Too Much

I’m in the Ministry’s ele­va­tor. It’s 8:30 am. And I have no clue what this woman is talk­ing about.

She sights loudly and put her cell­phone back in her purse.

We both exit the ele­va­tor on the main level. And sud­denly, I under­stand. In front of me, behind the commissioner’s desk, a big “Red Cross” ban­ner and a dozen of chairs. A line of gov­ern­ment work­ers and a few nurses and vol­un­teers. Got it. Blood col­lec­tion… in Indus­try Canada’s lobby. Why not after all? Most civil ser­vants would rather bleed to death than to attend another point­less meeting.

I walk across the lobby to grab my morn­ing muf­fin but I’m soon stopped by a vol­un­teer and a nurse.

– Hi, what’s your name?

– Oh, er… actu­ally, I’m just… going to the Thimothy’s over there.

How to look like a self­ish bitch in two seconds.

– … Well, that said I may be inter­ested in donat­ing some blood in the future.

– Okay, let me just give you some info then. Are you liv­ing in Ottawa?

– Yes.

– Have you ever donated blood before?

– Well, not in Canada, but I had in France.

He looks up at me.

– Sorry for ask­ing, but… you’re not French, are you?

– I’m afraid I am! But I’m half Cana­dian now!

My lit­tle joke doesn’t make him laugh and he now looks at me half sus­pi­cious, half embarrassed.

– Did you spend more than 5 years in France between 1980 and now?

– Born in France, raised there. So yes.

– Sorry, can’t take your blood. No Euro­pean blood… you know, because of the Mad Cow Dis­ease. We haven’t found a way to test peo­ple yet, so you’re not eli­gi­ble. Same goes with peo­ple who have been exposed to Malaria… they’re not eli­gi­ble either.

The vol­un­teer took a step back as he spoke, as if my Euro­peanism could jump on him. I decide to not men­tion that I spent quite a lot of time in malaria infected areas in Latin Amer­ica, and got my yel­low fever shot last minute in Panama’s remote coun­try­side in a local health cen­ter. I thanked them both (no hand-shake because of pos­si­ble dis­ease) and went to get my muffin.

I had never heard of this pol­icy before. Doesn’t exist in France, as far as I know… but there, on the other side, male homo­sex­u­als can not donate blood. Not a moral judg­ment they say, but because they are more at risk for the AIDS/HIV virus. No Mad Cow Dis­ease precautions…

Funny how per­spec­tive are dif­fer­ent, depend­ing on the coun­try and the cul­ture: what’s safe and what’s not, the local pet peeve, the national trau­mas and the big no-nos.

Like I’ve always felt so safe in China, despite all the hor­ror sto­ries I had heard. And, I found the big cities pretty clean, con­sid­er­ing the huge demog­ra­phy. But I don’t usu­ally feel that com­fort­able by myself in some North Amer­i­can cities… and I hate Paris’ old subway.

I ate in many 小吃 (small food stall on the street) in China, and in South and Cen­tral Amer­i­can mar­kets and rarely — if never — got sick. Yet, many peo­ple wouldn’t bet on them and would rather hit the near­est McDonald’s. French blue cheese is often called “rot­ten cheese” here — peo­ple like their “processed cheese” best, , I guess it sounds more hygienic.

Health wise, France is very para­noid about asbestos and has even called a world-wide ban… while Canada doesn’t seem to be wor­ried much. A city in Québec is even named Asbestos, after the local indus­try. And don’t try explain­ing that asbestos is, well, haz­ardous mate­r­ial, because most Que­be­cers just don’t see the problem.

On the other side, as I dis­cussed in Cig­a­rettes and Alco­hol a few months ago, North Amer­ica has tougher laws on alco­hol con­sump­tion, whereas Europe is much more relaxed: a lower legal-drinking age (vir­tu­ally never enforced any­way) and no shame in get­ting drunk dur­ing fam­ily get-together. What health risks? It eez national tra­di­tion! We are gourmet, putain! And don’t let me get started on smok­ing laws… they vary dras­ti­cally from a coun­try to another, from a state to another etc.

Feng would often tells me how he used to play with fire­crack­ers in China as a kid… I doubt kids here are even allowed to play out­side alone much. I even heard recently that accord­ing to some doc­tors, they shouldn’t go under the sun at all between 10 am and 4 pm in the sum­mer (good luck keep­ing them busy indoor!) because of risks of skin cancer.

Of course, I’m glad the Cana­dian Red Cross cares about the donors and the recip­i­ents, and being cau­tious about Mad Cow Disease’s pos­si­ble trans­mis­sion risks is prob­a­bly the right thing to do. This is just a small anec­dote to shows that coun­tries react dif­fer­ently on var­i­ous mat­ters. Yet, in a world where dis­eases and health risks are dis­cov­ered all the time, where acci­dents are broad­casted live on all chan­nels, where we want gov­ern­ments to keep us alive and safe by all means — how para­noid and scared can we get? What should we really be care­ful about?

Related arti­cles:

1. A Bizarre Story
2. A Chi­nese Mas­sage Story
3. Go Sens, Go !
4. A Driver’s License Story
5. The Inter­view