Health and dentistry

April 21st, 2009 by Elizabeth Kruithof

Namaste my beloved friends and family!

On Saturday, I left my host family early in the morning to meet one of the volunteers in Thamel for breakfast at this delicious little Korean run restaurant that serves a toasted peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich (soooo good after you’ve been eating a heap of rice and curried vegetables for breakfast for the past however many days). I had come in to Thamel to go with the Health Coordinator to the other Children’s Homes and help with the monthly health checks (our home had been done the week before, if you remember). As everyone was running on “Nepali time” (it is a slow pace of life here), it wasn’t a surprise that we left late. We jumped in the Jeep with the Nepali doctor and the driver for VSN (you need a driver here because navigating the streets and the traffic in Nepal is a special skill that takes both a high level of alertness and a reckless disregard for safety at the same time in order to get from point A to B). We visited three other Children’s Homes, and I recorded the health information for each child as the doctor checked over them one by one. She took weights, checked skin, hands, feet, hair, ears etc. Each check actually happens quite fast, and it seems that many children have some problem or another that always seems to require a drug to fix.

It was a good experience to visit the other homes again, since I hadn’t seen them since I first started training. It was a reminder of how different our home is, in terms of hygeine, health, and organization. Our home is obviously at the bottom of the pile in terms of these criteria compared to the other homes, but this only makes me feel more useful and reconfirms that I am needed here and making some kind of difference, even if it is small.

A group of volunteers went out for dinner that night in the Embassy district, just outside Thamel for one of the volunteer’s last nights in Nepal. I had chicken AND salad, which are two “no-no’s”, but I was craving protein and fresh vegetable…and I survived. All six of us packed in to a tiny white Suzuki taxi (the only kind there is here) and went back to Thamel for dessert (a “sizzling brownie” that came out on a hot iron platter topped with ice cream and chocolate sauce….it’s no dhal bhaat, but I managed to eat it ). Afterwards, my belly looked like it was six months pregnant. I really wish I was exaggerating for literary effect, but it’s true.

The next morning we all got up for a day of shopping, since the volunteer who was leaving us had left her gift/souvenir buying until the last day. We got trapped in the shops of Thamel for quite a while and managed to spend a bit of money buying gifts, or just giving in to getting the couple things we’d wanted since we got here. Finally we made it out of the Thamel trap and started walking along narrow streets packed with locals, vendors, and tiny hole in the wall shops overflowing with everything from rice pressure cookers to saris and fabric, to biscuits, to jaws of buffalo meat with the teeth still attached. It was fun to shop through local markets and barter for items that sprung out of every corner and window. Things are much cheaper out of the tourist district, even if you do still get a higher price for having a white face. We did manage to get the Nepali price for a bunch of bananas though, and we were quite proud of that. Eventually we made it to New Road, where the streets are lined with shops draped in the most beatiful fabrics. Bought some more items/gifts on Freak Street, near the Durbar Square (it seems once you start spending money here, it becomes hard to stop). After a long day of shopping through the streets, we said goodbye and safe travels to the volunteer (who had been one of ours at our Children’s home).

I woke up early from a hot, sweaty, restless sleep where I was eaten alive by mosquitos. I spent most of the morning in my room reading the Kiterunner. After the kids at the Children’s Home ate their dhal bhaat, another volunteer and I took them all outside to do a toothbrusing demonstration (after discovering the disgusting state of some of the girls’ rotting teeth). We had made poster with pictures of toothbrushes, nice white smiles, horrendous rotting teeth, and the dentist so the kids would understand. The other volunteer narrated as I showed them how to properly brush their teeth. If we moniter their tooth brushing every morning and night for a while, hopefully we will have made a sustainable change to their hygeine routine (ie. hopefully the kids will continue to do it on their own after the volunteers leave). During our phsyio routine, I kept noticing the stench of urine. Unfortunately, if the children wet themselves (or worse), they don’t seem to be telling anyone and then they just stay in the same clothes for weeks (and it may happen over and over again…drying in to their clothing. It’s a difficult issue to deal with, especially since the volunteers will not always be at the home (and so will not always be available to carry the kids to the charpi). We’ll have to do a lot of brainstorming to figure this issue out, especially since one like this has lots of dimensions.

After a khaja (snack) of real lemonade (so good!) and fried rice from my family (beginning to see how much rice I’m eating in a day?) I walked back in to Thamel just for a few hours to work on making some weight charts with the Health Coordinator so that hopefully the children’s weight gain/loss can be monitored using graphs. On the walk back to the Children’s Home, I passed a building with smoke billowing out of the top. As I walked by I glance in, and for half a second, I saw the outline of a charred body burning atop a bonfire bed of logs. A cremation site.

The next day I actually managed to eat a respectable amount of dhal bhaat (although still not close to the amount my family can eat…only a certain C-Lo could live up to the Nepali standard of eating rice, I think). I had another horrible and mosquito bitten sleepless sleep. As I had my morning chiyaa with my family while watching a Nepali movie, my aamaa (mother) said something to me in Nepali, but the other word I could pick out was “chorri” which means daugther. Then she rested her hand on my knee and went on watching the movie. For the first time, I actually felt part of the family (unfortunatley so close to my leaving to take my break!) The day also brought another trip to the dentist for the two girls’ second appointment. Once again my job was to do the suction as the dentist filled a cavity (with no freezing). As I was sitting with the suction tube in my hand, I realized that the water for the drill was coming from an old one litre pop bottle attached to the dentist chair. At the end of a long day, I had a good dhal bhaat (either I’m getting used to it, it’s getting better, or I’m getting better at eating it…or all three) and finished the Kiterunner. Ate too much chocolate and went to bed.