Rue Rude

A French hospital; New York Christmas advice

This evening I went to visit L in the hospital. She's got something that's unpleasant and serious but not chronic or fatal. Ses jours ne sont pas en danger, as the French say. ["Her days are not in danger."] Still it's never nice to be in the hospital, and I brought L some toiletries and some light reading. She didn't look as well as yesterday, poor thing. She is on intravenous feeding and was feeling nauseated, and tomorrow she has to have a nasty intervention. You're so alone in a hospital.

It's a public hospital, but not the awful kind our concierge died in a few years ago, which was clean and decent but ugly and bare, full of half-naked, destitute, toothless old people en fin de vie.  This one is a teaching hospital, hushed and grand, with a beautiful garden like many Paris hospitals, surrounded by long cloisterlike arcades. L is in a large double room on the ground floor with a sweet-tempered quiet roommate and a bathroom. The ward must be mostly empty because it is always so silent when I visit. The hospital is so much nicer than I was expecting. Everything looks clean and well taken care of, although there were posters everywhere urging solidarity against attacks on public medicine. The nurses and doctors I saw were all white French people; most of the patients seem to be recent immigrants (that would include L). To my surprise, the doctor who came in to examine L while I was there spoke excellent English. He said he'd lived in the States for ten years.

I took the bus home across the city. It's very cold for Paris right now, and I had to huddle into my coat collar while waiting for the bus, and was glad I had worn my hat. It was a magical ride. Like an ad for visiting Paris. All the Christmas lights of Paris are up. Galeries Lafayette was the most extravagant. This year it's decorated like an oriental palace, with enormous Persian-carpet-like patterns of multicolored lights over its façade. Printemps next door is lit in pink and is having a British Christmas. We passed the spectacular Place de la Concorde at the moment when the Eiffel Tower was sparkling. (This started the night of the Year 2000, and was meant to continue for a year, but Parisians loved it so much that it has been continued. One year the lightbulbs were  replaced with blue ones, but they were hard to see and so the regular white ones came back. A team of mountain climbers is needed to change them.) Then the Rondpoint des Champs-Elysées was there with its Christmas trees freshly set up (and their hideous artificial snow, which surprises me again every year: how is it that a people so renowned for elegance firmly believe that Christmas decorations all need a coating of white chemicals? ), and then of course the most beautiful avenue in the world, slanting uphill in a blaze of lights to the Arc de Triomphe.

But some people are eager to get away from Paris. Today I kept getting weird text messages on my cell phone, and while reassuring me that the company was just remotely updating my SIM card, the guy from the phone company and I somehow got into a conversation about Christmas in New York City. "I dream of going to New York!" he said.  I told him that Christmas was the only time I ever missed New York, which on the whole I loathe, in spite of having lived there for five years. "How much would a flight cost?" he asked, and we had a long conversation about airlines and where to stay. I hope his supervisors weren't listening!

I do miss it sometimes. I miss the Christmas carols, the snow, the bustle, the Rockefeller Center skating rink and the huge tree and the Christmas tuba concert, the Radio City Christmas show, the Singing Christmas Tree at South Street Seaport, the Nutcracker and its enchanted Christmas tree, balsam Christmas wreaths with red ribbons (French ones are spray-painted chemical-snow and gold), Christmas cookies, Christmas pageants, lots of good American Yule spirit. But on the whole, I appreciate that in France, the holiday is more family-oriented, less public, less frenetic. My father used to rage against the commercialization of Christmas. Here, you can't shop all night. You can't shop on Sunday, except that in December the Grands Magasins are allowed to open on  Sundays. But maybe the stress is coming here, too. The last time I went to BHV at Christmas, there were so many people that there were firemen to move people along at the bottom of the escalators. (Who are these people who get off a crowded escalator and then just stand there?) That scared me.

More snail action

In the past two days, two different people I brought to Air France at Charles de Gaulle airport have been bumped off their separate flights in spite of arriving well in advance of the temps limite for check-in. This happens all too often on Air France. One of the passengers got a later flight the same evening, but N, on a transatlantic flight, was bumped, along with twenty or so very grumpy people, to a flight the next day.

The Air France agent was in a very bad mood by the time N got to him, and when someone tried to horn in next to N and pound the counter, he just lost it. "I'm leaving! Je plaque mon poste!" he snapped, standing up and throwing down his papers. "I get paid nothing!and then to take all this abuse just for doing my job! You deserve for me to just walk off and leave you here! You can't pay me to do this!" The guy had to grovel and go back in line to get him to stay. N was a sympathetic ear and afterwards we found the agent had done N a big favor he didn't need to have done. Never be rude to the agent!

N got the standard compensation of 600 euros plus the onward reservations, and Air France would have paid for taxis into town, hotels and meals if necessary. Instead of the cash, N could also have chosen an 800-euro credit on Air France. I don't understand how they can make money bumping so many people so regularly. Meanwhile, if you fly transatlantic, you'd better get there three hours ahead of the flight.

This morning I brought N back to the airport and after check-in, he went to the passport line forty-five minutes before he was supposed to board. Luckily--  since he spent fifty minutes in line. It usually takes five or at most ten minutes. As he waited, the line got longer and longer, three times longer than when he joined it. I went to the front of the line outside the velvet ropes, and I could see that there was ONE agent to look at the passports of literally hundreds of anxious people. At the other end of the terminal, another single agent (there were five or six empty police booths) faced another restive line of hundreds of passengers. If they'd been French, they'd have been making a huge fuss (and something might have been done about it), but they were mostly foreigners, Americans and Asians, waiting trustingly, patiently, politely. Behind the police booth, three x-ray machines and a dozen security employees stood around with nothing to do. Moreover, the agent was doing something with a computer to every single passport. And almost every passenger who finally got to him complained: you could see them waving their arms around, and I saw his smiling lips through the glass say over and over again "Je n'y suis pour rien!" ["It's not my fault!"] The people at the end of the queue had a two-hour wait. In this photo, you see the middle of the line. To the right, it starts to snake around in Disneyland-style zigzags for at least forty-five minutes. On the left, the line goes out of sight toward the rear of the terminal.

N got through early enough to catch the plane, passed through the x-rays, and waved goodbye. As I walked away, a well-dressed French businessman with a camel-hair coat and an ascot (earlier I had seen him walking confidently toward the front of the line with his boarding pass and passport, only to have his face fall as he realized the extent of the problem) rushed out of the queue to grab a hapless airport employee with a walkie-talkie (which the French oddly call a talkie-walkie). "C'est un scandale!" he said. "You must tell them to hold the planes!"

"Je vous comprends, but we don't have the right, Monsieur," said the woman. "If the planes are late, it costs the companies a lot of money."

"All these people will miss their planes!" he said. 

"They should have checked in earlier," she said. "It is not the responsibility of the airlines. It is the responsibility of the police."

"Ce n'est pas normal! On va appeler les médias!" [We're calling the media!]

"Vous avez raison, Monsieur! Ce n'est pas normal! Appelez-les! We are doing our best!" She made her escape.

The man went off with his lips pressed together, white with rage. I'm sure he missed his plane. The people at the front of the line, in trouble themselves,  weren't having any of that "I'll miss my plane" line from latecomers that usually works. I've never seen anything like the lines today, and can only conclude that the police are doing a go-slow strike. Another escargot action! Or maybe what is sometimes called a grève du zèle ("strike of zeal,"  i.e. everything done punctiliously, which takes forever). Thank goodness we arrived early today.

The sky has been white for the past few days, that European sky that must make tropical  hearts sink but that I love. Maybe because I grew up partly in Louisiana, and it still seems exotic to me, I love winter and the wintry welkin [an old word for sky; the German word for clouds is Wolke]. "Hark, how all the welkin rings! Glory to the king of kings!"  It's Christmastime, my favorite time of year. Never mind about the P's and queues.

Lights up on the Champs-Elysées

The Christmas lights are up on the Champs-Elysées! It looked so beautiful tonight.

One year, I think it was 1999, some creative person decided to change the usual glorious-but-classic white lights in the trees along the grand avenue. Instead, unbelievably hideous white gauze wraps covered the trees like an enormous tent-caterpillar  infestation. I think it was supposed to look magical when lit up in colors at night, but the gauze turned gray almost at once and in the daytime it looked as if the avenue were under tarps, while at night the dim lights made it look somber and eerie. Everyone complained about the dustmop trees, and the Boxing Day tempête (which was a mini-hurricane, winds "at the extreme of possibility" for Europe) tore the last shreds of their dignity away. The rags sat in the trees like toilet paper until they were quickly and ignominiously cleared away in time for the Year 2000 celebrations. I felt sad for the person whose idea it had been; no doubt it was conceived as something spectacular and chic. I didn't like the idea at all, but I admire the French for their willingness to try (and subsidize) something a little different.

For example, the ice skating rink at the Eiffel Tower in a week (7th December to 1st February)! You can't bring your own skates and skate for free, though, the way you can at the Hotel de Ville's rink that opens this Saturday until the end of February. This year, there will be a children's rink and a sledding slope too.

A letter from Iraq

From my cousin's son D, from southern Louisiana, who just arrived in Iraq. He had enlisted in the National Guard to help pay for his college education five or six years ago. He is a really nice young man, not sophisticated, from a poor family, but unusually kind and thoughtful to everyone. One of nature's gentlemen. I hope that survives the next 18 months and that he comes home safely. I've tried to take out most of the identifying details.

Hi ya Big Family!

Sorry about being out of the loop for so long! I just kinda locked myself out of my own email account. I forgot the "Secret Password", and the Army is a big stickler for red-tape and paper-work nightmares. But I'm back in, and I just got done cleaning out about 407 emails, most of which was Russian Porn Spam-- weird, I have no idea how that happend :)! But I did see a bunch of emails about me floating through the family email tree, and I just wanted to give you all a Big HELLO!

So let's start with the important stuff! What are each and every one of you sending me for my B-Day? I'm turning 2X, which by the way makes all of you very very old, and you should all know that, in case no one has told you lately!!! No seriously, I'm turning 2X in a [non-U.S.]-run Forward Operating Base (FOB) in semi-southern Iraq, how not normal is that!

I have to tell you guys, I almost didn't come on this deployment because of all the hurricane stuff that had happend back home in the past couple of months! Katrina happened just before Labor Day weekend, and I was slotted to fly home for that "Family Fun Day" where we drank and ate and played with the kids, but mostly drank! Well, I had to break my mother's heart on that one. When news finally got to me of what had happened, I called and called until I finally got through to my unit, who only had a skeleton crew left in [Louisiana city] while most of them were already in New Orleans working day and night to keep things under control! Not a fun weekend for me at all, seeing all those fellow coonasses [Cajun slang for other Cajuns, but my mother says, "It's very rude"], tired, de-hydrated, without food or power  for days. They came in truck-loads, or walked miles, old, very old, and young, too young. I have to tell all of you how much that made me hurt, for us, for our city, for home. I had to leave after that weekend and go back to work in [another state].  Needless to say I had a very bad attitude for a while. It wasn't easy for me to choose between our home and the Big Army, especially after [Hurricane] Rita hit y'all. I told my chain of command I was coming off the deployment and going home to work. Well, needless to say they talked me out of it. Right now there's a huge deficiency of people like myself in the Army, and we're needed like you wouldn't believe, so, I had to leave for the "Box." I never got another chance to come home-- no leave, not even a break or pass to do much of anything-- not that I'm complaining, just that I wanted to come home and thank all y'all for the emails and everything!

So real quick let me tell you about Iraq, funny place, people here aren't what you'd think.... you think they're okay, till you get a look into their psyche, and then you go, "WOOH, these people aren't okay." It's winter-time here, not too bad really, great sunrises and beautiful sunsets! Everything's dusty or foggy, depending on the wind and amount of ground-level air pollution. And yes, visibility is very limited, not yet a scenic place, but you can almost picture how it will be one day when these people get their act together.

And please excuse, if my tone sounds harsh towards the Iraqis, understand that I'm toning it down for the sake of being politically correct with the family, I know the [great-]Aunts read these emails too. You just have to understand that the locals here never worked for their own freedom, they were cowed for decades by fear and death, murder and corruption. No matter how hard you try to appeal to the hearts and minds of these people, they don't really know how to believe in themselves and certainly not each other. Hopes lies in the children, beautiful children with hope and wonder in their eyes. I love playing soccer with the kids, little brats are better than me some of them. But fear is rampant in this world, thugs, corrupt individuals, insurgents especially are the rule here. Mostly violence is the spoken language in this country, sad to say but very true.

Sorry about the long tirade, but I just want all of you to have a realistic idea of what happens here. I'll always try to be objective with y'all, for I know how many smart, educated, knowledgeable, and witty individuals we have in our family, and then there's MN!!

Listen if it helps, my address here is: [  ]

It's funny they actually took a NYC postal code and spread it all over Iraq, so it's really cheap to mail stuff home (hint, hint!!).

Love y'all, hope everyone's doing well, and that no one is spoiling their kids. I just couldn't take one more  Christmas with everyone's bratty kids!! Especially after being in Iraq for 18 months!! Haha, just kidding, one more bad joke for the KING of poor taste humor!!

Be Safe,

D

Two months after Hurricane Rita

A letter from Aunt B to her niece's son D in Iraq:

So much has happened since you left.  Mostly storm stuff, which I'll summarize by saying the storm may have come through two months ago, but believe me, it's far from being over. There is destruction everywhere you look, every road you turn, new scenes which make you shake your head.  The weather bureau said they stopped counting at 125 tornadoes.  Yesterday we spoke to a man who rode the storm out in his home, and he said it sounded like a train on top of his house for eight straight hours.  Personally, we lost about seven huge trees, two of which fell on the carport, and one nipped the edge of the house, meaning we had to replace all roofs.   Comparatively speaking, we came out lucky, though there is not a single tree left in our back yard which now resembles a muddy, dirt driveway. (Much due to the utility vehicles needed to remove the tree debris.)  The [formerly thick] woods are so sparse that we see [a mile through them]. Our view from the back windows of our home shows tangled, mangled, dangling tree branches and massive up-turned root balls, leaving gaping holes 10-12 feet deep. This scene is in the woods on the edge of our  property which is undeveloped, meaning no one will be cleaning up that mess. For the first time in my life, I'm thinking about putting up a fence. [For before-and-after photos, see this post from right afterwards.]

J and A and families became homeless. A huge branch fell on the K's house and water poured in for hours, meaning all the bedding, clothes, tvs, toys, had to be put on the curb. Of course, the water proceeded to spread into the kitchen. When the mold started forming, it was clear they could not live in the house without major repairs.  J's brand new house, due to be moved into the week of the storm, took a major hit with a tree smashing the entire front of the house, hours of rain pouring in, ruining almost every single room.  Both families moved in with us until just two weeks ago.  The bank has allowed J and H to occupy the kitchen, bedroom and bath of the new house, meaning they are basically "camping out" in their new home.  No place to put things, as the closets and bedrooms in the other parts of the house are stripped to the studs .  And of course, there's no attic.  Much of their "stuff" is in plastic bags under the carport, subject to wind and rain. Not a pretty picture.  Luckily, the Cs had another rental house for the Ks to rent until they can occupy the house they'd purchased just before the storm. That's what I mean about my personal loss being so minimal.  Even so, our problems pale in  comparison to what people suffered in New Orleans.  So you can see why the storms have come, but have not gone.

Anyway, dear D, you have enough troubles of your own.  We think of and pray for you very often.  When I think of our family Christmas party this year, it's hard to imagine it without you....Take care of yourself, D.

Completely plugged up

Paris was complètement bouché today because of a big manif by the restaurateurs. There were about 6000 of them, dressed in their chef's hats and aprons, and they drove their 3000 cars in a snail operation for five hours across the city from the Bois de Vincennes in the east to Porte Maillot in the west. There were dozens of cars de CRS (riot police buses) on the Périphérique, and the whole city was clogged. Everyone I was supposed to meet arrived late and crabby, except the carpenter who was coming from Place de la République and never arrived at all. He would have had to cross the demonstration.  The restaurateurs are demanding a change in the TVA (VAT), which costs their customers an additional 19.6% on each bill, while fast-food places, take-out places and cafeterias charge 5.5%. This tends to affect small restaurants where people would go for lunch. The restaurateurs view the VAT as deeply unfair and a threat to their existence, and Chirac promised to lower it when he was campaigning, but the European Union has to pass on it, and the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the new states of the  EU are against any change: they are afraid it would be the thin end of the wedge for all kinds of other special exceptions to the VAT.

N and I went out to dinner. Appropriately, he had escargots.

Literally Jet Set

Charles de Gaulle/Roissy airport, where I have to spend a lot of time, has the triste distinction of being the worst place I know of for men invading the women's bathrooms. For some reason, almost every time you go into one, there are men standing there at the sink or coming out of the stalls. "Ne vous inquiétez pas!" they always say. "There's no soap in the men's room," or "There's no paper in the men's room," or "They're cleaning the men's room." Funny, the women don't seem forced by those same circumstances to march into the men's bathrooms. It bugs me and would scare a lot of women to have a strange man (and I do think these guys are strange) rattling at the door of their stall in a public bathroom.

The airport has a new symbol. I think it's cute.

Il neige!

It's snowing!

[Later] It's really icy. Eighty or more flights were canceled at Orly and Roissy (Charles de Gaulle) airports and there are still delays up to two hours. The Eiffel Tower is closed. They said it's because they can't use either sand or salt on the elevators. It's true the elevators at the Eiffel Tower are a little special. They are two-storied and go up on a diagonal. (This image is from Anthony's Home Page. )

The Christmas charity fairs and school fêtes are beginning. Today I went to one in Auteuil, the southern end of the 16th arrondissement. "On est entre nous!" This particular charity is patronized by some of the richest women in Paris, with correspondingly valuable donations, so the second-hand clothes room and the brocante section were jammed with bargain hunters. There were even a bunch of fur coats in perfect condition. I bought a tiny old Venetian mirror and some old hand-embroidered linen sheets. This kind of fair is the only place you can still find them at a reasonable price. There were paintings, books, hats, scarves, statues, chairs, tables, wardrobes, plates, candlesticks and lots of other things for sale, plus a fresh produce tent that sold Christmas trees, and a coffee stand.

On the way home I was surprised to see a genuine London cab in front of me! Maybe he was Christmas shopping too. Paris is much, much cheaper than London. I don't know how anyone affords the life there. Even a single ride on the underground is twice as expensive as on the Paris Metro.

Anomalies of French life: pink toilet paper

For some reason, toilet paper in France is pink.

For lo, it is written.

Thanksgiving in Paris; disaster in Harbin

Thanksgiving in our house is a little different from the typical American Thanksgiving. It's true that we celebrate it on the same day as other Americans, which is unusual in Paris-- most Americans here don't have the day off, so they often have their Thanksgiving dinner on the weekends. Only the American companies and the U.S. government offices, like the consulate, take Thanksgiving as a holiday. The embassy and consulate take not only all American holidays but also (as legally required) all French holidays as well-- nice work if you can get it!

For at least the past ten years we have begun our Thanksgiving dinner with champagne, sauterne and foie gras en gelée. I knew that E from New Orleans would be here (although she and her friend had to come late because of work) and I made an even more Louisianan Thanksgiving than usual:

        --turkey roasted by our neighborhood rôtisseur (I don't like turkey, so I love being able to farm out that job) 
        -- rice and gravy
        --a sort of spoonbread made with asparagus, zucchini and corn
        --cranberry sauce
        --green beans and pecans
        and for dessert: pecan pie, apple pie, and pumpkin pie (I don't like it, so I bought one) with ice cream; chocolate pots de crème with whipped cream; and bread pudding with hard sauce.

The last, Buffin assured me, is as British as they come, and called bread-and-butter pudding there; but it is also a famous old New Orleans specialty, and I remember how, when I was a waitress there,  I used to sneak into the walk-in refrigerator whenever I could, to get a bite or two of the delicious bread pudding of our chef Joe. He had a vile temper and once chased his sous-chef out of the restaurant with a carving knife. He also got one waitress fired: he made sure her orders always came up last, so her customers were constantly complaining to the manager.

E and her friend came late from a teachers' meeting. They are both teaching English in suburban French public schools. They have been asked to teach British English, which is ridiculous: if the French are fixed upon British English, they should hire Brits to teach it. The two had both, sensibly, refused and said that it would be too unnatural. I certainly understand two of the reasons for teaching British English here: Britain is across the channel, not 3000 miles away; and the exams the students must prepare for are in British English. But the French often seem to get the idea from this that American English is a sort of inferior English, or even not English at all.  (If you believe this, please go away right now to another blog and don't ever come back.) Anyone who understands how languages evolve knows this is nonsense, and even for those who don't, how is it possible to believe that "I have a dog" (American version) is inferior to "I have got a dog" (British version, as taught in schools in France)? or that "lorry" is  the correct word and "truck" incorrect? (because the queen says it, I suppose? because of geography? that's what this argument comes down to.) All differences between British and American dialects are variations on those two examples, along with the differences in local accents.

After dinner we sat around the living room absolutely stuffed (Buffin and O had to go on to an office party afterwards. I felt so sorry for them). D read out Art Buchwald's famous article, which has been reprinted in the International Herald Tribune every Thanksgiving for at least fifty years. (While I add the links, the others are watching the first episode of the television series "Lost," which we can get only on DVD.)
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Le Jour de Merci Donnant

One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant.

Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims (Pélerins) who fled from l'Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World (le Nouveau Monde) where they could shoot Indians (les Peaux-Rouges) and eat turkey (dinde) to their hearts' content.

They landed at a place called Plymouth (now a famous voiture Américaine) in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower (or Fleur de Mai) in 1620. But while the Pélerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the Pélerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the Pélerins was when they taught them to grow corn (maïs). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pélerins.

In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pélerins' crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more maïs was raised by the Pélerins than Pélerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges.

Every year on le Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.

It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilomètres Deboutish) and a young, shy lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth called Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant:

"Go to the damsel Priscilla (allez tres vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth (la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action (un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe), offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this, in short, is my meaning.

"I am a maker of war (je suis un fabricant de la guerre) and not a maker of phrases. You, bred as a scholar (vous, qui êtes pain comme un étudiant), can say it in elegant language, such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, such as you think best adapted to win the heart of the maiden."

Although Jean was fit to be tied (convenable à être emballé), friendship prevailed over love and he went to his duty. But instead of using elegant language, he blurted out his mission. Priscilla was muted with amazement and sorrow (rendue muette par l'étonnement et las tristesse).

At length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: "If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?" (Où est-il, le vieux Kilomètres? Pourquoi ne vient-il pas auprès de moi pour tenter sa chance?)

Jean said that Kilomètres Deboutish was very busy and didn't have time for those things. He staggered on, telling what a wonderful husband Kilomètres would make. Finally Priscilla arched her eyebrows and said in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, Jean?" (Chacun à son goût.)

And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes, and for the only time during the year eat better than the French do.

No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande fête and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilomètres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.

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Here is an interesting account of a real-life pilgrim.

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Most people here don't seem to understand the magnitude of fast-developing disaster in Harbin, China. It is a city with almost 4 million people (Chicago has 2.8 million)--9 million in the metropolitan area-- in Manchuria, at roughly the latitude of Edmonton or Winnipeg in Canada, and just as cold: 12 degrees Fahrenheit (ca -11 C), well below freezing, right now. It's known as the Ice City. China already has less drinking water per capita than most other countries, and it's not as if the population can just go out and buy Evian, or move elsewhere; the Chinese government is also very unlikely to have the toxic spill cleaned up in a few days. Maybe this will force through some much-needed environmental measures. But meanwhile millions of people are suffering and could even die.