I awoke on Monday morning feeling surprisingly refreshed, and amazingly, not sore! It had rained all night, and included a trek to the neighbours’ toilet in the rain and mud, but living upstairs at the Kindy House had prepared me for outside treks to the loo!
Our house sister (we were staying with an older couple, here you call them ‘Didi’ (older sister) and ‘Dhaai’ (older brother)) brought us in some milk tea (what service!) and I snuck a peak outside. Since it had been dark when we’d arrived, this was my first view of Tallo Semrang. Wow.
After breakfast, Kopila and I went up to Mathillo Semrang to see RP and the NEWAH field staff. ‘Just up the hill’ actually meant climbing up through rice paddies- I think it’s really climbing if you have to use your hands as well as your feet! So by the time we got to the NEWAH house, I was ready for another rest. There were a heap of kids at the house, who seemed to think it was hilarious when I said ‘Namaste’. They kept daring each other to come up and say it to me- and I couldn’t refuse because I thought it would be rude!! So instead I put my hands together and repeated it back to an outpouring of giggles! Three of the biggest offenders are pictured here- at least taking their photo stopped them from laughing at me for a little while!!
I then went on a bit of a ‘wander’ (read: trek) with the NEWAH and local staff around Mathillo Semrang and up towards the water source. I was pretty impressed with myself not falling over, but everyone kept making fun of me for sweating and drinking ‘lots’ of water (which was actually about 2 sips on an hour long walk). It kinda got to me as the week went on; I was always being criticised for drinking too much water, and felt peer pressure to drink less- not something I’d experienced before!
Anyway, at some point one of the guys asked what I weighed. He guessed correctly and I agreed, though I really wasn’t sure why he'd asked, and one of the other guys rattled something off in Nepali, except he said ‘20kg’ in English. I’m assuming it was something along the lines of ‘she could stand to lose 20kg’. I was pretty offended that that part was in English, if it had been in Nepali I wouldn’t have noticed. It was like trekking around with Jillian the mean Biggest Loser trainer. And the worst part is that I was pretty proud of myself for what I’d been doing the last couple of days, but the locals (including the kids) just made fun of me.
Anyway, we relaxed in the afternoon, and hung out for a bit at the NEWAH house. Later in the afternoon I decided to have a chat to a lovely goat at the house where we were staying. Most people wouldn’t know this, but I have a bit of a habit of ‘talking’ to farm animals. I can’t help it!! Maybe I watched too much ‘Talk to the Animals’ as a kid, but I have a penchant for trying to communicate with livestock. Originally this was mainly the cows at my PhD project site in Burekup, near Bunbury. But it turns out I have a soft spot for goats too. They TOTALLY answer back! Anyway, I tried not to get attached to most of the goats I ‘met’, because next week is Dashain, which means at least one at each household is going to be sacrificed and eaten. So they aren’t exactly family pets. However, I couldn’t resist this little one, who liked to chat to me, but was a little bit wary of coming out of his house to meet Blinky and I….
Later in the afternoon something much more serious happened. One of the young women in the village (I’m guessing about my age) was sick. We had heard about it in the afternoon and RP thought it was amoebic dysentery. We had given her some antibiotics in the hope that she would get well enough to be taken down the hill (mountain) for medical treatment. But she got worse.
At about 6pm, Kopila rushed her and I over to the house where about 15 people were congregating outside the room. We were ushered in and told to sit on the bed next to her, feel her forehead, etc. I thought that perhaps this was because we had more knowledge of ‘Western’ medicine, but Kopila indicated that they wanted to treat her in the traditional way. This really worried me, because her fever was off the charts and she was curled up in a ball shaking and unable to talk- not good. I suggested at least a cold cloth and lots of fluids, perhaps paracetamol of they’d let us. But instead they stirred some form of spices in water, got four men to pin her down, and tried to pour it down her throat whilst she struggled and cried out- and we all watched. This was a big cultural difference for me- firstly the medical treatment, then the fact that I was being encouraged to watch with the other 15 people crowding around the doorway, pushing and shoving for a better view.
The poor girl is an only child, and lives with her mother, whose husband had either died or left them. So the mother was crying, and the poor girl was shaking, and I was genuinely scared that she would die. If we’d been in Australia she would have been taken to ED hours before. Eventually everyone drifted off (when they realised she wasn’t going to miraculously recover) and I was left to contemplate what had taken place. We found out that the next day she was much better, could sit up in bed and talk, and I was so relieved. Watching the way everyone wanted in on the treatment, and the treatment itself, is probably the biggest cultural shock I’ve encountered thus far in Nepal. And since it was quite likely a water-borne or water-washed disease, it really brought home why it is that I'm here.
No comments:
Post a Comment