Foreign Blood

July, 2008
Knives were the big souvenirs. Dad, brother, cousin, boyfriend, uncle, in-law, whoever, we were all pretty sure they would love the hand-hammered knives the guys down the road made daily. It was amazing to watch. Up before the sun, they heated their fires, prepared their tools and went to it. When the metal was glowing hot, one guy would lift it out with tongs and hold it on the anvil. Then he pulled out his hammer. He and two others would alternate their hammering in seamless rhythm to bend the metal to their will. The whole process took a good amount of time, but the blades are incredible. And the sheaths are carved wood, fitted to each blade.
The downside to shopping with 20 other people when you aren't willing to elbow through and snatch up everything you see first is the fact that the knives are bought up faster than they can be made.
After a particularly hard morning of cleaning cemented silt from the local road, most of the team was ready to rest for the few hours we had before heading to the next school. When Lindy mentioned adventuring into town and only two of us joined her, I was secretly rejoicing that I would finally have my choice of knives.
Bouncing down the road, we came to a pile of rocks. Perched at the bottom was a little boy, 7 years old if I remember right, crying hard while blood from a gash on his head ran down his back. It took us a moment to realize what we were seeing, then Lindy was on the brakes and jumping out of the car. The boy was obviously in pain, but wouldn't sit still for us as we tried to figure out what to do (he may well have been on the hysterical side of pain). We didn't have anything in the way of bandages, paper towels, rags, nothing. Lindy used the one small disinfectant wipe we had. It quickly soaked with blood and the wound kept gushing.
A teacher finally came out of the nearby schoolyard and calmly took his hand. Lindy tried to get across to her the serious nature of the cut, that it needed pressure, stitches... but the teacher remained nonplussed.
With the help of his playmates we found the boy's mother, who also seemed surprisingly calm when we told her about her son bleeding profusely. She smiled pleasantly, hopped in the truck and rode with us to the school, where we found the boy had stopped bleeding and the wound had been cleaned off. He wasn't crying anymore, and his schoolmates were surrounding him. Smiles everywhere. Lindy offered to take the boy to the clinic-- the wound was still gaping-- but she was denied. So we accepted their thanks and left to continue on.
I was woozy from all the blood and put my head down in the truck while Jennifer and Lindy talked about the discrepancy between the calm parents of the Philippines and the "I know she's lying dead in a gutter" obsessed mentality of American mamas. It was bizarre to us that everyone was so unconcerned about a little boy's serious wound.
But it's a different culture, with different ways of dealing. It was also a very poor area we were in, and health care was an immaculate expense. I found myself wondering about the education of the parents. It's strange to me that nobody would realize a wound of that nature can lead to worse things if not properly treated, but then I suppose had nobody taught me that, I wouldn't be concerned with such trivialities as blood.
As for the knives, it turned out people had given requests and while I took my time contemplating my choices, the day's collection was bought up for people who weren't even with us. Sigh. The men in my life will just have to wait.