OCT-B-7

OUR FINAL CLINIC DAY IN WEST BENGAL,

REACHING BEYOND ONE THOUSAND PATIENTS,

AND ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO START THIS DAY WITH A RUN,

WITH THE VAGARIES OF ELECTIRCIAL POWER AND HOT WATER BUCKET BATHS AS A LIMITATION

October 11, 2003

The weather, the team, the situation here on a rainforest hillcrest in Kalim Pong, and the circumstances of civilization (i.e. hot water and electrical power) have all made it rather difficult to get up and about to see and do things in the environment of West Bengal. But, the patient demand has also required us to be in the full time practice of high volume medical care for over 300 patients for each very full clinic day of each of the four in a row while we have been here.

Las evening I tried to get a message out by internet, but both phone and electrical power were not cooperating, so I will try again before we leave Kalim Pong tomorrow for a site called Mandang, and then on to Gangkok, Sikkim, and leaving from there to a place which has a name you know, Darjeeling. That will be the site of our last clinics and from there we will make our way back to Bagdogra to get a flight to Delhi and the return back to DC. Many of my thoughts have been centered around events and turning points in Derwood and Washington and Iowa and Michigan, so this has not been a trip in which I have really got into the environment around me and tried to extract as much as I could from the first time visit to this region of the Eastern Himalaya. That may come along the long road rides to get to our next sites, but I have been essentially a working troll, putting in non-stop clinical days in seeing patients and going through the case presentations with far more sophisticated students than I had this summer in Ladakh and Lingshed. For starters, nearly all the students are seniors on elective, and for another factor, there may have been something uniquely demanding about those first world students and their expectation about what should be furnished to them given their relative status in the distribution of the world’s consumers. But, this group is far more attentive and responsive and we had a good, through session last evening in going over the interesting cases and findings of the day for which they expressed gratitude.

I am waiting again for fellow runner (s) to appear to see if we can get out for a good run, since it is only foggy and showing only a wet mist, without the downpour that scratched the last two days’ attempts at the run from this same starting point. I am looking now toward Kanchenchunga where I had seen the glare of white sunlight off glaciers for only a few minutes at dawn yesterday before the rain clouds came and wrapped not only the mountain top, but also the Sood’s Garden Retreat and me and all others who might have made so bold as to look up and about at that hour of dawn, before crawling back in bed. We will see how far I can get today.

A GOOD RUN, AT LAST, IN THE FIRST NON-RAIN (BUT STILL CLOUDY) DAY IN KALIM PONG AS WE SEE THE MARKIET DAY SET UP AND CONTINUE ON TO SEVA SADAN HOSPITAL

FOR THE BIGGEST PATIENT DAY YET,

PUTTING US OVER 1200 WEST BENGAL PATIENTS SEEN

A run at last! It was only damp and cloudy but not actually raining for the first time since we have arrived in Kalim Pong, so I met Jackie and ran through town and then off to the area where the market would be set up for this Saturday—the biggest market day of the week. We were ahead of all but some early porters carrying in the vegetables and spices for their big day, and I did get a chance to shoot a couple of pictures as they began their day just before we began ours.

Ah, I was dreaming of a “hot shower” (or our bucket bath equivalent) sine I noticed on departure that the electricity was on. After getting clean and warm, I could then email that pair of messages I have tried to send for four days of non-functioning email internet. Wrong on both counts! When the room cleaners had seen that the electricity was on, they came in to our room and turned off the water heater of the tank, so not only did I get a bucket bath only, but it was cold at that!

But the good news was that two of my colleagues had got access to their email accounts and had sent messages, so I brought over the disc on whi8ch I had been typing messages on the laptop when I could get the bugs out of the “corrupted files” so as to store them on a clean disc, and popped it into the machine. Wonderful! I got access to my GWUMC account and immediately tried to attach the birthday message to Milly, typed up two days early and now heading toward two days late. “This page cannot be found.” That was the single response to everything I tried to do, even opening messages and trying to reply to them. Then the power went off, so there was nothing I could do except consider it a wasted hour with a zero yield. No, not zero, since the machine “ate” my disc. So the yield of my efforts has been negative! The metal flap over the floppy disc got caught, bent and trapped the disc which was finally pulled out stripping the flap off and jamming the machine. So, a total meltdown in the efforts to send any message back home about the trip thus far and a couple of timely messages I have been trying to send for several days. So, I will have to redo the efforts on a new disc to recoup the lost messages on the “cleaned up “ floppy disc I had just managed to produce.

BUSY CLINIC AT SEVA SADAN,

WITH SCORES OF INTERESTING CASES AMONG HUNDREDS OF PATIENTS IN A SOMETIMES CHAOTIC PRESS OF BODIES

I pushed hard to keep that stations going with at least as many translators as examining students and run as much through as we could. But since it was not raining, the patients turned out in droves on this market day Saturday, almost all of them with an envelope of X-rays or their endoscopy report, far more sophisticated services than we can get, all of them eager for a second opinion from the American experts with the principle selling point being that it was all free with generous amount of medicine given away to be a bonus. So, by eleven o’clock we had registered over 400 patients our quota for the day. But they would not stop coming even though the registration slips had run out so they came in with counterfeit slips. An officious ex-politician who had come in the day before and jumped to the head of the queue since she was too busy to wait, (I pointed out the sign saying that since the free clinic was for the “Needy and Poor” she had jumped to the head of the queue no doubt since she was neediest an poorest?) She was back—all day, shuffling out the slips of friends and dragging them around needy patients and pushing them in for extra free medicines. She was a bonus broker, giving out generously our services to her family and friends and accepting full credit for her generosity and leadership. I told her to go home.

FOLLLOWING A FULL DAY WITH A RECORD NUMBER OF PAITENTS,

WE WALK THROUGH TOWN AT THE CLSOING HOUJRS OF THE MARKET DAY, AS I HAD IN RUNNING THROUGH THE OPENING HHOURS OF MARKET SETUP THIS MORNING, AND IT CONCLUDEDS WITH A MARCHING BAGPIPE BAND ALONG MAINSTREET,

UNDER THE CASTLE-LIKE BELL TOWER OF MACFARLANE CHURCH,

FOUNDED BY THE YOUNG SCOTLAND MISSION

Despite the long day and full clinic, I had wanted to walk back from Seva Sadan in order to see the big market day in Kalim Pong, which I had seen being set up when I ran through it after dawn. I had also seen the unusual temple and orphanage there that had been run by the Trust of the Charity Order of the Hindu Sect that also ran Seva Sadan Charity Hospital. By seeing the temple (with the goats perched on rocks around it like votive statues) and the soccer pitch beside it where the orphans played from their orphanage) I had seen most of the sights to be seen in Kalim Pong, according to the guide book. ON there first day, I had seen the hillside with the Buddhist Gompa at its summit, supported by funds raised by Tensing Norgay, the summiteers of Everest along with Hillary, and whose son is not only a bit of Nepali royalty now but also is running a trekking company that we are going to use later in our expedition here. I learned about the MacFarlane church, and then later in the evening about Dr. Graham’s school. So, I have covered most historic bases of the era when the Kalim Pong area was a part of Bhutan, and had been ceded to the British to make it part of West Bengal.

I walked up through the market that had been scurrying to set up when I was there earlier, and now it was also filled with porters who were carrying large loads on tump lines aver their foreheads to break it down after the biggest market day of the week. I could hardly be incognito, since I seemed to be the only westerner in the market, but I did stand in several places long enough that they got used to seeing me and no longer nervous about the cameras I was carrying and taking pictures of the spice markets, vegetable stalls, and the passersby doing their marketing or begging, as was the case with one colorful Sudra who was dressed in his ascetic robes and carrying a brass begging bowl to the spice sacks. I liked the sights and the smells. Then, I heard the sounds.

The sounds were of a bagpipe band and drums of a marching band in full Raj regalia marching down Main Street with the crenulated castle tower of the Church of Scotland behind them founded by Macfarlane in the late 1800’s. It was as though I was part of the British Raj in the era when the whole subcontinent belonged to the Crown, after the Black Hole of Calcutta and before the partition and independence of fifty four years ago the day I was in Pidmo on trek from Zanskar, India’s National Day, one day ahead of the same celebration for Pakistan.

You will see those sights and hear those sounds which I had captured on tape and film, before going back to the Sood’s Garden Retreat, to get ready for our evening dinner out, in a special place which is said to have a spectacular view—when you can see it weather permitting, and in this instance, only by night, despite a full moon, the rim of the Kanchenchunga Range was shrouded in clouds. But, after a long bus ride, we did overlook the lights of Kalim Pong on the hillsides below, where I am usually running and looking up through a very thick cloud cover at this very same hill on which this Deolo Restaurant is run by the West Bengal Tourism Association, our hosts for this evening's dinner, preceded by a bit of pool and beer in the bar.

It was an interesting climax to the week of work in West Bengal. Next, a week in Sikkim with our start in a place called Mangan, beyond the capital Gangtok, on “hill roads” which will take us all day tomorrow to reach. Stay tuned.

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