Cannabalism of the Vietnam War

I know to title this "Cannabalism of the Vietnam War" might be misleading in a chilling dietary way, but that is not the meaning of my title. Cannabalism instead refers to the human mind that has become so corrupted, twisted, damaged by war that the mind cannabalizes the senses to be altered and perhaps self-destruct the individual. War does that. War is a destroyer. War does not stop destroying the moment a treaty is signed. War continues to ravage, to maim, to aphixiate, to kill. Following are three books written about the destructiveness of the Vietnam War, a destruction that shattered homes, families, bodies and minds that can never be mended after the war.

The Girl in the Picture

Source of both pictures - during and afterwards

The book The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph and the Vietnam War is chillingly sad. The book was written by Denise Chong who wanted to get the story behind the famous picture known in the West as "The Girl in the Picture". The girl, Kim Phuc, was nine years old and had known war much of her childhood. One afternoon when out with extended family members, she, aunts and cousins and villagers around her were suddenly victims of napalm splashing from the sky. Friendly allies had napalmed their own side, and people came running and screaming down the road toward and past people, reporters among them, to flee the atrocities. Several who were running had burning skin and Kim Phuc was the worst. Her clothes had been burned off of her and her skin was afire with napalm. The picture taken of the running burning girl hit the the media and brought to world's attention the ugliness of war. The picture became a symbol for anti-war sentiment, but the war was not to be "over" for another three long years. The Girl in the Picture is a story that tells what life was like for Kim Phuc who survived the napalm attack but who was horribly scarred for life, luckily not on her face or arms so on some level she was thought to lead a "normal" life. Denise Chong gathers Kim Phuc's story from among the surviving family members in Communist Vietnam, in Cuba where Kim Phuc received an education and then onward to Canada where she eventually immigrated. Though the Vietnam War has been over for decades, to Kim Phuc she lives with the memories on her scarred mind and body ... and though the music of bombs falling is no longer heard, the silence of the aftereffects rings defeaningly in her ears.

The Tunnels of Cu Chi

The tunnels - not the underground 'hospital', sleeping and cooking quarters. Source.

The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A Harrowing Account of America's 'Tunnel Rats' in the Underground Battlefields of Vietnam is another chilling story, not one of a victim this time but one of soldier survivorship. Cu Chi was one of the most heavily bombed places during the Vietnam War. It was an area fairly near Saigon that was riddled by Viet Cong soldiers who burrowed holes through the ground to infiltrate the enemy's territory. Though few in number, the Viet Cong tunnel rats would pop up and spray the enemy with a machine gun and disappear back into the ground before the enemy even knew their lines had been infiltrated. It was a warfare totally foreign to the Americans (Australians, etc), and as the Allies caught on, they would train soldiers to crawl through the three levels of burrows after the tiny Vietnamese. The burrows were intricately networked, booby trapped and very confined for one-on-one knife fights but that was the kind of "war" that raged underground. And then at times, the Americans were ordered away from the tunnels so bombs and napalm could be smashed down over and over on the fearful ground that held secrets too awful for Americans to approach. Of the hundreds of Vietnamese tunnel rats, only three (or was it four?) survived from beginning to end of the war. Death lurked in the holes from the enemy tunnel rats or from the deadly pounding of the bombs to destroy one of the Viet Cong's most feared areas in the war. Those who experienced being in the tunnels were forever haunted by spooks of the unknown blackness; the locals who survived had their lands and their families destroyed, and were haunted by the years of evil and death particularly rife in the area; and the Viet Cong, the 3-4 who survived, are people living with guilt for surviving while their friends and families were destroyed, often before their very eyes. Cu Chi is a haunted place and for many of those believing in the spirit world, it is a place to fear. 

[BTW, I have been to the Cu Chi tunnels and even crawled through an open segment of tunnel, only a first level. The second level segment that was open for tourism was a bit too narrow, especially because I didn't know how far I would have to belly-crawl before being able to come up for light and air. Many people who lined up to go through the first level took one look at the close confines and decided they weren't up for it. Actually, I was able to almost duck-walk through most of the first level tunnel so it wasn't too bad. Also, the segments that are opened for public are rigged with intermittent small lights to give the "adventurer" a guide as to where to go. There are off-shoots to the lighted parts but people are told not to try them ... the guides didn't know if they had been properly explored or not, and of course no one knows what is "around the next corner" in them.]

The Sorrow of War

The Sorrow of War was the hardest of these three books to read - hard because it was written after the war but constantly the story flashbacks to what once was. The story is a progression of flashbacks triggered by memories of after the war or yet another time which is the result of depression. Depression of Kien, the narrator, is caused by guilt of leaving his girlfriend after her gang rape to rush to the army (or face the firing squad) and fight at the front for 11 years, during which time his friends and companies are summarily killed and he always seems to be the one who survives. It is not a story of surviving, but of flashbacks that are triggered by his life as he's trying to pick it up in the present ... rather, it didn't seem like he was trying at all to pick it up, but was just in a state of existence. Eventually however, Kien is living a life of continual flashbacks. His mind has been so ravaged by the senselessness and dehumanizing acts of war that he cannot live to enjoy his gift of survival. The author Bao Ninh uses a style which is most compatible with the reader's inability to track time and easily comprehend a chronological story for the entire book is written as if it were a single chapter, one without headings or clues to organize the changing of topics. But the fact becomes obvious, there is no change of topic for the war is the topic and that is paramount in the shattered mind of war-damaged Kien, the North Vietnamese soldier.

Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne

Lately I've been doing book exchanges with colleagues who are interested in history and the effects of war. My most recent is Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers about E Company, 506th Regiment, 101St Airborne who first parachuted over Normandy, who often spearheaded attacks on thinly guarded front lines and finally ended up in Hitler's Eagle Nest where blatant looting and wild drinking closed the war, and where casualties were no longer from gun fire but car accidents resulting from the inebriated state.

For an excellent book review, click here.

The name of the book Band of Brothers is the result of specialized training with the same group of men who were forced under dire stress by their unanimous hatred of their company commander, forced night marches where they learned to recognize each other's shadows, and fierce and on-going combat. They were faced with the ugliness of war, destruction, death, and where nothing was worse than letting one's buddy down. And through the grime, filth and blood they formed the closest brotherhood they would ever know, one founded on selflessness and the intimate trust that comes when one knows he can depend on another to do his utmost for his buddies' best interests. And as the book states, by the time they had gotten through the Battle of the Bulge they were a band of brothers who would be linked to one another through life from their shared horrific experiences.

The men of E Company passed through many countries as the war progressed, and each country was stereotyped by their treatment/reaction/indifference to the troops. In general the men had widely different perceptions and experiences with the German people, the supposed enemy. Some found reasons to reinforce their hatred, others loved the country and its people, but nearly everyone ended up changing his mind about their preconceived ideas of the Germans as all of them had some kind of fascination with the German people.

"The standard story of how the American GI reacted to the foreign people he met during the course of WWII runs like this: He felt the Arabs were despicable, liars, thieves, dirty, awful, without a redeeming feature. The Italians were liars, thieves, dirty, wonderful, with many redeeming features, but never to be trusted. The rural French were sullen, slow, and ungrateful while the Parisians were rapacious, cunning, indifferent to whether they were cheating the Germans or Americans. The British people were brave, resourceful, quaint, reserved, dull. The Dutch were, as noted, regarded as simply wonderful in every way [but the average GI never was in Holland, only the airborne.] The story ends up thus: wonder of wonders, the average GI found that the people he liked best, identified most closely with, enjoyed being with, were the Germans. Clean, hard-working, disciplined, educated, middle-class in their tastes and lifestyles (many GIs noted that so far as they could tell the only people in the world who regarded a flush toilet and soft toilet paper as a necessity were the Germans and the Americans), the Germans seemed to many American soldiers as "just like us."" (p248-9)

The book ends with the E Company running riot in Hitler's Eagle Nest but where the incessant drinking in the final days of the war became a bore and the men ached for action or a speedy return home. Finally, on November 30, 1945 the 101st was inactivated and E Company no longer existed. But the brotherhood remained. And almost annually a reunion takes place where many of the former paratroopers get together and re-cement their bonds with one another. Not all have faired well. While all suffered some physical or other adverse traumas of war, the majority were able to adjust back to civilian life. A small number became dysfunctional, three became wealthy, but the vast majority became builders of society.

In the final chapter on the "Postwar Careers" of the men from E Company, it was noted that most men took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights and went to college, became educated and participated actively in contributing to the social, and for some, economic welfare of the US after the war-torn years. And as Ed Tipper, one of the paratroopers, sums it up in regard to why so many of the soldiers returned to be teachers, he said, "Is it accidental that so many ex-paratroopers from E Company became teachers? Perhaps for some men a period of violence and destruction at one time attracts them to look for something creative as a balance in another part of life."

Edible Insects (Entomophagy)

A variety of insects are eaten in the Central African Republic. During the rainy season, termites called bobo swarm around termite mounds or, in urban areas, around electric lights. After an evening storm, children run to collect them by the basketful - often, tossing them in their mouths with shrieks of delight. Termites are eaten sun dried, roasted with salt, and spiced with hot pepper, or they may be boiled in stews or dumplings.

Kindagozo refers to green grasshoppers that arrive in the area in the dry season. Central Africans roast grasshoppers or simmer them in water after the insects' legs and wings have been removed.

Several species of caterpillar are also eaten throughout the country, for example the larvae of the Imbrasia. A large brown moth lays its eggs in sapelli trees. After the caterpillars are hatched, villagers collect and wash them. The caterpillars are then simmered with tomatoes, onions, and other ingredients according to a family's recipe. Some may be dried or smoked for preservation. They can also be kept for up to three months for later use.

Safe and Good for People
Although not all insects are edible, many are safe when harvested from areas free of pesticides and fertilizers and prepared properly. Of course, as a precaution, they should be avoided by those allergic to the insects' marine counterparts, shellfish, which are also arthropods. In contrast to most shellfish, which scavenge for decaying matter, most edible insects eat only clean leaves and consume plants that humans might otherwise be unable to digest.

Caterpillars have an amazing amount of nutrition concentrated in a deceptively small package. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, dried caterpillars contain more than double the protein of beef. Food experts are rediscovering insects as a source of nourishment in developing lands.

Depending on the species of caterpillar eaten, just 100 grams can provide a large part of the daily requirements of such important minerals as calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, as well as many vitamins. Additionally, flour made from ground caterpillars can be mixed into a pulp to supplement the diet of undernourished children.

Besides their nutritional value, there are other benefits to entomophagy - the practice of eating insects. Using insects for food is environmentally friendly. Doing so requires little water and produces few greenhouse gas emissions. Added to that, collecting insects for food is a natural means of pest control.

Imbrasia obscura
Picts in this entry all taken from
"Some edible caterpillars of Bas-Congo"

Insects may not appeal to all tastes, but they are served in well over a hundred countries, and in some countries, some insects are considered delicacies. And as one lady in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, put it as she prepared a meal for her guests, "Insects are an important source of protein for many in Central Africa, but we do not eat them because we have to; we eat them because they taste so good." Her meal had the enticing aroma of onions, garlic and spices ... and yet the makongo (caterpillars) were served uncooked.

In the Bible the law covenant given to the ancient nation of Israel declared locusts to be clean. Servants of God, such as John the Baptist, ate them - see Leviticus 11:22; Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6. However, people may still hesitate to eat what is culturally unacceptable to them in their culture - ah, good o' ethnocentrism! Nevertheless, in Central Africa large bowls of caterpillars can bring beaming smiles, and for the visitors, being served first and generously too is the way of showing one's heartfelt graciousness in welcoming the visitors ... and visitors should not disappoint ... or offend.

Info in this article is taken from "Awake!" June 2012 monthly publication.

The Ravens: Pilots on the Secret War of Laos

Christopher Robbins (2000) researched the Ravens, the little known group of flyers in the US Air Force. The group were the elites in a way but also the rogues, the men who flew well but wanted no constraints; they wanted their freedom in the skies to outperform or challenge the elements behind engines with wings; they wanted a chance to make a difference in a war that was bogged down in paperwork, men with too much leisure behind the lines and overwhelmed by bureaucracy. And so from a wild group of fliers known as the Butterflies, the Ravens were born, and Robbins whispers their story in The Ravens: Pilots of the Secret War of Laos.

The Ravens got their name from the raven bird, which is a bird of the gods. The exact reason for choosing this symbol for intelligence gathering is not clear yet the birds have figured heavily in many mythologies. In Nordic mythology, two ravens, Huyin (Thought) and Munin (Meaning), perch on the shoulders of Odin, the lord of gods, to whisper in their master's ears the things they have seen while flying to the ends of the earth. Similarly, the Vikings believed that the circling of the great black birds in the sky during battle were the representations of the gods in guise. To many American Indian tribes the raven could will to do anything as it was a source of power; it had created the sun, earth, moon, stars and people of the earth. Indians have admired the bird for its sagacity, recognizing its ruthless opportunism and wily trickery at the same time. Other beliefs about the raven have figured it to be a ominous bird and a harbinger of death. Zoologically it is known to be extremely clever and brave, having high mental development and the ability to convey messages to its fellows. For whatever reason the name was bestowed on the men who flew the hazards of Laos air in secrecy and in daily flights of death, either dropping bombs or napalm or other deathly things, or, dropping out of the skies to their own deaths. Their apt name intermixes mythology with the reality of their death watch in their daily flights to win territory for their allies, principally the Mao (Hmong).

Source with more mythology on the raven

Laos was not part of the war zone for the US or for the communists in North Vietnam, and both groups denied having troops in the off-limit zone ... and yet it was a zone so heavily bombed that eventually press leaks made the Americans aware of "another war theater", and caused more anger and anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam War, seemingly incorrectly named based on the widening theaters of bomb droppings.

"In excess of 6,300,000 tons of bombs rained down on Indochina during the Vietnam War years, more than all the explosives dropped in both the European and Pacific theaters in World War II. Less than a tenth (about 600,000 tons) of the total tonnage dropped in SE Asia fell on North Vietnam" despite that location being enemy headquarters. "The bombing of North Vietnam was mostly concentrated around the area directly above the 17th parallel, where troops and supplies were massed to move south. It is one of the supreme ironies of the war that it was South Vietnam, the allied country being defended, that bore the brunt of the US bombing--a staggering 3,900,000 tons. Laos took second place. More than 1,100,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, with a further 500,000 tons in Northern Laos (which means that a considerably greater tonnage was dropped on Laos than on Germany--which was devastated by 1,360,000 tons in World War II). The 1,600,000 tons of bombs dropped on Laos would have amounted to seventeen tons every square mile--or was equal to six-tenths of a ton of bombs for every man, woman and child."

Caught in the middle of all these bombs dropping, invasion of land, and fighting were the Mao (Hmong). Mao was a derogatory term commonly used for the Hmong until the 1970s when Dr. Yang Dao, the first of his people to earn a PhD, raised awareness that it was in fact a venomous word stemming from Chinese slander. Mao originates from the Chinese miao, meaning "barbarian". And yet the Mao (Hmong) were formidable fighters and fierce opponents; they did not deny the 'complementary' name but returned the complement by calling the Chinese "sons of dogs".

The Hmong were great warriors. They were a Mongolian race originating from China. They were the most mysterious of the 12 principal races of Indochina, and even more so since they had no written language or reliable history. Their histories were enshrouded in storytelling and legend, e.g. they had come out of China on a flying carpet, they originated in a land of eternal snow and arctic nights (Inuit origin?), they become werewolves and weretigers to eat the livers of slain enemies. They were a people who grew opium for medicine, but it was socially acceptable for only the old and infirm to use it. Their medical treatment were based on deep traditions for promoting health and long life, e.g. deer horn in velvet, tiger bone marrow, gall of bear and python, and skin of gaur (wild buffalo). And when the Ravens encountered them and introduced Band Aids to them, the Band Aids took on great reverence as medicine with magical powers which drew out bad phi (energy and/or spirits of their animist world).

The Ravens loved the Hmong and found them hard-working, determined, fearless and loving. When the US signed the Paris Agreement on Vietnam on January 12, 1973, South Vietnam and Cambodia (two countries intimately connected to the treaty and which quickly becames victims of the treaty) were not included in the negotiations. Laos, of course not being acknowledged by the US govt as part of the war, was not present or represented either. Basically the treaty called for a cease-fire but a clear date was unestablished ... and through the "treaty" the US was exonerated from the war, the Ravens were ordered to not drop any more bombs though their dear friends and allies (the Hmong) were being decimated below them in battle and pleading for bomb coverage. The Ravens heartbrokenly returned to the US, where they were hated as symbols of the Vietnam War. They felt their years of battling for the mountain territory of the Hmong among the highlands and the huge plateau of the Field of Jars (named after the 4000 ton jars mysteriously lying on the plateau and which were so heavy a helicopter could not airlift one out) was futile and wasted. Nothing had been gained ... and now everything was being lost by the Hmong.

In terror many Hmong, though drastically decimated in numbers, fled Laos to Thailand where they stayed in refugee camps hoping for patriation to other countries. Eventually 2,000 were scattered in Canada, Australia, Argentina and French Guyana. 6,000 in France. Over 50,000 in the US. This mountain group of people have not assimilated easily in the US where they predominantly were sent to cities to reside. Many brought crossbows, hoes and shaman paraphanalia. They had no language skill or technical skill for coping in a city life. They lived off welfare but had no idea of how to shop, cook or "live" the American way. Their family groups had functioned around clans but with clan dispersal among many nations, depression rates soar. While the American medical system is quick to label the Hmong as dysfunctional, the Hmong are more tolerant of "mental" illness. As animists believing that everything in the world must be in harmony, their dreams tell them they are out of harmony. They have rituals to propitiate spirits, but there are too many alien spirits in the US. Some strange deaths have occurred among the Hmong community, death by nightmare, which the Philippinos have a word for "bangungot", but which Americans shake their head at unaware that in a simpler age people would recognize that the Hmong are dying of broken hearts.

Wooden Fish Songs

"Wooden fish songs" are laments sung by Chinese women who were left behind by husbands, sons and brothers in the 19th century when Chinese men were seeking new opportunities in the Golden Mountain (America). This novel Wooden Fish Songs is actually a historical novel told about Lue Gim Gong, an actual person who left China as a young boy, worked in various menial positions in the United States and though perhaps returning to China for a time, spent much of his youth and adult life in the United States where he developed a hardy grapefruit tree that bore succulently sweet grapefruits. He was ripped off by a marketer and his years of hard work only perhaps brought him satisfaction as he never got monetary rewards for his studies and labor. Little is known about Lue Gim Gong (188?~1925), but his obituaries estimate his work was honored in the Florida Pavilion at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and the 1940 New York World's Fair. His extensive library was sold, his personal papers largely destroyed, and in the 1980s the author was able to trace down a single volume diary but only to discover it had been burned as it was deemed "valueless". This novel, therefore, is the greatest contribution perhaps that exists for the man who sacrificed his country, his labor and his health ... for the Lue Gim Gong grapefruit.

This book needs to read for itself, so my commentary is limited to the cultural reactions of Chinese when they were confronted by white foreigners, most likely Americans, for the first time.

In the years of drought, many Chinese were forced to attend the white ghost's worship center because those who attended were given a bowl of rice, which eased their raging hunger. Lue Gim Gong's mother was one such person. When she went to the center, the foreign ghosts were ugly and their behavior was barbaric. Mounting a raised platform, the ghost man called for silence, then shouted and howled, flinging his arms and twisting his body so furiously that his unhealthy white skin soon blotched red. Sweat poured off him but he lacked the sense to take off his jacket or loosen the sash tied peculiarly around his neck instead of his waist. The mother was not surprised as from the ghost's broken Chinese, he was denouncing her gods, the tender-hearted goddess of mercy, praising the foreign-ghost God, the one who'd murdered his own son. Clearly the man had lost his reason, and Gim Gong had gone to live among the foreign ghosts. Had he lost his reasoning too?

Going to the white ghost's worship place was like going to the theater. The white ghost woman would make strange music by pounding and pumping a large box with her fingers and feet. Her lips moved but Gim Gong's mother couldn't hear well, but understood the problem when the lady beside her snorted and said, "How can she sing louder? She's bound her waist so tight it's a wonder she can breathe, let alone sing!" Another person chimed in, "And she's carried everywhere like a bound-foot woman, but her husband speaks out against foot binding!"

Gim Gong's mother feared also the bread given by the white ghost for the white ghost had said that the bread would become meat and spurt blood if bitten down on. This would not be good because Gim Gong's mother had taken vows to never eat meat so she put the bread in her grandson's mouth, but she was convinced the white ghost was up to more trickery when the bread neither became meat nor spurted blood. She, like other mothers, hid her grandson's face from the look of the foreign white ghosts to perhaps protect him ... but how could she protect her young son Gim Gong who was separated by a sea and many mountains?

The mother indeed thought something was amiss when Gim Gong sent a picture of himself with a ridiculous sash hanging around his neck and his hand resting on his female white teacher's shoulder. The mother was deeply troubled. What kind of woman could teach a man? And worse, could this white ghost, a female though twice his age, have entrapped her son in sexual behavior and was treating her son like the husband she lacked?

In America Lue Gim Gong was learning the language and the culture, which means he was also learning about Christianity but he wasn't readily accepting. When someone rebuked a fellow Chinese for bowing to pagan idols for ritual ancestry worship, Gim Gong defended the man saying that the ancestral tablet was no different from tombstones in the white people's cemetery, the incense his fellow lit before it had the same significance as the flowers white's lay on graves, the deep bows made reflected nothing more than respect, like the bows gentlemen made to ladies. Gim Gong refused to accept the white people's religion as superior to his own when they were so obviously similar, and he was made more stubborn when his white associates told him he would burn in hell forever for his beliefs.

When Lue Gim Gong returned to China, he was a Christian who advocated change in his very traditional isolated hometown filled to overflowing with superstitions and the ever-pressing desire to live in peace with or to placate the restless spirit world. Gim Gong preached Christianity, and was condemned for reading out of a white spirit book with a devil cross on it. He preached change. When people shouted for reverting more strongly to their traditional roots to fight against the coming of the white ghosts and their powers, Gim Gong said no. "We not only can change, we must. We must take the money from surplus harvests, the money you now borrow for funerals and weddings, and spend it on fertilizers, better seed, and improved tools that will bring advancement." His words were not well received ... for who would listen to a younger brother when the older brother and father and sages of the village still lived and freely gave their counsel and wisdom based on their years of learning. And so according to the historical novel, Lue Gim Gong returned to America where he pursued his passion of studying horticulture, the soil and grafting of plants to created his sublime, heavenly perfumed grapefruit.

Doctoring the World with WHO

The following is a passage taken from Doctors of the World (1958) by Murray Morgan. The book was written as a graded reader for students to study English with, and 65 health and epidemic related words are put in bold in the book and glossed in the back. As a graded reader, or a "ladder" step reader of 5 steps, this book supposedly has a base vocabulary of 2,000 words and builds on the vocab learned in the previous level, I think the first level. Well, I might add that as a language teacher, I think the vocabulary selected is not your everyday common words and the sentence structure would be a real treat (yikes!) for someone struggling with English, especially Asian languages that use the radically different sentence structure of S-O-V while English uses S-V-O. Imagine the word order being complex anyway, without the many embedded clauses within clauses. Here's an example of the complexity, and notice that the first paragraph is constructed with only two sentences:

Twenty years ago the United Nations (UN) created the World Health Organization (WHO) to give to all peoples the highest possible standard of health. In a world with a population of something like 3,500,000,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are struggling with conditions that make sickness and lack of proper food the normal state of life, this is a huge task indeed - especially for an organization with fewer than three thousand full-time workers and with only $50,000,000 to spend in a year.

Of all the United Nations' activities those of the World Health Organization are probably the least known in the United States and Western Europe, but the best known in the young countries of Africa and Asia, as well as the republics of Latin America.

Sanitation

In its world-wide battle against disease, WHO works closely with other UN groups such as the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Labor Office (ILO), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

BREAKDOWN OF CHAPTERS AND CONTENT

Murray Morgan, the author, is not a doctor but as I understand it a reporter who travels from WHO sites to WHO site to document some of the "hot spots" where WHO is desperately trying to eradicate disease in various parts of the world. His reader has 11 chapters and I will ever so briefly outline what each is about:

Ch. 1 - The Race Against Resistance: Mexico Against Malaria
225,000,000 a year suffer attacks of malaria a year, and some 2,000,000 die from it. By the time of this writing, malaria had been eliminated in 13 countries which included the US, but in other places the mosquito, the carrier, is building up resistance and so WHO went on a hyped up mission to eradicate it by heavy usage of DDT on the walls of every one's houses in Mexico.

Ch. 2 - Kwashiorkor, the Hidden Killer of Children: Central America
Kwashiorkor with symptoms of emaciated arms and legs and distended bellies, hair that changes to have pink-yellow tones and skin to develop yellow-white spots is a child killer. The disease is one of malnutrition and is most common in children after they have been weaned from their mother's protein-rich milk and put on a diet for children, that of heavy starch. And in many countries like in Central America, sick children need special care, that is corn starch soup, not realizing that it is the excessive starch and lack of protein that is causing the imbalance.

Ch. 3 - The Bat Man: Costa Rica, Trinidad and Mexico
In an outbreak of rabies in Costa Rice, the best rabies-specialist Dr. Aurelio Malaga-Alba was sent. He made an eradication program for all wild dogs to be killed, all domestic dogs to be vaccinated, and as the rabies epidemic spread northward he caused rabies to be controlled in the wild spaces outside the cities. In short, he set up 41 poisoning stations and in an area of 1.5 million acres, 18,000 wolves were killed, drastically decimating the population but also decimating the carriers of the rabies virus.

Ch. 4 - Nurses Afoot and on Horseback: El Salvador
Adelia Eggstein, one of the nurses on foot who traveled to isolated places to vaccinate, treat, give powdered milk and feeding schedules to mothers, as well as care for patients in remote mountainous places in El Salvador was a phenomenal trooper. Though Adelia originally from Minnesota but having lived for many years in China until the cultural revolution was a well-educated nurse, there were many other female nurses who many of them had only as many as three years of education besides some nurse training for administering care in the mountains.

Ch. 5 - The Case of the Silent Monkeys: Colombia, Panama and Central America
The monkeys in the forest turned out to be dying of yellow fever, and the fever which had not been heard of for many years was wildly spreading again. Yellow fever is a killer and it spread northward with everyone holding their breath for "Would it stop at the Panama Canal like last time?" The answer was a clear no as it was transported further northward, as it was suspected, by migratory birds.

Ch. 6 - The Andean Mission: Peru and Bolivia
The creation of technical education programs to help the younger generation be more educated to meet the needs for improving agriculture and repairing machinery. The author picked up on the problem that in this early stage of educating the youth that sanitary education centers were lacking, case in point, when he asked about digging a latrine for the shabby elementary school next to the new tech school, the answer came back to not waste time or effort on the old but to place all effort on the new.

Ch. 7 - They Hunt the Smallest Game
Otis and Calista Causey were two researchers who would trek into the worst stretches of jungle to find and identify viruses, old and new alike. Of all the researchers who were employed by WHO to search out world viruses, Otis and Calista had by far found more than all the other research teams altogether. Otis insists that it's not skill from 18 years of acquiring research skill but rather that he and his wife have their success from the large amount of viruses present in the Amazon jungles of Brazil.

Ch. 8 - The Race with the Snails: Brazil
Snail fever (nowadays more commonly referred to a liver flukes) is a rampant disease of flukes which burrow into the liver and feed on the blood within the body. They do not reproduce in the human body, however, but the eggs are passed out through the feces which then contaminates water where snails are and the embryo eggs find a host in the snails until they can pass back into the water where they can be ingested or simply burrow through the skin of humans to develop until they can reproduce again. The flukes remain in the human forever causing loss of energy, weakness, liver hardening and after a long period of time, death. WHO was frantically trying massive poisoning methods at the time of this writing, but liver flukes are still a huge problem in the Amazon, so obviously the battle still rages.

Ch. 9 - Miracle in the Jungle: Nigeria against Yaws
Yaws is a disease for country people who live in a hot, wet climate. It is a disease caused by poor sanitation and affects the body with a skin sore or sores, much like leprosy. In past centuries, it was treated unsuccessfully with mercury, but other successful treatments have been to set up sanitation stations with good food, cleanliness, pure air and water, e.g. like bathing in sea water, and the yaws clear up after 6-12 months. The recent wonder drug Penicillin, however, clears up yaws within days, a month at the most. In Nigeria 1955, 40,000,000 people had been examined and 10,000,000 had been treated for yaws with penicillin.

Ch. 10 - Leprosy - One Million Victims: Nigeria and the Upper Volta
Out of a population of 18,000,000 in the northern states, 593,000 were suffering from leprosy and 125,000 lepers were receiving treatments at 462 clinics. Some clinics are permanent because people and their families by association are ostracized from healthy society; some clinics are weekly as in those areas the people are more open to lepers who own or work land and come on the weekly visit to the leper clinics for their weekly pills of Dapsone (DDS), a medicine related to sulfa.

Ch. 11 - The Big Picture: Geneva
Dr. J. H. Hale, a science professor at the University of Malaga in Singapore, noticed in 1957 that a large number of people were being treated for influenza. He took throat samples to learn which of the three types it could be - the three types of influenza A, B and C and each has many sub-categories. This particular strain of influenza was traced back to Hong Kong and was a new strain of influenza A, and therefore, a strain which no one was known to have any antibodies to. As this book was concluded, WHO was monitoring its spread to all continents of the world and making predictions about its behavior, the first time that WHO had had the technology to do either.

Teacher's Training and Child Abuse

Torey Hayden, special education teacher and author, wrote her own experience in one of her special ed classes in which 8 of the "worst" children were placed. The 8 had a medley of problems but there was just no where else to put them. They included Peter (8) with a deteriorating neurological condition; scarred Tyler (8) a girl who had tried to kill herself twice and once by trying to swallow some acid which ate away part of her esophagus; big strapping Max (6) with infantile autism; fat Freddie (7) at 94 pounds was said to be either retarded, autistics or condition unknown; Sarah (7), a victim of physical and sexual abuse who chose to be mute; petite, angelic Susanna (6) who had childhood schizophrenia and hallucinated, rocked herself or wept; William (9), a boy haunted by fears and rituals to waylay them; Guillermo (9), an angry blind boy from a migrant community. Torey wondered what she had gotten herself into to get such a mish-mash of "unwanted" children, that is, children who did not in any way fit in other special ed programs so they were dumped into her class.

And then after Christmas vacation, another child was added to her medley, a child who no one wanted and was scheduled to go to a state hospital, but as there were no beds available, her classroom was the only one where the child could be placed. The child was a horror! The child, 6, had a couple of months previously kidnapped another child, age 3 and about the same size, tied the child to a tree and proceeded to burn him.

Sheila, the unwanted child, arrived, She was feral, uncommunicative, unresponsive, and had angry watchful eyes. She already had a history of destroying other classrooms. Her fears seemed insurmountable, but love and understanding oh so gradually won her over. Her veneer cracked ever so slightly when in trapped fear she pee-ed on herself. The shame and horror of such an act and the teacher's response that it was just an accident was what got her to talk, to the effect of "You're not gonna tell my pa. He'd beat me for somethin' like that. I didn't mean to ..." And it became obvious that she was a child of abuse. Torey already knew from records that her mother had abandoned the girl at the age of 4 along a highway, and later Sheila revealed that she had just been shoved out of the car and left by her mother who took only the younger brother Jimmy with her. An abandoned child, seriously damaged, and one who was abused by the remaining parent.

I highly recommend this book. It needs to be on the reading list of every single teacher, psychiatrist, psychologist, child care worker and social worker. Torey Hayden, as a trained special ed teacher, made mistakes in trying to reach Sheila, she admitted those mistakes, but the premise in her classroom was to make and keep good communication with all her children. With Sheila this rule of communication was tested and revised as Sheila had a tested IQ of 182 and knew angles and loopholes in logic and behavior that Torey had never encountered. One Child is really a must-read!

Interesting notes on One Child

One Child did not start out as a book, but it was a personal story to record for herself her extraordinary time with Sheila. It was only after the story was completed that she considered publishing it.

One Child is Torey's first book and it was the first thing she ever submitted for publication.  The story itself was written very quickly - only eight days from start to finish. And it took only 42 days from the time she started writing One Child until she signed a contract with G.P. Putnam's Sons to publish it.

One Child is currently in 28 languages and has been adapted in several diverse forms, including a one-act opera, a Japanese puppet play and a TV movie.
 
The book was written 2-3 decades ago, and to find out what happened to Sheila and the other 8 children from that medley classroom, a person can read here. However, I recommend reading the book first and not spoiling the fun of discovery.