Lalits home
It was a complete honour to be able to spend some time with Lalits family in his mountainside village. We walked for 2 days over incredibly steep terrain, even through snowfields, and arrived in the dark. After an beautiful drumming welcome, we were given the a meal of Dahl baht (Dahl and rice). This is eaten twice a day by almost all Nepalese (and us, as there simply is nothing else to eat). We slept in a small room in a traditional house, where all cooking is over an open fire in the main room.
The next day we visited the health post, and Lalit saw some patients who ...
The hardest journey…
It is hard to describe in a handful of words the journey we have take over the last few days. On Sunday we left behind the relative safety and luxury of the jeep, and began walking. On the second day we walked over 30km through the Himalayas, over a snowy pass, with no place to stop for over 8 hours. We trekked 12 hours, arriving at Lalits remote village in the dark, to an incredible tribal drumming welcome. At one point I fell, and was lucky not to break any bones; a stark reminder of how easy that would be in this hostile part of the world. We have lived with Lalits ...
Meeting the smiling orphaned children
This afternoons journey to the West by jeep bought a lovely surprise. We came across Kopila valley school, where an amazing young American woman has homed 52 orphaned children from isolated mountain regions (www.blinknow.org). We met the children, and were shown around their school and home. There are some incredibly sad stories of how these children have lost their parents (such as baby Ravi, whose mother recently died in childbirth); but to see them flourishing was really uplifting for us.
It seems that potentially collaborating with other NGOs such as this, is the ...
Meeting the students
We arrived in Kathmandu yesterday, and after a blessing at Bouddha Stupa, we had the pleasure of having lunch with DFN's 3 new students today (Prakash, Apsara, and Kamal). They are all so grateful to be supported by us, and excited to talk about talk about their medical training, but also to learn about life and medicine in the uk. We then headed by plane to nepaljung- in the far west of nepal, where we are preparing for the next stage of our journey. Being eaten alive by Mosquitos, and somewhat surprised by the heat..
Dr Lalit makes remarkable impact on remote health post
DFN's first graduate, Dr Lalit, is making an incredible impact on his community. He has been posted to Kumalgaun Primary Health Centre - a extremely remote village in the far west of Nepal. He is the first doctor that the centre has employed, and his determination and drive to improve local health care, has led to power (a donated generator), and a water supply - which Lalit helped to dig and lay pipes for by hand. The photos show the incredibly hard conditions in which he is working, and the obstacles that both patients and labourers must overcome on a daily basis to ...