A Clean Bill of Health

A Clean Bill of Health
Originally uploaded by jakeyd.

Then we went to the doctor’s office to get Otis certified fit to travel to the US. We finally got a real weight and length -- 19.5 pounds and 26.3 inches, just the low end of average according to our books. Pretty amazing for an orphanage kid.

Dr. Johan Terhan – from Capetown, who came to KZ “for adventure” – had a great, dry sense of humor. He immediately noted that orphanage kids are never scared of the doctor because they’ve been dealing with them on an almost daily basis since birth. This proved true. Like Dr. A, he rolled his eyes at Otis’s diagnoses to date and gave him a clean bill of health, noting only that the rash on this face is probably a food sensitivity that will pass with greater exposure to whatever we’ve given him that he’s not used to. Who knows? It’s a rash; he’ll live.

Interesting aside: the partnership of which Dr. Terhan is a member is the only one the US government will permit to certify adoptive kids for travel to the US. Max says he thinks it’s because the US government is concerned about the ease with which KZ doctors can be bribed to provide a clean bill of health. So this clinic, which treats plenty of KZ folks as well, is staffed (apparently) by all foreign doctors. We met a nice KZ woman and her son, an older gentleman with a hunchback, a nice guy about our age who works for USAID, and another apparently American adoptive family in the waiting room.

The picture is of a house directly across the street from the doctor’s office. It is typical of single family housing here. Single family housing in the center city is all older, and as Sagat told us, and we described in an earlier post, dates from the ‘30’s or earlier. (New single family housing appears to be all built for the new oil money and looks like high end new American suburban. None of those new houses are in the center city.)

Lizzie is apparently having the same getting-to-sleep difficulties as Otis, and similar learned behaviors to avoid sleep, which is comforting to us, as well as some digestive difficulties, so we will wait until tomorrow to see Cathy and Tony and Lizzie.