The Half Day School finished its term and I didn't so much as have a chance to say bye to most of the kids who don't live on site. I never really explained to anyone that I'd be leaving and I never took Bang to the hospital...nor do I know how her situation will evolve this month. It'll be up to whoever's here in November to see how she's doing, though I'm thinking of doing some grant writing in the future to get annual health checks for all of our kids on and off our centre.

For me, these last couple of weeks has been hanging out with the staff and live-in kids, teaching in the mornings and evenings, hosting sponsors and short term visitors and the new long term volunteer. He is staying at my house at the moment because there is no space for him on site. I took the kids off site for a lunch outing with a generous contribution from my parents and fed 70 mouths with $50 US.

And the countdown before going home begins. I leave Mae Sai on Friday and will stay in Chiang Mai for one night. From there, I'll fly into Taipei, where I'll have another 24 hour layover...then I'll leave for Anchorage then off to New York to arrive sometime in the afternoon on the 15th.

And I guess as things and responsibiltieis have wrapped up one by one I've started to rehash and evaluate the last 10 months of being here. In a lot of ways, this is maybe the first "job" I've had that wasn't a complete joke by anyone's standards. I'm not here because my Dad's an important person on staff. And I'm not working behind the counter serving people ice cream or coffee anymore. Many people have been "impressed" with the work that goes on around here...

When my sister Anne-E was here for two weeks she reminded me of something I don't particularly like to highlight; that there's a bit of a narcissist in every person who works with children, myself included. And yes, the work was more pleasant and encouraging if I felt that I had somehow earned the children's respect, their trust and their friendship or love. And none of that even matters at the end of the day. The fact is there was no enormous impact made by my being here. No one has earned any citizenship through any work I've done. No one's become particularly proficient in English because of me. And nothing has changed in the way of these children's rights or opportunities in the future. This scares me.

I guess it should suffice to say that I have many friends in this country; people who refer to me as their older or younger brother... I might forever be haunted by the outcomes of their lives, one, two, five or fifteen years from now.

In preparation to come here, I'm not sure if I was thinking about anyone other than myself. I was expecting my own standard of living to be difficult. I was thinking this would be 6 months without friends, family or any genuine human interaction. I thought I would be ready to go home without any second thoughts. I'm so lucky that it wasn't that way. I'm so lucky that the experience here will make it so hard to say good bye.

Yesterday I went to the dentist. I'm a few months overdue. The truth is, I kept meaning to go to Chiang Mai to get a cleaning, but would never find a convenient time to do it and I didn't trust the dentist in Mae Sai. But when Garry went to get his teeth cleaned in town and raved about the performance of the dentist here, I realized I didn't need to go to Chiang Mai. And when I made the appointment, I felt like I was getting away with something. 400 baht for a cleaning. That's $10! What a bargain, eh?

But believe you me. I've gotten away with nothing. Much to my dismay, the first thing the dentist upon inspecting my teeth was, "You have a cavity." This was, obviously, the worst thing to hear ever. I felt like a piece of my pride had been taken away from me. And now I think that all of my teeth are going to fall out of my head in the next three weeks.

The dentist's office in Mae Sai is equipped with a lot of the same equipment and things to sell as a dentist's office in Manhattan. Including an electric Braun toothbrush. Even though I'll be home in two weeks and even though I have a Braun toothbrush at home, I panicked and bought one right there in the dentist's office. They sell for about the same price as they do in the States (1,500 baht, $35 US I reckon).

Upon this I came back to the center to lament and do some work when I had one of my frequent visitors come to my window. Her name is Bang. Bang is about 8 years old I think. She attends the Half Day School but lives at home, has a mother and father to go back to every evening. Beng has had a series of unfortunate medical problems in the last month. It started off with a toothache, which Garry was good enough to follow up on, brought her to the dentist (same guy), and had the organization take care of the expenses. Not days after she came back from the dentist, she appeared in the volunteer's office again complaining about her ear, which she apparantly couldn't hear out of. She pulled the right strings again, spoke to Garry, who brought this to the attention of the powers that be again and had her brought to the hospital. Again, the problem was taken care of and it was simple enough. The organization, again, took care of the expenses.

The day I got back from travelling with Anne-E, Bang appeared at my desk while I was working, standing and waiting patiently until I turned to her to ask her, "Is there anything I can do for you?" and she said, "My arm hurts." So the pattern was very visible now. And for a few seconds, I didn't actually believe her. I took a deep breath and said, "Ok, where does it hurt?" and she points to the lower part of her shoulder with her other arm. Then she said, "I think I broke it when I fell out of the car." to which I responded, "really? When did you fall out of the car?" and after looking up at the ceiling for a little bit, she said, "I think it was last Friday." I still didn't really believe her, but obviously I wasn't going to tell her that. "Bang, I'm going to move both your arms very slowly and if it hurts too much you have to tell me to stop." And so her arms moved in full rotations, up and down, left and right. There was no indication that anything was broken, as far as I could see. And so afterwards I kneeled down next to her and asked, "What do you want to do, Bang?" And she started to look upset and said, "I wanna go to the hospital."

This is a tricky situation. There's universal healthcare in this country, but it's not reserved for people without citizenship. Bang, like many people, doesn't have citizenship and all of these visits to these doctors costs the organization money. Not that every visit hasn't been warranted. Of course, they're all warranted. But the staff talks about the children on site who have parents who died of AIDS, and they're not sure if a lot of the kids also have AIDS or not. The Half Day School is meant to offer free education, not free health care and the fact is, for whatever lack of resources or initiative, physical health checks are not compulsory.

Knowing all of this, and being frustrated by the fact that universal health care excludes almost every kid I work with, I was reluctant to bring Bang to the hospital when I didn't think much of anything was wrong. As delicately as possible, I tried saying to her, "Bang, you can move both of your arms very well. I don't think the hospital is going to tell you anything." and she started staring at the ground and I could see she was getting more upset. She knit her eyebrows and shouted, "If Garry were still here, he'd take me to the hospital!" And so we made a compromise. I told her, just take it easy for a few days. If it still hurts or feels worse in two days, let me know and we'll talk to a higher staff member.

And was that even the "right" thing to say to her? And what do I say to her in two days when it still hurts? People could potentially argue for hours over this ethical dilemma.