AUG-B-3
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
OF THE LINGSHED TEAM MEMBERS,
ARRIVING IN LEH FOR ACCLIMATIZATION BEFORE
THE TREK
Aug. 2, 2002
The group for Lingshed, a small group without one single person more experienced in medicine than a medical school freshman, and one college junior and one engineer who has never been near medicine except being married to a first year PA student has arrived. They are jet lagged and altitude impaired, so they are gong to be taking the day off. We have had our introductory breakfast meeting, in which I suddenly realized that I am the single MD in the group, and will be on trek into the world’s most sensitive area just now, as we actually go through Kargill and other parts of the hotly disputed Kashmir Province. As the Western Media had it, this is the flash point for the Armageddon of nuclear war, even if moderately defused at this moment. So, I had to talk to this group, as I did to the previous group twice in introduction, about how they are here in a highly restricted area, on a special permit allotted only to the group, with special need certified by the health Minister for Ladakh. There is NO room for freelancing, and they are NOT a democracy that can decide that, well, you can continue the mission as the single leader of this group might envision it, but THIS is what we would rather be doing so, just go ahead, and don’t worry about us, but we will be following another agenda.
That did not stop the last group from wandering off in the most egregious way on their own, acknowledging both their pre-informed instructions and their perfect right to do whatever they pleased. The first was our Princess who went off for seven hours on her won in search of the action she could find in the night life of Tangste (a bit of an oxymoron in any case) and second at Tso Morari, where a pair of our group elected to try to climb a mountain they insisted would be only three hours work, max, and disappeared for sight hours, wandering in a free fire border zone around Chinese observation posts, without getting half way to the summit they had insisted was a piece of cake when I had told them it was a full day’s climb at best. We had the army out looking for them, and then a long dressing down by the commandant, whom we had fortunately treated in the clinic at Tso Morari the day before, or we would still be in the stockade in detention awaiting instructions from Delhi about foreigners wandering off on their own in hotly disputed territory.
Now, we are setting off into the disputed Kashmir Province along the LOC (“Line of Control”) with a group of novices who will be making their first ever visit to remote India, each with a mission to report back too their sponsors who have given them money or other support to make their trip possible, now on an open ticket to get into restricted areas that no one else would be permitted to do, and I gave the same hardball message after the introductions all around. We will see what kind of international incidents are waiting in the Kashmiri hotspot.
Moi: the only MD, the only veteran traveler in these regions and the only licensed practitioner for what we are setting out to do.
Anita Tiwari: A young freshman medical student at University of Wisconsin, whose parents live four miles from me in North Potomac, Maryland, and whose grandparents live in Uttar Pradesh, India. She is a second generation Indian-American, who has once previously visited the civilized regions of India to see her grandparents.
Cullen LaClair: A junior college student at Emory, who was unknown to me, and had corresponded with Ravi (who himself will not be going on the trek). Cullen is using this experience to see if he can become a premedical applicant.
Eileen Monyek: A freshman PA student at University of Colorado, commuting from where they live in the “Peoples Republic of Boulder” to the Health Science Center in Denver, with which I am very familiar. She is an avid hiker.
Bob Monyak: Eileen’s husband, Bob is a quiet ponytail-wearing engineer, who says first off that he has no medical background or connections and is uncertain how he fits, other than an accompanying person.
Sheila Eswaran: A freshman medical student from University of Missouri at Kansas City. She is from California and has moved a few times before coming to Kansas.
Shawn Vainio: I have been mis-spelling his name as though he is Irish, but he has a Finnish last name, and is a life-long rural farm upstate New York resident at the University of Buffalo. He was one of the pair, gung-ho to climb at Tso Morari, and got us into trouble there, then was equally gung-ho to do a legitimate climb here on Stok Khangri but backed out. He has been the intrepid explorer of Leh for two weeks, arriving for the trek early.
Shafkat Anwar: A GW freshman medical student, Shafkat was determined to go on this trip for several reasons, principally that he was gong to visit his family in Dacca Bangladesh, where he is originally from, and which he has just come from after a twelve year absence. I asked him if they managed to get him married while he was there, and he replied, “No, but they tried.” He has been equally determined that he should get the whole trip cost paid for, and he has been diligently approaching every conceivable sponsor—including the temerity to go to National Geographic Society and tell them he would carry back pictures for them if they would underwrite his trip. Remember, NGS has a crew of the world’s most professional photographers, and they declined to talk further with a non-professional. He has now got everyone from Nike to North Face and a few others with product identification, so I imagine we will have a s many product ID Shots as the IMAX film on Everest which managed to get translucent tent illumined photos on every occasion showing the brand name in the portrait. Bu, he even had a web page, and has come closer than any other student to getting a completely prepaid cost free trip through diligent pursuit of every sponsorship lead. When travel advisories were issued by the US State Department, most of my GW students were pulled out principally by their parents, but there was no way that Shafkat could pull out, since he was determined to get to Dacca, Bangladesh, and now he had sponsors for his homecoming trip to pay back with photographs of their products along the trek, which he now has to do to cover their investment in him. Two others of my students had sponsorship, which was then canceled with the “Travel Advisories “ to India—Let alone to Kashmir—the epicenter of the international worries.
Hem Singh Thakur: the do it all unflappable Man In Charge of All the Outfitting details (twelve scrawny ponies and a sequence of horse handlers for the packstock along the way), who will be going home to Shimla for an arranged marriage on September 24 to a young woman he has never met. He did tell me that he has a group photo of about twenty five people and he has been assured that one of them in there is his new wife, but not for sure which one. He will be paraded to the brides house on a white horse with the Bharat, and the auspicious time for the marriage has been set at 1:30 AM, at which time the groom can have either 5, 7 or 11 witnesses, and the bride can have three—father brothers, and no more. But the entire villages have been invited so there will be over two thousand celebrants If he were to have the full traditional wedding, he confesses, the celebration would be gong on for two more weeks, but he is leaving at the first of October to set up next year’s medical camps which he says I am leading in Sikkim. “Won’t she object to your frequent absences traveling?” asked one of our Ladakh female team members. “That is the value of an arranged marriage; they can say and do nothing about it” said Hem.
Anuj: the do-it-all helper will be front and center in coordinating details. Also from Simla, he has not been involved as long as Hem has been in Himalayan Health Exchanges, still evolving from its start in 1995, now largely based around my credibility and drawing power as a licensed physician for the clinical component part, not only, but also my academic rank which can give students residents and practitioners certifiable academic credit for this experience for either undergraduate, graduate or CME education credits. I just talked with Hem, and he said that he would book the Sikkim experience in September. Not so fast, thought I. Well, that would mean I would be continuously gone from Derwood and DC for three consecutive months on the sequence of trips the plan, always adding and never subtracting those I have already done a half dozen time, and I am NOT on the payroll! Besides, each “gap” would involve the interval down time that is presently affecting my electricity-less productivity here in Leh just now!
Sammy Gorman: I have just had a long talk with Sam, who has been on this trip last year, and is allegedly under my supervision for the two months of her International Health elective period this summer, going from Ladakh to Lingshed. But there is a problem. She has become involved with Jimmy, one of our drivers last year, and he is the son of Dr. Dawa the Chief Medical Officer of Ladakh. He is embarrassed by the affair between what he might view as a tourist picked up by his son for a fling whereas the family is a more traditional Ladakhi family who would chose to make the match for their son from among a selection of the local girls. So, Dr. Dawa does not want Sammy anywhere in the area around Jimmy, whatever they might work out between themselves. So, he is declining that she be along on my trek to Lingshed, and has already interdicted Jimmy going so as not to be seen with her in any public places here in Ladakh.
After long talking with Sammy, I really would like to have her with me as the only one of the students who has been with me before and experience is in short supply on this trek. But, what would be best for her and still get her academic credit is for her to go to Manali with Jimmy where they can work on their differences and whatever bonding there might b e that will have to weather some rather severe stresses, (I told her from limited personal experience the “being male and female is quite difference enough!”) But, I recommended that she get an even better clinical experience with Laji Varghese in Lady Willingdon Hospital, with either Sheila in MCH or with Laji, and I will make those arrangements. This is a superb institution and a doctor that the previous students of mine have said that, second to my influence on them, Laji has had the next most life-changing experience for them. Ravi is against Lady Willingdon Hospital and Laji for a very straightaway prejudice: “They are so Catholic!” This is a rather large blind spot, and inaccurate as well, since Lady Willingdon hospital is a private mission hospital run by graduates of Ludhiana Medical school a Protestant Mission organization, and the reason that Ravi is turned off by them is that there is a poster of the Good Shepherd on the wall. Ravi says he does not want to have anything to do with any Christian religious organization lest he be preached at. Just how much preaching I have done at him or any other from a motivation that I might happen to share with the Vargheses may not be an issue. But here we are, in the most religion-steeped area on earth, but since the religion is Buddhism, it is OK. During our confrontation in Tabo monastery over the expropriated and loudly announced “leadership" of Bill Norton on my expeditions with the single qualification for his pretentious public ceremonial announcements that he is a friend of Ravi, Ravi had burst out that he did not want to have anything to do with a Christian organization, since he was married to a Catholic. I am not going to explore that dynamic, but I will make it possible, sub rosa, for Sammy to get a good clinical experience in a mission hospital as a way of getting her out from under the political and social intrigue that her three “excess Indian fathers” have imposed on her, giving her an excess of paternity. She may be getting some much better and less interested advice from two other father-figures: her own father with whom she has been talking for over two hours long distance to India, and—in this particular case, very carefully considered—moi.
So, these are the players, and this is the dynamic of the start of another new venture into unknown and uncharted regions that I will be leading. As anyone who is running a business, craft or profession well knows, the business itself is the easy part: it is dealing with the complexity of the people involved in it that gets really tough!