Love is in the air

Forget about the Gaydar – that’s so 1990s.  These days, for us sensitive new-age male types, it’s all about the Gendar, and I flatter myself that I have an almighty one, which right now is standing to formidable attention!

I’m on the flight home from Port Moresby to Brisbane, and I can’t help noticing that very few of my fellow travellers are female … I can count three, in fact, on a 737 with about 180 passengers.  Such is the composition of fly-in-fly-out miners, builders, investors, public servants and missionaries which make up the cross border traffic between the booming, resource- and religion-driven economy of PNG and its down-turning, godless, former colonial master.

And as if the odds weren’t bad enough for an ‘always up for it’ barnyard Casanova, the three possibilities up for grabs consist of an elderly Papua New Guinean woman who looks like she’s got her fair share of grandchildren (and who made it clear upon first advance that she wasn’t interested), a European backpacker with natty dreadlocks, soiled clothing and in terrible need of a wash after six weeks ‘living with a family in the bush’ (who - and I know it’s no longer the done thing for a man to judge a woman by her looks – I wouldn’t go near with a forty-foot pole); and a nun (there are some blurred lines that even I won’t cross). 

So with no options for action from amongst my fellow travellers, I was left with no alternative than to turn my attention elsewhere, through which I noticed a rather interesting, and these days somewhat uncommon dynamic going on between the airline cabin crew and the fat, bald, jowly, ruddy-faced … but extremely rich mining executives heading home for a long weekend ‘alone’ in their riverside Brisbane apartments.

I recall decades ago hearing about young, frivolous air hostesses who used to clamour for shifts on the flights out of places like Monte Carlo and Las Vegas on Sunday evenings in order to land themselves a partner promising a high-rolling lifetime of five-star resort holidays, convertibles, coastal mansions and saucer-sized diamond-rings.  Of course that was a bygone era, and feminism has come a long way since then … at least for most women.  But perhaps not for those very same women whose gambling sugar daddies have since lost their edge, or whose dodgy government contracts proved leaky, or who simply drifted towards the new breed of younger, silicone-enhanced casino floor beauties.  Sadly, for these washed-up social lights, once the Porsche had been repossessed and the last jewel-encrusted g-string had been pawned, they had few options other than to return to the only skill at which they’d ever excelled, and here they were, back on the flight path … looking for a man of means.

And what fertile hunting ground they’ve discovered!  Every day, there are four flights out of Moresby, and every one of them is choc-full of sweaty, wheezy, portly and incredibly rich old men, most of whom, for one reason or another, have chosen to follow money-induced exile at the expense of losing wife and family, and who now, thanks to the power of chemically enhanced erections, have plenty of home-leave and resources to enjoy the company of slightly younger, but equally chemically enhanced starlets of the sky. 

These Botoxed bombshells spend a good deal of the two hours and thirty-five minutes in the air flirting and gesticulating suggestively to these well-heeled, gnarled old toads, and I can assure you there has never been a lap-dance as arousing as the simulated strip-tease these gals do with the demonstration lifejackets – “just bend over like this and you’ll find it under your seat”.

So as you can imagine, poor-old Donkey, with his development sector-issue cargo pants and grotty Greenpeace t-shirt is never going to stand a chance against the grotesquely overweight and over-paid parasites of PNG’s resource boom.  Right now, though, I’d probably settle for a glass of iced water to dampen my arousal, but I’ve been hitting this hostess call button for the last hour and a half and do you reckon anyone’s coming my way?  Not when there’s gold in them there front seats!

With all these old, rich bastards around, Donkey never stood a chance! 

Pic: http://loveletterfromlondon.blogspot.com.au/2012_08_01_archive.html

If looks could kill

Anyway you look at it, I was a bad student; my commitment was atrocious, my marks terrible, my conduct inappropriate and my attendance either tardy or non-existent.  By the time final year had rolled around, there was little to save me from the end of a dole queue.  But after a stern chat from one of my more conscientious lecturers (at the pub, as I recall) I was left with no allusions about my future, “Lift my game, step-up my commitment, or I was out”.

The message must have been delivered with considerable fire and brimstone as it cut through my inebriation sufficiently that upon sobering up, I tidied-up my act and set about trying to catch-up on years of missed learning.  At about the time my commitment started to kick-in, I recall having to work with a group of my fellow students to research and deliver an instructive presentation on the role of body language in practitioner-patient communication. 

I remember finding it surprising at the time that this concept of non-verbal communication embodied a significant breadth of scientific sociological and anthropological research, and some kind of academic curiosity deep within my semi-functioning brain was momentarily tweaked.  Still, old habits die hard, and I took to the assignment with the derision deserved of any un-graded elective.  Together with my fellow indifferents, I delivered a puerile, immature but amusing role play about young, drunken students trying to pick-up in a bar (fertile ground for yer old mate, Donkey, as you can imagine … aside from the picking-up part). 

Perhaps you’re thinking that this was yet another squandered opportunity for me to learn something new and to get serious about my studies.  But let’s face it, it wasn’t as though being able to read and understand body language was ever going to save my life, right?

True enough, I’d say … that is if I had knuckled-down and studied my nuts off, in which case I would have been making mega-squillions right now cutting the toenails of bored millionairesses like all my former peers, and would never have needed to understand body language to make my way in the world.  Given the choice, I would happily succumb to deafness induced by the substantially more boisterous language of money, rather than having to strain every fibre of my impoverished being to catch the allusive whisper of the body. 

The bitter irony is that because of my academic laxity, I was denied the moneyed path, and instead ‘chose’ the more modest pursuit of saving the world, within which one’s success, and indeed one’s very survival can at times rely on one’s ability to recognise and respond appropriately to people’s non-verbal communication.  If only I’d studied!

Anyone who’s ever travelled to a new country will know how it feels to have accidentally committed some cultural faux pas such as shaking hands, walking through the wrong doorway, helping oneself to a meal reserved for someone more important, grabbing your host’s wife on the arse and so-on.  More often than not, these innocent mistakes are taken for what they are, and usually the most adverse outcome is simply a sense of shared embarrassment amongst all parties.

But here in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, I’m discovering that recognising and responding appropriately to the signs and signals of people’s bodies, facial expressions and actions is my only defence against finding myself as the main ingredient in a pot of Highlands Donkey Stew.  In particular, one thing I have learned pretty quickly, and which is a significant departure from other Melanesian cultures, is that looking a stranger directly in the eye is not a chance to exchange a friendly smile, but rather a challenge which can generate an extreme response.

Jared Diamond, in his laborious Guns, germs and steel, explains that when highlander strangers meet, a lengthy discussion ensues, sometimes lasting many hours, during which the strangers attempt to identify whether they are related to, or know anyone in common, simply in an effort to avoid having to try to murder each other.  So ingrained in their culture is the mistrust of strangers and non-kin, that they will kill out of obligation, rather than to simply pass each other by.

What Diamond failed to cite is that their patience and ability to engage in such detailed and lengthy familial exploration are significantly diminished by the presence of two unrelated factors, both of which are found commonly in the highlands these days.

The first is rugby league.  Papua New Guineans are mad for it.  During the recent State of Origin match between Queensland and New South Wales, every woman, man and child in the country did whatever they could to get to watch the game on TV.  In the villages of the eastern highlands, satellite TVs aren’t that easy to come by, so that means getting to the nearest big town before the game.  Goroka is one such town, but as the transports only come to town in the morning, literally hundreds of thousands of highlanders had descended upon the two-block municipality by mid-morning, to watch a game that was not due to start until 6pm.

All day long, scores of people thronged the pavements in large, protective family groups.  Many of the men and women had painted their faces, admittedly in either NSW-blue or QLD-maroon, but utilising traditional, highlands war-paint designs which further increased their menace.

The other factor set to strain inter-clan tolerance in modern-day Papua New Guinea highlands is alcohol, and with nothing better to do for eight hours in the lead-up to the game, SP beer was flowing out of the bars and bottle shops of Goroka like a monolithic highlands god suffering from chronic, supernatural incontinence.

As I wandered through town on my way home that afternoon, I glanced at the menacing, slurring, war-painted faces of the highlands warriors crowding around me, and despite my incomprehension, I felt both fear, and the stirring of something unfamiliar in the pit of my brain.  I meandered cautiously through the crowds and noticed that groups of angry men were moving towards me.  Suddenly, as if a chamber opened in my mind to release latent information from the distant past, I became acutely aware that these hard stares and menacing faces were telling me something.  They were telling me that there was no need to sit and work out who we both might know, because clearly I wasn’t related to any of them … and they were telling me without words, but in no uncertain terms, to get the hell out of there.

I hurried through the crowd and made it home just before the sun went down … just before the game started … and just before the highlanders started burning everything in town. 

So to my stuck-up alma mater I say, “Screw you and your exams, your supplementary exams and your withdrawal of enrolment notices”, it looks like ol’ Donkey learned a thing or two after all.  It just goes to show that there is no need to concentrate all the time at school, and that you really can learn more in two hours at the pub than you can in a whole life time in the classroom.

Picture this, in a hue of blue or maroon, and fueled by alcohol and boredom … and then run!  

Pic:  http://www.pinterest.com/edstok/body-art/

DYB DOB Donkey

This week I’ve been in Bangkok attending a global summit of influential minds on Disaster Risk Reduction, which is all about trying to prepare communities, governments and countries generally to withstand and recover from the effects of natural and man-made disasters.  I was thrilled to be attending the meeting, not only to hear from the world’s leading minds on DRR, but also because I had been asked to present a key note address on the last day, which I was hoping was going to be my big chance to make myself known to these power brokers and who knows, maybe even nab a high-powered, important job in the future.

The discussion topics on offer at the summit have encompassed lengthy soul-searching on setting-up Early Warning Systems which can be operated as soon as the initial signs of a disaster are imminent, so as to alert communities and other parties to prepare for the coming danger.  There have also been detailed explanations of working with communities and various groups on Disaster Preparedness and Response, so that they know what to do when the Early Warning System is activated, and Disaster Mitigation and Resilience, which is all about putting things in place to limit the impact of the disaster on people and their livelihoods.

But as is so often the case with these high-level discussions, all the theoretical jargon and technical know-how immediately get thrown out the window when a real disaster hits, as I discovered this week when my world was thrown into utter chaos by a series of unanticipated, catastrophic events.  

On the last day of the meeting I was up well before the sun, diligently preparing for my presentation.  After finalising the materials and practicing my speech a couple of times, I ironed my shirt and trousers, and headed off to the magnificent hotel breakfast buffet which is a common, essential element of these kinds of global meetings, concerned as they are with improving the lot of those with barely enough household resources to feed their kids.

In the Disaster Risk Reduction biz, when we talk about developing Early Warning Systems, we encourage individuals and communities to look for any unusual events or changes in their surroundings.  Hindsight is indeed a powerful tool for reflection, and through this I must concede that my ability to recognise and comprehend a significant change to the breakfast buffet that morning could well have spared me from the debilitating effects of what followed, however I failed to recognise the significance of the bowl of small, ripe cherry tomatoes which had replaced the more common-place, large, pre-sliced tomatoes on offer during the previous four days.

Failing to heed this important Early Warning Sign, I obliviously sat down to my greasy breakfast and with the sharpened points of my unsuspecting table fork, I pierced the shiny outer skin of a cherry tomato, unleashing all manner of damnation and hellfire in the form of bright, red tomato juice all over my crisp, ironed shirt - my last clean shirt for the week – all within a few short moments of the professional and reputational reckoning upon which my future career in international Disaster Risk Reduction was to be built.

Within a nanosecond of the destructive cocktail of juice and pulp being sprayed from hip to shoulder where moments before there had been nothing but sharp, starchy creases, I was on my feet in the middle of the public thoroughfare, absently wiping sticky yellow seeds from my scalp and ears, while my shrinking spleen emitted an involuntary, guttural groan which rose into the lofty chamber before disappearing into the same, intangible locale as my future career prospects. 

In reflection, it’s quite possible that all may not have been lost at that point, as there may have been some individuals of influence who’d not yet become aware of the destruction my heedless actions had unleashed upon the early morning diners, however my voluble anguish was released with little heed to the number one rule of Disaster Response planning, which is to Remain calm – DO NOT PANIC!.  Instead, I projected a shrill, piercing scream like a couple of over-weight drag queens fighting over a pair of fourteen inch, red sequinned stilettoes, attracting the full attention of every member of the largest gathering of influential minds on international humanitarian responses ever to have been assembled.

Realising my mistake, I made a beeline for the door, only to slip on the organic mess I had created on the shiny parquetry with my clumsy upturning of a breakfast bowl, causing me to land flat on my arse and generating for those influential global minds a close-up view of the world’s first ever edible, indoor tsunami, which proceeded from the epicentre of my soiled behind to the far corners of the restaurant.

Crawling now, I lowered my head in shame and slowly reconstructed a Disaster Escape Route in my mind to guide me out the door and out of sight.  Back in my Safe House hotel room a few moments later, I waited for my hyperventilating to subside and began analysing the situation.  I had come to Bangkok for a reason, and I was not going to let this incident impede my Recovery to a lucrative, fat-cat position on the international stage.  I threw open my wardrobe to take stock of my provisions, only to remember with horror that my Disaster Preparedness for this high-level talk fest had me Stockpiling only the required number of outfits through which to get me through five days of looking as professional as possible, and like I knew what I was talking about, however I had not allowed for Contingencies.  Added to this, I had been schmoozing so much with the ‘Big Wigs’ each night … until well into the messy wee hours, that all previously worn shirts were stained with Guinness and sweaty underarms.

This was truly an unanticipated, catastrophic disaster of career-limiting proportions, but despite the dire circumstances in which I now found myself, I took a couple of deep breaths, gulped down my rising panic and I resolved to make something of this.  “Hadn’t I spent the last twenty years working hard and building my reputational Resilience?”, I reasoned, “Sure I had.  I have what it takes to impress these people with my skills, Knowledge, Attitude and Practice”.  I impressed upon myself that these brilliant DRR practitioners weren’t interested in how I was dressed; they’d carved out their careers through the sweat and tears of responding to some of the most severe humanitarian disasters in recent history: working twenty hours a day for weeks at a time while living out of military-type barracks with limited water and supplies.  They knew what was important in this industry, and it wasn’t the cut of a man’s Armani trousers.  I was going to show them that I too was like them; Responsive in the face of a Disaster.  I grabbed what I could from the closet, and boldly headed for the auditorium.

The Inaugural Global Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction is unlikely to be remembered for anything other than the Global Head of UNDRR, demonstrating the military precision upon which his reputation as a leader of international Disaster Responses was built, directing the Conference Facility Security personnel to chase down and brutally apprehend a scruffy, scab-faced maniac dressed only in a stained Singha Beer singlet, a pair of yellowing y-fronts and army boots, who had burst into the opening session of Day 5, shouting like a lunatic about Dyslexic Rock Renditions.

Attack of the Career-Limiting Tomatoes: Donkey comes a cropper to a pesky fruit at a Bangkok breakfast buffet.  Pic: http://www.bigmike-productions.com

Aversion Therapy

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Fighting the good fight

A rare encounter with truth and honesty.

Isn’t it amazing how much more difficult it is to try to do something properly, compared with the relative ease of simply shooting one’s mouth off with whatever vacuousities pop into one’s cavernous skull at any given moment?

Such as it is that this year’s World AIDS Day post seems to have taken me quite a few weeks to write.  The reason being that for this year’s post, I’ve decided to hold-up on the belly-aching introversion and soul-searching from years gone by, and instead focus very much on the here and now.  This year I am going to come clean on a whole chapter of my life which certain, pretty awful circumstances demanded I kept secret from this blog, and the internet generally.  I’ll leave it up to you and yours to decide on whether action is required.  But in short, for this one-post-only, never-to-be-repeated occasion, I am going to have a go at using this blog for good, rather than evil.

Most of you will know a little something about Tibet; maybe you’ll be aware of the chuckling fat statesman living in India’s hilly north, and perhaps you’ll know that he’s there as a result of an invasion of an ancient kingdom by a now-great superpower some sixty-odd years ago.  If you know that, then you’ll have heard that many countries (a majority of those being ‘Western’ ones), while verbally condemning said super-power for its continued occupation of Tibet and rumoured oppression of its people, have never once made a substantial attempt to moblise international, diplomatic, political and/or military pressure towards the exiled leader’s return, nor the restoration of Tibetans’ religious, political and civil freedoms.

This is the stuff which makes the news (albeit still a long way from the headlines), but what is not so well understood outside of the politically secluded and media-shrouded Tibet Autonomous Region,  is some of the very real vulnerabilities which the average Tibetan faces on a daily basis.

A rough business.

Within what I could only, honestly describe as a pretty fortunate life, I consider one of my greatest fortunes to have been the four and half years I spent working with an amazing, dedicated group of young Tibetans who, every day for the past eight years, have taken to the streets of Lhasa to provide educational resources and condoms to young Tibetan women and men who work in, or live on the periphery of the Tibetan capital’s thriving sex industry.

This might seem a little surprising to the reader who knows Tibet only as a seat of Buddhist enlightenment, but it’s not uncommon in societies whose culture and practices have not been influenced by conservative Christianity, to have fewer hang-ups when it comes to handing over a tenner for a quickie on the way back to the office after a heavy lunch of soup and wontons.

But despite the remarkable client through-put, one shouldn’t go mistaking the commercial sex scene in Lhasa as akin to the seemingly sexual enlightenment of say, Bangkok or São Paulo.  On the contrary, this is an industry whose continued existence is very much driven by the political, social, religious and economic oppression of these unfortunate people.  The reality for Lhasa sex-workers (and their clients) is gritty, grubby, dangerous and (in terms of health, well-being and life-expectancy) very, very dire.

Tibetan sex workers are young; they hail from rural areas, and in most cases, have never engaged in sex work prior to arrival in the city.  They were drawn to sex work as the only alternative for survival, due to a variety of factors which severely limit their opportunities for formal employment.

First and foremost, the majority of Tibetan sex workers have little or no formal education (a few might have completed the poor standard of primary education available in their home county), so literacy is low.

Many of them are also non-citizens.  While there is some relaxing of China’s One Child Policy in the Tibet Autonomous Region, larger, traditional Tibetan families are penalised such that the third, fourth and fifth children are not registered as citizens, and therefore are ineligible for government work, housing and all other state-run services (healthcare, education, social welfare etc).

But one government service that Tibetan sex workers, be they registered citizens or otherwise, are all too familiar with, is the security service.  As the Central Government decrees quotas for city clean-ups, sex workers are systematically and regularly harangued, harassed, locked-up, exploited and abused by the civil and military security forces, of which there has been a dramatic increase in recent years.  Since the civil unrest in Lhasa in March 2008, poor and hungry sex workers have had little alternative than to risk incarceration by working the streets during regular security crackdowns and week-long curfews.  With military foot patrols working day and night and perhaps one of the most sophisticated closed-circuit TV camera networks in the world operating on every street corner, sex workers are regularly caught and/or extorted by the authorities, and incarceration is common.

Added to this, their state-supported, Han-Chinese bosses further exploit them by taking the lion’s share of their meagre earnings, and are complicit in the government’s regular rounding-up of sex workers for enforced blood tests; a human rights violation in itself which is further compounded by the authorities rarely bothering to communicate the results to the frightened sex workers who have unwillingly contributed to meeting government HIV testing quotas.

These young women work out of grimy, confined, poorly-ventilated, unsanitary spaces designed for shop store-rooms, seeing upwards of ten clients a day.  With few exceptions, these Tibetan women had no awareness of sexually transmitted infections (and certainly not HIV) before commencing sex work.  Most had never seen (or even heard of) a condom.

Tibetan sex workers are frighteningly vulnerable to the short and long term effects of sexually transmitted infections; their poor knowledge of these infections and how to prevent them makes them vulnerable, as does their limited literacy, which excludes them from accessing safe sex messages within information booklets and pamphlets.  Added to this, they have few resources with which to obtain condoms, and even if they can buy them, they have little power to negotiate safe sex with their clients.  In the event of contracting a sexually transmitted infection, many have limited legal opportunities to access the government treatment and counselling services, and are forced to secure health care services from exploitative private providers who peddle questionable treatment regimes.

A glimmer of hope.

So you see … not a feel good story this year.  But there is hope, and that hope lies in the hands of that dedicated team I mentioned earlier.  They have been working with young women and men from the Lhasa sex industry for nearly a decade, educating them about the dangers of sexually transmitted infections, both in terms of their immediate health, and their long-term opportunities to give birth to healthy children.

The program works hard to assist young women and men to remain disease free and healthy long enough for them to reach the inevitable end of their sex work careers.  In the meantime, the program staff engage with the sex workers to foster an understanding of, and promote healthy sexual relationships and gender equality with a view to their contributing to a family and/or community in the future.

Sadly, the program is in danger of coming to an abrupt end early next year.  Since the civil unrest in Lhasa in March 2008, China has made it very clear to the outside world that it will not tolerate political dialogue from other nations on Tibet.  It has closed ranks on the issue and shut international tourist traffic down to a well-muzzled trickle.  As such, governments and other international donors who used to support HIV prevention programs in Lhasa, are now too scared to do so for fear of damaging those all-important trade relationships.

And so it is not even a slight exaggeration to say that without support from interested, non-government donors, the vulnerable young women and men of Tibet who find themselves with little alternative than to work the Lhasa sex trade, will soon lose one of the last vestiges of support open to them.  And without this support, they could well be denied the opportunity of reaching any kind of potential as citizens, or simply to dream for a healthy future.

Maybe you’d like to help?

This World AIDS Day, or perhaps this Christmas, if you really want to make a difference to someone’s life, get onto your local MP and tell him or her and their government to grow a pair.  Tibetans suffer some of Asia’s worst poverty, are poorly educated, have limited access to health care and suffer the ongoing physical and emotional abuse of systematic oppression.  The Australian Government should be doing more, and supporting non-political programs like the one I have described could well be a way to make a difference to Tibetans’ lives, without contributing to the propping-up of an unjust regime.

Thanks for remembering World AIDS Day, everyone, and Merry Christmas.

Trust me, I’m a doctor

There’s an old adage that gets bandied around bars across the Pacific which postulates that expatriate communities are made up of missionaries, mercenaries and misfits.  Usually there’s no doubt about who makes up the first two categories, but defining those who fall under the latter can be a little more tricky.

There are those amongst the ‘misfits’ who are really easy to pick; such as the skinny, long-haired, dope-smoking yachtie who washed-up on a bar stool in the late ‘80s and who never quite got it together to move on, but then there are those who might have arrived as missionary or mercenary, but who then fell -out with the missus and shacked-up with a local dame (and not necessarily in that order), who now have a couple of light brown kids but never quite crossed that line to being ‘local’.

But then there are the professionals; lawyers, stock-brokers, scientists, doctors.  Folk who, back in their home environment, have the run of the land, what with their six- or seven-figure income, their automatic social respect and their multiple dwellings and holiday homes.  But there are some amongst these professionals who don’t quite fit the mould, and they end up in some pretty out of the way places, no doubt having fallen through all types of social and professional cracks along the way.

One such example was a European doctor I once met who had voluntarily exiled himself on one of the most remote Pacific Islands he could find.  Here he used his significant medical and surgical qualifications to serve the local community out of the sparsely equipped, wall-less hospital, and in non-work periods, took long, naked runs around the island, drank fermented coconuts and embraced his ever-encroaching senility.  Why he was there, and not back home with his kin was never clear, but the last I heard he was still there, performing hysterectomies wearing nothing but a surgical gown and gloves.

More recently, I have come across a much younger European doctor who has found himself on a distant shore, serving well-healed expatriates and well-insured travellers from a small private hospital.  This short, skinny, bespectacled squib is friendly enough, but one might questions his commitment to the health of his patients, when he clearly has such little regard for his own. 

Arriving at his office for a consultation first thing in the morning, and you will be accosted by the stench of cigarette smoke wafting through his office door, or the repellent sight of a desk littered with burned-out cigarette stubs resting precariously on empty Coke cans, or two or three half empty coffee cups which, by the looks of their foaming, milky contents, look as though they have been curdling happily away through the sultry tropical evening.

Other than his questionable levels of personal and environmental hygiene, his obvious obsessive compulsive tendencies, his inability to remember a patient he may have seen only the day before, his rock-solid standard prescription of Penicillin V and his tendency to follow every patient out of the consulting room while lighting up a ciggie, this sickly-thin, weedy medico has a rather strange obsession with buff, male body-builders, and without exception, has a number of body-building websites open on his desktop every time I have entered his room.

Clearly there are reasons that this doctor has not quite fit the medical services environment of a big, European teaching hospital, nor even that of a small, suburban or provincial family medical clinic.  Why this misfit has found his way to tis part of the world is understandable, but why his current employers are happy to threaten their duty of care to their clients is a little more difficult to fathom.  Perhaps the reason so many misfits do end up stopping on the islands is because in a world where no one else will take them, the Pacific will always have something for someone to do … no matter how scary or weird they may be.

‘Would you like some Penicillin V with that?’.  Pic: http://cutcaster.com

Would you like balls with that?

What is it about working in the food service industry that makes transvestites so angry, uptight and aggressive?  In most other aspects of daily life, cross-dressing men seem to be the life of the party; for instance, stick ‘em in a pair of sparkly, pink-sequinned, eight inch heels, pack ‘em on a bus and send ‘em into the Australian outback and they’re everyone’s heroes; wrap ‘em in a powder-blue feather boa and send ‘em out on a carnival float and the crowds will flock for miles to see their happy grins; or simply whack a diamante g-string and a fruit-laden headdress on ‘em and watch Australian bogans on bucks’ weekends in Bangkok descend upon their lively floorshows like shit-hungry flies to exchange clumsy homophobic slurs for witty, gregarious taunts delivered with a flirtatious wink and a quiver of a massive Adam’s apple. 

But what is it about dressing transvestites in civvies and standing them out front-of-house in classy restaurants and eateries that makes them so friggin’ surly and offensive?

My first experience with a grumpy transvestite waiter/ess was many years ago while working as a lowly volunteer in wonderful Samoa.  In those days, Apia wasn’t quite the bastion of fine dining it pretends to be today, but even then, with the right financial backing, one could aspire to some quality fare in either one of the two-and-a-half star hotels overlooking the harbour.

I can’t quite remember what the occasion was that saw the yet-to-be-Mrs Donkey and I deciding to splurge three week’s pay on a slap-up, pool side lunch, but it was with great excitement and culinary anticipation that we found ourselves deliberating at length over what seemed to us to be an extraordinarily diverse menu.  In reality the selection probably wasn’t all that spectacular given that on this occasion I opted for a BLT, and I was already salivating like Pavlov’s dogs the day the dinner bell got back from the repair shop when the grotesque fa’afafine waiter/ess finally condescended to lift her enormous muli off her groaning stool and to waddle over to take down our order (which she did with a frosty scowl and neither small talk of her own, nor acknowledgement of ours).

An age later, we were alerted to her return by the air of inky black storm clouds her demeanour impressed upon the atmosphere, and despite the warning, we both jumped with fright as two catering-strength crockery plates angrily crashed onto the glass table top. 

Immediately I noticed that my BLT had lost some ‘L’ along the way, that its ‘T’ had been replaced with orange processed cheese and that the ‘B’ had morphed into a thick slice of Spam.  I turned to my happy waiter/ess to alert her to the mistake, only to discover that her massive behind was already thumping off into the distance to get as far away from anything resembling a customer as possible.

After some minutes of mundane deliberations with Mrs D about whether I should alert the surly old cow to the mistake or just to ‘suck it up’ and eat the congealing mess before me so as not to offend, I finally decided, in recognition of the cost and excitement of the occasion, to stick to my guns and ask for my BLT.  I strode purposefully across the concourse to find our congenial Miss, who barely listened to my complaint before dismissing it with an offhand, yet aggressive, “You ordered a cheese and ham sandwich”.

At this I nearly choked on the angry sobs leaping to my throat, but I reined-in my fury by firmly assuring her that I certainly did not, and heaved against her anchoring bulk to drag her over to inspect my soggy meal as some kind of proof that I would never have ordered such a mess.  Firmly, and with no small hint of steel, I demand she take the dish back, and return with my “Bee-Elle-Tea!”. 

Perhaps sensing that my levels of anger and aggression were approaching her own, she tried one more sly parry to ward off the exertion of having to walk the full ten metres back to the kitchen.  “Well who’s going to eat this, then?”, she spat, to which I finally lost all composure, “I don’t care … why don’t you eat it?”.  And she literally stamped her massive hoof in anger as she ungraciously snatched my plate off the table (sending a congealing glob of orange cheese across the condiments and onto Mrs Donkey’s glasses) and tut-tutted off to the kitchen.

After what seemed many hours, my BLT finally arrived and was smashed onto the table in front of me with a thundery stare that made it all too clear what sort of response I’d receive if I dared any further exchange on the issue of my meal.  I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that while lettuce and tomato were now present on my plate, the ‘B’ remained a thick slice of Spam with curious orange butter-knife striations along its surface.

Upon our exit, our wonderful hostess mumbled one last grumpy remark regarding our failure to leave a tip … I wish I’d thought to retort that an untouched BLT was more tip than she deserved … but I’m no Oscar Wilde.

Jump ahead 12 years, and the culinary delights of sunny Port Vila, with its French-inspired cuisine and bustling tourist traffic, is bound to entice.  But there comes a time when even Donkey can have too much of a good thing, and after 10 weeks straight of eating lunches of Vanuatu beef sautéed in butter and drowned in blue cheese sauce, I was looking for something a little … less heavy.

So I wandered along to the most popular patisserie in town and stood for an agonisingly long time to be noticed by the surly maître’ d, who when he eventually turned his heavily-shadowed lids in my direction, gave me an unimpressed once-over and simply walked-off towards an empty table.  Upon reaching his destination, he turned and fixed me a filthy stare in reprimand for my failure to follow, and as I clumsily closed the space between us, he had already slapped the menu down on the table and disappeared.

Menu read and decision-made in 1 minute and 17 seconds … waited to place order with angry transvestite waiter for well over 7 minutes (he only consenting to leave his podium when I stood up and waved him over).  He managed to take my order without ejecting upon me the bile that my presence seem to be generating in his throat, but I waited for almost an hour for my sandwich to arrive.  When it did, it was delivered to my table with all the aggression and clattering pomp that only seven years of study at the Pacific Regional Hospitality Training College for Surly, Disgruntled Transsexuals can instil.

Owing to the lack of choice for reasonable lunch options in the town, I have become exposed to this waiter’s angry countenance at least twice a week, and I run into him in the town at least every couple of days, yet despite my attempts at jovial exchange, his demeanour remains unhappy, unimpressed and decidedly unfriendly.

These are just two examples of grumpy transvestite waiting staff I have encountered throughout the world.  There have been others; the grimacing burger flipper at the Elwood Fish ‘n’ Chip shop, the huge café proprietor in Kolkata who unashamedly serves up whatever she wants to timid, pasty backpackers, regardless of their order, or the young transvestite working at the Phuket eatery who simply refuses to wait on any white male unless he is quite openly gay.  This is not Donkey’s imagination, nor is it some kind of homophobic slur … I am just surprised that these lady boys bother with food service when it quite clearly doesn’t agree with them.  Let’s face it, there’s nothing glamorous about serving sandwiches to upstart white tourists with too much money, but surely there are other jobs they could be doing?  Alternatively, if transvestite waiting staff by day decided to lend their night-time, floorshow flare to the taking-down of sandwich orders, they may just receive more of a smile and an equally affable tip at meal’s end.

Of course, there is every chance that the demeanour of these transvestite waiters is just a reaction to me.  My friend Brad once told me that I am way too butch to be an attractive option for a gay man … maybe my attempts at friendliness with gay waiting staff are mistaken for overtures, and like a heterosexual male bogan from Ipswich receiving unwanted approaches from a drunken, ugly broad while he’s trying to watch the rugby league game, their response is one of aggressive rejection.

 

Get your own f’ing coffee!  Pic: aaronandandy.com

You live and learn

Not being the most hirsute Donkey in the barnyard, it stands to reason that I'll rarely be spotted out in daylight without a hat.  Currently I'm sporting a pretty awful, woven straw number which makes me look like the scariest, pig-rooting yokel in the County, but better that than a scone coated with weeping sores and liver spots like C. Montgomery Burns.

This latest headdress is just another in a long line of amusing and sometimes controversial cranial garments that have become somewhat of a characteristic feature since my early teens (yes, yes ... the baldness started pretty early on).  Like most teenage boys, I too went through that phase of not washing my clothes, but I took the practice to a very unsavoury extreme by not cleaning or changing my hat for many years, and only swapping it when the dirt, sweat and hair gel (not a typo – my comb-over started early, too) no longer held the various panels together.

From dirty cap to dirty cap I went.  Over the years, I employed nails to hold various clips and visors on, which in turn went rusty and smelly and left ugly stains on my skin.  Sea salt crusted edges cut through my upper ear and bird shit was left to fester into blooms of new bacterial strains the likes of which modern science was yet to classify.  Put the pieces together and you're noticing just one more amongst the many reasons why young Donkey was never quite able to land a lady!

Anyway, it happened that after living in Solomon Islands for a couple of years, I managed to misplace my hat just before leaving the country, bound for India.  I'd loved that cap.  It had been with me on jungle hikes, mountain climbs, river crossings, open sea travel and more than a few torrential downpours, and each and every one of these was evident from the crud and muck casing every stitch and groove in the fetid fabric.

It was a great loss, and I was horrified that I was about to set-up a new life, in a new country, and attempt to break into a new social network wearing a BRAND NEW HAT!  Urgh – everyone would assume I was one of those wankers who would only be seen wearing a shiny new hat.  I'd be alone forever!  A social outcast.

There was only one thing to do.  If it had to be new, I was going to make sure my new hat at least had Edge.  So when I hit Kuala Lumpur for a 48 hour, en route shopover, I kept my eyes peeled for the prefect lid.  Things were looking pretty grim as I trawled through markets sporting nothing but knock-off Nike and Adidas caps, Department Stores with exclusive rights to Tommy Hilfiger and Gazman, and tourist centres with embroidered renditions of the Petronas Towers. 

I was desperate by the time I got to a food court for a final meal, just hours before we were due to take-off for New Delhi.  But as we pushed through a huge crowd amassed outside, I caught a glimpse of what they were all looking at, and my cold heart immediately warmed in a lovely, bright yellow and red glow – Maggi noodles!

In typical KL, gangbusters-market-economy fashion, some self-made entrepreneur had taken basic, poor-man's street food and was marketing the MSG out of Maggi Noodles through a massive, open-air gourmet cook-off, using a smorgasbord of fresh ingredients and Maggi noodles.  The noise was deafening as the crowd of onlookers ooh-ed, aaah-ed and cheered as the exuberant cooks served up dish after dish of Maggi noodle based delights for their consumption.

For me, it wasn't what was on the plate that I was interested in, but rather the Maggi noodle uniforms of the cooks and their assistants, and in particular, the sparkling, pale yellow caps adorned with the famous red logo.  I was over the moon with excitement and relief as I man-handled my way through the crush to one of the cook's assistants, and started waving handfuls of ringgit in his astonished face.  At first I was surprised at his reluctance to take me up on my offer, but by the time I was throwing the equivalent of about sixty Australian dollars at him, I was becoming both outraged and panic-stricken that I was going to miss this one chance at obtaining the object that would lubricate my introduction to New Delhi society.

As the crowd pushed past me to get their chopsticks into a plate of Maggi noodle-enriched Malaysian chicken, I was both fuming and perplexed at this young man's refusal to take my money.  He was clearly poor; he was skinny, dressed in pale, Maggi-noodle yellow from head to toe, and sporting a massive smile despite the physical and verbal abuse being showered upon him by his more senior counterpart demanding various ingredients and Maggi-embossed condiments.  I was perplexed, angry and dejected.

Within months – perhaps even weeks of living in India, I came to understand all too well why the young Malaysian man would not give-up his hat, even for the small fortune I was offering.  As I came to understand the way big business treats poor people in Asia, I realised the kind of retribution Mr Maggi would have dealt out to that young man, his family and perhaps his whole community if he'd so much as damaged his corporate uniform, let alone lost some of it.  My sixty bucks would have been nothing compared with his not being able to afford schooling for his kids, or fresh water for his family.

As embarrassed as I was to have been so aggressive towards him, particularly for something so frivolous, I was able to reflect on my changed understanding in such a short time.  It hadn't taken me very long to learn about this particular subtlety of domestic economics once I arrived in Asia, but it came as a shock to me.  I had been living in a very poor country for two years; living amongst malnourished, poorly resourced, rural communities, and observing the challenges they faced in accessing health care, education, livelihoods and cash.  I thought I had understood all these issues; I thought I was an expert; I thought I would have been doing this young man a favour ... but in fact I hadn't had the faintest clue of the issues at play during our interaction.

What I took from this learning was a very clear message; it is not possible, or at least it is extremely difficult for foreigners visiting and/or working in other countries to become experts on what local people think, feel, do and say.  This reflection taught me that every day, I learn something new about my surroundings, and everyday, this learning turns what I thought to be true right on its head.  It taught me that I am no expert, and I never could, or would be.

Which brings me to a recent, wholly unpleasant evening; just another in a series of difficult social interactions Mrs Donkey and I have experienced since we arrived in Port Vila and embarked on a quest for new friends we can rely on for a good 'bitch and moan' about poor plumbing, moonscape roads and the rising price of duty-free gin.

On this occasion, the potentially warm, intimate dinner party conversation was violently arrested by a mouthy young woman who couldn't help chiming-in at every opportunity (and even sometimes when there was clearly no opportunity at all) to tell anyone within ear shot just how good she was at ... well, everything!  From varsity sports tournaments, to dating celebrities, to maintaining lifelong friendships, to being down with 'the youth', to being a damn fine crusader for humanity ... basically, albeit by her own admission, this chick was 'The Shit'.  Sadly, judging by their screaming body language, everyone else in the room considered this description an unfortunate typo.

Now at this stage, it's gotta be said that the Donkeys aren't the most popular animals in the barnyard, and as beggars can't be choosers, we are quite willing to put up with the idiosyncrasies evident within a small social pool in favour of spending yet another night alone together watching re-runs of Packed to the Rafters.  But there's only so much one can take when the (one-person) conversation shifts up a gear from single-handedly leading the world revolution against poverty, to that dangerous red zone in which they claim to be at one with those very same poor-folk they claim to be emancipating.

It was at about the time when this la femme expertista, her crystal goblet of expensive Bordeaux sloshing with each agitated gesture, launched into lengthy explanatory diatribes of what life is like for local women – "and I know because I have lots of local female friends and I have a really special, trusting and open relationship with my house girl, who shares everything with me" - that Mrs D and I began making noises about over-worked baby-sitters, early morning starts and even (without word of a lie) that we were planning to visit a Seventh Day Adventist church service at 10am (now if that wasn't a thinly veiled scream for help, then I'm walkin').

As we were beating a hasty retreat out the door, I threw a sympathetic look to our male host whose chest was being pummelled by a mood-ringed index finger jabbing-out a painful list of the crimes that local men inflict upon "us women".  His returned glance comprised a peculiar mix of lost-dog's-home imploring and explosive fury at my leaving so suddenly – he must have seen our escape as somewhat akin to that mountain-climber who cuts the rope on his dangling friend in order to save his own skin.

Mrs D and I drove home exasperated and fuming at the way our pleasant evening had been hijacked by this 'expert' who had lived in this country for barely 12 months.  She'd claimed, through her penetrating opinions, to have the definitive knowledge about every aspect of life here, and particularly, the good oil on all issues facing local women.  Her unsolicited lectures, apart from being annoying, were to my thinking, offensive to the very people for whom she claimed to advocate.  I know from bitter experience that her opinions are unlikely to be fully informed, and I am embarrassed for her at the effect they were having on those gathered. 

Most of all, I am pissed-off that she ruined what would have been a nice, pleasant evening comprising interesting and lively conversation.  Lady, if I want to know about issues facing local people, I'll ask them.

Expect to see this on the Milan catwalks this season as the new face of emerging street cred.  Pic: http://marketingstrategy-sai.blogspot.com/2010/03/maggie-noodles.html