Welcome to Yaksteak.co.uk! At the moment, this will just be a site for me to post updates of my experiences in Nepal, though it might develop into something more interesting at some point in the future. It's all thanks to (and depends on) Nick and his genius techno-knowledge!

The site will automatically email my posts to my list of contacts - I've tried to remember everyone but if for some reason you have not been receiving the emails and you would like to, please email nick@mr-nick.co.uk.

I'm off on Tuesday, so I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures and misfortunes, and look forward to showing you the photos when I get back!

Friday, June 08, 2007

18 days to go!
Current mood: contemplative

Less than three weeks away and now I am starting to realise that I will actually be boarding that plane to Kathmandu - and this time I won't wake up and realise it was just a dream!

I think it's kind of crept up on me because the last six weeks or more have been devoted to nothing but OSCEs and EMQs (for those of you who don't know, OSCEs = objective structured clinical examinations, EMQs = extended matching question)... it was getting to the point where it seemed there would be no life after them! Unfortunately I suppose they're not all over yet, since the pass/fail results come out about 5 days before I leave - I am not looking forward to that day!

In the mean time, there's much else to focus on, such as vaccinations, malaria tablets (not going to take the risk going to the Terai during monsoon season even if it is only for a few days!), traveller's cheques, sleeping bag, first aid kit, the dreaded dreaded iodine (bottled water as far as possible for me!) and loads of other stuff I haven't even thought about yet!

And I'd better start getting my head round exactly what I'm doing when I get there finally! I have a whole list of general little things to do for GDHEDS (the charity I'm volunteering for) but my main aim is to work in the general area of health and sanitation in Gorkha district - and there are so many possibilities for projects! Toilet-building in the local schools aiming to eventually cover most of the schools in the area is an established aim of GDHEDS and I think that will be a really good area for me to focus on. Also teaching about general hygiene and sanitation e.g. good toilet habits in the local schools will be essential if there is to be any point in building them new toilets! Also there are many cleanliness issues in the hospital there which I'm going to have a look at.

Despite reports from previous volunteers, the only way I can really get an idea of what needs doing is to actually go there and see what's needed! So I think at the moment the best thing to do is to think broadly and not do too much focussed preparation.

And of course I've got to get round to seeing all my old friends before I go!! So please if I haven't contacted you to meet up give me a ring or a text or an email cos you all know how useless I can be when my mind's too busy with planning stuff!!

Mmmm and now I think a DVD and a drink... got to make the most of it before I go :-D

Well I got here in the end, after two long flights, a painfully long wait at Muscat airport since our flight was delayed, all the visa-buying rigmarole and nearly being abducted by the drunken Nepali man who sat next to me on the plane (only joking Mum!)

The hotel I'm staying in with my dhai (older brother)... well Mum and Dad, suffice to say that if you thought Hotel Excelsior was grubby, you haven't seen anything! It is, however, fully in the Nepali spirit so I am determined to stay there. Plus they do reeeeeeeally good daal bhat!

The hotel's on a bustling street near Kathmandu buspark, completely un-touristy hence I get stared at constantly. And the noise of the traffic is crazy! However I still managed to sleep through it for four hours this afternoon (there go my plans to get over the jet lag quick!) - the drunken Nepali man on the plane hardly let me get any sleep, he just talked at me for almost the whole 5 hours. And the number of times he insisted I call him on his mobile! Yes I got the point, I'll phone you (not).

I remember the smells and sights of Nepal from last time, but that doesn't mean they aren't still a bit overwhelming! That pungent mixture of sweat, sewage and dal bhat - it must be unique to Kathmandu. And the choking dust, and mountains of rubbish, and the frequent near-collisions, and the mountains behind it all looking so peaceful and inviting.

The plan is to send the next few days settling in, doing a bit of sightseeing maybe, and get myself ready for going to Gorkha on Saturday.

Now I think some food is greatly needed... look out for more posts in the very near future!

Well here I am in Gorkha, my third day here, second day in the hospital. There's so much to say I barely know where to start!

We arrived at about 4 o'clock on Saturday and Chintu dhai left me to go back to Shivapur. I stayed in a hotel that night, and also met the vice president of GODHEDS, Badri Maskey, and some other members of the committee.

The next day I was taken to the hospital to meet the doctors and have a quick look around - it's soooo different from what I expected! I also met my host family, and was shown my room - which is lovely, with it's own little balcony! Then came the tedious job of lugging all my bags over there from the hotel - thank goodness I had the help of my new bahini Sabena!

Later that very afternoon I joined a candle-lit ward round - the electricity had gone (as it very often does apparently!) Cases of neurosyphilis, typhoid, amoebic dysentry and conjunctivitis were among the list. For some reason I thought I'd got away from ward round grillings for a year or so but turns out I was wrong - they have taught me more in the last couple of days than any doctor in England ever has!

As I knew from previous reports, outpatient consultations are conducted by four doctors in one room (except that one of them is away) - which certainly takes some getting used to but I don't think it's actually that much of a problem - relatively speaking.

I must say I have learnt soo much Nepali in my 5 days here (I can't believe I've only been in the country for 5 days!!) - I have even managed to take a few rudimantary histories!

I am missing having a friend like Sushila here - I haven't yet met someone who speaks English well enough for me to have a chat to. But everyone here seems lovely!

I'll write more another day - so many emails etc to write!

Chiara

Aaaaargh I just wrote a really long blog entry and it wouldn't post it because I didn't add a title, plus it lost most of the entry so I have to write it again! Nick, pleeease can you change that? :-)

It must be a week and a half since I last wrote an entry - a lot of interesting things have happened in that time!

Firstly, the hospital. It's has 14 beds approximately, plus an outpatient department, emergency room, delivery room, lab, some others and quite a few unused rooms. It's bigger than I expected! I've arranged my time so that I work there from about 8am to 2 pm five days a week. 8am is the ward round - which sometimes starts an hour late depending on when the doctors decide to turn up - followed by dal bhat at home (accross the road) followed by morning clinics. These are my real opportunity to get involved - my Nepali language skills are invaluable! One of the doctors particularly is so keen to teach me - I've learnt more from him than I ever learnt from the doctors in London, despite the fact that he has no reason to take the time to teach me!

A list of diseases/conditions I've seen so far: enteric fever (typhoid), TB, amoebic dysentry, plenty of varieties of gastroenteritis, shingles, rhemuatic fever (I listened to her heart - a textbook murmur!), severe malnutrition (a 2 week old baby weighing 2kg - it looked like a skeleton with skin stretched over it) and much more. Certainly stuff we rarely see in London, hence the doctors received a blank look when they asked me about the antibiotic treatment of amoebic dysentry, among many other things!

The day after I started working in the hospital there was an epidemic of gastroenteritis, due to food from a birthday party. There were 35 ill people in total, laid out in on the floor in the outpatients waiting room, in the corridors and on pull-out beds in the ward. Needless to say, it was chaotic, and I stayed late that day to try and help out.

I will now post this just in case we get a power cut!

Other news...

The family I'm living with are absolutely lovely, as Nepalis are! They look after me so well - they're even reluctant to let me go out on my own! I find that I'm practising my Nepali loads with then - I don't really speak English at all.

The other day I went downh to their field to help plant rice. You must have seen in photos - those terraced fields flooded in water? There I was, berefoot, up to the knees in mud and water, among leeches a (YES!) a crab! I am pleased to say I managed not to get bitten, stung or broken in any way. Ironic that last time I was in Nepal a leech got me ven though I was wearing trainers and socks!

Another ironic thing is that I've had a stinking cold - of all the exotic diseases I could have got!

I managed to get a meeting together for GODHEDS (the charity I am with) and have some plans in place for community work. I have already visited the school at which GODHEDS funds a student sponsorship programme. A typical Npeali school - concrete buildings, 60 students crammed into a classroom etc. The sponsorship programme allows atudents who are considered unable to pay for education themselves to go to school - an extremely worthwhile effort in my opinion, and it's being implemented in a surprisingly organised, un-Nepali way! Lin I think this definitely is down to you!!

I have also been to see a sewing class, run by the Gorkha Women's Association. The class is funded by GODHEDS, and students learn how to make clother with a view to being able to earn money doing this later on. They are currently making a new kurta suruwal for me!

I will post again, just in case...

Before I forget, people please please please please email me on snowslider84@hotmail.com - my Imperial inbox takes forever to open and I get so much spam in it.

Other things...

I met a lady called Sarita in England at a meeting before I left, and she lives a 10 minute walk from my family's house. She's been brilliant looking after me! Last week we wandered along the ridge that Gorkha sits on for about 45 minutes, right to the end, a place called 'Children Park'. It's absolutely stunning, with steep forrested and terraced hillside running right down to deep valleys on three sides, with a river running at the bottom, and there were blocks of rain falling on the other side of the valley. I wish I had the time and poetic incliniation to describe it properly - it certainly beats the Lake District!!

I also had a surprise at 6:30 in the morning last Friday - some old volunteer friends from last time had come to visit! We did the 45 minute steep trek right to the top of the hill to the palace that makes Gorkha famous in Nepal - the current dynasty of Nepalese kings originate from Prithivi Narayan Shah who originally had his Kingdom in Gorkha. He took over Kathmandu Valley from here. A bit of history for you there!

I can't really remember anything else to say, but I'll try and post another bog as soon as is reasonably possible!

Hi all,

First of all thanks to all of you who have sent me emails - it's great to get a bit of feedback and it's also great to hear about home... it's sometimes a bit too easy to forget that England actually exists! So even if I haven't replied, I appreciate it!

I came to Kathmandu on Thursday - a last minute decision to change money, meet up with friends and do a bit of shopping. It only takes about 5 hours on the bus so not quite such a marathon as last time when I was in Rupandehi!

Unfortunately I chose the wrong time to come - there was a rumoured bandh (closure of all shops and no vehicles on the roads) on Friday, which fortunately was only a rumnour, so I managed to do some shopping (a gorgeous pair of jeans for GBP5 - I'm going back there again!) and then went to visit my old friend Soni. Her Dad picked me up on his motorbike to take me there... Mum I'm glad you weren't there, no helmet and the crzy KTM traffic, it's not really the safest method of transport! Soni's house has a view that people in the UK would pay a lot of money for - it sits on a plateau of paddy fields which falls away down the Kathmandu city and the hills and mountains beyond. I have yet to go to her house on a clear day when the actual Himalayas can be seen, but even so it's an amazing view. She was just the same as before and her family just as friendly - as usual I ate far too much food!

I stayed there overnight, then Saturday turned out to be a proper bandh. We waited for ages for a bus to come but it never did. We met up with one of the other volunteers, Suroj, and in the end he cycled all the way into KTM (at 45min cycle ride) with me sat on the back of the bike! It was a good job it was all down hill. We met another friend, Raj, there, who also hasn't changed much, so now I've managed to meet up with 5 out of the 14 Nepali volunteers from last time.

Well now I'm working on serious Nepali lateness time - I should have been on a bus to Gorkha for about 2 hours by now, but my bahini (little sister) has only just arrived with a crate of tiles they have bought for the new bathroom in our house in Gorkha. So I think we might be a bit late!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post... as usual have been extremely busy and internet here is always a bit of a marathon because it's so slow.

Well as it implies in the post, it has been raining really quite a lot here... though surprisingly enough it sounds like I haven't actually been getting much more rain than you have back at home!! It's pretty foggy and cloudy most of the time, though yesterday evening I was lucky enough to get my first glimpse of the actual Himal... much much much closer than I expected, there only seemed to be one row of hills between us and the mountains, though there was lots of cloud so it was hard top tell. I wish I could come back in October or Novemeber - the view is supposed to be perfect then.

Work is now going well, now I only have 2 weeks to go! I am getting a sanitation prgramme set uip with the Youth Movement and Women's Association here, which will be run in schools. It's looking like it'll be a pretty big thing which I will only see the start of - which is better because it means it will run independently. They really are a brilliant set of people here - so much more motivated and creative than I expected.

The hospital has also been interesting. I went to see my first post mortem the other day, an old lady whop had drowned herself. It was conducted in a tiny outbuilding with hald the neighbourhood crowded outside looking through the windows and incense burning in a attempt to keep away the flies! I have seen more rheumatic fever, enteric fever, TB etc, as well as a dangerously severe case of chronic supporative otitis media (ear infection) which had the potential to form a brain abscess... not nice.

Lots of visiting places in the area as well! Last weekend I visited a place called Manakamana, a place on top f a hill with a temple and Nepal's only cable car leading up to it. It was built by the Austrians, so the station at the bottom is like a little paradise of westernness! I think most Nepali people go there to experience the cable car trip rather than to go to the temple! It was a great fun day, with interesting bits like bringing back a goat's head as 'prasad' (holy food) and sheltering from the ridiculous amounts of rain in a deserted cowshed. Unfortunately the rain meant there were pretty much no views, but the little town was pretty in itself anyway.

Other random things I have done include speaking in Nepali on the local radio, wandering up to the palace on the hill for the hundredth time (i think I must be fit by now) and generally sliding my way through the last few weeks, really not feeling ready to go home for another year or so!

Having been too lazy to write a blog for a while, I am now paying by having the prospect of three weeks worth of extreme busy-ness to catch up on!

Work-wise the last couple of weeks in Gorkha really started to speed up. There were several meetings, at many of which my presence was not needed; I went to see a college that GDHEDS has sponsored in the past; and went to visit a friend's school which was being sponsored by some other English people. However, the main activity was the launching of my newly organised sanitation programme in conjunction with the local Youth Movement and Women's Association. We had several planning meetings leading up to it - meetings are generally a good excuse to drink tea and eat chow mein without having to pay for it. On the day we hiked for a good hour in the scorching hot sun to get to the school, which was rather run down and had a single stinky toilet. There we introduced ourselves to the children and did a small preliminary test to find out how much the children knew about hygiene and sanitation already.

The next day whisked me straight back to Kathmandu ready to pick Nick up from the airport at 6:30am on Sunday morning. Anticipating that Nick might not be quite so keen, I decided to have the Nepali cinema experience before he arrived, and went with my bahini (younger sister) and her boyfriend the night before. I was surprised - it was just as comfortable as in England, the only difference being the fact that the audience responds to the film as if they are in a theatre - i.e. clapping and shouting in response to what's going on.

I picked up Nick the next day, and we booked ourselves into the lovely Shree Tibet Hotel for some true Westerner luxury - toilet paper! However the expensive prices for everything did take some getting used to - the staff even wanted to charge us an extra Rs70 for the privilege of having a fan in our room! We spent the next day or so shopping, sitting in cafes and sorting out my extension visa (I was a nonce and decided to book my flights 63 days apart, thus costing myself $50 for the 3 days extra to my tourist entry visa.

Before we knew it we were off back to Gorkha. Perhaps typically, I was more busy in those last few days than I had been at any point in the 6 week placement! We ended up hiking to the sanitation programme school on Thursday and Friday to teach the first two lessons, on drinking water and home-made filters. It was great fun, especially on Friday - each bench of children had their own empty water bottle in which to make their own filter. There were some interesting results, but I do think they got the idea of what we were tying to tell them.

Yesterday, crazily, we decided to do the marathon 2 and a half hour trek to see a village where the GWA had a programme about 10 years ago. It was a properly remote place, with a school that was almost falling apart, benches made from a couple of bits of wood stuck in the ground and another laid across, and no running water. The village itself consisted entirely of mud houses and wood houses, but they all had toilets thanks to the GWA programme. I really wished I could have stayed there and seen more of the place and met more of the people, but we had to make our way back - and Nick and I were exhausted from our three days of solid walking and working. Unlike Sairta, the Nepali lady who took us there, who walked the whole way in her flip-flops and kept having to stop to wait for us.

So this morning I had the horrible task of packing, then going around the town to say goodbye to all my friends. Not too nice - I'm going to miss them all a lot! Then at midday we jumped on a bus to Pokhara, and here we are!

This is actually quite ridiculously late, but I really feel I should finish it off and post my last blog entry, not half because everyone wants to know that story of our good news...

The day after my last entry, Nick and I decided to have a lazy day, did a bit of window shopping and eating nice food, then in the afternoon rented a rowing boat and went out onto the lake. It was lovely hot weather and we even saw the top of Mount Macchapuchhre (Fishtail) poking out of the top of a cloud. Then Nick proposed to me and I said yes! Of course he didn't try and get down on one knee - I dread to think what would have happened if the ring fell in the water. So there's the story!

The next day we got up early to catch a bus down to Butwal, where we were to go and visit my family from my first visit to Nepal. However, in the taxi on the way we suddenly spotted the mountains in their full blazing glory looming over the town (I don't know how we missed them at first)! So we made an unplanned detour to a viewing spot on a hill high above the town - absolutely stunning views, and we got some great photos.

We left at half eight, and boarded the bus for the long journey down to the terai. It was scorchigly hot once we emerged from the mountains six hours later, and we prepared ourselves for three days of constant sweating and no sleep.

It was so exciting for me to see my family again - and the house had changed a lot since I was there. There was a new hand pump and all the front of the house with it's pool of scummy waste water was cleaned up with the water draining properly into the fields. Aama (mother) had not changed a bit, and neither had the rest of the family. I met a few kids who were definitely no longer kids and saw the school which looked exactly as it had three years ago, except with slightly grubbier paint.

The next day Nick and I visited Lumbini with Aama and Buwa, a collection of Buddhist temples surrounding the birthplace of Buddha. It was a good day, if not only because the car journey between each temple cooled us down a bit. We finished off the day with a random visit to some sort of training centre in Butwal and some public gardens (paradise there, the local scummy park here).

The next day was the best for me in many ways - I went to visit the school I wroked in last time, while it was open, and met some of the teachers and pupils. Best of all, I saw the library, which now had a collection of books ten times the size from when we started it, more desks and bookshelves, a librarian and a proper system for borrowing. I couldn't stop smiling at the thought that something we did there actually carried on and had a worthwhile benefit to the school.

Another very satisfying thing was that so many people commented on how much my Nepali had improved - I think last time they didn't think much of my Nepali skills at all!

Later we visited the village where I used to teach English to the local women, and we were served ridiculous amounts of the extremely tasty mango pickle that I remember so well that my (now) 73-year old student makes. They had all not changed at all, though I felt so sad when my 73-year-old student and her husband said that they might never see me again because they didn't expect to live until I came back.

It was very sad to leave the next day, although we were certainly looking forward to catching up on some sleep in kathmandu. When we arrived that afternoon we decided to have an hour's nap before dinner at 6pm. We woke up at 11pm, got into our pyjamas and went straight back to bed.

We spent the next day shopping for verious bits and bobs, before I dropped Nick off at the airport on Sunday morning. I then spent the rest of Sunday and most of Monday with Menuka (the oldest sister of my Gorkha family) shopping for a present to send back to the hospital. It was an irritatingly slow two days, because I was ready to go home and didn't want to hang around. But on Monday night, relatively smoothly, I got to the airport (no bandha (transport strike) this time!!) got through check in and flew back to England.

Ahh home sweet home - the cold, the rain and the grumpy arguments of peoplein queues... but also the clean toilets and toilet paper, the smooth organised roads and the cereal with semi skimmed cow's milk! It's great to be back... for a while anyway.