Healthcare experience in Kathmandu

COUNTRY: Nepal
PROGRAM: UniBreak - Kathmandu
PROJECT: Health projects
WRITTEN BY: Trent Cutts

It has been a big week for the volunteering crew in the big K. We are currently chilling out over lunch at our hotel in Chitwan national park. We are down here for the weekend with our guide Shankar. So far we have experienced some of the local tharu culture and watched an incredible unset where you could stare at the perfectly round red sun.

Just this morning we all clambered aboard elephants and went for a jungle safari; no tigers yet but wild boar, marmoot, monkeys, rhino and deer have all been spotted. Our morning was topped off when some of the volunteers went bathing with the elephants.

It was much like riding a mechanical bull and I don't think anyone succeeded in staying on their ride! Later this avo we are off canoeing to try and see a croc or two and heading bush for a walk. Fingers crossed we see a tiger, hopefully not too close though! We also decided to tack on a trip to lumbini where the Buddha was born. This weekend trip has definitely been worth the arduous 6 hour bus trip.


This has been a great end to a fairly hectic week for some of us. Most of the volunteer crew have been crook, with a dose of gastro catching a few of us out. It was always going to happen at some point though! We are all settling into our placements and many off us are taking the opportunity to visit each others sites to offer a hand and broaden our healthcare experience in Nepal. On Monday and Tuesday three of our volunteering group who were allocated to Stupa Community Hospital were invited to attend the biannual Health Camp to a remote village in the Sundal Palchok district.

Sam, Georgia and I quickly learned that the Nepali concept of time is quite different from that in the western world. What was supposed to be a brief 2-3hr bus ride with a small hike turned into 6-7 hours of travelling including a coccyx crushing 30 minute blitz up the side of a mountain on the back of a ute. All in the name of adventure! We had incredible views of the white capped himalaya and met some remarkable people including some children who had never seen white people before. It took some time to convince them we weren't ghosts! In a very summarised description of what the volunteer group got up to up there, we had hot milk tea, met the family who was to accommodate us, danced and sang traditional nepali chants around the fire, drank cold goat milk, watched a goat being butchered, 'took' some whiskey, ate various components of goat anatomy in a broad array of serving styles ( including boiled, masala and even curried intestine), drank hot cow milk, ate dhal baht, ALOT of Dahl baht!

And in between all of that, we were part of a team of 5 doctors and 3 nurses who saw 450 patients in 6 hours many of whom had COPD and remarkably low blood pressures due to wide spread dehydration. Sam and I were predominantly taking blood pressures while Georgia used her previous pharmaceutical experience to help dispense the much needed medication. My very quick summary does not do any justice to the phenomenal, challenging and at times saddening experience we had up there, but to conclude I would say that you should seriously reconsider moving to the Nepali countryside if you are lactose intolerant.

Closer to home. All of us international volunteers are starting to get closer to our host families. The opportunity to live with a nepali family has exposed us to the traditional, yet progressive nepali culture. Some of the traditions are very different and quite shocking such as the custom where a menstruating women mustn't sleep inside the house. James and I were woken by our nepali niece who was crying because she wanted her mum who couldn't come inside to see her. James and I also have a very hard time trying to convince aamaa ( our nepali mum) that we will do the dishes. All cooking and washing up is still very much a women's job. Next week I have lined up a cooking lesson, momo and rice pudding is first on the agenda!

Still getting used to he cold showers!