That Untravelled World: Finding My Niche

We’ve been back home for two months. We still can’t get enough of the stars at night or the morning sunrise. We gulp water from the faucet in amazement, and I stare in awe at the size of my washing machine. We are in love with our friends and family here and can’t believe we get to see them whenever we want.

When was the last time you saw Matthew this smiley?

Maybe too smiley...

Naomi takes the bus to her new school, and it takes the same amount of time as her bus ride in Shanghai. But now, the bus bumps over dirt roads (and sometimes slides down steep, icy hills into ditches) and not through a huge, hot city. None of the kids wear uniforms anymore. Instead, they wear the uniform of Vermont kids in winter – snow pants, boots, whatever LL Bean can throw at us.

Well, sometimes Townes likes to wear his old uniform. Because, he's Townes.

The re-acclimation has been rocky at times. So much snow. Quite a lot of sickness. Four bouts of strep throat among two kids. Some tears at the mention of cheap foot massages and xiaolongbao. Lots of driving, not a lot of walking.

And then there is Eli. No bumpy adjustment for him. He LOVES his school. His mind is exploding in kindergarten. His anxiety has plummeted. Go figure.

So what now? Two years in China behind us. Many years of Vermont and America ahead of us. Time to find our niche. No, time to find my niche. The other four are on their way.

Thanks to Betsy G.'s son's friend for the awesome bumper sticker that inspired this post.

Long, winding story. Bear with me.

I loved our time in China for many reasons (did I mention foot massages and xiaolongbao). But much of it was also stressful. I spent a lot of time enjoying living in a huge, cosmopolitan, international city.

I also spent a lot of time worrying about my family’s health:

Is this water safe?
What’s the air quality today?
Does that taxi have seatbelts?
Is the taxi driver awake?
Is the taxi driver going to use the brakes?
Should I worry about the note from school about measles, mumps, bird flu?
BIRD FLU?!?
What is that weird ray gun they’re using to take my kids’ temperatures every morning at school?
Why are dead pigs floating in the river?
Wait, what?! There aren’t any flu shots left? In the whole freaking country?
What’s my plan for a middle of the night asthma attack?
Is that glass door going to blow in from the typhoon-level winds?

Now some of the Chinese mothers in the parents’ group at school were kind enough to add to my anxiety by asking if the school cafeteria used gutter oil. Or if they could add cameras above the water coolers to make sure no one was poisoning the water. WTF? Is that a thing?

Really, I can be wound a little tight, but I’m not normally one to be this neurotic. But it felt (rightly or not) like we were living on the danger frontier. I mean when you’re smooshed into a subway car with a couple of million of your closest neighbors, you start to scroll through the list of diseases still endemic in China. Your mind wanders to TB and Hep B and all those other Bs.

But even on the frontier, we had access to good medical care. We had great insurance, including insurance to evacuate us if needed. We could afford a taxi ride, albeit a scary one, across the city to get to the VIP clinic in the middle of the night.

Of course, if we got the bird flu, we’d be screwed like everyone else…

And what we experienced in Shanghai was nothing like what people experience in Leizhou (Eli’s hometown) or in rural Yunnan province. And that is nothing like what people experience in South Sudan or Syria or parts of Pakistan. Or areas in the U.S., to be honest.

These are the thoughts swirling through my head as I drink cool, clean water from my tap and stare lovingly at my washing machine.

So I decide to take my thoughts and my mixed feelings about being back in rural Vermont, and I look for ways to stay connected to the rest of the world. I try to find my niche.

And that leads to diarrhea.

You didn’t see that coming did you?

Did you know that each year, more than half a million children under age five die as a  result of diarrhea caused by rotavirus, and almost 2 million more become severely ill? Did you know there’s a vaccine available to prevent those deaths and many, many mothers will walk 15 plus miles with their children to get it? Way worse than my taxi ride.

I learned this, and lots of other crazy statistics, when I dragged my whiney “Waaa, I can’t live in a big city and get my nails done whenever I want” ass down to DC to the UN Foundation's Shot@Life Champions Summit.

Peter Yeo, VP at the UN Foundation

I joined pediatricians and nurses and pharmacy students, and bloggers, and other regular people like me who, for whatever reason, have an interest in global health or a love for kids, or who might be trying to channel their angst into something useful.

When you give kids a shot at life, you give them a shot at sibling rivalry...

...and a shot at being messy eaters.

We learned the details of the various global vaccine programs, complicated international funding schemes to pay for them, and yes we talked about diarrhea.

I learned:

One child dies every 20 seconds from a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine.
Vaccine-preventable diseases claim the lives of 1.5 million children every year, accounting for nearly one quarter of all childhood deaths.
In the past two decades, immunization has prevented an estimated 20 million deaths globally.
Polio paralyzed more than 1,000 children each day in the 1980s. Because of efforts to immunize every child, the number of new cases of polio has dropped 99%. 99%!
The Measles and Rubella Initiative has immunized over 1 billion children against measles, reducing measles deaths by 78%.
The U.S. recoups our total expenditure on smallpox eradication every 23 days, because we no longer have to vaccinate against the disease.

And the real kicker. All this misery and death and sickness is preventable. And really cheap.

Many of you out there know the answer to this question already. What percentage of the budget do you think the U.S. government spends on international affairs? 5%? 10%? 25%? A recent study showed that most Americans thought it was 25%. When asked what they thought it should be, they said 10%.

The correct answer, as you smarty pants know, is about 1.6%. For reals. And 20% of that 1.6% is spent on global health programs. And 4% of that 20% is spent on global vaccine programs. And that 4% of the 20% of the 1.6% of the entire U.S. federal budget saves the lives of more than 3 million children each year.

So it turns out that my niche – advocating for full funding of global vaccine programs – is a no brainer. But that doesn’t mean I’ll shut up about it. Or not make my case on Capitol Hill. Or not write letters. Because that stuff really works, and it reminds the decision makers that we care about this stuff.