Mustang (not the horse or the car)

I’ve noticed that a number of people are reading my blog so I’d just like to say that the following post is, of course, completely fabricated.

This past week there were a few Hindu holidays so a friend of mine planned a nice trek up the Mustang Valley.  I jumped at the chance to go see a new place, and to take a break from life in Mallaj.  The trip was spectacular, but as usual, there were a couple times we were definitely flying using only my good luck, and maybe a little charm.

Two other volunteers and I met up in Beni on a Thursday evening and acquired some supplies and then stayed the night at one of my friend’s house.  It turns out that my friend’s husband works at a bus ticket counter so he was able to get us the non-tourist price as well as one free ticket.  We took a nice short four hour ride to get 20 km up river to a town called Ghasa which is where we wanted to start from.  Two hours into the ride we stopped at a tourist checkpoint where we were told to get off the bus and show our TIMS permit.  Well naturally we did not have one of these so I just said, “Hi there, we are volunteers.”  I was asked for a Volunteer ID card, which I do have, and that seemed to work.  So off we went.  At Ghasa we got our things together and petted a nice snow leopard (tan dog on which someone had kindly added black paint spots).  Walking through the town we were stopped at another tourist checkpoint and asked for our Annapurna Conservation Area permit, which again we did not have.  So again, “Hi there, we are volunteers.”  This time I was met by a look that seemed to say, “AAANNNNDDD??”  Shit.  These permits are found in Pokhara, but we all live past Pokhara by several hours in the direction of Mustang Valley, so we never went there to get one at a reasonable price.  They were asking a lot for a permit on the spot, and were not budging on the price or the necessity of this permit.

Now it’s time to make a few excuses.  I actually think permitting is a great idea, and paying for a permit almost always goes into protecting the place you are going against the hordes of people that visit.  But here’s what happened: the people at the checkpoint were being pretty grumpy which was making me grumpy and hot headed and after what seemed like a long time, but was probably only a minute or two of arguing I just threw up my hand and said, “Fine, trip cancelled!!”  And then proceeded to storm out of the building leaving my poor bewildered friends no choice but to follow.  We walked about 200 yards back down the path to where I had spotted a nice trail winding up into the woods at which point I told my friends, “I think it would be best if we just snuck around the checkpoint.”  So we did.  The trail, of course, quickly degenerated into some pretty world class bushwhacking, but after about an hour of sneaking (crashing) through the woods we ended up on the other side of town and more importantly on the other side of the checkpoint.  At this point I finally realized that we were going to have to come back this way and our plan was to take a bus back so we were going to have to deal with that checkpoint again and the workers probably weren’t going to be too stoked about seeing us again without a permit coming the other way.  Hmmmm…

We continued up the road/trail for a ways and were quickly greeted by a nice view of one of the shoulders of Dhaulagiri. 

 

The trail went into an extremely lovely pine wood for a quite a while in which there was some flower blooming that smelled really good.  A short while later we stopped for a break and read in the trekking book we had that in September the villagers in that area see Himalayan Bears. Google them, they look so, so snuggly!!

I didn't take this picture.  From Google.

 

looking North from our break spot.

 

nearing the end of the first day, looking south down the valley.  Neat braided stream!

 

After another hour or so, we came to our goal for the day and found a little hotel to stay in.  Right now is off season so a lot of the hotels are closed and the ones that are open are definitely looking for business.  Our plan was to eat dinner there and then head out to the woods to sleep, but there was only one lady running the kitchen so the food took a while and after tasting her apple pie we decided that we wanted to stay and eat breakfast there in the morning for the apple pie.  My friends mingled with the other guests and I went to the kitchen and helped the lady make everyone’s dinner.  She was very grateful for the help, but when it came time to settle the bill she didn’t cut us much slack.  She was very nice and friendly the whole time and jokingly called me a beggar for asking for a discount so we still felt good about the stay.

That morning the clouds had cleared and we could see some of the enormous peaks that we were surrounded by which gave us some energy and excitement for hiking up towards the Dhaulagiri Icefall. 

Morning light looking towards Tukche Ri.

Tukche Ri

 

This was not part of the original plan, but when I heard it was an option I cast my vote to take the time to go up there and my fellow Coloradan quickly sided with me.  The person who made the plan was planning on just checking out the Buddhist culture and temples in the area, but was just as happy to go see the icefall.  We made it to Sekung Lake at around 9000ft and ditched a pack there with our camping gear since we were planning on returning there to camp in the evening.  While we were sitting there a nice yak herd came wandering up to cool off in the lake.  A sign informed us that in April there is a yak blood drinking ceremony at the lake.

A yak! With a yak bell.

Yaks!

Friends and Yaks, looking towards Nilgiri.

 

We continued up and ran into another yak herd around 10,500ft but this one contained a very small yak puppy!

A little fuzzy Yak puppy!

Up we continued.  One of friends has a bad ankle which was giving her some trouble and around 11,500ft we started hitting some snow and the trail got a little more uneven, so she opted to turn around and wait for us at the yak herder’s hut where the yak puppy was probably still sleeping in the sun.

Nilgiri

Annapurna I

A Friend and Nilgiri

My other friend (from CO) and I kept going up and up. 

Summer Yak herder huts around 12,000ft

 

I set a turnaround time at 3, and around 2:30 we were at 12,600ft and were starting a nice pattern of continuous post holing in the snow. 

Standing a harder section of snow, Nilgiri starting to sock in.

 

The weather had socked in, and we were still 1000ft from the icefall viewpoint.  We stopped and had snack while it started to gently snow on us. 

A socked in Nilgiri, but the peaks are still above these measley spring T-storms.

Looking towards the icefall.

Enjoying the mountains in some pretty incredible terrain.

 

Then back down to meet our friend and like any good trip through the soft spring snow in the mountains involved some penguining!  It was so great to be up in the mountains again!

Penguining!

No need for skis on this here powder snow, face shots!

At the lake it started to rain and I thought we should find a place to camp, eat dinner thinking by then it would stop raining.  We got a nice fire going using some of the gas from my stove to help the wet wood along, and then ate a nice dinner of oatmeal.  It was still raining after dinner so we retreated to some shed thing we found along the trail.

The morning dawned clear finding us in the middle of some very nice mountains. 

 

After a nice breakfast of oatmeal we were on our way again.  The weather held for a couple hours, but after that it rained the rest of the day and the view of the mountains left when the rain came.  It gave me a better chance to look at our more immediate surroundings.  The valley bottom is scrubland and reminds me a lot of the desert southwest in the US.  There were a lot of Pinõn pine trees and the hillsides were covered in scrub for a thousand feet or so at which point the vegetation switched to big pine forests.

Crossing a nice suspension bridge in the drizzle.

The valley floor

We passed through an old Tibetan refugee camp, and shortly after reached a town called Marpha.  At the first hotel we stopped at the owner seemed unprepared for guests as it was off season so while my friends sat and drank some tea I continued on to find another place.  I randomly picked one and quickly imposed my presence in their kitchen where I struck up a conversation with the owner/cook lady who used to work in health development and so we immediately had a connection.  She said she would give us a volunteer discount and everyone was very friendly.  On top of that there were a lot of other tourists there so the place was clearly in go mode.  I fetched my friends and we settled in. 

Checking out a Buddhist Monestary

I offered my help in the kitchen and they were pleased but didn’t need anything at that time.  I told them to call me if they needed help.  They said, “in fact, five of our rooms have been without electricity for 10 days.  There was a short in the wiring, and the electrician hasn’t come.  This is Nepal, so he keeps saying ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ then the next day ‘I’ll come tomorrow.’  Can you look at it?”  “Sure,” I said.  They showed me the spot where the sparks were coming from when it was shorting, and I pried some rotten wood off and found some very old, fried wiring on which the crappy tape job had disintegrated.  I tested the wires with the back of my hand and found that none of them were live.  So I grabbed one quickly discovering that I had not tested completely after shocking the shit out of myself.  At this point the power in the town went out, and then we flipped a few main breakers that were located around the building.  I went to work on stripping the wires and cleaning up the fried parts.  Again I got lucky as it turned out because we later found out that none of the breakers actually did anything so I was playing with wires that could have become live at any point.  We found this out when the power came back on and I when I touched any other wires together you could see some small sparks come off.  After trying a few more breakers and fuses around the building I just asked for a pair of decent gloves and attached the live wires and taped them up using those.  This worked and all the lights came on in the rooms that didn’t have light. 

While I was doing this my friends were taking to a guy from New Zealand who was an electrician and they mentioned he could probably help me out, but he said he didn’t want to get near that shit.  I don’t blame him.  All of the connections were done with poorly wrapped electrical tape with lots random wires going every which way.  Also, the wires I was working with were pretty main lines coming from the outside power lines and those were probably only 14 or 16 gauge wires.  Anyways, the lady was extremely grateful and gave us a free homemade apricot juice and a free piece of apple pie.  Honestly, it is great to get an extra discount for helping out, but I truly enjoy getting involved with the places I am staying here.  I get to have some interesting experiences and I just really, really like interacting with Nepalese.  I can’t put my finger on it, but I just get along very well with probably 90% of the people I meet here.  The rest of our stay was full of yummy food and good company, and I left that hotel the next morning 15 dollars poorer, but a couple friends richer.

Niligiri casting some cool shadows in the early morning light

Zoom in of the summit area of Nilgiri.

We missed our 8:30 bus as it was actually on time so we ended up waiting until noon for a bus to come.  Getting tickets in this town was work.  The lady even called ahead for us and told them to give us a discount, but they didn’t want to.  The man was very grumpy and while I was trying to get him to lower the price my voice was definitely rising, so I walked out and we talked to some of the other Nepalese who were waiting for the bus with us.  They sided with us and told us to send one of the ladies I was with to go in to haggle.  We did so, and this worked.  The bus came and we hopped on checking out some spectacular views.  I had to look almost straight up to see some of the summit areas on the peaks surrounding what is supposedly the deepest valley on Earth which is sandwiched between the 8,000m monster, Dhaulagiri, and the 8,000m Annapurna I which boasts are pretty impressive 40% mortality rate of climbers.

Nilgiri

The Dhaulagiri Icefall from the valley floor with some strong winds whipping snow off of a false summit of Dhaulagiri.

Later we arrived in the town at which we had snuck around the tourist checkpoint.  All the white people or their guides had to get off the bus to check in.  I got off, and just sort of loitered around the bus at a distance hoping I wouldn’t be recognized as the jackass that had stormed out of the building three days earlier.  When a group of tourists came out I just sidled back into their line and got back on the bus and off we went!  We had to switch to a jeep in that town in which we spent three more hours with 11 of our closest friends (so 12 people total).  Cramped (or snuggly perhaps?), but uneventful.  As usual an awesome adventure with some great experiences and good friends.

Some pictures of recent happenings

After a long storm, clouds clearing:

I thought the light on the clouds was nifty

 

Pre-storm winds (Annapurna range)

I also have been going to some Mother's group "mother child nutrition" trainings:





A long day

The other day was interesting and extremely frustrating at times.  I was told by my counterpart that my supervisor that is based out of Kushma wanted to meet with me the next day and that we would leave early in the morning.  Then he left and I didn’t see him the rest of the day.  Well, “early in the morning” in Nepal can mean anything from 4 AM to 11AM.  So, I just put it from my mind and figured I go about my normal routine until it was time to go.  My counterpart came and woke me up around 7:30 which is about when I normally get up, so big deal.  He informs me that we would be leaving in 15 minutes, and “did you forget what I said yesterday?”  “No, I didn’t.  Okay, I’ll see you at your house.”  I get up and am ready to go, but of course I can’t leave the house without drinking tea first!  Heaven forbid!  So I show up like 25 minutes after he got me up.  He says that the ambulance is coming which we will be traveling in, and we are also waiting on a sick person who will also be going with us in the ambulance.  We will be dropped in Kushma, and the sick person will go on to Pokara for treatment.  Then we sit and drink tea again.  I ask what happened to the sick person, and it turns out she fell from a tree.  Anyways, we sit and some time passes.  I wander back home to help my host father carry some stuff, and now it is around 9:30 AM.  The ambulance shows up and the sick person as well.  Well the woman who fell from the tree is like a 65 or 70 year old!  So, I sit in a little broken jump seat, the husband sits on a stool on the floor, the woman sits/lies on the bed/my counterpart has the front seat and then there is the driver.  A little crowded, I’m not so sure I should be on the ambulance.  I feel like the family should have priority, but I just sit quietly.  The lady has had no treatment, and I’m thinking maybe she should be given some wraps or something to make her more comfortable.  Something I’ve had training and can do.  We are on the road now, and the ambulance obviously has no supplies in it.  Why would an ambulance have medical supplies?

The ambulance: a TATA Ambulance.  It has been beaten and broken over the years.  The back door doesn’t open so anyone who wants to get in the back has to crawl over the front seat.  This is hard to do for an injured 70 year old.  Also, it limits how much immobilization of injured limbs is possible.  The front suspension is, as far as I can tell, gone.  No springs, no shocks, nothing.  So the ambulance sags pretty low in the front which is compounded by broken pieces of the four wheel drive system which just sort of hang loose.  Also, as you can imagine it makes every little tiny bump pretty jarring.  Also, there is no spare tire and the tires that are on it are not super awesome to say the least.

So, I ask the lady what hurts.  She says her left leg, collar bone area, ribs, and lower back all hurt a lot.  Plus she has a pretty wet sounding cough/wheeze.  I ask if she can take a deep breath, and no she cannot.  I’m thinking at least bruised ribs, and that I couldn’t figure out if the cough was something she always has from breathing cook fire smoke or developed after the fall.  On this road, we would have to stop for a long time to check her out properly, and we don’t have anything really to create splints with other than our own clothes.  I should have spoken up back in our village to make her ride a little better.  However, I consciously decided that I didn’t want to hassle with trying to talk people into letting me and my counterpart check her out before we left because I was tired and a annoyed at how the morning had gone and I just wanted to be left alone.  Very courageous.  So now, I was pretty grumpy at myself for not speaking up when I had the chance.  We finish slamming down the road, and get to another town on the main road.  Her we pick up some other random lady who turned out to be the daughter of the injured woman, but I was further annoyed at picking her up for a while until I asked who she was.  Anyways, we get to Kushma and I eat my breakfast at 11.  Then I head to meet my supervisor.  I meet him at the hospital as he is on his way out to another meeting that will be two hours long.  Okay… I met up with the other two volunteers who had been called in for this meeting, and they had shown up a little earlier and met with my supervisor who only wanted to tell them two things: please inform him when we go on vacation, and please write up a small report of our activities every once in a while and give it to him.  These two requests seem fairly reasonable to me, but probably could have been communicated over the phone fairly easily.

Now it is time for big meeting with the WHO (World Health Organization) about the various immunization drives and the progress they have made in Nepal.  This meeting was fairly interesting, but directed towards the Nepali health workers so I did not understand everything.  Also, it was a good three hours long, so after snack break the other volunteers and I decided to wander around for a bit.  Then they had to go home so they could get home before dark and I asked my counterpart what the status of the ambulance was.  He replied, “It is coming.”  We sat in for the tail end of the WHO presentation which only a few of the health workers did, and then around 4 we left the hospital to meet the ambulance somewhere.  My counterpart and the other guy who was to come with us were clearly in no hurry so I went and had some ice cream and then met up with them a bit later.  Soon it is 6 PM, and then 7.  I start getting grumpy about the delay.  I could have easily taken a bus, but my counterpart keeps saying it will be hear soon.  He calls the ambulance guy around 7:30 for an update.  I thought I heard something about an hour in the conversation, and ask him after how long it will be.  “15 minutes,” he replies… An hour later the ambulance shows up and we get in.  Now I am exceptionally grumpy and annoyed that my counterpart lied right to my face.  The guy clearly said an hour on the phone, and then I was told 15 minutes.  I would have gotten on a bus if he had told me the actual time, and would have been home before they even left.  But I also would have missed the coming excitement which made the whole day worthwhile.

So we get to the turn off to take the bumpy steep road up to my village.  Within a 100m we get stuck in the water that is flowing down the road over the rocks making them very slippery.  After a few tries of trying to nurse the truck through the rocks I get out and start stacking rocks to keep the tire from spinning as easily.  Then the guy backs up and I tell him to go at it pretty fast.  He goes pretty quick but is still hugging the left hand side of the road where it is the roughest because the right hand side has a pretty mean drop off into a creek 30 feet below.  I convince the driver on the next go to let me have a go at it.  I back up, and the whole time the other gentlemen are babbling at my open window.  I just sort of nod along, and then rev the engine and rally that bad boy up the road hugging the side close to the edge, but not concerned about going over having rallied a road or two in my day…  I get past the part where we were stopped go another ten feet and then hit another rough spot and get stopped.  So I back down, and now we have to do some more road rearranging.  Also, the all of them start pleading with me to get out because they were very scared watching me go up the road.  I plead for a while to let me do it, but give in and hand the car back to the driver.  After some more rearranging it is time for another go.  I tell the driver to go fast and he does, but still stays close to the left side, and gets stopped.  So I tell him to go on the right side of the road and go fast, and he does and we make it through.

Twenty bumpy minutes later we get to a pretty rutted spot that has a fair amount of mud.  Here we again get stopped.  But this time we get really stopped.  The front suspension is hanging so low that we managed to get high centered on some rocks in the mud.  The back tires have no traction so we can’t go forward or backward.  We dig around for a while with a pick and then I ask for a jack.  We have that, but positioning under the sagging front suspension would require a lot of digging so we try to jack from the steel side step things which I tell them will probably bend.  They do, and we can’t jack high to get any rocks under the tires, so I say we have to try again.  The say to just put some rocks near the tires and they will try backing off the jack onto the rocks.  Well, that sounds like a horrible idea, but go for it.  They give it a try and gain us a good 4 inches.  We are still stuck.  At this point, I get in and try some crafty vehicular maneuvers, and after much tire spinning get us another two inches.  By now it is 11:30 and they have a pow-wow about what to do.  I say I am walking home, and that is what everyone decided to do with the plan of the driver to go back very early in the morning to get help from one of the tractors that would be coming up the road.

So I have a nice hour long walk under a near full moon, and arrive home at 12:30.  I eat dinner and go to bed.

The driver went back early in the morning and got out then drove another quarter mile at which point it appears the front suspension snapped in half and now the ambulance is sitting peacefully on the side of the road halfway to my village until the people here decide to make fixing it a priority…so quite possibly forever.

And in other news, the other day I was invited to have lunch with the other volunteers from Parbat and Baglung districts with the Ambassador of the United States to Nepal.  This was to take place in Baglung district capitol so I went there and had a delicious lunch with some volunteers, the Peace Corps Nepal Country Director, the USAID Nepal Country Director, a previous volunteer in Nepal who now works in the Foreign Service here in Nepal, and the Ambassador.  The Ambassador sat at the head of the table, and the other volunteers started sitting several seats down so I snagged a chair right next to him to hear what he had to say about the Foreign Service.  First he gave a speech to all of us about the need to hang in there and whatnot that seemed pretty much scripted by our Country Director and it was pretty clear that the lunch was just a morale boost for the struggling kids in our group.  But hey, it was a pretty cool morale boost.  The ambassador had a few interesting stories, but mainly he just looked sort of tired.  It could have just been a long day, but I’m guessing that that job is just stressful.  That said, he did make the Foreign Service sound fairly interesting… After the lunch I had some more interesting transportation issues which caused me to stay in Baglung for the night and even more the next day, but that is a story for another time perhaps.

Some random and rather rambling thoughts

This blog is probably going to be sort of long and rambling with no real subject or direction.

A couple of interesting happenings have happened recently, as I suppose happenings tend to do.  One day at the health post I felt like I had a real job, meaning I was actually really busy all day.  I’m not entirely sure how I feel about being so abruptly forced into an average American type working environment, but I suppose the change was nice.  The two health post workers had shown up at midnight to deliver a baby, which they only finished doing when I showed up at around 11AM.  Needless to say, they were very tired and went home to sleep.  My counterpart had a meeting all day, but he was the only one that knows how to examine patients so he had to be taken out of his meeting from time to time to deal with the huge number of people that had built up.  On average we probably see about 25 people a day, but that day 45 people came in!  I had to write their names into the records, and then tell them to wait an unknown amount of time until my counterpart could break from what he was doing to see them, and then I had to run the pharmacy to give out the meds my counterpart prescribed.  That doesn’t sound like that much now that I’ve written it down, but I didn’t have any time all day to sit and work on my language book, read, or stare aimlessly at the leaves blowing in the wind while I contemplate all of life’s big questions.  That’s a busy day in my book.  Regardless, my counterpart was very thankful for my help, and I felt like I accomplished something.  Win!

And as I tend to do every week or so, I went to the government school and did some teaching.  I had some decent success this time around.  I think I am getting more comfortable teaching, and this is paying off in the classroom.  In a few English classes I successfully made up some very basic conversation role-plays and the students practice them.  The speaking practice is what all the teachers say the students really need, and I think that they benefitted from the little dialogues I made up.  And understood a majority of the vocabulary I used, and the little they didn’t understand they learned during the practice.  Then I had the treat of teaching some second graders about health.  This second grade class was huge with a grand total of three students: two boys and one little girl, all of whom I would describe as buttons.  My fellow teacher and I asked a few questions about when you should wash hands, brush teeth, and what to do if you have to sneeze or cough.  Then to help the students remember and to keep their attention span for the whole 45 minute period I invented a little song and a dance on the spot that was about the above mentioned subjects.  The dance was really just miming the actions with a jump to the left or right after each verse.  It went something like this and was done in Nepali with a lot of help from the other teacher:

You must wash your hands (mime washing) before you eat (mime washing, and jump right) x2

You must wash your hands (mime washing) after you eat (mime washing, and jump left) x2

You must wash your hands (mime washing) after you go to the toilet (squat, and jump right) x2

If you have to cough, do this (mime coughing into your sleeve, jump left) x2

If you have to sneeze, do this (mime sneezing into your sleeve, jump right) x2

Morning and night, you must brush your teeth (mime brushing, clap hands) x2

Pretty simple, and they had a good time and at least retained some of the information I think.

And last on this blog’s agenda, a random thought from me.  As usual, all the below statements are based on absolutely no formal research and are simply my opinions based on what I’ve seen in my rather limited experiences. Things I may have presented as facts stand a good chance of being completely untrue. Feel free to call me an idiot, and set me straight because I can’t change my opinions about the world if I don’t know I’m wrong.

People here keep telling me that in five years China will be the most powerful country in the world which I have been hearing all my life.  I don’t buy it, not that it really matters what the most “powerful” country is, but the people who said this kind of meant it as an insult to make sure that I know that I am not as great and all-knowing as they seem to think that I think I am.  (That sentence does indeed make sense, just give it a second).  So I’ve given that statement some thought.  China (I think, at least) is now the richest country in the world (GDP).  That could be wrong, but is sort of irrelevant either way.  If they are the richest, they are not the most powerful and will not be because wealth is an undeniable fact while power is simply a matter of perception.  The US is perceived as the most powerful country and will continue to be because of the US’s historic and continued role in the world.  The US puts itself out there.  This can be a good thing sometimes, but frequently has unintended and bad consequences which I think most people know.  China tends to keep quietly to itself.  The US comes to the aid of other countries (even if they don’t want it in which case it is definitely arguable whether this is actually “aid”).  Even though China has a big and powerful military, other countries rarely ask for any sort of aid from China.  They ask the US because the US has a history of getting involved (good, bad or indifferent), and continues to get involved.  The US kicked some Nazi ass back in WWII just because Europe was like, “Hey man, help us out here.  The Nazis are giving us a whooping.”  And since then we’ve continued to “police the world” as people say.  I’m not saying that this is good or bad, but I am saying that this gives others the perception that the US has power.  Even if we aren’t sending troops or other aid directly, the US is involved in every conflict in some way, shape, or form. It could just be negotiations, but it means something to other countries that the US is involved.  They either hate it or are glad we are there.  Almost every place the US Secretary of State goes makes international news, and your average semi-literate person can probably tell you the current US SoS, and most definitely the president’s name. I doubt they could name a single Chinese government official.  The fact that people even talk about American politics at all outside of America means they think the American political system yields some sort of power.  Also, as I travel through developing countries I see signs plastered everywhere of projects funded by USAID or some other US NGO, which again, (even though many of these projects have failed or will fail), gives the perception that the US is everywhere and involved in everything and is therefore powerful.  I don’t see many Chinese aid organizations working.  I don’t think peoples’ perception of this globally reaching power is going to change in the next five years, or even the next twenty.

All this said, China doesn’t have entire populations of the world in a sworn holy war against it and the average Chinese citizen travelling in a western country doesn’t receive scorn from 95% of the people they meet just because of their nationality, but they also never hear “thank you” for just walking into a classroom, hospital, or business place and having a look around in a community that is struggling.

 

A birth

Warning: this post may be a bit intense.  The other day the health post was very exciting.  It started when an elderly woman with high blood pressure came in with a really gnarly wound on her palm.  She clearly needed stitches but I guess people were a little concerned that the extra stress might kill her off.  We determined that she had been taking her pressure meds and so decided to proceed with the stitches.  The wound was very deep and had plenty of exciting fat and stuff squishing out of it.  Since she was going to need quite a few stitches we decided to give her some numbing.  So the young lady I work with stuck a needle into her gaping wound and started applying lignocaine into the tissue.  This did not look very pleasant for that old lady, but more excitingly I did not pass out or even feel light headed.  Then I got to hold her hand still while my co-worker started stitching her up.  The first stitch was too close to the edge of the cut so when it was tightened the thread just pulled through the skin.  At this point my counterpart intervened who has more experience with jagged wound stitching and just flew through the rest of the stitches.  I was impressed.  It was like watching a tailor.

As we were closing down for the day a lady in labor came in and I was invited to stay and check out the birth.  I ran and grabbed us all some snacks and then settled in for the ride.  The lady was put onto the stainless steel birthing table then we just waited.  It was just me, the soon to be mom, and two of the health post ladies.  I was told that if I was asked if I were a doctor to just say yes.  The younger lady would occasionally put on a glove and stick her hand inside the mother to check on the baby position.  This would make the mother gasp in pain, but I’m sure it was nothing compared to what was coming.

The younger lady is a pencil thin but very pretty 20 year old.  She is probably 30kg soaking wet.  She has really gorgeous light brown, sparkling, almond shaped “Indian Princess” eyes that are offset a bit by a slightly abnormally large gap between her two front teeth.  The older woman is tall for a Nepali with very good smile-crinkles around her eyes.  She tends to slouch some which makes her appear as if she has a bit of a belly.  She is not very good at communicating with a non-native speaker.  She speaks very fast, and tends to garble her words a lot, but I’m learning to understand what she is saying.  I remembered the preggers lady from her pre-natal visits to the health post because she has these insanely striking, almost golden eyes.  Every time I saw her she looked a bit haggard and uncomfortable from being close to 9 months pregnant, but I can imagine her eyes would light up like a sunset when she laughed and would be like staring into the eyes of a wolf when she was angry.

We had to insert an IV drip for oxytocin, and I was really nervous about watching this go down since last time I was around an IV I passed out.  But, as I’ve mentioned, I gotta nut up.  So I watched all of it.  The whole set up, then slapping the back of the lady’s hand while she made a fist to get a vein to pop out.  Then the little needle was inserted, and I still had it together enough to tape the IV down.  Later on in the process something didn’t go right with the IV and the lady’s blood started working its way back up IV tube.  This again made we feel a bit queasy, but I didn’t pass out.

Before we knew it, the time had come to start pushing out the child.  First we had to drain the bladder.  So the younger lady inserted a tube up into the ladies bladder and judging by the way the patient cried out this was not a comfortable experience.  I got light headed at this point and had to stare out the window for a bit.  The urine was drained onto some absorbent pads that were placed between the ladies legs, ready to catch the blood that was surely coming.  I was given the task of supporting the lady’s head and keep her chin on her chest when she was pushing really hard.  I’m not sure why this was necessary, but I did as I was told.

I could see a little head of full of black hair starting to pop out.  The ladies kept telling the lady to push and she kept trying to get the head out, but was having trouble.  After about the third attempt the younger lady takes a deep breath and in English says, “Shit.”  This just struck me as interesting for some reason.  Each time the lady gave up the little head would slip back in a little bit.  At one point the head got really close to coming out, the patient started to relax, but the young lady says, “Do it!!”  So I didn’t let the lady lay back down and rest, and she gave it one last push and out came the baby in a whoosh of thick, dark red blood.  The baby had a very elongated head and looked really pale and almost bluish and I thought, “Oh no, something is wrong!!”  But it turns out I know nothing about newborns and the little alien took a deep breath and let out a good throaty wail.  It was a girl, which I’m sure the family was bummed about, but I thought was pretty great.  The ladies put two clamps on the umbilical cord, leaving about three inches sticking out of the baby’s belly and cut in between the clamps.  The baby was taken over and weighed, and then the older lady tied a few small strings around the rest of the umbilical cord, the last being as close to the belly was she could get it.  Apparently it falls off in about 24 hours or so.  I cut the strings for her.  While this was going on, the younger lady pulled the rest of the placenta out which was pretty bloody as well.  It looked like a purple and slimy old leather wine skin of the sort you might find as part of an old trapper’s clothing.

Now it was time to clean the lady up.  The younger lady did most of the dirty work on this.  She put her hand in and scooped out as much blood as she could, and then started inserting absorbent pads to get the blood that had pooled up out.  Then she grabbed a stitching needle and some thread and stitched up a tear inside the patient’s vagina.  Holy shit.  That looked intense as hell.  At this point the ladies decided that the patient was bleeding a bit too much for their comfort and decided to give my counterpart a call for instructions.  Since their hands were covered in blood, they asked me to dial him up, and hold the phone up to the younger lady’s ear.  I did this, and now I’m getting all sorts of shit from her because she says that my hand was shaking.  I don’t buy it.  We gave the baby to the waiting family, and my counterpart showed up and took a look at the lady.  She was okay.

They got the patient up started to walk her out to her family.  She had lost quite a bit of blood and had just fucking given birth about 30 minutes earlier, so of course she passed out.  They carried her out to the second of two rooms in the birthing center, and laid her on the bed.  I guess they really wanted to clean the room up and get home, but getting her up that quick was a bit too soon in my very uninformed opinion.  One last disturbing thing happened on my way out.  The family had brought their own cloth for the birthing table since the health post doesn’t have any. I thought it was understood that those sheets would be thrown out in some sanitary way.  Nope.  The grandmother comes in and collects this cloth which is just soaked in blood and carries it out to the other room with blood dripping all over the floor and shoves it in her bag with her other things.  Um… okay.  The cloth was just scraps, but maybe they needed it for something.

VIP status

The other day I was invited to a very exclusive Puja (or worship ceremony). Only men were allowed and only men from a couple families. The person in charge decided that I was acceptable material for this puja and asked me to go along. The person who was in charge is the husband of the eldest of my younger sisters. I was very flattered that I was invited. We left the house around 7 AM and hiked for a good three hours until we got to a temple way, way up on the hillside. They had leashed a goat up, and we brought that along with us and when we arrived we killed the goat. I had been told that we were going to have lots of yummy food like vegetables, rice, and goat. We ended up having the rice and goat only. I am not a big goat meat fan though they prepare it very well. But if you are given a tire to eat there is only so much you can do to make it taste good. They cooked all the organs separate from the “what I would consider normal” meat, and I got a heaping plate of organs before they served up the other meat. I tried to resist, but they forced the plate on me so I took one bite of intestine and decided that it in fact tasted like intestine, which is where food is slowly turned into poop and therefore I think tastes remarkably like poop. I have a lot of trouble opening my mind when it comes to eating organs, and also I just truly do not like the taste of any of them. Anyways, after the first bite I sidled my way over to a corner and chucked the meat for the birds. Then came the meat course, and then the three hour walk back. I enjoyed the Puja the other week that served rice pudding more. Not only because of the food, but well, I’m not totally sure why. I think I just had a bad attitude about this one because I wasn’t feeling awesome; I was very, very hungry by the time we got to the temple as we left before breakfast and didn’t eat until 3 PM; and there was a serious lack of pretty Nepali girls which, in my opinion, is a must for any good celebration or ceremony. But it does mean a lot to me that they already accept me enough to invite me on such a sojourn.

Looking across the valley at another settlement

Man talk

The view from the temple (very nice!)

Rota-tiller

 

In other news, I helped stitch another kid’s forehead.  Almost the exact same wound as the first kid, uncanny really.  The kid came in later for a checkup and is now terrified of me.  As soon as he sees me he minimum starts crying and usually just starts screaming.  And I went to the government school.  This was a good time.  I taught English to 6^th, 8^th, 10^th grades and health to 6^th grade later in the day.  In English class I talked a lot about America and had very simple conversations like “What is your name?”  “Where do you live?” “Who is in your family?” etc.  The English at the government school is way behind the boarding school because at the boarding school all the subjects are taught in English except Nepali, and at the government school all the classes are taught in Nepali except English.  This is unfortunate because in order to get almost all higher level jobs in Nepal you have to be able to speak English fairly well.  (Also I find it humorous that when people here say “government” in English it comes out “gument” just like a good Murcan would say it).  I actually found it easier to teach 6^th grade than I did 10^th which is the opposite of what I was expecting.  This is due to the more conservative nature of Nepali society: kids here mentally mature a bit slower than in America.  This isn’t necessarily good or bad, but just different.  The 12 and 13 year old 6^th graders were all very engaged and interested and were quickly able to overcome the embarrassment of their poor English skills.  The 10^th graders were 15 to 18 years old, and the class, surprisingly, was probably 75% girls.  These 17 to 18 year old girls were just giggling wrecks.  I would ask a question and everyone would start giggling and when I’d turn to one side of the class a girl on the opposite side would murmur the answer and when I’d turn and ask the person who answered to repeat what they said because I didn’t quite understand or I wanted the whole class to hear she would just turn red, hide her face, and giggle.  The class turned out to be fairly productive, but not as much as the other grades.  In America I would expect the 6^th graders to giggle uncontrollably when a dangerously sexy man (self-description) walked into the room to teach, and the 18 year olds to hold it together a little better due to them being a bit more mature.  I still had a lot of fun though because I just enjoy teaching, and it was a good way to get face time with the kids in the community.

I also have become friends with one of the teachers at the gument school, and she asked a very surprising question today while we were walking back from the school: “Why can’t men give birth?”  I thought she was joking and was going to continue the joke a bit, but when I turned to look at her she was dead serious.  This young lady is very smart, but just has clearly had a serious lack of sex education.  I think she is 26, and is pushing 4 foot 3…literally.  She is probably the tiniest person I have ever met, and is also super rad.  I didn’t get too detailed with the answer as there were other people around and things like penises and vaginas are pretty taboo here.  I know she could handle the conversation one on one, but everyone else would be pretty weirded out.  So I just said that you need to have eggs to be fertilized and a uterus to carry the baby, and only women have those things so only they can give birth.  This was done in a Nepali/English mix because I definitely don’t know the Nepali for words like 'uterus.'  But good times.

Christmas etc

Just a couple of things to write about now.  I went to Pokara for Christmas, and celebrated with my friends.  I came into Pokara on Christmas Eve, and immediately went to a restaurant and ate some delicious pizza with a bunch of the other volunteers.  After that we went out to a cool bar with live music, and stayed out until about 2 AM.  I got back to the hotel and slept for an hour then got up at 3 for a sunrise hike.  I hiked up to a town called Saranghot with two of my friends which we thought was a three hour walk, but it only took us 2 hours.  So we got there an hour before sunrise and I was able to climb a nice cell phone tower.  From the top of the hill we watched the first light hit the Annapurna Range which was spectacularly beautiful.  I got a few pictures:

Early, early morning light on the snow covered peaks of the Annapurna Range (LtoR: Annapurna Dakshin w/ Annapurna I behind, Macchapucchre, and Annapurna III)

Shawn and Matt

Ethan!!

(LtoR) Macchapucchre, Annapurna III, Annapurna II, and Lamjung Kallas

The (publicly, at least) unclimbed Machhapucchre  (I'm convinced at least one person has climbed it illegally).



Some sweet sunlight and glaciers on Annapurna II

A hazy Dhaulagiri

Annapurna Dakshin (south)

We hiked back down and I took it easy for a few hours until Christmas dinner where we did a “white elephant” gift exchange; I got a light-up bouncy-ball.  Then back to the bar from the previous night.  The other volunteers here often get too drunk because I guess they are children.  I usually find them fairly entertaining, but occasionally that can be a real pisser as I end up babysitting.  (Of course, I can’t complain too much as it is my choice to help my idiotic friends, but I feel for them.  Being in a foreign country can be scary for many people so I can’t blame them if they occasionally need to drink away their fear).  Anyways, on Christmas one of my friends got way too drunk, and I wasn’t about to walk his ass back to the hotel and luckily a couple of other volunteers…volunteered to do this.  I went and grabbed him a bottle of water and met them on the street just as my friend stumbles into the back of a taxi and breaks a light.  They just start walking faster, and I am standing there surrounded by six bewildered taxi drivers.  I decided I should try to fix the situation, and started talking to them.  They started demanding exorbitant amounts of money and say they are going to call the cops, so I said I can’t pay and they can get whatever they want to.  They tell me to go get my friend.  I say I don’t know him and that they can go get him if they want.  They tell me to stay there, and they are going to get my friend and the cops.  I say, “Nope.”  And start walking back into the bar.  I was wondering why I even tried to fix the situation in the first place.  When I start walking away two of them grab me, and I whirl around and yell in English, “Get your hands off me, boy!!!”  They let go, took a step back and I walked into the bar and had no problems.  I found it funny that I called the taxi drivers boy since I only call my brothers boy, but I guess when I am angry, and I was, I confuse people with my brothers… or I am just a huge racist which is also a good possibility.

The next day all the other volunteers headed back to their sites and I decided to go para-gliding.  I haggled a decent price and then got in the company’s jeep and went up the hill a ways.  I was just a passenger on the paraglider as there was a pilot who actually knew what he was doing.  It was pretty fun; we quickly caught a few thermals and shot up way higher than our take-off spot, and soared out over the lake.  I get motion sick pretty easily and so I barfed (there was a barf-bag).  This was a bummer, but the whole experience was still pretty exciting.  I recommend it for those who either don’t get motion sick or who have a lot of motion sickness meds handy.

Looking out at the lake just after take off

Stoicly trying not to barf

My feet!

Another hang glider!!

I think the pilot is more stoked than me... I think I'm just concentrating on not barfing

I'm flying it!  And trying not to barf.

Back at site, I went to a puja with my host sister and her friend’s family.  They did some various religious activities and I sat on a rock and napped in the sun then had rice pudding and vegetables: great success!!  A few pics of that day:

Having fun weaving a grass and flower necklace thing

Cutting up potatoes for snack

Making the flower thingy for some ceremony or another

HAHAHA.  My older sister's child

Hanging out

My health post

My village

My sister (left) and her best friend (right)

Sister, random girl, Ethan, and sister's friend (left to right)

And recently, I helped give a two year old boy stitches on his forehead.  That was a very loud experience… lots of screaming.  I also found my first positive deviant.  A positive deviant is someone who doesn’t do what most people do when it comes to some activity, but in a positive way.  In this case it is mother-baby nutrition.  I had just had another conversation about improved flour with a young mother and how to make it out of various bean flours, corn flour etc.  And again, the mother asked me for money even though all the ingredients to make the flour are readily available in like 99% of the households around here.  Breast milk and plain rice is just not enough for a one year old, so most babies are on definitely on the small side.  I was thinking, “I need to find someone who is doing this right, and who actually has the results to prove that it works (aka a healthy baby).”  Ten minutes later in walks this beautiful, radiant woman with a one year old baby that has a light fever.  So, while she is waiting I approach her to talk to her about improved flour to make porridge.  I do this with all the women who come in with babies and usually get ignored, misunderstood, or asked for money.  I ask her what she feeds her baby and she says mother’s milk and improved flour porridge.  I did a double take, and then asked her to weigh her baby.  I plotted the weight and age on the baby weight chart I have and sure enough the baby was at the highest end of the curve.  At one year old, you really can’t have a baby that is too fat and hers looked very healthy despite the fever.  I was so happy that she came in and that the practices that we are preaching really worked for her.  My counterpart and I talked to her, and he said that she is the only one in the village who comes in regularly for check-ups and who follows his advice.  I asked her if she could come to the trainings we do, and she said that she never has free time…bummer.  But I got her name so when we actually have a training scheduled I’ll go find her and ask her to come again.