The Biggest Swimming Pool in the World

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Superlatives are words used to qualify the absolute top or bottom in quality or quantity. How we enjoy talking about the wealthiest man in the world, the thinnest tablet or the most crooked political leader!

I guess these words were invented to make us forget how common our ordinary lives can be.

As I was discussing superlatives with colleagues, it made me think of something that happened while I was still married.

My wife was born to drive a car. She just loved to take to the road. She used any excuse to jump into the car and travel aimlessly looking for something new to see.

On a nice sunny Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take a ride in the countryside.

My wife was at the wheel. Fields, groves and cattle were going by the left and right of the car. I was daydreaming, thinking how great life was and how wonderful it was to be alive.

We came to a village famous for its cheese curds factory and decided to stop and sample the local delicacy.

Cheese curds were invented in Canada in the early 1960s by dairy farmers trying to bypass quota regulations. Easy to make, this fat, salty, slightly processed cheddar cheese quickly became popular and gave birth to the infamous “poutine,” a meal made of cheese and french fries topped with hot gravy.

We bought our cheese and as my wife was admiring the quaint shop, I read a story in the local newspaper about one of the area attractions, “the biggest natural swimming pool in the world.”

As soon as I mentioned it to my wife, she wanted to see it since it was only a few miles away.

We found the “swimming pool” at the end of an unnamed dirt road. The pool was made of three communicating stone basins at the foot of a large rock where a trickle of cold water was flowing from a spring. The bottom of each basin had been painted aquamarine to give the impression of an artificial swimming pool. All in all, the lagoon was much smaller in size than an olympic swimming pool.

It had been a hot summer with less than average rainfall. The stream was not a bubbly jet of water, just a slow dribble. The smallest basin was empty and the deepest contained nothing more than three feet of sticky water, green with algae proliferating under the warm sun.

This did not seem to bother the numerous children who were noisily splashing about in the water while their parents, slumped into lounging chairs around the pool, distractedly kept an eye on their progeny.

I told my wife this seemed to be the perfect place to catch a dermatosis that would make these poor kids’ skin tougher than the hide of Big Joe, the largest alligator of Florida that we had seen near Fort Myers.

With more than one million American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in the world this species is far from being endangered as it haunts the southeastern United States. The word “alligator” is derived from el lagarto (the lizard), the name given to the reptile by the first Spanish explorers.

“You always see the bad side of things! Look at how much fun they’re having!” she said smiling and waving at the children.

At that moment, a man with a worn-out Elvis Presley T-shirt and sporting a dirty pair of khaki shorts with a dangerously open fly came to meet us.

— Welcome to our little paradise on Earth! Are you looking for a place to park your camping trailer?

— Erm... No, we just came to see the biggest swimming pool in the world, I said before being interrupted by my wife.

— Oh! There’s a campground? Can we see it?

— Yes, behind those trees, answered the man pointing towards a thinly-wooded area. I can give you a tour if you want.

— Oh! That would be delightful! Shall we go my darling? said my wife to me as she took the arm of our improvised guide.

Against my will I followed them through an underbrush planted with birch and aspen trees.

A lacing road was forming a loop of the campground. Trailers were parked along the road close to each other, most of them permanently. Some seemed to have been there for decades.

At the centre of the loop, a large porcelain urinal decorated with lights and plastic flowers was acting as a grotto for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The saint was standing in this makeshift shrine with her open arms, looking discouraged as if she declined any responsibility for the compound she found herself in.

Our guide was explaining the intricacies of camping to my wife as she obediently listened and asked questions from time to time. The man was so happy to have found an audience that he was rocking on his heels, a nervous tick that, to my dismay, was causing the broken fly of his shorts to open even more.

He then invited us for coffee in his trailer. My wife accepted although I was not keen on the invitation and we walked towards the fellow’s mobile home.

The trailer looked like our guide: common and unkempt. As the guy started to fight to open the jammed door, the broken fly zipper of his shorts gaped even more and, to my disgust, I saw “Elvis” leaving the building.

I had had enough. I took my wife by the arm, thanked our host and, pretending we had a long ride home we left this place where I had seen everything I wished I had never seen.

Swimming pools have been popular since antiquity, the oldest one was found in Sindh, Pakistan. In England, public swimming pools appeared in the mid-19th century. However, nobody has ever boasted of having the emptiest swimming pool in the world.

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Hospital Diaries III: Incubation

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next.

Parked in a wheelchair at the hospital’s emergency ward, I soon understood why sick people are called “patients.” Patience is the ability to wait in silence while surrendering to calamity.

Unfortunately, the young lady sitting in front of me did not grasp that concept. With her cell phone glued to her ear, she was ranting over the senselessness of the health care system.

“I’ve been waiting for five hours! I’ve had a splitting headache ever since I got vaccinated last week and I’m leaving for Thailand in two days! Why is nobody taking care of me? Don’t they realize this is an emergency?”

Many people think that all emergencies require immediate action. This is not so. There are different levels. Some emergencies need to be addressed without delay, others can wait a little while. Few are a priority.

While driving me to the hospital, my friend Lucide tried to reassure me about my stay at the hospital by telling me the difference between private and public healthcare systems.

“A private healthcare system sees patients as a source of revenues whereas a public system – such as the one we have in Canada – views them as expenditures. A public system aims at getting you well enough to send you home as quickly as possible in order to minimize costs. You’ll see: in a snap you‘ll be back in your apartment, happily cleaning it up.”

I was not as optimistic as my friend. I believed that the waiting time at the emergency ward could be long. That’s why I asked Lucide to prepare some supplies for me before leaving my place.

In a shoulder bag I had a sandwich, some apples, an orange, a few biscuits, a water bottle, two packs of cigarettes and a small jar of Ibuprofen, the muscle relaxant I was using as a pain reliever.

Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory drug used to alleviate fever, pain and swelling. One can say it is basically a “super Aspirin.” Ibuprofen is included in the core model list of essential medicines published by the World Health Organization and should be part of everyone’s medicine cabinet.

The enraged Thailand traveller was furiously pacing when I was called on the intercom.

Clumsily I wheeled my chair to an office where a nurse was waiting for me to check my “vital signs.” It took me a minute to understand she wanted to take my blood pressure and my temperature.

The nurse tightened an armband on my upper arm and stuck a thermometer in my mouth under my tongue.

Fever is measured by inserting a thermometer into the mouth, the rectum, the ear or under the armpit of a patient. It was only in the 19th century that doctors realized that fever was a symptom, not an ailment. Besides their taste, there is no difference between an oral and rectal thermometer.

While she was writing down the results I asked the nurse if she knew how soon I would see a doctor.

“Not right away. We’re very busy now. We will call you to let you know which cube you should go to.”

“A cube? What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“That’s what we call our consultation rooms. Now if you could please return to the waiting room, I have other patients to see.”

I was not thrilled by the idea of being “incubated” at the hospital. I was also less than elated to wait for ten long hours until I was called to Cube 67. During this waiting time, several patients – including the traveller to Thailand – grew tired of waiting and left the ward without seeing a doctor.

I had been looking at the walls of Cube 67 for twenty minutes or so when a young doctor showed up. I told her why I had come to the hospital. I explained my gout attack, the torn ligaments in my twisted knee, the weeks spent in bed at home and my paralysis.

She wanted to examine me. To do so she had to call two orderlies to lift me up from the wheelchair and sit me down on a bed. I painfully took off my jacket and my shirt and put on an open-back smock that one of the orderlies tied at my neck with a lace.

After the doctor checked my knees, my hands, my wrists and my arms, she left the cube without a word.

I could hear her talking with a man on the other side of the door:

— “He’s well over 50, he can’t walk and he has trouble moving. I wonder if...” she said.

— “He’s got all the symptoms, said the man, it could very well be spinal stenosis.”

— “That’s exactly what I thought,” she concluded.

Those were the last word I heard from her and I was never to see her again.

After 30 minutes, a nurse came into the cube carrying a plastic basket filled with small glass bottles and stickers.

“I need to take some blood samples, she said. Please roll up your sleeve, sir.”

I obliged half-heartedly. The nurse filled 31 vials with my blood then left.

There I was, alone in my cube, sitting on a slippery leatherette and foam mattress. I was cold. My arms, my shoulders and my legs were sore. What would become of me? I did not know what “spinal stenosis” meant and I was afraid.

One of the most widespread myths of modern times is that medical officers specializing in nerves and the spinal cord are called “spin doctors.” Because of that belief, people think that spinal stenosis means these doctors write down their observations using shorthand. However, spinal stenosis is really about an abnormal narrowing of the spinal canal running through the backbone.

Shivering, I managed to stretch and pick up my jacket that the orderly had left on the wheelchair. Despite the pain, I put my coat on, lay down on the bed and dozed off.

When I woke up, a man dressed in tan scrubs was putting my clothes, my shoulder bag and my shoes under a gurney. He then proceeded to skillfully slide my body over to the stretcher.

The attendant opened the cube’s door and wheeled me out to the corridor. I asked him where he was taking me and he replied:

“Where am I taking you? Why, to the gurney hall, of course!”

A gurney is a wheeled stretcher used to take patients on a journey. It is often equipped with a hydraulic system for raising and lowering patients so the attendant does not injure his or her back and develop spinal stenosis.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries IV: The Gurney Hall

Walking in Ernest Hemingway’s Footsteps

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My love life was not going well. The woman I was dating had just told me that she was not interested in a serious relationship.

Needing a change of air, I decided to take a trip to Cuba to walk in Ernest Hemingway’s footsteps.

Ernest Hemingway – who spent winters in Cuba from 1939 to 1960 – was a great adventurer, a keen hunter, a war correspondent, an incorrigible drinker and a cultured man. He wrote seemingly simple sentences that kept to the fundamentals, ignored superfluity and let readers decide for themselves what the author meant.

I devoted the first day of my stay to a pilgrimage: I visited La Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s domain in San Francisco de Paula; I went to Cojimar, the village where Santiago, the fisherman of The Old Man and the Sea, lived; and I stopped by the hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana where Hemingway stayed before purchasing a property.

Ernest Hemingway's study in La Finca Vigia, his property in the suburbs of Havana in Cuba. Visitors are not allowed inside the house where some of Hemingway's numerous hunting trophies are kept as well as part of his personal library.

I had six days left to quench my thirst in every (and there were many) drinking hole where the Literature Nobel Prize winner found solace from the hard life he was leading.

At seven o’clock in the morning, the sun would rise suddenly without wasting time with dawn. Exactly twelve hours later, night would fall without waiting for dusk.

After breakfast, I would take a walk on the easterly beach facing Florida. There were old bunkers everywhere. Cuba was still expecting an invasion from the United States: once bitten, twice shy.

One morning, as I was walking on the beach, I saw a group of men dressed in blue overalls gathering seaweed under the surveillance of guards who were sporting machine guns. I kept my distance. However, one of the men in overalls, on seeing that I was smoking, came to ask me for a cigarette. Immediately, I was surrounded by workers, all wanting a smoke. The guards quickly came to disperse them, telling me to continue on my way.

That night at dinner, a hotel employee told me those men were patients from a “psychiatric hospital” doing “community work.”

I never got used to seeing armed soldiers. I was also surprised every time I saw a vulture perched on a fence or a brahma bull grazing, the only bovine that seemed to be raised in Cuba.

A group of tourists are entering La Terraza in Cojimar, the village of Santiago the fisherman of The Old Man and the Sea. In the novel, the owner of this bar-restaurant was feeding Santiago and letting him have day-old newspapers so the old man could read baseball games results from the day before.

The locals I saw were often poor, sometimes dressed in rags. Despite this they had a striking dignity. They did not seem sad nor submissive. On the other hand, several times I was approached by Cubans who, sensing that I was a tourist, offered to buy my jeans or my shoes.

To better blend into the crowd, I started to wear khaki pants, a light white rayon shirt and sandals. This trick worked perfectly until somebody would try to start a conversation; my Spanish has never been very good.

On morning, on the beach, a tall blonde young woman came to ask me for a light for her cigarette. She spoke in Spanish with a strong English accent. I answered in English.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were Cuban,” she said.

“No problem; I see my disguise is effective,” I answered.

She laughed at my remark, took the lighter I handed her and we started to get acquainted while walking on the beach.

Margaret was Canadian from Ukrainian descent. She was a computer programmer, living in Saskatoon who was spending her vacation by herself in Cuba to improve her Spanish.

Although our hotels were only 15 kilometres from Havana, she had never been to the city. I invited her to join me for my daily outing in the afternoon.

We walked for a long time in the streets of La Habana Vieja. We visited small shops where ladies made cigars by rolling them on their thighs. We shopped in a bookstore. In a small record store, we saw the owner wrapping vinyl records in old newspapers to keep the cardboard jacket.

Margaret was a good companion. She was smart and curious about everything. She smiled easily and her laugh was infectious. I would be lying if I said that I did not like it when her hand brushed against mine.

It was a cloudy, hot and humid day. At the end of the afternoon, I suggested going for a daiquiri at El Floridita, one of Hemingway’s hangouts.

El Floridita is a bar-restaurant famous for its daiquiris, at the corner of Calle Obispo and Montserrate in old Havana.

As I opened the door to the bar for Margaret I noticed her giving me an odd look.

We sat side by side on one of the window seats against the wall, admiring the beautiful mahogany woodwork. There were three guitar players on a small stage at the back of the room.

As the waiter was bringing us our daiquiris, Margaret said:

“You are a gentleman. You open the door for me, you stand up to greet me, on the sidewalk you walk on the curb side. I have to say though, that I find it patronizing and a bit annoying after a while.”

I explained to her that in elementary school I had learned good manners. I applied them without thinking and I certainly was not trying to be unpleasant.

“That’s all right, I understand,” she said. “I just needed to let you know how I felt about it.”

“The Will of Woman is the Will of God,” I thought, promising myself not to offend Margaret anymore.

The musicians played well. The daiquiris were good. We lingered in the bar as it filled up with people coming back from work.

Margaret took my hand and laid her head on my shoulder. I felt good. The patrons were looking at us in a friendly way.

We had just finished our daiquiris when the waiter brought us two more. I tried to explain that we did not order any, that it was getting dark and we had to go back to the hotel. The waiter told us that the Cuban couple sitting at the bar was offering us these drinks. I looked up; they were looking at us, raising their glasses and smiling.

Courteously, I also raised my glass, nodding to thank them. After those two daiquiris, there were more; it seemed all the patrons in the bar wanted to buy us a round.

Margaret and I were laughing; the rum was making us tipsy. The guitar players came to play at our table. We danced. Our casual visit to the capital was turning into a joyful party.

Finally we managed to escape our hosts. It was very late and we had to find a cab to drive us back to the hotel.

The City of Havana shrouded in smog. In the background El Capitolio can be seen. The boulevard in the front is the Malecón, an 8 kilometre long esplanade stretching along the coast.

Margaret and I were walking and hugging on the sidewalk. We were quite drunk when I realized that I was walking on the curb side. Playfully, I swung Margaret around and, as she understood what I was trying to do, she burst out laughing.

At that moment, a car with embassy plates came speeding out of nowhere. The passengers were yelling in Spanish and one of them threw out of the window something that landed on Margaret’s blouse.

It was a freshly-used condom... If I had kept walking on the curb side it would have landed on me.

Margaret started crying. I tried to comfort her by holding her in my arms but to no avail.

We found a taxi and during the entire trip Margaret kept silent, sitting apart from me, looking nervously through the window.

She was staying at a cottage in a hotel a few minutes away from mine. I walked her to the door and told her how sorry I was about the incident that had just happened, and that it was a terrible way to end a day that had been otherwise so pleasant. Her wet eyes avoided mine. I took her hand one last time and told her I would stop by in the morning.

There was no answer when I knocked on her door the next morning. The desk clerk told me Margaret had gone out. I left a message saying I would be back later in the afternoon.

Margaret was not there when I returned around 4:00 PM.

The next day, the desk clerk told me Margaret left the hotel.

I never saw her again.

The fishing boats wharf in Cojimar.

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