Raj and Lois in Timor

I was incorrect. In other news, it is raining again here, a little early for the late rains, but too late for rainy season. It's pleasantly cool after the rain; the grey clouds, having wept themselves dry, slip into the distant and ever-present mountain mists, and the dusty earth drinks up the water like a promise. Half-naked kids run through the downpour screaming with laughter and in the office we shut our laptops with an air of finality as the internet crashes. -------------- Raj has taken the HIV line management load off me, leaving me free to concentrate on creating training content for clinical and managerial training. I miss the team but I am grateful for the extra time this frees up -incidentally for work that I find enjoyable and meaningful. I might muse about some of the learning points from this process along the way.  -------------- I might as well speak directly of it: Raj and I had a difficult conversation about our exit strategy with our team this week. I trust the t...

Raj and I have, for the last few years, been going through assisted reproductive technology. Unsuccessfully. Today I confirmed that the last of our 4 embryos (Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Mo- had I presence of mind I would have called them maggie and millie and molly and may ) didn't make it after implantation. We're done with this process. We are grateful for the technology and the access we have to IVF as Singaporeans. And we're sad.  Sad is too short a word, but it's also an appropriate word, the sigh lisping out at the start, the little exhale in the vowel curling up in the back of your throat like a hurt animal, and the downward pitch of the last closed syllable. Now you can read on if you are thinking "how is Lois making sense of this?" and "how can I be helpful to her?" I caution that if you're processing your own loss, infertility, grief or gender identity, my reflections may not be the most helpful thing for you to read for you right now. I wi...

We've met half a dozen times I know your name, I know you don't know mine But I won't hold that against you You come here every Friday night I take your order and try to be polite And hide what I've been going through If you looked me right in the eye Would you see the pain deep inside Would you take the time to Tell me what I need to hear Tell me that I'm not forgotten Show me there's a God Who can be more than all I've ever wanted 'Cause right now I need a little hope I need to know that I'm not alone Maybe God is calling you tonight To tell me something that might save my life - Sidewalk Prophets, Save My Life The older I get, the more thankful I am to have people in my life who can look me in the eye, and not be afraid of what they might see.

What have I been doing in the 3 months since my last update? Making lists and sometimes tearing them up. I have a list of "To do today" items, quite standard. It hasn't moved very much in the last 2 weeks. Mundane things: triage emails, edit policies, plan teaching sessions.  I have a list of "Deep work" items/projectettes that require focused attention: my Med Ed essay, my Moore essay, a research paper I'm trying to write with Dr M, Chinese+Mandarin revision, Tetun study, core skills in Medicine. I have a list of "Dashboard" items that represent the things I'm responsible for or have things to do with: Research Staff Health Education/Training Volunteers Email M&E (Monitoring & Evaluation) Translation Emails Communications and Social Media People (Relationships) That's just for work. I have a more general list that captures the bigger categories: Bible Journal Exercise Work People (Relationships) Home Medicine I used to have a list ...

Sorry if we've been out of touch. We felt rather thrown in at the deep end (sadly, pun absolutely not intended) when April (and our unofficial new-role assumption) opened with the floods I mentioned in my last post. The tensions and demands of the last couple of months (eating instant noodles with rice over the kitchen counter when one is too dead tired to cook anything else between crisis response meetings BD; thinking through COVID-19 safe measures for return to work, reassuring staff when colleagues get COVID-19, reminding people that COVID-19 is real, googling "mask-fitting in low resource settings?") have given me slightly more insight into the uncertainties of life out of our privileged bubble. I am getting better at not feeling as guilty, and channelling any guilt into work. As the floods waned, COVID19 surged. I'm grateful to be connected to others, in other countries, who have seen first and second waves and much worse- their steadfastness and perspective giv...

 It rained without stopping since yesterday night. We woke to news of flooding on WhatsApp. Then videos and photos of the sort of things I'd hoped I would never witness again after Salone-- roads collapsing, houses torn away by currents, people wading chest-deep in (or outside) their ruined homes. Almost everyone I know has had flood damage to their house . Some of our staff lost their homes. The power grid is down, either because of structural problems or to avoid electrocution through the flood water. We are fine. We've got fuel for another few hours of the generator, and the flood did not damage our house. We were halfway through a move to the neighbouring house, but we have suspended that plan for now. Fortunately the main office is minimally affected, though the HIV clinic was completely inundated and it will be an extremely mucky clean up job tomorrow. We still have not been able to make contact with some of our staff. I'm not sure how we will do that (the first S of...

One of the chief blessings of the new (temporary) home is access to a lush, tree-lined compound (it feels like an acre for 3 houses). 9 of us volunteers live in two houses at opposite ends of the compound. The week we moved in, someone suggested volleyball. As always, I am amazed by the speed and execution of sporting facilities construction* here. T and the other guards grabbed a machete and went to work. In an hour the volleyball net was up. These lockdown days. As the blazing afternoon sun fades, we abandon our laptops and head to the garden. I marvel at the dexterity with which my neighbours and housemates set and spike and dig, with arms, with fists, with foreheads, with the lateral edge of a foot. I have long felt that ball games are not my forte (a suspicion first engendered by playing tennis with my 5-years-older, kinesthetically-gifted brother, and fossilized by a childhood entrenched in books and craft and musical dabbling). Experiences of activities requiring hand-eye coordi...