The Roots and The Source

Wednesday 24th February 2010, 7.55pm, Up2U Bar - Krabi

The mysterious rainbow-coloured tablets are working! Goodness knows what's in them but whatever it is it's doing the job. Eating is still beyond me, but I'm no longer in agony, it's such a relief to be able to get up and walk about without worrying that I'm going to make involuntary yelping noises at the pain. I sent Daniel away earlier this evening, feeling now capable of caring for myself and deciding that it was unfair of me to keep him here purely to fetch me things, I ordered him back to the islands. He really has been a trooper these past few days, and an excellent if not financially reckless travelling companion for the past 2 weeks. I'm hoping our paths will cross yet again, or that I'll at least be able to someday take advantage of his flat in Stockholm.

Being confined as I have been for the past few days in the rooms of my guest house, my inspiration for writing has obviously been limited, but as it turns out, not entirely devoid of stimuli. The reception of the guest house is a very neat, professional little outfit. Tiled floors, whitewashed walls, air conditioned, information pamphlets lining the walls, and fish tanks and vases of bamboo for decoration. Behind their computers the two staff sit suited and booted, cocooned in this tidy tourist haven and completely oblivious to the one anomaly, the red herring in the room who is completely incompatible with his ordered surroundings.

Sprawled out on a tattered and holey old mattress in the corner, lies an old man, pushing 80 I would guess, fast asleep in his underpants, a fan blowing on his face, and a bowl of fruit next to his makeshift bed. From the tender way I have witnessed one of the suited staff members tuck him in, move the fan closer and bring him food, I imagine they are Father and Son. Everything carries on in the office around him, it's business as usual whilst he lies sleeping, stretched out like a greying, hairy old ape who occasionally stirs to scratch himself or gobble down a plum. No one other than me seems to find this in the slightest bit strange, and other than the seeing to of his basic needs, he is paid little or no attention - and he appears to be quite happy with this arrangement.

Back in January, when I was walking round a war museum just outside of Hue in Vietnam, I saw a line of prose engraved into a wall plaque that at the time, I deemed noteworthy enough to take down... 'Only trees with roots can grow well. Only waters with source can create vast oceans, deep rivers.' Above the quotation was a title that read 'In Praise of Ancestors'. This old man in his underpants, in the foyer of my guest house, has got me thinking about the way South East Asians view and treat their elderly. They are a venerated generation over here, living within the family home when their children have married and borne offspring of their own, a place is always found for them amongst the new family they have ascended. There's no such thing as a Nursing Home, no Community Care, no respite charities, no state pension, no NHS, no Social Workers - the ageing generation rely entirely on their families to house, feed and care for them in their twilight years, and their families take on this responsibility not begrudgingly, but with acceptance and compassion. It is a matter of fact situation, the young are loyally bound to the old.

Would I, sat in an office at work, some 20 years from now, want my Father to be sleeping on a bed in the corner in his boxer shorts, interrupting me from my daily tasks to go and make him a cup of tea or rustle up a bacon sarnie? The answer is no, as much as I love him, no I would definitely not. Yet here, in this part of Asia, in these countries that are apparently so far behind our Western ideals that they occupy a 3rd World dimension, they are doing just this. Without compromising their work or their professionalism, or the harmony of their home lives and young families, they unquestioningly provide for those that brought them into the world. In the absence of the health services and corporate support systems we in the West have created for our own convenience, these people remain able to lead normal lives of work and play, whilst acquiescing to their simple duty of care, looking after those who once looked after them.

Now I'm not saying that I have any plans to introduce such stringent ethics to my own life back home. My Nan would have been somewhat of a hindrance in my Social Services office, being the countermeasure to political correctness that she is, and I'm sure my lovely parents would much rather spend their retirement years birdwatching, or gardening, or eating scones in Dorset teashops than they would living with me in a London flat, receiving inadequate attention and poorly cooked dinners. Nonetheless, I will endeavour to remember these men with their successful hotel and tourism business, their enviable language skills, their travel experience, their smart, modern office, and their old Dad, asleep and content in the corner. Holding on to their roots, protecting that water source from whence they came, well it certainly hasn't done them any harm.