Banepa: Crayons and X-rays at HRDC

On my first day working at HRDC, Hospital for the Rehabilitation of Disabled Children, I almost vomited and then I almost fainted. I had just finished helping with the plaster casting of 3 children with clubfoot, a genetic disease where the foot twists inwards. The technicians at HRDC cast their feet in plaster of paris, move their foot into a more normal alignment and let it set. The casts are left on for a little under a week, and the children get six to ten, or sometimes more casts. The children who are older or who have particularly bad cases also need surgery after the casting, but for many of the infants, casting and special shoes can completely cure their condition. The downside is it can be pretty painful while the cast is being put on...changing the alignment of bones and muscles isn't particularly comfortable. So when, after helping cast a kid who screamed particularly loudly, I felt myself get light headed. I became pale and sweaty and cold and very  nauseated. Luckily after that little episode I was fine helping with castings and did many many more over my three and a half weeks at HRDC. 

At first it was difficult to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, or what I could really help with, but after the first week or so I fell into a pattern. In the morning before tea I would help with the castings. Between tea and lunch I would give the kids who wanted them crayons and paper and try to facilitate a peaceful coloring time. It was much more difficult than you would think. By the end of my time I had overseen the coloring of about 400 different pictures, back and front - enough to line the walls of the ward and make it a little less hospital-depressing and a little more colorful. Then after lunch I would usually help out in the x-ray dark room. Yes, they do still manually develop x-rays in some hospitals in the world. After I learned to develop them on my own, I could actually help the waiting time in the x-ray department when it was busy. On my last day the x-ray technician even let me develop an x-ray of my own hand! Probably the coolest souvenir  I'll get from Nepal. 

Besides having the hospital placement, Banepa was great for day trips. I went to Bhaktapur twice, an old-style Nepali city just a 20 minute bus ride away. There was a little cafe overlooking the smaller square where I would order a huge pot of milk tea and sit and read. It was a little touristy, but there were some great old statues and temples and carvings. Once I spent a while walking around outside of the Bhaktapur square areas - a very stark contrast to the squares themselves. It was one of the poorer, dirtier neighborhoods I've seen, with people still living in the crumbling houses that were built in the 17th century and garbage everywhere. It made me sort of upset to see such poor standards of living right next to, even in, such beautiful things and none of the other tourists were seeming to notice. No one else ventured outside the pretty, clean squares.

I also went to Naugurkot with my roommate Chanty, a city a short bus ride away, with some nice views of the mountains. It was cloudy when we arrived so we couldn't see mountains from our hotel (The Hotel at the End of the Universe) but the sunrise was very nice. It was nicer when I didn't have trekking sunrises to compare it to, but still a good sunrise. For other day trips I went with Rima, my second roommate at Banepa, to a HUGE statue of Shiva an Indian man is building for an upcoming Hindu festival. We didn't really realize you could walk up a nice road to get to the statue, so we cut across a steep grassy hill and became covered in burs, came across a Nepali couple in the trees being intimate, and finally made it to the Shiva where we ate pringles and enjoyed a view of the valley.

Between all the day trips via crowded buses, I was pretty practiced at riding on the tops of buses by the end.  

 On one of our last days at the hospital, we walked with four other HRDC volunteers up the hill behind the hospital and had a nice picnic at the top. At HRDC a lot of the other volunteers came from Volunteer Abroad...there were volunteers from Holland, Finland, Germany, Australia, the U.K. and America while I was there. The community of other volunteers was very nice and we had some interesting discussions over morning tea.

Also while in Banepa Chanty and I set up a fund for a kid at HRDC who was paralyzed from the waist down due to a tumor in his spine. HRDC is a free hospital and they were able to surgically remove the tumor, but they don't have the facilities or medicines to treat cancer and this kid didn't have the resources to get the chemotherapy necessary for his cancer. He was going to be discharged from HRDC to go home and battle cancer on his own, so Chanty and I decided to raise money to get him admitted to the cancer hospital. Our friend and family really came together and helped us raise over 1,000 USD, but it turns out that raising money was the easy part. The cancer hospital was in Kathmandu so we had to go back and forth from Banepa to get him admitted (which took 3 days) and pay for the tests and the chemotherapy he got, and make sure he and his father were taken care of and getting the right treatment and everything. With the way Nepali hospitals are run, this wasn't an easy task. We finally got his first round of chemo done and sent him and his father home for three weeks until the next round, and entrusted the money for the rest of his treatment to Damu, the HRDC doctor who's house we stayed at and who is a wonderfully nice person. It was such a headache sometimes, but I'm so glad we were eventually able to help this kid and his family, and it made me really appreciate what families with sick or disabled children have to go through in Nepal to get their children treated.

HRDC was overall a really fun placement. The food was delicious, especially the breakfast of chipatti bread, bananas, jam, boiled eggs or potato curries and lots and lots of milk tea. Except the one festival day we were served a sort of molasses wrapped in dough that was not so pleasant. The rooms were comfortable and occasionally we even had a hot shower (!)

In Banepa there was a free community yoga class that I went to twice during my stay. It was at 5:30 in the morning, but totally worth it. It was a decent workout, some nice stretching, but the best part was at the end when the whole room of almost all local Nepalis did the laughing exercise - throwing their hands back over their heads they would laugh the most loud and unnatural laugh, then reach down to touch their toes and repeat the process ten times. I would laugh too, but not really as part of the exercise.

Rima and I were at the HRDC placement for Thanksgiving, so we came back to Kathmandu to try to get the other American volunteers from Volunteer Nepal together and go to a place in Thamel that was rumored to serve a real Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately the plans fell apart for one reason or another and we found ourselves at the restaurant by ourselves. Amazingly, at the table next to us was an American couple we both knew, so we ended up having a pretty festive dinner. The meal was delicious and pretty complete - everything except for the cranberry sauce. The restaurant owner came by and invited us to go back to the kitchen for seconds (or thirds in my case..) We were all in a proper Thanksgiving food coma by the end.

Saying goodbye wasn't easy, but HRDC is a well-run hospital with plenty of staff and plenty of volunteers and a little too much down time, so I felt I could be more useful elsewhere. I'm starting a placement where I change beds and wash dishes and clothes at the old age home in Kathmandu. It'll be nice to do something hands-on that really needs doing.