Bev Panto, BVetMed MNVC

Hello again. I have now been in Nepal for about a week, and have discovered a few interesting facts. Firstly, whilst you all perhaps know where I am, I bet you don't know when I am...I am in the year 2067 - yep - I'm way in the future here! Not quite sure of the reasoning behind it, but Nepal is 57 years ahead of the rest of the world! And within the year 2067, we are not 5 hours ahead of you in the UK as I originally thought, but 4 ¾ hours ahead - I didn't know that time zones could work in such small denominations, but apparently it is just because Nepal are so determined to be distinct from India, they made themselves 15 minutes ahead!

So since I last posted, I have mainly been at the centre. I spent Sunday afternoon relaxing in a rooftop coffee shop, not wanting to go too far afield with my toe still being sore. After I had been there for about an hour, the heavens opened, and a torrential downpour began. As the café was terraced, most of the tables around the outside got drenched, and everyone huddled into the few tables in the centre of the café. The rain carried on for hours, and was so heavy that parts of the roof started falling in to the exit, so we couldn't get out! After being trapped there for most of the afternoon, the rains slowed, the exit was cleared, and I headed back to the guest house for a well needed early night.

The next morning, I went to the bakery café near the micro stop that Laura and James had recommended. I went in, and when the waiter came over, ordered a fruit salad. He touched his ear and gave me a pen, which confused me at first, but then I realized the he was deaf. In fact all the staff are hearing or speech impaired - it was only when I realized that that I noticed the complete silence in the café! The food was great though, and a really lovely little place. I turned up to the clinic hoping, possibly a little naively, to be able to get into surgery. I was told by the vets that they had had a discussion with the board of directors, and decided that to eliminate any talk of sexism, no one apart from the Nepali vets were allowed into surgery. This obviously didn't help me very much, but when I mentioned it in passing, to Jan, who I, (again, naively!) assumed had been involved in the discussion, it turned out that the vets and some of the clinic staff had gone behind her back, and she was fuming. I decided to just accept whatever was decided, and just hope that once I had my Nepali registration things might change; it's just not worth getting involved in the politics of it all!

I went off to get my registration sorted out at the Nepali Veterinary Council in the afternoon - which involved riding across town on the back of Suraj's motorbike. Not my idea of fun in the Nepali traffic, and with insane amounts of smog and dust in my face. The journey lasted about an hour, but felt like a lot longer, especially as I couldn't see or feel my hands by the end of it, from clinging on for dear life! It wasn't a smooth journey, to say the least! When we arrived, we had to wait for the vets, who were meeting us there, and while we waited, I had a hilarious conversation with Suraj:

Suraj: how old are you?

Me: guess

Suraj: well you must be older than Laura (who is 27, and by the way, extremely slim!)

Me: No, I'm 26

Suraj: oh, well she must just look younger then cos she's not fat like you!

I actually had to bite my lip not to burst out laughing - it is very much just the Nepali way, to be so direct with comments like that-he wasn't meaning to be rude, in fact it is considered healthy to be 'rounder' here! Did amuse me though!

Eventually the vets arrived, and we went to get my certificate. I was amazed looking at the Nepali Veterinary Council building (their version of our RCVS). It was a small, run down, yellow building in the middle of a huge overgrown, filthy back street area. The registration itself involved signing lots of documents, answering strange and obscure questions, and waiting for long periods whilst everyone obviously spoke about me in Nepali! I met Dr. Gamiri, one of the government vets who also runs a private clinic down the road from KAT. We chatted for a while about the veterinary profession in the UK, and how impressed they are with the RCVS, and he then asked if I would lecture a group of his vets about legislation in the UK...not sure that's quite my forte, so hopefully he won't ask again! I think they get very confused between the RVC and the RCVS despite my attempting to explain the difference! After completing the registration and them telling me they would send my certificate the next day, the vets took me to a lecture by a Nepali vet who has just spent a year in Canada. According to the Powerpoint, he was talking about disease reporting in Canada, but the majority of the lecture was in Nepali, with a sprinkling of English here and there. I have never been so bored, but everyone was watching me, as I was the only English vet there, so I think I might have been fairly conspicuous every time my eyes closed! Eventually, Prabin, one of the KAT vets passed a note to me from the back of the room saying 'lets go?'! Clearly they were as bored as I was, and they understood it!

That night, I went back to the New Orleans bar in Thamel to get something to eat quickly before planning to head back to my hostel early. But an English guy who was also travelling alone came up to me, and we ate together, had a few drinks and talked the night away! It is well known amongst solo travelers that the worst part of it is eating alone - so it's always nice when someone approaches you! He showed me a couple of bars in Thamel, and we went to one called Reggae, where they had a great live band interspersed with reggae music. It had a great atmosphere, and some very strange characters, including a girl with a cat on a lead and a drunk dressed in full cycling lycra.

The next day at the clinic, after my usual breakfast at the deaf café, I was tasked with treating all the inpatients, whilst Bidur did the surgery. The operating theatre is a complete no go zone for me now, to the point that I stand at the door and call if I want to ask any questions. It really is quite ridiculous! Anyway, the rescue cases basically consist of kennel after kennel of wounds, in varying stages of healing, plus a few new, infected maggoty wounds. But I managed to get them all done before lunch without too much difficulty. After lunch there wasn't much to do on the ground, so I spent the afternoon helping James draw up a volunteer policy for vet students and vets, so that no one else has to come in to a similar situation as I have. After work, Laura, James and I went into Thamel for a Chinese - although actually ended up having a chicken wrap and a few gin slings! It was a good night though, and we decided to all go to Chitwan National Park the weekend before I leave which is quite exciting!

On Wednesday, I had to go and pick up my certificate - apparently they couldn't find my RCVS membership number on the certificate, so I had to trek across town, just to point it out to them. When I got there, there was just one man in the office who didn't speak a word of English. He appeared to be looking for my certificate...he poured out a drawer of about ten different keys, and then proceeded to try them each in turn in all of the many filing cabinets, drawers and cupboards around the room. It was clear than many of them had not been opened in a very long time, and that my 2 day old certificate was unlikely to be in there, but I just watched with a combination of frustration and amusement! An hour or so later, a woman walked in, picked up my certificate from his desk (!!) and sent me on my way!

Now fully certified, I am hoping that I will be able to talk my way into surgery, but I have also been down to the private clinic down the road, and they have said I can go there too if things don't improve at KAT. It's all a bit of a pain, but I'm having a great time, just unfortunately won't get the experience I came for.

Hopefully by the next time I post, I will be much happier with things at KAT! Oh, and my toe by the way, is healing...slowly, but it's getting there!

Gender issues and infected toes

Hi again! Well I've an interesting couple of days settling into the clinic, and Nepal living. I went down to the KAT centre again on Friday, and spent the morning doing the vet checks with Bidur - the main vet. The cases were mainly cleaning mange and maggot wounds, as well as the post op checks. You would not believe the size of the spay wounds on their flanks - they're less than an inch long! Before doing the vet checks, I had been into the vet clinic, where they do all the surgery, but Bidur had immediately come in and asked me to come and help him with vet checks. I didn't think much of it at the time, but after we had finished checking all the dogs, I asked if it was ok if I went back into surgery to see how they do the flank bitch spays. I was then told that they wanted to ease me in slowly, and they didnt want me even watching surgeries for the first 10-14 days, and would prefer if I just helped feed the dogs and help with post op checks. In that I'm only working in the clinic for a month, this didn't seem like a great plan to me - as I really wanted (and had told that I would be!) hands on.

Jan, the founder and director of the clinic arrived then, for a photo shoot, with Mango, the clinic dog, for her upcoming appearance in Yes! magazine! She came to meet me and we went for a chat - at which point Bidur came in with my Nepal veterinary council registration papers for her to sign. I felt this was a good point to bring up my unwillingness to pay $150 for my Nepali license if I would not even be able to watch surgery. Jan was horrified that Bidur had not allowed me into surgery, and a huge row began between the two of them. It was lunch time, and we were sat in the staff room eating our Dahl-baht (lentil soup and rice - the staple food in Nepal). More and more people came into the room, and I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life! We all sat moving our food around our plates awkwardly whilst Jan laid into Bidur, asking him if he was on a power trip, if he felt threatened by me as a western vet, and eventually, if it was because I am a woman. This was in fact the case, and it came out that Tristan, a second year vet student from Australia had been watching surgeries all week! Bidur came up with a number of excuses so as not to admit that it was a gender issue, but Jan was having none of it. It turned out that this is not the first time that a female vet has been refused into surgery, when male vets and students have been allowed in, with no questions asked. I am all for accepting cultural attitudes and local gender roles and but having paid over $1000 for my flight, I wasn't feeling particularly sympathetic at this point.

I managed to escape eventually, with Jan teling Bidur he needed to go away and have a think about it. Laura, one of the researchers saw that I felt pretty uncomfortable with it all, and we went off for a banana lassi until things had calmed down. In my rush to get out of the room, I stubbed my toe quite hard on a step - but it didn't seem too bad at the time. Laura and I got on really well, and chatted for a while before heading back to the centre, where we found the vets had both left.

Without any vets on site, we spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and I filled Laura and James in on the UK chart music, as they feel so out of touch having been away for 18 months! After work, they invited me back to theirs for dinner, via a Kiwi couple's house near them. Marianne (a dutch vet student) and Tristan came along, and we all set off to Koppan, where they live, high up in the hills. It was a couple of bus rides away - the buses were reminiscent of the daladalas and matatus in Africa - crammed full to bursting with bus boys hanging out of the open doors shouting their destination and banging loudly on the side of the bus. We got off the second bus and popped into the supermarket before setting off up to the village where Laura and James live. By this point, I was limping from my stubbed toe, which had formed a large blood blister and got worse throughout the day. The walk started off fairly gently, but after about ten minutes, we were wading through paddy fields full of leeches - in my Birkenstocks! The next section of the walk was debatably worse - not in the water, but instead a balancing act along the narrow brick ledges in between the fields! After a very steep climb and a few more hills and fields to cross, all now barefoot, we arrived at Kate and Doug, the kiwi couples' house. They have the most incredible house up in the hills, with amazing views of fields, mountains and beautiful monasteries. They are setting up their own small centre for street dogs at the back of their house and took us down to show us the progress on the kennels they are building. They invited us in for a drink, which became a couple of drinks, which became more than a few drinks, and hours later, we stumbled out to stagger down the lane to Laura and James'.

The next morning, we all headed back out, to go to the hindu temple at Pashupati, the biggest Hindu crematorium in Nepal. As we were strolling down the lane towards the bus stop, I, again, stubbed my toe on the ground, and the blood blister burst - spilling blood everywhere. It looked an absolute mess, and was really painful now, but I bandaged it up with a wet wipe and a hair bobble and we got on our way. The temple was somewhat disappointing - partly as I only made it halfway round before I gave up and headed back with my bad toe, and partly because it just didn't seem that spectacular. We saw the burning ghats and the outside of the temple, but didn't seem to be much special. We all then headed into Thamel for the most amazing chinese meal, and then Laura, James and I spent the rest of the evening in a bar, putting the world to rights!

When I eventually got home, well in need of a good night's sleep, I peeled my 'bandage' off my toe to reveal a large green infected wound - lovely! It is now Sunday morning, and I am soon off to find a pharmacy to find something to clean my toe with - monsoon season in Nepal is definitely not the time or place to have an infected toe!

Tomorrow I am heading back to the centre, hopefully to go and watch some surgery, despite being female! I will let you know my progress!

Day one - one very long day!

Well, have finally made it to Nepal after what feels like days of travelling! It wa a fairly uneventful couple of flights - Bahrain airport is not a bad place to spend 7 hours! The onward flight to Kathmandu was interesting though - the first strange thing was walking onto a plane through clouds of thick mist - it actually turned out to just be the air conditioning, but I actually couldn't see more than about a foot in front of me through the mist! Very strange! Secondly, were the unruly Nepalese passengers. I have never experienced a flight like it - they were all standing up during take off, on their phones throughout the flight, stealing drinks from the hostess' trolleys, and....wait for it....smoking on the flight! I felt really quite sorry for the poor air hostesses who were getting so exasperated with everyone. But it was quite an entertaning flight, despite all the official entertainment being in arabic with Nepalese subtitles!

Anyway, I eventually landed in Kathmandu airport to 29 degrees C and bucketting down rain. I was entirely inappropriately dressed in my flipflops - which were on their last legs anyway, but lasted about 10 minutes before they were chucked! I made it through all the security checks plus baggage collection and visa application in less than half an hour - impressive. I then braced myself for the inevitable onslaught of taxi drivers, beggars and general hassle that I have experienced at every airport in Asia that I have arrived at. But to my (very pleasant!) surprise, there was none! I made it into a taxi without one single person approaching me for anything! Driving through Kathmandu towards the hotel, I watched the usual hustle and bustle of frenzied activity that I have come to love about Asian cities. But again, it was noticeably different to everywhere else I have been - the people seem less aggressive, even the people selling things at the car windows walk away at the first 'no'. I checked into my guest house, which is a bargain at about 3.50 a night for a double ensuite room - the water doesn't come out of the taps but out of one of many tubes that empty randomly into the bathroom, and the shower is barely a dribble, but still, a bargain!! I had a quick nap before heading up to Budhanilkantha, about 40 minutes from Thamale, where the KAT clinic is.

Jan, the founder wasn't there, but I met all of the other volunteers, the two Nepalese vets, and two English researchers (one of whom is from Southwell, Notts - small world!!) - and loads of dogs, cats and puppies that the centre has rescued and adopted over the years. There's not much you can do without tripping over a puppy, or being jumped on or licked by one of the bigger dogs! I was given a quick tour of the centre - the facilites are fantastic for a charity clinic - they have boarding kennels, isolation kennels, the vet clinic, and many other areas. I mainly spent the afternoon trying to keep my eyes open, and getting to know people, but also spent half an hour pulling huge maggots from the large open wound on a stray dog's back.

I sloped off at about 4.30 to get some sleep, and found a very cheap and pretty quick internet cafe next to my guest house - where I am now! am off to go and get some good sleep before hopefully starting properly at the clinic tomorrow. Am loving Nepal so far, and fingers crossed will get lots of good experience here, and some chance to explore a bit too! Will write again when I actually have something to tell you!