Friday, May 28, 2010

The Hair Scarf Again

I was called a name the other day. I don't know what the name was and it is probably best I don't. From the look on the young man's face who said it, I know it was not a pleasant one. I was riding to the office and since I had my hair in a headband, I was wearing a scarf so it wasn't completely windblown when I arrived at my destination. I've written before about how I feel when I wear a headscarf in a previous blog. (I have cut and pasted it below for those who haven't read it before.) I get stares and looks which have made me feel that folks view me as Muslim when I wear my scarf. This incident cemented that perception. I was approaching a school, biking along, minding my own business. I heard someone call something out, but not expecting anyone to be talking to me, I paid no attention. This same word was called out again, then again each time louder. Finally I looked in the direction of the voice. When I did a saw a young man glowering at me and he repeated the word. I tried to remember what it was so I could ask my Dutch friend when I got to the office, but it was time for staff meeting and by the time it was over I could not remember it well enough for her to understand it. Again, it is probably just as well. I didn't really need a translation. His face said it all. Such seething anger in someone so young. It reminded me of a painting Jon and I saw at a place which used to be called The Biblical Museum and is now the Orientalis Museum. I will write a whole blog on that experience another time, but in it was this painting. It showed the profile of a volcano and below ground level were words of racism and anger and tension. And the title or remark with the painting was that The Netherlands was about to blow like a volcano from this pressure. I believed it when I saw the painting. We have seen signs of this. Underneath the veneer of tolerance, which is so highly valued here, is this resentment and anger. The government is making it increasingly expensive and difficult for people to immigrate here or even reside in Holland, as we do. It is a passive way of restricting or limiting immigration. It is a method which will fit with the Dutch value of tolerance, while perhaps having some effect on the rising foreign population in this already overcrowded land. There has even been talk among candidates and holders of office to more openly restrict immigration. This incident with the young man tells me that perhaps that explosion is coming sooner than I thought. I do so wish I could think of another way to hold my hair tidy when I bike.

Hair Scarf

I have longish hair. When I bother to fix it, I like it stay nice. The problem is that if I leave the house I am often biking to my destination. When I bicycle, I make my own breeze and my hair gets quickly messed up. To counter this I will wear a scarf over my hair. I wear the square kind, folded into a triangle and tied under my chin. Think movie actresses of the 60's driving in their convertibles. They had breezy problems too. I always feel self-conscious when I wear my scarf. Scarves are never worn here in a western way. The only women covering their head or hair are Muslim. I wonder if I will be mistaken for a Muslim woman. I am not sure the casual observer would notice the difference in scarf styles or how I wear it. I do not cover my bangs and my hair hangs out the back, but still I feel funny at the possibility of being mistaken for a Muslim. I think in part because I have a hard time getting my mind around the concept of a woman's hair being such a sexualized item that every strand of it must be concealed. The men in my family assure me that a woman's hair is very alluring, but is that the same thing? Can it really send men into such paroxysms of lust that it must be totally concealed? You never hear construction workers making rude comments about the shine and body of a woman's hair. I didn't know for decades that men even noticed that women had hair on their head nor that the men cared anything about it. I do know this. It seems that men are universally interested in the woman in their life having long hair and women tend to have a love/hate relationship with their own hair. Hence the phrase - bad hair day - meaning if your hair doesn't do right, then nothing goes right for the rest of the day. How a woman's hair looks to her can profoundly affect how she feels about how she looks in general. I know one young woman who, after getting a bad hair style at the salon, came home in tears and told her mother that she would rather have all her teeth fall out than have her hair! I think the other problem I have is being mistaken for an adherent to a religion which I see as so oppressive to women. To me the head scarf symbolizes this oppression. When I was in language classes there were mostly Muslim men and women. One day three of us women were in the computer lab and the young Turkish woman took the opportunity to take off her head scarf and show us her pretty, wavy long hair. She longed to show it and to have it admired. It is perhaps a universal thing. This relationship of women to their hair. The other day I headed out of our neighborhood onto the main road. I had to stop for a pedestrian, a woman in a robe and hajib (head scarf). She saw me sitting in my car with the head scarf, nodded and motioned me to go ahead. That has never happened before. Did she see me as a sister under the scarf? It adds to my unease.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

I had my first run-in with the Dutch emergency medical services last week. I was attending a concert in a church in a nearby town. A colleague was organizing the concert to finish a degree in worship music she has been working on for several years. I had gotten a ride with another colleague and was enjoying it immensely. About halfway through my back began to bother me. I didn't think too much of it, knowing that folding chairs and my back don't often agree with each other, but as the evening progressed the discomfort turned to actual pain. After the concert was over I got up to visit a bit with folks when I suddenly felt very nauseous and made a mad dash to the restroom where nature took its course. I felt a little better, but still not right, but felt well enough to go back and visit a bit. A few minutes later another mad dash. Now I needed to let my friend, who had driven me to the event, know that I needed to get home. We got home without incident and I then spent the next couple of hours being sick every ten to fifteen minutes. I tried to go to bed. I kept thinking when my stomach was empty I would feel better. Didn't happen. As I was lying in bed I began to realize that what I was feeling wasn't just nausea, but I was having pain and some fairly significant pain in my chest. It was a squeezing pressure kind of feeling. Okay, I am slow, but I realized this wasn't just a stomach flu or something. My stomach was long ago emptied and I was still getting sick. Then there was this strange pain. So I headed to the computer to Google my symptoms and it came up with heart attack or digestive problems. I didnt think it was a heart attack. We have no history of this in the family and my cholesterol is always good and I'd had an EKG before surgery in the fall, but I thought about lots of folks who didnt think they were having a heart attack who actually were. Now I knew I needed medical attention, but I was alone since Jon had been away to the Partner's Conference. By this point he was due home in a half hour or so, so I got dressed, sat on the sofa and waited for him to get home. When he arrived, I let him know the situation and he was preparing to take me to the hospital. That posed two problems. One is our car was not legal to drive since we had been away and the car had missed its inspection and to avoid some of the road tax we had put the car on "vacation" and hadnt finished all the paperwork to get it put back into our name.The second problem was we didnt have a clue where the nearest hospital was and it didnt seem like the time to go wandering all over looking for it. So we looked up the emergency number for Holland and called an ambulance. They arrived in no time and introduced themselves then got down to checking my heart. The EKG showed that all was well and in between getting sick, let them know my other symptoms. The EMT's began to suspect my gallbladder. They knew I was sick enough to need to be seen by the doctor in a nearby city, whom they called. Then instead of putting me in the ambulance and taking me, there began to be a debate of sort between the doctor and the EMT. The EMT said I was too sick to get to the hospital on my own and the doctor wanted me to come there to be seen. For some reason, traveling by ambulance to the hospital was not an option. So in the end, the doctor came to my house. I was tender in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen, had pain in my back and was throwing up, so she concluded it was gallbladder problems. That was it. No x-rays or ultrasound or whatever is used to confirm diagnosis of gallbladder problems. Just an assumption that that was what it was. I did get a "sit pill" for pain and nausea. You can imagine what that is. Told to watch for a fever and to avoid eating any fats for a few days. I took my medication which didnt seem to help any, but perhaps it kept things from getting worse. I spent a sleepless night where I learned not to lie on my left side or that would initiate yet bout of violent illness. By late morning the next day the pain had subsided enough that I was able to sleep. I slept on and off the rest of the day and the next night. I watched my diet and my temperature for the next few days. Ate little the first day and worked my way into some sort of reasonable amount of plain foods. I was quite weak and had little energy for several days. Couldn't even sit at the computer and do emails. Was tender for several days then by the end of the week the tenderness was gone so I began adding some fat into my diet. Amazing how much a bit of fat has to do with flavor. Over several days continued adding foods until I could eat normally. So a week and a half later I feel normal and can eat normally, though I find I am still working on my stamina for things like walking, etc. and I haven't tried biking yet. I wonder what the protocol is for this situation in the States. Probably would have gone to the hospital and I expect there would have been some sort of diagnostic testing. Wonder if surgery would have been done. Probably would have depended on the doctor. I think some or more surgically inclined than others. I am so glad not to have surgery here. I dread the thought of it. But I would not care to have that thing go off again.