Elaine

My MSF mission will conclude earlier than expected, but at the right time for me.

In my “backyard”, my home, my mother-in-law, the best in the West mother-in-law, is dying of cancer, and it is good, it is right that I depart a bit early and come to sit by her side, to tell her stories, to listen to her stories, of which she has no lack. This is a time of choice for me, and some choices are easy and good.
All of my inner voices say, “Go Home, Be With Your People.”

We have known Elaine’s life-end was out there, maybe a year or two. Now that end is closer , probably weeks, as cancer often surprises us it with its fits and starts then its finality. Cancer for Elaine has been one of those things that she had for several years, now the cancer has her. She and the cancer have traded places in the role of who will lead. Like other aspects of her long life, she has taken charge, and has given her willfulness and her unique “Elaineness” to this burden. She is pragmatic and reasonable. She is direct and resolute. She is an inspiration to many, many of the people that surround her.

I will miss her cranberry jelly, and so I must hurry home to make sure I have the recipe written down correctly. It is a family recipe. It is in her head and hands. There is a copy in my recipe file written by Dolly, Elaine’s mother-in-law, but it is no longer readable having been splattered with the boiling cranberries. The few times I have tried to make it “Like Lanie Does” I always have to repeat, “ how much sugar do I put, and how long should the rolling boil last, stirring all the while?” ( “I recall “stirring all the while” are the exact words on the recipe)

We have traditions to keep, Pritchett and Hillyer, Harper and Wilson legacies that carry onward only if we listen and learn and pass them down to Our People. There are many traditions that Elaine has carried on behalf of her ancestors, both from her family and from her husbands family. She collected precious “treasures“, stories and recipes and memories. Each of us will get to choose in these coming weeks which treasures we want to keep from Elaine. Which gifts I will choose to carry onward from the enormous pile of gifts? Which treasures that I have carried will my children carry onward?.
Some treasures will be kept by Elaine only, they are not ours, they are her special secrets and stories that will join her in eternity. But she will no doubt eagerly and generously give us treasures, if we choose.

I look forward to these days and weeks ahead, the good ones, the tough ones.

I will complete my writings about Abkhazia soon. My journal is full of more stories, more images, more emotions. I’ll share a few more before I close the Abkhazia Adventures.

While I prepare to say “Farewell” to the people who have opened their homes, their lives, to me over these past months, I will savor the best: The Black Sea, the constant that has brought daily nourishment, the little canal with the peach streetlight reflecting into its varying ripples and waves depending on the weather. The clang of the metal door closing as I enter the MSF compound. The oscillation of the fan cooling me at night, the morning birds that awaken me, the moaning water pump that is heard every time the sink faucet turns on, the squeaking pulley on the clothesline, the hustle-bustle at the market……the laughs and grumps of Inga, LaLa and Olga…..the smiles of Shamile and Zurab…and then there is Sveta, I will give her an apron that I had engraved, it says “CHEF SVETA” displayed right in the middle of the breast…..I hope she likes it…… and on and on……..

Thank for listening, for being a reason for me to write, even though you have only read a small portion of what has been written, it is enough, I’m sure.

Till later, genie

JOE

Many of you may be thinking, I am going to talk about Joe, Joe Harper, dad. It’s another Joe, the one who has recently been in Tbilisi, Georgia, the Joe that responds to Mr. Vice President.

As you may recall, our Mission office is in Tbilisi, Georgia. It is where the Head of Mission and the team that “call the shots” live and work. The MSF Tbilisi office is in a shabby building two blocks off “the main street”. Rastavelli, the main street has shops and hotels and the Parliament building. As is often the case in many cities, the main street is fancy, and two blocks away the living is distasteful or downright disgusting. So it is with Tbilisi.

Joe was visiting not long ago and he happened to stay at the Marriott on Rastavelli,one block away from our office.
So there was security, meaning blocked streets and extraordinary traffic. No surprises with a visit from a dignitary.
Everyone anticipated some hub-bub, but I understand it was quite an event. Let’s defern the politics until another time.

While Joe and President Sakashvilli are discussing arms and peace with Russia (Ha!) and other such important things, humanitarian aid was in motion.
Weekly on Thursdays we have transfers from Tbilisi to Sukhumi and Sukhumi to Tbilisi. On those transfers we transfer expats, expat’s stuff (if they are coming to the mission or leaving the mission or just going on holiday). We also transfer mail from Tbilisi, because there is no postal service in Abkhazia, and we transfer items from Tbilisi that cannot be purchased in Sukhum. However, most importantly we transfer sputum and pus. Those disgusting body fluids that must be analyzed in order to determine whether and which type of Tuberculosis is alive and well in these particular specimens, as we know it to be alive in well in many, many human species in the Caucasus, some of whom are our patients.

Because we expats and national staff and drivers really don’t want to be infected with Tb while transporting the samples, (and that can happen), we have a rigorous process to protect the sputum and pus( and those that are involved in the transport). We have boxes, “cold boxes”. These are insulated, metallic-lined boxes in which we have placed those blue frozen thingies you put in the freezer then put in your cooler to keep the potato salad and beer cool on the 4th of July….. instead of potato salad and beer, we put sputum and pus in the cold boxes, which are really only cool, not cold.

Anyway, Joe and his entourage were causing quite a ruckus on Rastavelli and the area surrounding the Parliament building, and the humanitarian aid workers just wanted to get the cold box out of the car and into the next box along the “cold chain”. So, what’s a cold chain? It’s a process of moving items that must be kept cold from one place to the next. There are often a series of cold storage devices to make that happen such as freezers and metallic boxes with blue thingies. In our case the S&P had to get from the Tb hospital in Sukhumi to the MSF office and then to the Tbilisi laboratory where further analysis would be conducted to determine whether the sputum has regular Tb or multidrug resistant Tb (it had already been established that Tb was present).

Typically the transfer is quick, efficient, minimizing any mishap which would involve dropping the box and the S&P. As you can imagine there were multiple blocks with traffic and hoy-paloy interfering with an efficient transfer. So, on this otherwise uneventful day, the driver of the transfer vehicle and his passengers were obliged to carry all the transfer items, including the S&P, from the car, now parked many blocks away.

For entertainment value I would like to tell you that there was a grand mishap, that S&P were spilled all over the streets of Tbilisi, that Joe and his entourage are now undergoing testing in the US to determine if they have been exposed to Tb and that there is a wild, embarrassing Tb scandal, but the truth is everything happened as it should have, given the interruption of the traffic and the extra on-foot transport of S&P.

There is no big splash, or emotion, or “awakening” to share with you today. Just a simple recognition that while all of you were listening to news of the day, and perhaps heard that Joe, the VP, was traveling somewhere far away, and a few of you may have even thought, “I have heard of Georgia, it’s the place that’s close to Russia, that’s where Genie is, isn’t it?” The truth is I am not in Georgia, I am in Abkhazia, but the MSF mission headquarters is in Georgia.
But anyway, on Wednesday this week, as on every day there is “THE NEWS” the scandal, the big scoop, and then there is what is happening with the rest of us that never makes the news. Primarily because it isn’t news-worthy.

Sitting at the beach today, it was fun to think about potential events, the unlikely but possible events that turn into screenplays and blockbusters….like Caucasian terrorists who have staged a heist of a humanitarian aid’s transport vehicle, during the chaos of a dignitaries’ arrival, only to find deadly sputum and pus …..!!
Not to worry, I will not be writing it.

it’s bedtime…nighty night….