Namaste (“I respect your soul/god in you” the greeting in Nepali).
Our time at the hospital is almost done, and we have only a few days left. I have, together with my Danish EWH-partner Marie, worked at Bharatpur District Hospital for the last couple of weeks. The hospital is one of the largest and most busy government hospitals in Nepal. The nurses and doctors working at the hospital are very good at their jobs, but they have limited resources, and the hospital in general is very dirty and worn down.
In Nepal the hospital solely provides the patients with beds and medical treatment. The patients’ families are therefore expected to help with everything else (to provide food and help feeding, change their clothes, help them to the bathroom ect.). As a result of this, the patient rooms and hallways are heavily crowded with patients and their family members.
One of the things that has made the largest impression on me in the hospital is the lack of privacy. The patients that can’t afford their own room lie in large common rooms with no curtains between the beds. Up to four women give birth in the same room, and Marie and I are easily let into the room to repair some broken equipment while they give birth.
We work every day from 10:00 to 17:00 in our workshop, which is a small house surrounded by old hospital beds and broken equipment that is beyond saving. In the workshop we work together with the local hospital technicians and the biomedical engineer. They are very creative and good at working with the very limited resources they have at hand, and we have learned a lot by working with them.
Bharatpur is the fourth largest city of Nepal, and it has a lot of coffee places, restaurants and shops. There are in other words plenty of things to do here. Even if the city is large, Marie and I are the only white people, and people therefore stare a lot. People also frequently approach us to ask where we come from, to practice their English or to take a selfie with us.
In Bharatpur we live with a very nice host family in a quiet area right outside of the busy city. In the host family we are not guests, but a part of the family, and they treat us in the same lovable way as they treat the rest of their family members. We couldn’t have asked for a better host family!
We have the day off on Saturdays which we have spent exploring the nearby attractions, such as the holy city of Devghat, the devi temple and Chitwan National Park. Chitwan means heart of the jungle, and here it is possible to see several species of animals such as rhinos, elephants, tigers, deer, crocodiles and many birds.
//Synnøve
