My first full day here was spent visiting the popular tourist destinations around Kathmandu. Shanti and her sister - thankfully "brother" or "sister" is an appropriate form of address if I forget anyone's name, which I do readily - showed me around Buddhapark, Thamel, and Swayambhunath. Buddhapark is home to a 2000-year-old statue of the Enlightened One that rises an impressive 70 feet high. From there we hiked up to Swayamabhunath, commonly known as the Monkey Temple for reasons that soon became obvious.
Suddenly, there's monkeys. Everywhere.
Whole families of small, orange monkeys marched single file past the wandering tourists, sprang from tree to tree, and fought over scraps of "food" and the occasional plastic water bottle. I can't describe the feeling of looking into the faces of these tiny primates. There was some element of savagery, to be sure, but also the strangest sense of familiarity - like I was staring at a distant cousin whom I'd never seen before.
The top of the Monkey Temple afforded the most incredible view of the city, and as we marched back down the hill I caught sight of a swimming pool designated "Monkey Only." Apparently segregation is still an issue in this part of the world. We pressed on to Thamel, the backpacker's district and home to all of the nightclubs and souvenir shops. I wasn't very impressed with the place (but I would have a more memorable experience a few days later).
The next day, Shanti and I walked two miles to the Helping Hands Hospital, one of the most unusual places I've ever been. I could describe the place as a sort of hole-in-the-wall, community hospital with 100 beds and every specialty represented, from orthopedics to neurosurgery. But that would not do it justice. It is literally a drive-thru hospital, with doctors and employees riding their motorbikes past the patients waiting to be seen. At the center of everything is a corral of dozens of human-sized oxygen tanks, so large that each one requires a security guard to act as a porter - a pretty funny sight to see trailing a huddled, elderly woman. And nobody bats an eye when the hospital loses electricity, which it does at least five times a day.
I assigned myself to the emergency department, already being familiar with it and deciding that's where the action was. My first day, I removed some skin staples and assisted with an I&D and wound packing. That night, I rode home on the back of a doctor's motorcycle. The next day I put in my first sutures, in a young woman who cut her foot open on a piece of glass. Human flesh is much harder to stitch together than the banana peels I'd been practicing on. Today I performed an EKG on myself (healthy as a horse, if you were wondering).
During the slow times, which there are several a day, I hand out lollipops to the little kids roaming the hospital and I read from the fourth edition of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. I was expecting the text to contain a litany of anatomical and pharmaceutical references, which it does, but I was surprised to find the first few chapters dedicated to medicine as an art. The discussions of ethics, of handling the pressures of work, of the limits of "mere mortals," and of Nature and death, were truly poetic. To give you a taste, the authors describe death as "Nature's great master-stroke, although cruel to us individuals," because without it the beautiful and varied expressions of DNA would not get their opportunity to arise. We belong to our genes, not the other way around, and every so often the slate must be wiped clean to give life the chance at a fresh start. Maybe this is close to what Buddhists have in mind when they talk about reincarnation. Heavy shit.
My journey thus far hasn't been entirely spiritual. For a couple days, the hostel housed a pair of trekkers from Germany who had already done their volunteering before going to the Himalayas. Jan, Sebastian, and I met up in Thamel with two other German trekkers and a Nepalese medical student, and we all connected over the timeless foundations of male camaraderie - beer, women, and The Godfather. Using the excuse that it was Canadian Thanksgiving, we hit the pubs and the dance clubs and before we knew it we were playing roulette at a nearby Indian casino (not that kind of Indian).
Fast forward to closing time and we were presented with any number of taxis offering a suitable ride home. For some reason, we chose the single rickshaw of the lot. The driver begged to take us the ludicrous distance of four miles home for 100 rupees, which is about $1.28. A few minutes into the ride, we started to sympathize with the driver and we decided to take turns pulling the rickshaw. With three passengers and one driver in tow, this requires backbreaking effort. Even more so when done on half of a bicycle that is older than I am. We made it about a mile before a wild telephone pole appeared on the side of the road, pulling Jan in like a magnet. Everything was chaos at 8 miles per hour and we watched in slow-motion as the carriage flipped completely upside down. Luckily we were mostly intact, though the technology in our pockets was not as fortunate. We traded apologies with the driver, who set off rattled but with his fare and a few extra pennies. After an hour searching for a camera that seemed to vaporize during the crash, we managed to catch a taxi and make it home. Of course, everything was locked so we had to stand on each other's shoulders and climb in through an open window. Jan and Sebastian left for Germany the following day.
That's enough for one night. I'm meeting up with some of the doctors and other volunteers for dinner soon, and then it's straight to bed for me.
Lesson learned: Don't drink and drive rickshaw.
I assigned myself to the emergency department, already being familiar with it and deciding that's where the action was. My first day, I removed some skin staples and assisted with an I&D and wound packing. That night, I rode home on the back of a doctor's motorcycle. The next day I put in my first sutures, in a young woman who cut her foot open on a piece of glass. Human flesh is much harder to stitch together than the banana peels I'd been practicing on. Today I performed an EKG on myself (healthy as a horse, if you were wondering).
During the slow times, which there are several a day, I hand out lollipops to the little kids roaming the hospital and I read from the fourth edition of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. I was expecting the text to contain a litany of anatomical and pharmaceutical references, which it does, but I was surprised to find the first few chapters dedicated to medicine as an art. The discussions of ethics, of handling the pressures of work, of the limits of "mere mortals," and of Nature and death, were truly poetic. To give you a taste, the authors describe death as "Nature's great master-stroke, although cruel to us individuals," because without it the beautiful and varied expressions of DNA would not get their opportunity to arise. We belong to our genes, not the other way around, and every so often the slate must be wiped clean to give life the chance at a fresh start. Maybe this is close to what Buddhists have in mind when they talk about reincarnation. Heavy shit.
My journey thus far hasn't been entirely spiritual. For a couple days, the hostel housed a pair of trekkers from Germany who had already done their volunteering before going to the Himalayas. Jan, Sebastian, and I met up in Thamel with two other German trekkers and a Nepalese medical student, and we all connected over the timeless foundations of male camaraderie - beer, women, and The Godfather. Using the excuse that it was Canadian Thanksgiving, we hit the pubs and the dance clubs and before we knew it we were playing roulette at a nearby Indian casino (not that kind of Indian).
Fast forward to closing time and we were presented with any number of taxis offering a suitable ride home. For some reason, we chose the single rickshaw of the lot. The driver begged to take us the ludicrous distance of four miles home for 100 rupees, which is about $1.28. A few minutes into the ride, we started to sympathize with the driver and we decided to take turns pulling the rickshaw. With three passengers and one driver in tow, this requires backbreaking effort. Even more so when done on half of a bicycle that is older than I am. We made it about a mile before a wild telephone pole appeared on the side of the road, pulling Jan in like a magnet. Everything was chaos at 8 miles per hour and we watched in slow-motion as the carriage flipped completely upside down. Luckily we were mostly intact, though the technology in our pockets was not as fortunate. We traded apologies with the driver, who set off rattled but with his fare and a few extra pennies. After an hour searching for a camera that seemed to vaporize during the crash, we managed to catch a taxi and make it home. Of course, everything was locked so we had to stand on each other's shoulders and climb in through an open window. Jan and Sebastian left for Germany the following day.
That's enough for one night. I'm meeting up with some of the doctors and other volunteers for dinner soon, and then it's straight to bed for me.
Lesson learned: Don't drink and drive rickshaw.
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