded in, but they seemed to be leery of being swept away or they found the water too cold for their liking.

We had a relaxing time.  I enjoyed just lying in the river, enjoying the scenery, swimming against the stream, and when bored looking for another part of the river to explore.  Eventually I was bored and the skinny boys and girls were cold, so we trudged uphill toward their homes in Baguio Gold.

When we arrived at their shack, I told Nick and his sisters that they could come uphill later to go with me to Holy Mass at Turning Point if they’d like to.  Then I hiked up to Monterrazas Village for a shower and a snack.

The beginning of Mass was delayed about forty minutes as we waited for the pastor to arrive, but the kids didn’t mind.  Filipinos are apparently accustomed to waiting.  After Mass we rode a jeepney back to Monterrazas Village, and I bid farewell to the kids as they strolled down to Baguio Gold and I turned left to return home.  †

Anyway, Nick said that Andy fled for Aurora Hill this morning yet needs money for school. He had hoped to ask for money and go to Mass with me today. So I asked Nick if we should go visit Andy to deliver the money for miscellaneous school fees, and he said that he’d hoped that we would (that’s why he’d come to bat for his brother). So I gathered my bag and two umbrellas for us, keys and wallet, and we departed for our nearest Tuding Road jeepney stop.

We rode a Tuding Express to Magsaysay Street, disembarked then hailed another bus headed east to Aurora Hill. After a little while of riding, we stepped down and began hiking up a sidewalk looking for Uncle Alfredo’s house. Nick said that he hadn’t been there for six years. He didn’t know the house number, but the gate is (was) painted red, and he’s heard that Uncle rents rooms (and thus has a “Rooms for rent” sign in front. Well, we walked and walked, and I suggested that Nick ask people we passed for help in finding the house.

I tried to ask a girls coming toward us, but she ignored me on her way to a sari-sari store. Okay. He asked a young woman, and she said that we were on the wrong street. Nick knew that Andy is living in a house on Aurora Hill Road, yet we were roaming Leonila Hill Street for twenty minutes! So we got direction to Aurora Hill Road and went to it. As we walked down it, it branched-off or split, shall we say. And no street signs could be seen, so we didn’t know whether to go right or left to remain on Aurora Hill Road.

What did Yogi Berra say? “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” That advice didn’t help us. We turned left, though. Nick queried asked a boy we encountered. I supposed that he asked if we were on the right road and if he knew where Mr. A. resides. I don’t know what they said in Tagalog. We continued down the sidewalk, and I suggested that Nick ask adults who were minding the tiny stores along the way for advice.

He leaned to one iron-bar storefront -the convenience store is smaller than many clothes closets- and asked the clerk if she knew where Alfredo Abellada lives. She gestured to the house behind the tiny store. The garage of Mr. A.’s house has been converted into a turo-turo diner and a miniscule candy/soda/rice store. Nick rushed through the carport/diner and knocked on the house door. Andy answered, let us in, and Nick and I met Uncle Alfredo and saw where Andy now resides.

I bought lunch for the boys and me in the diner, we had a delicious meal, talked about Andy’s nearby Doña Aurora Annex of Baguio City National High School, and I gave hime the 405 pesos he asked for plus more for mid-morning snacks.

Then the boys accompanied me by jeepney to downtown Baguio City. I wanted to drop-off two rolls of photo film for developing before returning home. At home Nick and I watched a movie before going to Mass at Fatima Hill/Turning Point. We ate dinner, then I bought five ice cream ‘drumsticks’ to take with Nick down to his home in Baguio Gold. Today is Rose’s birthday, and I hadn’t seen her yet. I wanted to surprise her and to treat her to a little ice cream. I can’t buy a birthday cake anywhere nearby…

Mack and Pat weren’t home, but the girls and Nanay were delighted to see me and more so when I pulled out ice cream and sang, “happy birthday” to Rose. “A good time was had by all,” as I wrote yesterday. By the way, the kids each told me today that they went to bed as soon as they arrived home yesterday, around 6:40. The day of play in Riverview Water park had exhausted them!

I again asked Nick if he would like to be examined by a doctor, and he agreed.  So I got my umbrella in anticipation of usual afternoon rain, picked up my keys, and we walked uphill to Tuding Road to wait a quarter hour for a jeepney ride to Baguio City.

I thought that we could go to the pediatrician to whom I had taken Andy* twice or we could return to the pediatrician that Nick visited a month and a half ago.  Well, after we checked my post office box for birth certificates for Nick and Rose (not here yet), we walked down Session Road’s sidewalk all the way to the clinic we’d been to previously.  The doc is only there from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., reported the clinic’s receptionist.  So Nick, Rose and I back-tracked up Session Road’s sidewalk to the Anita Theresa Building, where on the third floor are medical clinics.  Rose and I had gone there with Nanay a couple of months ago so that Nanay could be examined and treated by Doctor Montenegro.

Today Nick was interviewed by Dr. Bilog-Roaels then sent to Session Diagnostic Center (several meters away) to give blood and urine samples (which he’d never done before).  The doc said, after the specimens were analyzed, that Nick has gastritis.  She told me, after talking with Nick, that he seems not to be eating enough, often enough.  She said that he misses meals each week, including breakfast.  His stomach acid hasn’t enough food to ‘work on,’ so it irritates the stomach’s lining and induces discomfort.  Dr. Bilog-Roaeles said that drinking acidic soda pop doesn’t help, especially drinking sodas without eating.

So I felt guilty about taking Coke to the neighborhood kids in Baguio Gold back in April and May.  That’s what they’d requested (not juice, water, C2, or tea — and Gatorade, Powerade, and the like aren’t for sale).  However, aside from the caffeine and sugar in Coke, it’s too acidic for the skinny little boys to drink with empty stomachs before or after we played Sepak Takraw or basketball.

Dr. Bilog-Roaels said that Nick must not miss any meals.  He must eat breakfast daily.  He should drink more milk or Milo.  He’s under-height and under-weight for his age (12 on Saturday), as many Filipinos kids are.  I have bought so much powdered milk and Milo for him, Rose and Andy since meeting them in April.  But Nick says that they have none now.  I said that we’ll get more.

Dr. Bilog-Roales gave to us a bottle of Dicymed (Dicloverine Hydrochloride), an anticholinergic syrup for Nick’s tummy ache, to be ingested every eight hours as needed.  She prescribed milk of magnesia for Nick to take a half-hour after meals.

Since seeing a poster showing a childhood immunization schedule tacked to a wall in a pediatrician’s clinic in late May or June, I have been concerned for months about whether this family’s kids have been completely immunized against diseases in the Philippines.  I think that I asked Nanay, their maternal grandmother, who’s raising them in Baguio Gold, if they’ve been immunized against typhoid, diphtheria, malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis and whatever I could think of.  I don’t think that she caught-on to what I was asking.  That may’ve been when she was beset by her own problems with asthma and blood pressure.  And Nick couldn’t say with certainty who’d received which vaccinations.

Today I asked Dr Bilog-Roales’ secretary for a list of children’s immunizations so that I could go over it with Nanay and try to ascertain who’s received what.  After paying for the physician visit and laboratory tests, we walked downstairs to but milk of magnesia in Mercury Drug.  Then we crossed Session Road to eat lunch. I’ve fed these kids many times in the past months.  Both are too small for their age.  And I think that down in Baguio Gold they don’t eat much more than rice and chicken and a few veggies and fruits.  So I have bought groceries and meals for them so that they’ve had thousands more calories and nutrients than they would if they’d never met me.

At the start of lunch, I had Nick take a teaspoonful of Dicymed syrup (for gastritis).  About half an hour after lunch, I had him take a tablespoonful of mint-flavored milk of magnesia, which he hated.  We rode a jeepney to Tuding, then I walked with the kids down to their home in Baguio Gold as rain began to fall on us.

At the family’s home, Jimmy, the father of Rose and Charlotte, was there with Charlotte and Nanay, his mother-in-law.  Charlotte, whom I don’t remember meeting in April, remembered me and rushed to greet me and hug me.  And you should have seen when the sisters reunited.  Such joy!  Charlotte will be eight years old August 11, and Rose will be six years old on Sunday.  I’d heard yesterday that Jimmy would bring Charlotte for a visit on Sunday, and I lamented that she wouldn’t be accompanying us to Riverview Water Park on Saturday.

Well, Jimmy had brought Charlotte on Thursday afternoon to reside with her siblings and Nanay as she had until April.  He’s had a stroke and is unable to work full-time and support Charlotte’s, so he has returned her to Baguio Gold where she’d gone to grade one in the elementary school two hundred meters away.  I don’t know what she thinks about the poverty in Baguio Gold, but she’s happy to be reunited with her loving sister and grandmother — and perhaps her brothers Nick, Pat, and Mack.  And she’s eager to transfer to grade two tomorrow or Monday.  Baguio Gold Elementary School has a record of her; it’s not a huge hassle for her to return to the school where she completed grade one in late March.

So I asked Charlotte if she’d like to go with us to Riverview Water Park on Saturday.  I think that she’d already gotten wind of that outing from grandmother, because she readily said yes.  I asked if she has a swimsuit, and she said yes.

I went over the doctor’s instructions for Nick with Nanay and gave to her the bottles.  I reviewed the list of recommended immunizations with her, Jimmy, and Nick, and they assured me that every child had received all the vaccinations. They were quite sure.  So I horsed-around with Rose and Charlotte while Nick brought out his bicycle and inflated the rear tire.  He wanted to take his sisters for a ride.  Shortly thereafter I heard a jeepney engine revving and a horn honking, so I gathered my bag and umbrella then dashed down the steps to take a ride up to Monterrazas Village. †