Champe Clinic

Out to the satellite clinic today in Champe. Its about a half hour walk from chapagaon. Through town, down a hillside covered in terraced gardens, across a suspension bridge and up over the other hillside. 

 The roads are more like what you might find on a backpacking trip, rocky terrain and slippery slopes, though littered with plastic wrappers. My interpreter, Pragel, is a 26 year old who is dedicated to Vajrabarahi Health Clinic, working as the manager. He gracefully walks in front of me with Adidas sandals. And here i am, in my Solomon hiking boots, watching my every step, careful to not slip down the cliff side to our right. This time a year the terraced gardens are filled with either mustard greens, bright yellow mustard flowers bolting, emerald green scallions or 2 foot tall fava beans. The majority of the fields are covered in a cover crop of winter wheat. 

  As we’re headed down the first steep slop, we catch up with a woman about 40 years old. She is carrying a large basket the same size as her upper body in height though twice her size in width which is hanging from a strap around her forehead. The basket is filled with tangerines and so we offer to buy some, mostly just to get a little weight off her back. She pulls out a scale form on top, packs a plastic baggy of tangerines, weighs them out and then hands it over. While she’s busy making our bag i tested the basket, guessing it weighed about 60 pounds. This is a perfect example of the majority of our patients. Women in their middle ages who have been using their head to carry incredible weight while they journey miles and miles by foot. 

(common way women carry goods)

  The ritual at Champe is that once arriving to the village, you sit for a cup of tea across the road from the clinic. There are already people sitting out on the dirt in the road waiting for the clinic to open... no pressure. This particular satellite clinic seems much more relaxed than the others, we only had 10 people today. Though I've been warned there will be 20 plus booked easily on a normal day.

(champe clinic)

   One of the patients was a woman who has been coming for acupuncture for a few weeks. She’s completely blind in one eye and having pain and blurry vision in the other now. Two years ago she had a cataract removed from this eye, but clearly the trouble is far from gone. Her eye was glossy and coated with a film, as though plagued by a fungus. Instead of showing a bright and sparkly brown color, her eye looked hollow and iridescent as though it were a fortune teller globe.

  My job today was to explain that what we have to offer is not going to stop or reverse the degeneration of her vision. This is when the faith in your interpreter is really important. Trusting that they have delivered this heavy message with the same empathy you have in your tone and translated into the same gentle Nepali words. She just sat there without responding for a while. After a few minutes she started to explain that its really hard to do her work in the field and how she has to get better because she has to harvest the food for her whole family. She said the western doctor is too far to get to since its so hard for her to travel. 

    In other words, “you’re all i’ve got.” So, we keep treating. We keep treating until we're absolutely sure we cannot do anything at all. Maybe the acupuncture is just here to ease some of the emotional pain she has because she knows that soon she wont be able to harvest food anymore. And then what?