2019
Arrival in Kathmandu
July 4th, 2019
Hi or Namaste – as they would say here :)
The Danish Technical University – EWH Summer Institute has begun, and we are up for a good start. I arrived the 30th of June, which is a day early compared to the other, but I got an extra day in Kathmandu. I used the extra day with another participant of the summer institute to see Kathmandu Durbar Square and the Monkey Palace.
For the last days we have seen the city, learned a little above the culture, and language. Every day we have an hour to learn Nepali culture with our logistic coordinator. It is followed by a couple of hours with language classes – and then to my favorite part of the day; Taste Nepali food. We have eaten street food, dumplings, and of course Dal Bhat with our fingers :)
In the afternoon we have visited different historical places in Kathmandu, e.g. Boudhanath Stupa, one of the largest stupas in South Asia, Patan Durbar Square, and Thamel.
We have also visited an Innovation center, where we meet some inspiring people, who wants to do a difference for the Nepali people. They work with people, who has an idea, and help them to make a startup. We meet a biomedical engineer, who started working on making an affordable incubator for the hospitals in Nepal. We also meet a Nepali, who was working on transporting medicine by small gliders in the mountains - thus lifesaving medicine can reach patients if the roads are blocked.
The 5th of July, tomorrow from the day I have written this, we are making the final preparation before we are sent out to the hospitals - which we are looking forward to now.
Arrival in Kathmandu
July 4th, 2019
Namaste. Tapaailai kasto chha? (Hello, how are you?)
Finally, I am here in Nepal! My flight from Copenhagen Airport to Dubai was good but packed. My Dubai experience was limited to a burger at McDonalds on the run to the departure gate. Administrative people from EWH met me and another participant as we landed. We left the airport and we got our first sight of Kathmandu. Cars, scooters loaded with precariously balanced families, bicycles, dogs all jostling for position. Keeping left or right seemed to be an unknown concept. After 30 minutes of travelling we arrived to Hotel Kaze Darbar. A hotel that was built during the Rana period. We were welcomed by three young and very kind men who served us a cold fanta. Just what we needed. During the stay we got language and culture lessons, got introduced to the hot humid temperature and the famous daal bhat.
We explored the quite chaotic and charming Kathmandu. One of the top places to visit was Boudhanath Stupa which was considered as one of the most sacred places for Buddhists. But if there was any place that swept me off my feet, it had to be Patan. It is traditionally known as Lalitpur, City of beauty. It is filled with architectural treasure and wood and stone carving in the temples. Among all the places that must be visited, we also visited an Innovation center, called National Innovation Center where we got the opportunity to meet a lot of dedicated and inspiring engineers. These people work every day to create the needed resources to the Nepali people. They are making incubators, drones to transport medicine and solar cellular.
As one of the coordinators said, “if you think Kathmandu is Nepal, you are wrong”. So, one last day is left in Kathmandu before we all are heading to the hospitals, to the host families and the real Nepal.
Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.
Amppipal
July 12th, 2019
After an intensive three-week course at DTU spent on learning everything from safety to troubleshooting of medical devices, I am finally in Nepal, where I can use my knowledge in practice. The first weeks were used in the capital, Kathmandu. Here we went to a number of different temples, learned the Nepalese language and tasted the amazing, yet spicy food. This is what I would somehow call a easy transition.
I am currently in Amppipal, a village located in the district of Gorkha. This place is the definition of simple living: the air is clean, the people are smiling and the view is amazing. It is completely different from Kathmandu, where everything seems chaotic and everyone and everything moves fast. In Amppipal we are surrounded by nature and silence.
On arrival we where introduced to the hospital staff and to the office we share with the technician, Garnesh. We already had a lot of different medical equipment waiting to be repaired.
Me and my Swedish partner live in a guesthouse close to the hospital. We share the house with two medical students from the Czech Republic. Amppipal is a small village with only two shops, so our free time is spent going on small hikes around the area, when it is not raining, as it tends to be in the monsoon season.
I am excited for what the upcoming weeks will bring!
First Two Weeks
July 13th, 2019
Namaste!
The first two weeks have been very interesting. The first week the focus was learning the Nepalese language. At the start of the second week, we traveled to Charikot - Dolakha, which is a small town 140 km from Kathmandu. The chosen transportation method was by Jeep, where we sat four people side by side. This would be no problem if we were four Nepalese people, but being three Scandinavians (Kevser, Agnete and I) and one Nepalese man, we sat very close and it was not very comfortable. The road on the way to Charikot was a bit too exciting. There were a few times the distance to the edge of the road would be less than half a meter, and if you were to drive off the edge, the drop would be at least 50 meters – but hey, who doesn’t feel safe with a sleepy driver.
When we arrived at our guest house, the first week learning Nepalese came in very handy. The guest house owners have a very limited ability to speak English. Therefore, the few phrases we know have been very useful. The hotel is what is to be expected from a relatively cheap homestay in a poor city, not very clean but friendly staff. We are never worried if the food is going to taste bad, because we have been eating Dal Bhat twice a day the entire week, but sometimes they put cauliflower in instead of bell peppers, which we are very excited about!
We have wandered around the city looking at the very beautiful nature (when it is not foggy). During one of these walks, we found a futsal field. I have played twice, they are friendly, but their inability to speak English or my inability to speak Nepalese can be a bit restrictive – this hopefully gets better during this entire trip.
Everything is good, and I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks.
Till next time
Damauli
July 13th, 2019
One week has passed since Eirik, my Norwegian EWH-partner in-crime, and I swapped out chaotic and at times overstimulating Kathmandu with the much calmer and quieter town, Damauli. The day before we left for Damauli, I was struck with the classic, but nonetheless explosive and hard to control, travelers’ diarrhea. Nice. And with a 7-hour bumpy jeep-ride to look forward to the next day, I prayed the universe had my back and chugged a couple of Imodium pills. Fortunately, the Imodium kicked in and I was able to enjoy the ride from Kathmandu to Damauli as the scenery and landscape was - to say the least - quite stunning.
When we arrived at Damauli Eirik and I quickly settled at our homestay and began exploring the city. Damauli is beautifully located in between a dozen of hills which means that no matter where you look - the view is almost always something to be in awe of. It feels like Damauli is not quite used to “tourists”. The kids ALWAYS want to say “Hello” to which we by now have learned to respond with the classic smile-and-wave routine. The adults are not nearly as impressed by our presence, but still look at us curiously when we walk by and, depending on their English capabilities, often asks us where we’re from. And when I write, ‘us’ and ‘we’, I mean Eirik - I don’t think I’m the one who triggers their curiosity, ha-ha. I wonder why? ;)
As for work, we began working the next day at Damauli Hospital. We were given a nice little room in the ER and immediately handed an oxygen concentrator, a nebulizer, two microscopes, two centrifuges, an autoclave and two fans to work on. Nice. This has kept us busy so far.
We also tried a couple places to eat in the city - just to switch it up a little bit. It quickly becomes a bit old to eat daal bhat for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day. So far, we’ve tried two street food dishes, chatpate and panipuri. Both were delicious and spicy - especially chatpate. It’ll toast your taste buds, but it’s so good that you’ll keep eating it anyway.
Our game plan for the coming weeks is to go through the storage rooms to locate any broken medical equipment, talk to the staff about any needs they might have (for a potential secondary project) and to go visit our second hospital in Bandipur to see how much broken equipment they have and potentially spend a couple of days there as well.
Stay tuned for more updates. Peace out.
Kushma
July 21st, 2019
Namaste!
After the first week in Kathmandu I have now stayed in Kushma for two weeks and it's been an amazing experience!
I live with my friend Carl 🇳🇴 in a guest house of a very nice and carring Nepali family.
It is a very poor way of living; squatting toilet, cold showers and daal bhat three times a day. This is way different from what I am used to back in Denmark, but I am doing better than expected!
The family have two kids; a shy but yet funny 18 months old son and a 9 year old daughter who was very quick to draw mehndi on our hands. Later we found out that mehndi is only for girls, which has provocted a lot of laughter and pointing fingers when we walk down the street. Ha ha ha
Even though the village is small, there is kids everywhere and they all want to play with us, all the bloody time. Even when we are working at the hospital they look inside the window to ask us to come out and play (or sometimes that we are doing our job wrong lol).
The work at the hospital has been great as well, we got lots of equipment to work on and friendly colleges all around us.
The wiring in some of the equipment is horribly bad. We have also found some interesting spieces inside of some of the equipment, yummy!
The nature here is incredibly beautiful. Everything is so green and hilly. There is four suspension bridges just a stone's throw away from the hospital including the tallest and the longest suspension bridges of Nepal. It is an impressive view from the bridges with the noise from the river, running 230 meters below you. And some times when it is not cloudy - what it tends to be in the monsun season - you can catch a sight of the Himalaya. Amazing.
Alright, it is time for some more dal bhat, see you around.
Namaste!
Work in Charikot
July 23rd, 2019
Namaste!
We have now been working at Charikot Primary Health Center (CPHC) for about 2 weeks with my partners Agnete and Teitur. Charikot is a small town located in a rural district called Dolakha.
The Primary Health Centers are responsible for health care delivery in rural parts of Nepal. Primary Health Centers lack in resources and personnel compared to hospitals but have necessary lifesaving equipment. I did not have many expectations of CPHC but my first impression of the center was that it is very organized and modern. An infrastructure manager arranged a workshop for us and introduced us to the technical team. CPHC does not have Biomedical Engineers to repair and maintain the equipment so they were very happy to welcome us.
Our work at the hospital started by checking the inventory list in different departments with two technicians. We noted the condition of every equipment and made a repairing schedule. The technicians are very helpful but their ability to speak English is limited. We try to communicate with them by using a few Nepali phrases we have learned in Katmandu during the language and cultural training. This has been difficult in the beginning but now we manage to understand the technicians (yaay!).
We have so far fixed most of the equipment on the schedule and currently in the process of making preventive maintenance instructions for the technicians and nurses. The hospital staff is not trained to use and maintain advanced equipment such as infant incubator and phototherapy unit. Next week, our project will be to demonstrate how to use important equipments and make a short presentation about preventive maintenance.
We work 6 days a week and take a day off from work on Saturdays. Last Saturday we went to the neighbor town Dolakha and visited the well-known Bimeshor Temple, hiked in the area and cuddled some baby goats. This week, we visited Charikot View Tower at an altitude of 2500 meter. After one hour of walk in the muddy roads ve reached the tower and enjoyed the beautiful view with a delicious mango juice.
I'm excited to see what the weeks ahead will bring. Stay tuned!
Bhaktapur Hospital
July 25th, 2019
As of this weekend, my Swedish partner, Sophie and I have been stationed at Bhaktapur Hospital for three weeks. During those three weeks we have performed maintenance and done repairing of many different types of medical equipment. The first week was very confusing for us and we spent the better half of it just trying to get used to the work pace and culture here. Thankfully, we have an incredibly nice biomedical engineer-colleague with whom we work in very close quarters. She made it so easy for us to become familiar with the hospital staff and how things worked. Every day at lunch she makes us try out different Nepalese food and then laughs at us when it's too spicy for us.
In the beginning of our stay, we made an inventory list of all the pieces of equipment that had been stored away in the graveyard they call upstairs. Now that half of the time we are supposed to spend here has gone, I am glad to see that we have managed to repair quite a large quantity of the machines we have dug out. Not to say that everything we touch suddenly works; we have come across several machines which were beyond repair, but at least we could use them for spare parts.
This weekend, nearly all the volunteers from EWH are going to Pokhara, a beautiful lakeside town. It will be very nice to see the others again and have some time off.
First Two Hospital Projects
July 27th, 2019
My Norwegian partner (Simon) and I have now completed our third week at Phaplu district hospital. During our first week and a half we completed and repaired all the broken equipment at the hospital as well as installed preventive maintenance quick guides on the oxygen concentrators which show how to change and clean the filters.
We have therefore from that time and until now been working on our second project at the hospital. The hospital has recently been expanded, and one of the wings have not yet been painted outdoors. Simon and I have therefore been by the local paint shop, bought some paint and brushes and have been doing our best to make the hospitals new wing blend in as well as possible with the rest.
The paint job has now actually been finished and since we do not have any more equipment to work on, we are being transferred to a new hospital. The stay with our host family has been amazing. They have been very glad to have us and have made us a variety of Nepalese food.
We were sad that we had to say goodbye to them, but we are happy that we will be going somewhere we are needed more. The new hospital is a new partner for EWH as well as the host family, so Simon and I are excited to meet them and see the new hospital.
This weekend we are in Pokhara together with many of the other EWH volunteers. We have seen temples and been out sailing on the big lake which is here. It has been nice to get a little vacation, but we are excited to get back to work for the last two weeks of the program.
Country and Hospital Experiences
July 30th, 2019
Namaste dear reader.
After five months of hard work for completing my Master’s thesis and three intensive days recap of last years three-week course (red. Bioinstrumentation) to prepare myself for my journey, two weeks ago, I arrived in Kathmandu. With great enthusiasm (and lack of sleep) and curiosity to get my first impression of Nepal, I rushed through the crowd to find my name and found it in the hands of an EWH staff - ‘Bernado Radoncic’ it was written. Lots and lots of scooter-drivers and ‘magic vans’ were everywhere to be seen, giving you the feeling of never being able to cross the roads. My only way of dealing with the chaotic traffic was to follow the inhabitants without letting them notice my lack of ‘Nepalese traffic skills’.
As I came to Nepal later than my fellow volunteers, missing both the cultural and language lessons, and sightseeing of Kathmandu, I only had one night in the capital before I had to continue my journey to Bharatpur from 6 am. A glimpse of Nepal did I see from my bus passing through the heavy flooded and ‘zig-zag’ patterned roads. Mere beauty everywhere - from the diverse inhabitants to the magnificent nature that overwhelmed me.
Almost 6 hours later, I got to meet my friends Gamze and Karolina in Bharapur who came directly from Sarkari hospital. With tons of questions in my head spilled after each other in ‘Kathmandu Bakery shop’, Gamze and Karolina taught me about everything that I have missed and prepared me for both an emotional and life changing experience. Together with Gamze and Karolina, I finally had the chance to try a tuk-tuk car, which were much faster than I expected while driving towards our host family, Baniya family. From the Nepalese tuk-tuk car, I was presented with many impressions of Bharatpur city. The city of Bharatpur is full of life, some with traditional Nepalese clothes and some with ‘western’ looks, and many local shops blended with calm and colorful villages giving the city a perfect diversity.
On the first day at the Sarkari hospital, immediately after entering and walking the first steps into the hospital, I saw the hard and incomprehensible conditions. I finally saw with my own eyes the reality and reasons why EWH DTU is very much needed year after year. Hereafter, a tour around the hospital, our own office, and presentation of the engineering staff were given. As Gamze and Karolina already have been repairing many medical equipment during my absence, I had to roll up my sleeves fast and continue the work all together with the many syringe pumps waiting to be repaired. After a few days at the hospital.
Beside the work being done at the hospital 6 days of the week, we manage to find time to explore what Bharatpur has to offer such as, the beautiful Jalbire waterfall where we took the local bus (the bus itself were an amazing experience as well), the Bhat-Bhateni department market that serves great ice cream, to the National Park Jungle Safari and Elephant breeding center in Chitwan district. Furthermore, the city of Pokhara were explored during the weekend, gathering five other groups to spend the weekend together and ‘sabotaging’ the Cashmere scarf vendors with our hunger for cheap scarves. The upcoming weeks will be focusing on a very important secondary project beside the work of repairing the equipment.
As time is running fast, every minute is utilized to help the hospital, and exploring Nepal and its beauty.
Best regards/Śubhēkṣā sahita from Bernarda
Three Weeks at Hospital
July 30th, 2019
The last three weeks we have done small repairs at the hospital. We have two really good technicians and they do most of the repairs and maintenance at the hospital. Therefore, we have been left with the equipment the EWH participants from the last couple of years could not fix or have not found. We have used a week on five suction pumps, which have had the same problems with the coils. We were really frustrated at that point and we really do not want to see anything with a motor again.
To get a break from the suction pumps we travelled to the nearest health post to look at their equipment. We talked with the chief doctor and he was a little guarded. First, he gave us a couple of blood pressure devices and an otoscope to fix. When we succeeded in fixing most of the equipment, the other staff members started collecting all the broken medical equipment and placing it in front of us to fix. Thankfully, we could fix most of it and they were really happy.
For the last couple of weeks, we have used our time on the secondary project we have to do for the hospital. We have used the last years project and “upgraded” the system so the nurses could get cleaner water all year. This will prolong the lifespan of some of the medical equipment at the hospital.
Otherwise, we have used our spare time to see a lot of Beni. Our language teacher lived in the area as a kid, thus he gave us all the information needed to really see Beni and how extremely beautiful the place is.
Last Week - Amppipal
August 2nd, 2019
We are approaching our last week at the Amppipal hospital. It has been 3 weeks filled with challenges and rewards. Our biggest challenge was the limited access to the internet, making it very difficult to search up manuals and information about the equipment. However, my partner and I have been able to fix a lot of pieces of equipment in the hospital. We were also able to build new relationships and get to know the staff better. The local people as well as the hospital personnel have been very welcoming. The staff has shown their gratitude even if we haven’t been able to repair all of the medical devices and communicative despise the language barrier.
Amppipal is a very isolated village with a limited amount of shops (only two nearby small shops). If you want to buy something else you have to walk for around 30 minutes to a place called "Bangang". My partner and I have instead used our Saturdays hiking or travelling to nearby cities like Bandhipur and Gorkha to meet up with other of SI participants and to eat something else than Daal Bhat.
Bharatpur Sarkari Hospital
August 3rd, 2019
One week left in Bharatpur, the fourth largest city in Nepal.
Our stay in Nepal as participants of the EWH DTU Summer Institute has now officially come to and end. This leaves us with only one week more at the hospital repairing medical equipment. My favorite partner Karolina and I have spent 4 weeks now at Bharatpur Sarkari Hospital. A governmental hospital placed in the central-southern part of Nepal in Chitwan district where the temperature range is about 25-35 degrees Celsius.
The 7th of July we began our work at the hospital and got to know the hospital staff as well as the hospital itself and the resources. The hospital does only have biomedical engineers on call and 1 biomedical technician. Therefore, they had a lot of high expectations when we arrived. The biomedical technician had his first day, the day we began our work. He was just as new as we were. The first week we repaired 2 ECG machines and 1 infusion pump and gained the trust of the staff at the hospital. After repairing a lot of medical equipment, they finally showed us the treasurer room (maintenance room). We found three patient monitors that have been standing in the room for 1.5 year. In one day, we were able to tell the hospital staff how to repair the equipment. The day after the monitors were ready to be used.
Our host family have been very welcoming and have been serving us the best dhal bhat. Bharatpur is a beautiful commercial city where you can find hot weather, tropical forests and stunning natural scenery. We have been using our off days as being tourists and exploring the beautiful places as Jalbire Waterfall, Chitwan National Park and Devghat dham. We were one of the lucky groups who spend a weekend in Pokhara with sightseeing around Pokhara. We got to see Davis Fall, Mahendra Cave, International Mountain Museum etc.
This week we have started our secondary project. Twenty-seven beds have to be cleaned and painted. Hot weather and long days are ahead.
Reflection
August 21st, 2019
Namaste!
Here's a short reflection on a great working and culture experience and an overall amazing stay in Nepal!
My Norwegian friend (Carl) and I have been working at Parbat district hospital in Kushma for more than a month. We have an overall feeling we have done a great job and repaired a lot of equipment along the way. The picture is not completely perfect though. The work has sometimes been pretty frustrating. We have met constantly leaking autoclaves, living cockroaches hiding inside the machines, horribly bad wiring from India and we also spend half of our budget on an order of spare parts where none of our requested specifications were met. Damn!
We sometimes got a feeling we were the only ones actually doing work at the hospital. Our office was in the administration building were the health officers seems to be spending most of the time on YouTube, chatting with each other or drinking tea ("all time is tea-time in Nepal"). They sometimes came by our office to tell us that we are very efficient, I wonder why.
One day we needed to ask the hospital's radiographer and technician something, but he was nowhere to be found at the hospital, so we called him and an hour later he was at the hospital. We asked him our questions and had a cup of tea with him and half an hour later he told us he had to go back home to sleep. He literally worked for half an hour - including a tea break - before he was done for the day. The working mentality is just very different from what I am used to in the Denmark.
The time outside of the hospital has been spend with our lovely host family and exploring the beautiful nature, I believe I have taken photos of Kushma (the village where we stayed) from almost every angle!
Being back home in Denmark is very nice, but it has also been strange to see traffic lights and roads with line dividers again. I'm not going to miss the Nepali roads or traffic. It's deadly!
At last I want to thank Nepal for its wonderful nature and friendly people. I will for sure return one day!