Hospital Labs, Eye Surgeries, and Nepali Traffic

So, another random photo. This time of the 4 year old daughter of Bobitra, Sumna.



The weekend rafting was great! I'm pretty sure most of the things we did on the river would be against safety procedure back in Canada! We're in a period between the dangerous monsoon rapids and low winter rapids so we had a nice strong current and great rapids. The raft I was on each also had the best guides by far! Both days my raft's guide had us doing cheers and playing games such as where we stood on the edge of the raft holding hands and tried to pull each other off into the water or stood and leaned on our paddles while going through rapids.




There were also times where guys would board the other raft and push people off or would swim around and yank people backwards into the water. We spent a lot of time in the water when there were no rapids to say the least. We also got to go cliff diving at one point!



Our volunteer leader, Ruth, said that was the first time she saw that happen too! We camped on a beach by the river and had a huge BBQ followed by "rafter's punch". The punch was apple juice, sliced apples and rum and was served warm. It tasted like alcoholic apple pie! The second day the first thing our guide did was launch the raft onto a huge rock like a ramp and almost flip the raft. We definitely had the best guide. The rapids were larger and faster the second day with more jumps, whirlpools and close calls. At one calm point, our guide had us flip the raft about four times intentionally. The last time two girls held on and were launched back into the raft! The whole weekend was amazing!



I spent Monday at work in the emergency ward. There was a man who had a collapsed urethra and so had a catheter inserted right into his bladder through the skin. It looked slightly painful. Also had a nice discussion with the newest doctor there. He's getting married in about 20 days and is probably the calmest groom to be I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure he's buddhist and he sees marriage as a "spiritual union" so I think he's going to be fine. He was giving me medical advice all day like asking what kind of symptoms to look for in certain cases and the order to treat them in. Always start with pain, that's what I learned. He also quizzed me on some things and luckily I knew the answers. He also advised me that Bhutan is a great place to practice medicine once I'm done school. I think I'll have to keep that in mine for later.

I miss milk (it's all yak milk here, and a female yak is a nak, so it's nak yak milk) and being able to get my hands on fruit I can trust.

Tuesday there was a motorcycle accident in the ER. They were both horribly lucky and came away with just cuts and gashes. I also had another conversation with the new doctor and found he finally got a letter of placement for Stupa hospital! I'm happy for him, I think he'll make a great doctor. He was quizzing me again. I feel like I've been in residency for those couple of days. I tried working the lab again, but the people there didn't want to talk to me and just kind of ignored me. I found out the lady I would need to work with since she likes to teach, Sunita, was on night shift. It's disappointing since I bought a book on lab tech procedures that the guy working in the lab before me, Jens (Denmark, pronounced "yens") had and was hoping to work there for the next 2 weeks. After that I've put in to switch to NOH (Nepal Orthopedic Hospital) for the last 3 weeks. They're much busier and I'd have many more opportunities to work directly with patients doing dressings and such, as well as watching more surgeries.

I got to work in the lab again on Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday was with Jens as well, so it was fun learning all the basic stuff and the different things he's learned. I've done some clerk work and prepared urine examination tests. It might not be the most exciting stuff, but it's hands on for the whole day and that's good enough for me.

Friday there was a talent show at Snowlands organized by Grace and Jude. All the kids were super-talented with poetry, singing, dances, and skits! They did a great job!





Saturday was another self-organized trip by everyone at the hostel. Everyone had gone except Jens, who left for Tibet that morning and Grace who went to a Snowlands soccer match. We all rented scooters and Sebastian rented a motorcycle in Kathmandu and we went south to the Lele valley. It's a rural area where not many foreigners go so it was really great. We had to go travel on a dusty mountain road to get there, so I was very brown after a very short time. Lele was all green hills and small villages and was so very tranquil.



From there we traveled to Godawari, another small village where Bobitra, the lady who cooks for us, lived with her husband. We visited the Shanti Ban Buddha, a giant golden buddha overlooking Godawari.



We also traveled up to the Godawari Kunda, which we thought was a sacred spring, and it seemed like all we could find was men bathing. We went to sit in the botanical garden forest after that. It was beautiful and we really could understand why it is so popular on Saturdays, the Nepali peoples' holy and often they're only day off.

After that we rode up a rocky mountain trail where I fell over a couple of times due to potholes. The girl riding with me, Jennie, took it all in stride though. Our next stop was Bishanku Narayan, a Hindu shrine at the peak of the hill. Nepali people love stairs, so we climbed another set to get up to it. There's a cave there with a legend that if you can't fit through it then your sin is pride or gluttony.


Surprisingly, all of us fit through.

The view from above the shrine was amazing and we thought it would make an amazing picnic spot.



From there we kept on the mountain trail until we reached where the path sloped down again. Then it turned into more of a green, slimy hiking trail. We kept following it though and rode our brakes the entire way down. It felt like being in the middle of a rainforest with walls of green leafy trees on each side. The hum from the cicadas filled the air around and it was all I could hear besides my scooter. My scooter kept stalling too, so it was mainly just silence. It was definitely a one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. After that we booked it through Lubhu, another small village. I almost hit a bus trying to pass another bus in front of me. Luckily I stopped just in time and so did the other bus. Phew. On the way into Kathmandu me with Jennie and Jude lost the others at an intersection and we had to find our way back to Thamel on our own. We somehow pulled it off and made it back with five minutes before the scooters had to be returned. The entire trip was great and an amazing way to see Nepal. All of us want to do another scooter trip again!

Monday we went to a wedding reception of a famous bollywood actress that Santosh, who runs the hostel, knows so we went to a 5-star hotel and had a great night of food and drinks. Lots and lots and lots of food. The bunch of us scraggly, way too casually dressed volunteers didn't quite fit in.





Tuesday was the nest interesting day. Me, Sebastian and Nicki went to an eye hospital in Banepa to observe eye surgery. We observed about 5 cataract surgeries. There surgeon was real quick at cutting open the eye, removing the clouded lens, washing out the cloudy film in the eye, replacing the natural lens with an artificial one and cauterizing the wound back up. It almost seemed like a scene from a horror film with the eye being held open and blood pooling around the eye. I'll spare you pictures of that.



Yep, things are really sterile. You're allowed to bring a camera in...

We also saw the anesthetic being injected through a large needle being inserted beneath the eye and tilting the point towards the eye. That was enough to numb the muscles around the eye and the optic nerve. Being the first surgery I've seen I thought it was really fascinating. On our way there and back we saw a humongous statue of Shiva in the hills. I really hope we go back there sometime.



This week I've been working in the pathology lab. I've had more chances to prepare different tests like urine examination slides and white blood cell counts where I stained the different blood smears. I've also done more filing and stuff. I've learned different things about blood biochemistry, as well. Sunita wants me to learn to collect blood so I hope I'll be able to do that in the next couple of days before I move to NOH.

Well, that's all that I've had happen for the last while. Namaste.

P.S. I have a beard now!

Hiking....and a little more hiking...

So...let's start off with a random picture of a cow in the middle of the road...



After being here for, what, 3 weeks, I've decided that living and working in Nepal is definitely my favourite "holiday" (I am still working here) that I've been on and absolutely my preferred method of traveling rather than just traveling around. It's much, much more of an experience than simply being a tourist. I also don't feel like people should be allowed to rip me off anymore (and I hope they don't, and no, I don't want hash from the guy peddling it on the street)!



Mukti and Revival!

Well, after being blessed by Surye, the rest of the week was pretty slow until Friday.I had a chance to go to a blues show! Well, a blues-rock show, but Nepali style blues! It was at a small local bar called the House of Music tucked away in a back alley corner of Thamel. Couldn't understand the lyrics except for the cover of "I shot the sheriff" but, damn, was it good! And the Nepalis damn well loved it too! Seeing local bands in seedy local bars is something you don't get to do often in a foreign country!

Saturday, was kind of "meh, saw Monkey Temple again, I prefer the Boudha stupa, but I did get to go eat cake at a cafe that's been open for 40 years! It was on Jochne, or "Freak Street" which was the hippy hangout in the '70s. Have I mentioned I love living here yet? 'Cuz I really do!

Sunday was great though. We (me and a few volunteers) hiked to the Gokarna Mehedev temple which is a Hindu temple nestled in the woods. It has statues of many of the Hindu deities and a pagoda with Newari (the main cultural group of the Kathmandu valley) wood carvings which are just amazing.



The most fascinating part of the temple was definitely a shrine which was demolished by a fig tree which grew from the roof.





From left to right: Nicki(UK), Sebastian (Germany), Jude (Scotland, and Dan in the background with his backpack (also Germany). Oh, and some Nepali guy on the hill!

After that we hiked through the forest-clad hillsides to Kopan monastery, a buddhist monastery at the peak of a hill overlooking Boudha and Kathmandu. It's so serene and breathtaking you don't really want to leave.



Stupa of a Thousand Buddhas.

There they have the "Stupa of a Thousand Buddhas" which is magnificent just to look at but what's even more amazing is that what looks like gold patterns on the steps are actually each a small gold statue of Buddha!





The past week was kind of uneventful, though. On Tuesday there was a girl in the emergency who couldn't have been more than 16. She had drunk insecticide mixed with kerosene. Luckily the family had rushed her to the hospital and her stomach was being flushed by the time I got there. She recovered and 2 days later left the hospital just fine.

I also took over tutoring a Japanese girl in English from another volunteer since he got sick. She already reads and writes English well but wants to practice listening and speaking and improve her vocabulary and understanding, so it mainly involves us just having a conversation. My first lesson was on Thursday and my second was on Monday. So far, it's sizing up to be a great experience.

So I went rafting on the weekend, but I'm leaving that 'til I have pictures. Then I'll put details.

That's all for me for now. Namaste!

Pictures....Finally!

So, I don't really much that's happened in the past few days, but me and some volunteers did go to the reception of a Nepali wedding on Wednesday. It was very familiar, lots of people, dancing, eating, and drinking. Santosh, the lady who runs the hostel I stay in, says she might take some of us to a wedding later in June, so I'm really hoping I'll get to see the actual ceremony!

Now...pictures!


This is me standing by the stairs to the monkey temple with an image of Buddha.



And here's the hospital where we had the gyno clinic and I spent all day sticking things in places where no one really wanted them to go.



This is the monkey temple stupa itself.



And this is the Boudhanath stupa packed with people for Buddha Jayanti (his birthday).



Here's Pashupati at night, you can see the stairs at the bottom of the pic and the fires there are funeral pyres!



And this is me and all the other volunteers drinking chang (rice beer) at a seedy little local hole in the wall...so starting with me it's: me, Lucy (USA), Martin (Denmark), Nicki (UK), Sophia (Germany), and Jude (Scotland)!



This is the best pictures I could get of the costumed Buddhists at the festival.




And....this is the stairs leading up to Bajrayogini with a small side temple (Unfortunately, the temple itself was off-limits for picture taking :( )




And, finally, last but not least, this is me with Surye Lama after the blessing and praying!


P.S. If anyone wants more pictures of any of these let me know and I'll post more next weekend!

A Week of Work and Some Stuff That is Definitely Not Work

I've only been volunteering at Stupa Community Hospital for a week now, but I feel like I'm already settling into the pace. I work with the two other volunteers there, Jens and Sophia, and Dr. Swasti. He's been practising for thirty-some years and is the hospital director. He's a funny, knowledgeable ma and I quite like working with him. It's a hospital designed for the poor in a poor area so it has just the basic necessities for a hospital like x-rays and such. Many of the patients' problems have were very similar the first couple of days with many chest infections, which are common due to the pollution, and gastritis with a random problem thrown in once in a while like tuberculosis. Wednesday was the eve of Buddha's birthday so the hospital held what it called "healthcam" where all treatment and medications were free. It was definitely the busiest I've seen the hospital so far with large groups waiting in line to see the doctors. The issues also varied much more, there was everything from osteoarthritis to typhoid. It seemed much more like the busy hospitals in Canada that day.

That night we went to Pashupati and had the chance to watch a Hindu funeral. Pashupati is a complex of Hindu temples on a river which stretches into India. Funerals are held on the steps leading to the river and after the bodies are burned, the ashes are swept into the river where they are meant to travel to India. Given the difference in surroundings, it was interesting that the occasion was just as solemn and emotional as the Christian funerals I've been to, if not more so.

The festival of Buddha Jayanti was on Thursday which is Buddha's birthday. Boudha is a heavily Buddhist area so the streets were teeming with people and huge flags were hanging over the busy streets with prayer flags flying everywhere. Dr. Swasti had a holiday that day so we went to the Boudanath stupa. It was packed with thousands of people and monks walking clockwise around it praying. There were also some monks parading around in costume as well. All in all, it was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience I think.

Work at the hospital was slow on Friday, but there were two cases of jaundice which was something I had never seen before. So there's that, anyways.

Saturday I got to do something horribly touristy: bungy-jumping. There's a place called the Last Resort very close to the Tibetan border with the largest bungy-jump in Asia: 160 metres off a suspension bridge. I only jumped once that day, but I feel that was enough considering I've never don that before. I had some trouble as it was jumping though, I had to try twice, my legs bent the first try but my body simple wouldn't move. It's a very long drop and very insane. I'm pretty sure my brain rebelled against the fact I had just thrown myself off a bridge since the left side of my head started to hurt and kept hurting for a while after I was on solid ground. It as definitely an experience I'll never forget.

Sunday was, of course, another adventure. Me and a few of the other volunteers that live at our host family decided to just hop on a bus going east out of Boudha and see where it would take us. After rolling and bumping along (the buses here aren't exactly comfortable) through some hilly countryside, we ended up in Sankhu, a small country village which used to be an important point on the trade route from Kathmandu to Tibet. We visited a school there where the kids were on recess. Everyone was nice, the teachers chatted with us and the kids showed us around. It also seems to be rice-planting season in Nepal so there were many rice patties with people working on them. A large Buddhist temple named Bajrayogini is at the top of a small peak nearby so me and another volunteer, Nicky, took the two km hike up. There were a bunch of people eating a large male at the temple, but it turns out it was just a normal daily celebration, though it seemed large enough for a festival. We also found a bunch of meditation caves carved into the hillside with shrines carved inside each and benches carved in to them for devout monks to stay in. There were also a surprising amount of monkeys (including a baby one which tried to grab the hem of my pants)! By the time we got back down to where the others were waiting from our "spiritual journey" the other three were drinking chang (rice beer) and gambling with people working at a local restaurant. I really think our group is a good influence on these small villages!

Today, Tuesday, has been pretty much a normal day except for one thing: I was visiting some local Buddhist monasteries and got a good luck blessing by lama, Surye Lama, and was given the gift of a khata, a white silk scarf! Really not much else to say about it but that, but I'm quite excited by this.

Well, unfortunately, the internet's too slow for me to do pictures, but hopefully I can do a whole post with them on the weekend when I'm in Thamel with faster connections. Until then, namaste!