MAY-A-5
FIRST CLINIC DAY IN LUKLA, WITH A VARIETY OF PATIENTS
FOLLOWED BY A POSTPRANDIAL HIKE TOWARD MOUNT TETRA
ON THE MERA PEAK APPROACH
May 6, 2002
We got up around the time the first stirrings occur at the foot of the hill beneath the Himalaya Lodge, a hill that keeps collapsing, for which reason a crew of men AND women is digging out the hillside and reinforcing it with wire basketed heavy rocks, the women being principally employed as the heavy lifters, in a riprap reinforcement of the hill into which he steep runway ends. They are making rapid progress, unless we stop to watch them, in which case they all stop to watch us.
Apparently the deployment of 156 armed military police doing their drill and sentry post jobs allover the town and clustered around this steep airstrip is to discourage anyone from doing what happened here last moth. Apparently some Maoists got into the control tower and broke all the glass in the windows and also robbed a number of the hotels and business shops here. The military police have been good to us, especially since about half of them are counting on being seen as patients by us, as they come in in full uniform with their BAR automatic rifles older than any of them men who carry them. But, they make for a very harsh inspection team for any of the Nepalese, or anyone else staying in the guest houses, all of whom have to have passports and full details about each person registered, and if not sure, they can call them all out and examine them themselves. There is a curfew that is in effect from seven PM onwards to the time that the dawn shuffling begins around the airstrip. The weather pattern requires that any flight hoping to come in will have to be in before the later morning weathering occurs, in which clouds ascend to wipe out the visibility, not only here, but more importantly, at the saddle in the mountains, near where Nimi’s village is, since we must clear that by about fifty feet in the approach to this airstrip, which rises sharply to meet the incoming flight of the Otter.
The first patient we will see is also well known to us. He is Lakpa’s uncle. He came with us, and had stayed with Lakpa and Nimi until it was time to return to his monastery. He is the number two man in the Thangboche Monastery, second only to the high lama of this whole region. He is examined for a bit of BP elevation and sugar problems, and is going to go from our initial exam, to set out on foot to make it from here to Thangboche as quickly as twice as fast as we will. That denotes rather good exercise tolerance for an elderly monk, I would reckon. But, he was our first patient of our Lukla Medical Camp, and was sent on his way with the usual prescription and the supply of free analgesic and antacid or whatever the problem was as described in the limited history through a translator.