JAN-C-6
A HALF DAY OPERATING AND A BRIEF TOUR OF THE MALAYBALAY
ENVIRONS, WITH A VISIT TO KAAMALAN PARK,
THE BENEDCITINE MONASTERY,
AND MKADVI, A PINEAPPLE PLANTATION,
BEFORE THE BBH/MMI FAREWELL PARTY CELEBRATION
January 22, 2003
This OR day began with my going to the Or for a foreshortened day, and seeing two women with big goiters sitting outside the OR door, the second one a recurrent goiter from the operation he had had in 1993 as a subtotal thyroidectomy having re-grown as a goiter twice as large as it was then.
After waiting through a couple of cleft lips and seeing the patients I had operated yesterday—all of whom were doing well, including the one who had had the inadvertent tracheostomy, so I pulled out drains and changed dressings and returned to the OR—to do the first goiter with Jovi. It was large but fast and relatively easy. The next was a recurrent goiter and we prepped that one also, which went rather well also. So, I must be up to over three dozen thyroidectomies by now done personally with a few more done by others in the team, as well as a number of miscellaneous operations that might collectively add up to the total of the goiters removed. And, once again, thank God, under these unusual circumstances, still there have been no major complications, even in the one with the tracheal perforation, as it was recognized and fixed at the time.
We came over for lunch and planned a short trip out into the environment, no longer including a dip in the pool at a series of forest springs some distance away, since it was raining and we were looking to start with a few indoor activities. The first thing we visited was a park very well known to me. We drove around the Kaamulon Park where I run in the pre-dawn darkness. It was raining as we made our way into the rainforests road cut by bulldozer only shortly ago, but we also saw the Bukidnon Province’s offices, where the Governor is and the Provincial Hospital is located.
We then went to a very familiar place, the Monastery of the Transfiguration at a volcanic hilltop where I had visited last year. It is a Benedictine Monastery and the monks are self-sufficient, producing farm products also for sale. Last year I had bought the “Monk’s Blend Coffee” some of which went missing in a rental car package of Christmas presents, but, I figured that must be why I had returned here. So, I bought more of the coffee to carry back as souvenir to replace the lost. We also saw the sanctuary and the mural painted by a Malaybalay artist. We heard about the Benedictine Boys’ Choir, which, like the Vienna Boys’ Choir, has a turnover as boys get older and their voices change, since the option is not longer available to make castrati of them for musical purposes. This year I did not hear a rehearsal as I did last year. We toured the pyramid, a design made by the famous Philippine architect Leandro, who had designed the cultural arts center in Manila and other public buildings, making this open air pyramid just before he died.
We had toured the banana plantation of MKAVI on Sunday my birthday, so we now toured its sister organization, MKADCI—Mount Kitanglad Agro-Development Corporation, Inc, a little like the banana plantation in that the people working are more than peasants, but a lot like a utopian society based on a paternal management, which has, for example, Bible study breaks, in the 400 hectare fields. We saw and rode around hundreds of hectares of pineapples in various stages of maturing. We finally stopped at a ripe field of pineapples and cut open dozens and “OD'ed” on fresh sweet pineapple.
We have now returned to take part in the celebration of our being here in a big production number for the BBH/MMI program.
ONCE AGAIN, THE BBH PRODUCTION WAS DONE BIG,
AND THE MMI CONTRIBUTION WAS PART OF THE PROGRAM,
AS THE PAGEANT OF BBH/MMI FAREWELL FELLOWSHIP
Our group had to rehearse a little to get ready for the program, which began with a rendition of the schmaltzy song “I come to the Garden alone.”
Subsequently, it is learned that this is the song of a prisoner of war who is assigned to tend the human cesspools of a concentration camp, which he likes to think of as a garden since it is the only place he is not beaten. Whether this story is true or not, it had contributed to our own folklore, since I would refer to the “song I come to the Cesspool alone….” We did that one, but what really intrigued the group, is that we had picked up the music sheets for a song we sang in the Visayan language, which surprised them.
OK, so much for us. I taped the proceedings, including the sermonette that was delivered, and the special numbers done before the dance and cultural festival of the Bukidnon peoples. The rehearsal I had heard turned out to be a Luzon dance and song. You will hear and see it on the record I had made of it.
We were each introduced, not once, but twice, with little stories told about each of us. We could recognize several of the nurses and others whol had worked with us, including Ken Van Huizen and his wife who come from Grand Rapids, and have two children in college in the US as well as two here in Nasuli. The eldest daughter went to try out for Calvin College and wanted to do thespian drama. She was asked to audition and failed the audition, a great discouragement to her, so she wound up at Hope. The other is at RBC in Grand Rapids. These are two of the four kids of the New Tribes SIL mission pilot Ken and his Cutlerville wife. There were also members of the Board of Trustees of the BBH since this marked the inauguration of the festival that goes through April 16 of the 50th anniversary of its founding.
So, I received an orchid as a necklace, and a Bukidnon tee shirt and a lot of cheers, with extracted promises to be returning to the next of the MMI projects in the Philippines, which will be centered around BBH in Malaybalay.