Let's start off with a picture of everyone walking in our nearby neighbourhood where the hostel was under a rainbow!
So, it's been quite a while since I've had a chance to post anything, but now I have some time to put down the rest of my experience in Nepal.
That next Saturday most of us from the hostel had a chat with Sajani who run Projects-Abroad here in Nepal. The owners of the building made up a story about us staying up until 4 a.m. on the roof of the building and peeing in the water tanks. I still don't understand why we would do that or where they got that idea. It's unfortunate, but the owners seemed to have a grudge against all of the volunteers the entire time I was in Nepal, they seemed to just not like that we were foreigners and didn't like our western ways. But when you rent out flats to a hostel for western volunteers what else would you expect? The main problem was they never tried to discuss any issues with us or come to a compromise, they wanted to pressure Santosh to force us to act like traditional Nepalis which I'm afraid would never happen. But, moving on. We did stay up on the roof chatting, playing card games and drinking a little, but we try to be respectful and most of us are usually down off the roof by midnight.
After that there was a talk on orthopaedics by the chief doctor at a hospital in Banepa. It was an interesting talk but it was mainly just the most basic information about the topic and I kind of fell asleep during it.
Here's Pashupathi in the daylight.
This is everyone walking through a different part of Pashupathi (it's a big complex).
That Sunday we ended up going to Pashupathi again in the morning. We wandered around the temples, went into the forest to see the sadhus' (holy men) graves which stretch off into the forest and saw some threatening gangs of monkeys (I hear sometimes they charge tourists money to take pictures of them, but we were lucky this time). I also learned how to hug a tree... what an exciting and informative day...
Here's a shot of some of the Sadhus' grave stretching out into the forest, with a dash of holy cows.
Nicki teaches us all the proper way to hug a tree while Ian and Dan watch in rapt attention (the proper way is to lay your hand on the tree to ask permission, press forehead and stomach against tree, hug, rinse, repeat for anyone who actually cares).
Since that Monday the 28th I've been working at NOH (Nepal Orthapaedic Hospital) instead of Stupa. It's quite a stunning difference between the two. NOH more closely resembles a western hospital. There are also many more on staff doctors, more nurses and nursing students and many more patients. I like it there, but I think I'm just getting restless of mainly acting as an intern without much actual impact involved. I'm getting kind of glad that next week will be my final week working at the hospital.
My first day on Monday was pretty eventful for a first day. I wasn't placed with a doctor so I spent my time in the emergency ward. There really aren't many actual "emergencies" that come in, but more bandages that need changing, wounds that need cleaning, and casts that need to be taken off or put on. It was only a little bit strange just kind of being thrown into it. There was a man with a dislocated thumb and I had to support him while Dr. Laxman (the emergence ward doctor) attempted to push it back in place. The guy eventually just fainted on the table. I'm pretty sure it ended up being serious enough to require surgery. I also had to help hold a little boy who was very unhappy about setting his broken arm and putting a cast on it. There was another boy who had pins in his hip that weren't holding the bones properly so he needed to have a cast put on from his waist down to his right ankle. He just handled it really well and was just shockingly quiet. As an extra bonus for the day I found out after a nurse started asking me about a rash she had that Dr. Laxman was letting the nursing students know I was a skin specialist from Canada. So, on that note, I'm a dermatologist now!
A nice picture of everyone at the table!
With a photo of Sumna and Pabitra!
That night we all went to the cafe at Shechen Monastery for dinner. We got to bring Pabitra and Sumna too! The meal was great and it was just nice having everyone there before people started to leave. Unfortunately, Jude had already left that morning and the next day Dan from Germany left. It got really quiet in the hostel after that night. It just felt empty at meals.
The rice-planting mess Ian and I became...
Tuesday was something a little different. Projects-Abroad held an event for the beginning of the rice planting season and that, of course, was rice planting! Well, I think we were supposed to be rice planting...it kind of devolved into a big mud fight for the first while after we were given water...but we planted some rice eventually...not much but we at least planted some...
On a whole other note, back in Canada I was never a big soccer fan but being here where soccer and the World Cup are front page news every day is just plain infectious. I really enjoy watching the games with the other volunteers here. It's hard not to get excited for on of the home teams, like Germany or England. The Germany - Holland game was really a great game to watch, and it helped that there's some Germans at the hostel. I'm pretty psyched to see the final game next Sunday!
A routine day at work.
Now back to work. The rest of the past week at NOH was pretty good. Nothing really to complain about anyways. I stayed in the emergency room on Tuesday, where nothing horribly out of the ordinary happened and went to consultations with my doctor, Dr. Sandeep, on Wednesday. Consultations have kind of lost their lustre at this point though. It seems doing them for three straight weeks with Dr. Swasti has kind of numbed the excitement of watching people speak Nepali to each other. Sandeep like to talk and explain things though, so that's a definite bonus. I had the opportunity to clean some wounds and change some dressings on Thursday since we couldn't go into the operation theatre. It's not exactly difficult to do but I can be a little anxious about it and I just need to realize I'm not going to hurt the person by cleaning the wound. Not seriously, at any rate. Friday was more consultations with a surprise case of what seemed to be leukemia. I kind of miss Stupa Hospital where I had built up a rapport with the doctors there and was able to have more chances to ask more useful questions. NOH is much more busy and the pace is much quicker than Stupa.
Everyone and the kids that followed us resting.
On Saturday we returned to our tendency towards great trips. We traveled out of Kathmandu to the Nagajurn Reserved Forest. It took us some time trying to find the bus to take us there and after making to Balaju we decided just to walk there as no one seemed to have a clue how to get to the forest by bus. Our goal was to hike up the Jamacho mountain in the forest. We ended up, after a while of walking, finding the main gate, but we being the cheap bastards that we are, decided to go further down and hop the wall near a cave with a shrine inside to save 250 rupees. Some kids hanging out near the cave decided to follow us for a while up some stone steps while making roaring noises and stuff. The kids here in Nepal are ridiculously friendly and a lot of fun! The forest was so thick and humid and you became surrounded on all sides by the buzzing of the cicadas again. Most of the trail was actually quite steep so you just kept walking up rather than forwards. Me, Amilie (from France) and Anna (from Germany) all tired out pretty fast while the others tired out but just kept going. I guess they just had a bit more stamina for uphill hiking. We reached a lower peak, took in the view, took some photos, decided the climb was definitely worth it, realized we hadn't reached the peak yet and were only about halfway up, asked if we were really going to climb the rest of it and moved on to climbing the actual peak of Jamacho. It's the smallest mountain in the Kathmandu valley but still a bit of a challenging hike.
This is the view we climbed for. So worth it.
What we didn't expect!
Once we reached the peak we discovered something we truly didn't expect: a stupa and a whole bunch of Nepali people doing a rain-dance and praying! We decided, once again, that the view was completely worth the climb. The people gave us some food which was really kind of them and of course the food was great. Chickpea curry, rice pudding, and chiura (rice flakes) are always delicious! Some of the food was given to us on giant leaves as plates. Martin, Dan, Amilie and Nicki all decided to join in the rain dance and hopefully not mess up the calls for rain. A big cloud started to engulf the peak as we sat there so it seems like their calls did something anyways! Watching a cloud engulf a mountain peak is pretty eerie too, I must say. The leeches attached to everyone's legs weren't quite as eerie, just kind of annoying and gross instead.
The rain dance! For rain!
Amilie playing with some children we met near the Shiva statue!
Sunday we decided on another scooter trip, since if we survived the first run we might as well go again! The drivers woke up pretty early and wandered down to get the scooters from Thamel. English Dan (the only Dan left) had a bit of trouble with the whole turning thing and almost smoked a cyclist, a little girl, and a traffic cop. He had a tendency of leaning over but without the scooter going the same direction! So instead of him driving, the honour was given to Amilie with Dan as her passenger. I ended up getting Ian as my passenger so we had a good, heavy weight thing going on, which made hills really interesting. Me with Ian and Martin with Anna had a few races uphill at about 5 km/h at a few points in the day. First thing we did was we drove out of Kathmandu to Hhaktapur which is an old, temple-filled city. They charge 750 rupees just for entrance to the city and once again, we're cheap bastards so we attempted to sneak in a back way but drove our scooters into Durbar Square which wasn't the best decision and had a guy escort us back out of the city. Driving through the streets was interesting though. Martin said the town felt like a small, old French town. It would have been nice to explore but when it comes to Nepal there's so many things to do and so little time!
It's big. Like I said.
The next place we visited was a giant Shiva statue in the hills between Bhaktapur and Banepa. It was completed just a couple of months ago so it's not an old wonder or anything but it's still pretty impressive. Along the way we discovered that maybe our scooters couldn't handle steep mountain roads with two people on them this time. It was a sad, but necessary revelation. The statue itself is big. Really big. And gold. Big and golden. When we were getting ready to leave some Nepali guy attempted to charge us for parking on the dirt road. We didn't let him hustle us of course, but I applaud his effort. Those kinda things happen here in Nepal.
The temple with no name!
Next was Banepa for lunch and after that we went off the main roads into the hills for the afternoon. We ended up at a tiny village called Nala with a temple none of us know the name of. No idea what it's called, but it was nice. Then we pushed on through the mountains to Changu Narayan. After a while of some steep, rocky mountain roads we needed to stop and siphon some gas from Sebastian's motorcycle a couple of the scooters that were running low. After we crested the next peak we reached Changu Narayan, a beautiful village with a temple complex perched on the peak of a hill. The most interesting piece of architecture there is a pillar with an inscription that dates back to 464 AD, the earliest known inscription in the Kathmandu valley. Of course my camera died at that point so I have no pictures of that...
One of the few pictures I have of Changu Narayan...
We went out to dinner on Monday again, but this time for Grace's birthday! We had bought a cake from a local baker where we buy donuts all the time and had the waitress bring it out for us. I just enjoyed spending dinner with everyone because you definitely start to miss these people once they're gone.
The next week was mainly represented by surgeries and dressings at NOH. On Tuesday and Thursday I watched surgeries in the operation theatre. Tuesday I had the opportunity to watch the doctors operate on the spine for a vertebrae fracture. It's a strange feeling when you here the crack as they put a screw in place in one of the vertebrae. We had to wear these giant lead vests which felt like a suit of armor. You get tired just standing in one place. I also saw the adjustment of a plate holding the femur together in a leg. Wednesday I worked in the emergency room with Anna and Sebastian. We took turns doing dressings. I ended up with an infected foot where the infection had spread and created a wound to the bones of some toes and a person with a pin holding the bones of the elbow in place. Putting the gauze on the pin ends up being quite tricky. Thursday there was just one interesting procedure was an amputation. A man had malignant melanoma (skin cancer that can spread) in his hand and there was a large black tumor growing from the palm and the ring finger. The doctors had to cut away a large portion of his hand and the ring finger to keep the cancer from spreading. Afterwards they attached the leftover portions of his hand together into a new three-fingered appendage. I don't really think he's that lucky since this was recurring cancer and now his life has gotten a bit more difficult and complicated for lack of a finger.
Well, that's those couple weeks covered. Three more posts to go to cover the rest of my stay in Nepal! I'll leave you with a photo of Dr. Gary ready to operate!
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