Hello world...it feels good to be connected again. Since I last wrote, I feel like I have aged at least twenty years and time has morphed into the endless circular rhythm of Chapagaun. If any of you have seen that episode of The Office this last season where Jim and Pam book a night at Dwight's Beet Farm Bed and Breakfast, you know exactly what my day-to-day in Chapagaun is like. And the funny thing is that for the first time during this whole experience, I'm completely at loss of words to describe all that has transpired in a week alone. My head is literally still swirling from the maze of adjusting in this last week. So I will try to thoroughly recreate bits and pieces of the journey to the best of my ability for your entertainment and pleasure. :)
The very day that I arrived at the clinic in Chapagaun I was ushered into the OPD (Outpatient Department) where a CMA (Community Medical Assistant) handed me the seated patient's chart and instructed me to start questioning the patient regarding medical history and chief complaints and then to make my diagnosis. I wish I could have seen a freeze frame of the reaction on my face. Thinking: "Are you kidding me?You might as well hand me a scalpel and ask me to remove the patient's appendix." Completely taken back, I stammered something lame in Nepali to the patient like, "Is there blood in your sputum?" To say the least, I've had a very hands-on opportunity to witness primary health care at its finest while working alongside some phenomenally skilled medical professionals. The clinic has been commended so highly as a success story of grassroots level health care that it has become a teaching clinic for a sizeable group of nursing and CMA students from all over Nepal. So that has made the learning atmosphere very fast-paced and anything but boring.
Every Friday I hike out to two of the remote outreach health clinics that are reachable only by equivalent of cow paths and by foot with several of the other nurses. Talk about entering the realm of "The Real Nepal". We traipse through fields of mustard and every other imaginable crop, grape vines, and orchards, cross over heartracing enormous ravines on wooden slat bridges, and climb high up through rice terraces to the hillside where a whole different world of Nepal lives. Homes are made of mud and straw and families bathe at the community water tap. We sit down and drink sweet yak milk with the mothers as they tell us about their children's illnesses. And everytime I think to myself, "Wake up America. This is real deal community health."
So I've been repeatedly asked about my living conditions in Chapagaun... and believe me I love to divulge the details. Basically, I've concluded that I live in a wheat silo with about twenty other people, all of whom are family with the exception of the three of us who stay there while we work at the clinic. There may be more than twenty of us, because new people continually show up to meals whom I've never seen before and apparently also live there as well. My host mother is seriously a living "Helga" with bulging arm muscles and a thick rapid fire accent who stoutly believes in the unshakable Nepali institution of "Daal Bhaat", otherwise known to me as "Thorn in my side" or "Scourge of my Day". Daal Bhaat, the meal of lentils, rice, and flaming vegetables with a comparable acidity to a bottle of DrainO is eaten twice daily, FAITHFULLY. Just like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who believed in the undeniable virtues of Windex, so is my host mother in her allegiance to the almighty powers of Daal Bhaat to cure any malady. Therefore, the intestinal thrashing that I underwent as a result of eating Daal Bhaat was seen nearly on par with treason to the country of Nepal. Trying to tell Helga that Daal Bhaat was nearly killing me after days of vomiting and nights of severe diarrhea was as successful as trying to tell her that the Hindu god, Vishnu, wasn't blue would have been. There's really nothing quite like being balled up in the fetal position and shaking uncontrollably in your sleeping bag while praying that you won't have to visit the squat toilet for the fifth time. I was so miserable for days that I would just come home from clinic and crawl into my sleeping bag and shiver in the dark. I think my host family feared that I was going to turn into mushroom because I spent so much time in the dark (partly because the electricity is limited to certain hours of the day and partly because the sole source of light in my room is one buzzing flurescent green bulb that dangles from the ceiling by one suspicious looking electrical wire). Therefore, my host mother would occasionally burst through the door without the slightest hint of a knock, but rather a punch, and scream the Nepali equivalent of "Eat the bananas!!" vehemently at me in my pathetic half-conscious state.
When it wasn't the mother, it was the cackling, asthmatic grandmother with electrostatic hair and a jack-o-lantern toothless smile. It wasn't until my third day that I realized that she was actually the grandmother and not just some random crazy women off the street that found her way up the stairs to my room in the silo. One night during one of my numerous sickly bouts with Daal Bhaat I decided to lay down and read in my room for awhile with my headlamp since the electricity was shut off once again. All of a sudden my door started to creak slowly open and I became vaguely aware that someone was standing in my room, watching me. I slowly sat up and saw a wild-haired granny beaming toothlessly at me-I hadn't the slightest clue who she was but greeted her in Nepali and told her hello. I thought that she had closed the door and gone away so I laid back down and then realized that my door was cracked open once again and she was still there staring at me with her wide jack-o-lantern grin. One of those moments you gotta love.
There is so much more that I wish I could express and have time to write out tonight; but I guess it will have to wait until another time.
Blessings until then!
Oh yeah, I have a cell phone now. Will send out a message with the number for ya'll.
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