Going on art gallery crawls in Accra, Ghana, you can find many treasures, like the Yellow Splasher and the Pinhead Painter.

Should we worry? We found the doctor in the labyrinthine alleys of a tiny Asian village. He wore a Micky Mouse T-shirt and was half-asleep.

Here I was, in the throes of labor and in comes the doctor, wearing . . . no, not scrubs, not a white coat, but . . . .

My store of expat life patience is exhausted. It’s not only the chicken, the water, the electricity, the tiny fridge, the heat, the dull knife, the lack of kitchen drawers, the dead rat in the garden this morning, but . . .

Just one micro-second of inattention and you’re in trouble. One moment of not thinking and you manage to get yourself in a problem situation. Okay, that’s saying the same thing…