First day in Bajrabarahi clinic

I’m sitting here writing this post after seeing my first Nepali patients this morning in the Bajrabarahi clinic. I woke up feeling a mixture excitement and nervousness. Luckily, it was a slow day in the clinic because we’ve been experiencing torrential rains. Everyone walks to the clinic, some for hours just to get treated.

I am so happy to be out of the city and in the country. I cannot describe the feeling of waking up to views of mist passing along the mountains. There are cows and goats everywhere and endless rice terraces. It’s very lush here and this town is so full of life. I took a walk to the village and got to walk two cows with an elderly Nepali woman! Eighty percent of the people here are Hindu. We visited the local temple that is more than 1000 years old. Every Saturday sacrifices are made of chickens and goats.

It’s been an adjustment to use the typical Asian squat toilet. No one uses toilet paper here or anything that will cause more waste for the environment. Every meal we eat is harvested from the clinic’s garden. We eat a lot of stewed vegetables with beans and turmeric and always rice. When it rains hard we lose electricity. No electricity means no showers. Rain also means there is no point in hand washing our clothes as they won’t dry. Yup. I’m sitting here in three day old clothes and a layer of dirt on my skin. I don’t mind though.

I was only able to see 6 patients this morning, but that’s way more than I would see in the USA at school! Low back pain was the most chief complaint for almost every patient. And, if you saw how hard these people work, you’d understand why. Everyone is so grateful and it is such an amazing experience. The doctors spent yesterday training with the interpreters. Most of the interpreters are young, ages 17-23. It is harder than you’d think to work together as a lot of the questions we ask our patients in the USA are not easily translated into Nepali.