Another Day, Another Goat

Tonic started out the morning washing socks on the rocks… which is really nothing like whisky on the rocks… nor is it as fun as it sounds, as you precariously balance on the slippery side of the mountain while trying to ensure that everything is clean but you don’t get soaking wet. While she was doing this, Gin somehow got roped into treating 5 goats in the front yard… which also led to her examining the youngest child who had been up all night with a fever. Unfortunately there was little that could be done for any of them.

After this, we waited for breakfast until 9am – but the entire household had disappeared. This was problematic as we had made an appointment to see a buffalo at 9:30am… 50 minutes away.

So being worried about being late, we left without breakfast… only to be called when halfway there because apparently Sudarshan’s mother was worried about our lack of nutrition (and more about the potential wasting of food). We arrived at our clinic site, but of course we were the first ones there. Our Western concern for timeliness is obviously misplaced here.

The clinic today was also delayed as we needed to shift a huge pile of scrap metal to make room for a safe place to hold it. Ironically despite moving it, people kept attaching their goats to it and left them to roam over top of it. This was somewhat frustrating, as every time the goats got spooked, they tried to bolt and sent chunks of metal pipe flying, causing tetanus hazards for everyone around. Somehow the clinic had also been placed in front of the local “watering hole”, and beside the school toilet, and so we had a consistent trail of random adults and students trailing through the workspace – that we also had to worry about ducking the metal missiles.

This clinic, patients had to be coaxed to come – and so when they started, it was kind of like diarrhea… they just kept coming all at once, and wound up overflowing everywhere. We mention diarrhea somewhat facetiously, since there has been a lot of it in the week we have been here… (not us yet, knock on wood). And a crazy number of people arrived without animals, just wanting drugs. We have apparently become the doctors for all species on the hill… which included everything from cats to people… and a few hobbits and Gandalf as well. However unlike the true Gandalf, this one expected us to treat his calf for him.

On the way home we stopped for tea yet again at a student’s house. Interestingly, everyone in this community seems to run a shop from their house. Very entrepreneurial really… While roaming the mountainside on the way back, we discovered that for some reason the bins followed us, despite our agreement that they could stay where they were to be picked up by vehicle tomorrow on the way back to Kathmandu. So confusing.

We spent a couple of hours sitting and chatting with the family this evening, about life, and politics, and the future. And we had another dance session with Binita – which was mostly her firing Nepali words at us and demanding to bhangra (dance).

We also discovered that our previous driver decided to bail on us, and so a new one had been found. However this one has decided to arrive at 10, rather than 1pm… which rather upsets our morning appointments (and hoped for shower).

So we have made friends with our gecko Gregg, and he is back to spend the last night with us… which is probably a good thing as otherwise we might find ourselves carried off like in Gulliver’s Travels – except this time by ants. Which we have discovered it is not fun to have ants in your pants….

Anyway, tomorrow needs to start early as apparently we have a zillion exams to do before 7am.

Sleep well…

Love you all.

GTS xoxo

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *