Blood

Thailand

2005

Sundays are our day off. That's enough of a reason to like them but they get even better for me when there's a Formula 1 Grand Prix on. (Today is the French Grand Prix.)

I'm going to go running. I'm in poor shape but getting better. I try to run around a big triangle (OK, it's probably not that big) and I've gone about half-way so far before walking back but making good headway each time. It should be worth walking around the rest of the triangle today as I'm really inspired to push myself.

Some days here are less inspiring though, especially emotionally. We were discussing the demoralizing lack of voluntary blood donors a couple of days ago. I was moaning uselessly that nobody who works at the Liberian Government Hospital has ever given blood voluntarily. My friend Dr. Simon looked me in the eye and said there was something I didn't know: Hospital staff wait until a patient desperately needs blood - patients are supposed to persuade two friends or relatives to donate blood per surgery but sometimes they can't - and then the staff sell theirs. Also Simon told me of a case where the father of a needy woman had had to pay her brother to donate.

It's in keeping with the total lack of compassion for community and country that I find here - worse than any other country I've lived in.

But enough of that - I can moan about the West too. For those of you following my mission to have a dangerous street performer in Covent Garden stopped (see July 2), I have taken the issue up with the City of Westminster.

My favorite journalist, Peter Dudley, has posted another of his insightful stories to his blog (http://www.canadiannewsblog.blogspot.com/). This one is about Canada's failure to meet its Kyoto targets.