July 14, 2009
11:12PM Nepali time
Sofia, Dan, and I are staying in the
mountain village of Bershiadia tonight.
This is the location of the Christian-managed government hospital that I
mentioned in my last entry. We woke up
at about 5am and got into a taxi at 6:10am that took us to a micro-bus location
where we were picked up by our friend, S.P., who is the current manager of the
health organization.
Originally, the trip should have only
taken approx. 5 hours, but several complications arose.
1. 45 minutes into our journey from the bus stop,
we encountered what we originally thought was a traffic accident along the
mountain road. However, after two hours
of getting some tea, crawling up and down the mountain road as traffic moved
very slowly, we finally discovered that the traffic delays were caused by
protesting construction workers who decided to block one side of the road with
mounds of sand and cement materials.
This obviously would cause a bottleneck and only began to be freed up
b/c of Nepalese policemen who arrived on the scene to facilitate the traffic.
2. 15 minutes later, we were stuck again because
of a construction vehicle had blown a tire and then broke its front axle, on a
bridge. Needless to say, that took a
while to get through the bottle neck there.
After those problems, we were able to go
straight to the hospital without much interruption besides getting some lunch.
When we arrived, the hospital staff
showed us our accommodations for the next couple of days. Though they believed that these
accommodations were very minimal, for us, this was a luxury! The rooms had
western-styled bathrooms, ample space to put our luggage in, and overall a
decent place for us to sleep.
We then took about a 2 hour tour of the
hospital facility. As they showed us the
many patient rooms they had, the type of hospital equipment they possessed, I
could tell Sofia look a bit concerned.
It’s very hard for us westerners, admittedly, to remember that we had
been truly blessed by God. We take a lot
of things for granted, and in a sad way, we lose touch with how to deal with
situations that don’t have the best conditions, especially in the medical
arena. In many ways, practicing medicine
in Nepal is practicing frontier style medicine; make due with what you have and
try your best to help those who are sick.
We’ll be staying here for at least
another two nights. Sofia will be
shadowing the doctors tomorrow and she is looking forward to when the pre-natal
doctor comes in on Thursday and speak with him/her about child care and
pregnancy care. Dan & I will
probably explore and document the surrounds as much as possible. There is a lot to do, but until then, time to
get sleep. Night!
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