Ut Prosim: Belated Update

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Belated Update

It's been mercifully slow over the past couple of days (I guess that means "normal" working days). All of the Yushu Health Bureau medical camps (including our own) were closed on Sunday as care was transferred over to the national-level provider. We were able to see over 1100 patients during our immediate response in Yushu, and are now planning our mid-to-long term recovery assistance. Thanks to everyone who donated and sent encouraging words- it was an incredible team effort and we needed you guys back home, too. This week has mostly been filled with debriefing and counseling for those returning from Yushu, assessment of the first phase response, and planning for the future. One item of note is that we're soon sending down 30 high-capacity water purification systems (each one serves ~2500 people) to be set up in the displaced persons camps and remaining neighborhoods of Yushu.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling