February 25, 2014

     Today was Dr. Nawrocki’s first day of teaching. The students welcomed him warmly, and listened intently to his lectures. He discussed chapter twenty-two in the student’s textbook, Where There is No Doctor. It was all about the health and care of elderly people. The students were saying that some of the most common complaints of the elderly people in their villages is arthritis and back pain.  The arthritis is a side effect of aging, but the back pain is more than likely caused by the long days that they spend in the rice fields, bent over, planting, caring for, and harvesting rice.  

     After lunch, Dr. Nilson used the audience response system to present demographic questions to better understand their situation both individually and as a group. The results were very revealing. Most of the students had six or more siblings. Two of the students had nine or more brothers and sisters. When we asked them how far it was to the nearest clinic, some of them only had a half a day walk. Four of them lived over twenty miles away from the nearest clinic, and they could only get there by walking. A few of the students lived over three days walking distance away from the nearest health clinic. These clinics sometimes only have nurses, they are not guaranteed to even have a doctor at the clinic. The student that lives the farthest away is over fifty miles from the nearest clinic among another twenty to thirty villages, all dispersed in the otherwise inaccessible Himalayas. She will be the only health worker in that area.  

     Also today, courtesy of a generous donor, we had the privilege of giving each of the students their own camera to take pictures of medical issues that they face, and bring them back to us so that we can better understand their situation and the medical problems that they face.

Lindsey and Bjorn