Epic News

So… a month later and I’m finally letting you in on some news- sorry to anyone who has been waiting for it and sorry for the length this is going to be! I’ll try and break it up so you can just read the bits you’re interested in, and skip the rest. I don’t know how I’m going to put the past month into words but here goes…

First, the ‘adjusting to life in Nepal’ bit:
I love it! The first couple of days I was walking around in a bit of a dream, but since then I think I have truly woken up and addressed real life in Nepal. It took a couple of weeks before I woke up and wasn’t a little bit disappointed to still be here, and early mornings are still when I feel the most homesick, I think because I haven’t got anything else to think about yet. But generally I’ve settled really well- I’m living with a great group of girls and we all have highs and lows, I’m learning my way around Kathmandu and am fairly confident getting a local bus on my own, and I’ve learned ‘ali ali’ (a little bit) Nepali. Some days, especially when I’ve been on home visits all day with only Nepalis (more about that later) I’m desperate to talk to someone whose first language is English, and don’t be surprised if I’m talking in pidgin English by the time I get home! Generally, the only time I don’t like Nepal is if I’m lost and hot on my own, but that hasn’t happened too many times so we’re okay.

Working for SGCP (the "Speech Therapy" bit):
The centre is amazing, I think I said that last time, so much better than I expected! It’s quite high tech and has received a lot of training over the years, and they even have their own newly-qualified speech and language therapist (SLT)!! At first we were a bit at a loss for what to do, because all the basic training we expected to do, wasn’t really required. But somehow the time has flown by and there isn’t enough time to do everything! It’s been helpful for the SLT to have people to bounce ideas off, because she has no form of mentoring at all, being one of about 6 Nepali SLTs in the country. We’ve worked a lot with her which has been great because we can discuss ideas but she’s much more able to carry them out (speaking the language is a huge advantage). We’ve been able to do some work though- intensive interaction and oro-motor work mostly, and a bit of basic vocabulary and language work with the help of our trusty English-Nepali phrasebook! We are working on a couple of communication books for some of the children as well, and trying to make some resources that can be used when we leave, because the SLT resources are more or less non-existent.

A part of our work which has been much more prominent than we expected is to do with feeding and swallowing. In England we wouldn’t be fully qualified to offer feeding and swallowing advice, but here we are the most informed people in the area, and we can’t stand by and watch practices we know to be unsafe, so we’ve been a little bit forced into the area by our consciences. Feeding practices aren’t great- a lot of it is positioning of the children and carers, and feeding techniques such as not putting too much on the spoon and waiting until one mouthful is finished before giving the next one, but there have been some dysphagia concerns as well.

On Wednesday I was asked by the volunteer physios we’re living with to accompany them on a home visit to see a child who was very ill, and whose mother was having a hard time feeding him. I went, armed with a few quickly translated Nepali phrases and some different consistencies of food, but I couldn’t have been prepared to meet a child so poorly and so obviously aspirating on anything he was given. In England he would have been nil by mouth for weeks and given another method of feeding, but it’s just not possible here, or at least not for a few days. What to do in that situation? The mother was doing everything perfectly in terms of positioning and method of feeding, but nothing would be safe. It’s a no-win situation: does he aspirate and develop a chest infection/pneumonia or starve? We managed to get him admitted to hospital but I’m not sure how helpful that will be, he needs the attention of so many specialists for so many complications that he already has. I felt so helpless in that situation, but it was such an eye-opener that I’ve never had on my travels before.

Fortunately, most of the children we see are much more healthy than that. I have been accompanying a Nepali girl on some home visits which are her very first because she’s still in training. These have been mixed- some don’t even need any speech therapy and I wonder what I’m even doing there, but some are really receptive and take on board all the advice I give, and having Lina there to translate is perfect. I feel like I can make more of a difference to individual children on home visits because these children wouldn’t otherwise see an SLT, whereas the children in the school at the centre already have a lot of fairly well-trained input. I like being in areas of the city where there are blatantly no other westerners as well, and visiting peoples houses, really getting involved in the culture. Lina is becoming a really good friend of both Ellie and I, I think I’ll really miss her when we leave.

I’m considering joining another volunteer we’ve met here (also called Becca- gets confusing!) in visiting one of the other districts in Nepal where SGCP works, to support the home visitors there. They’re much more isolated because they only come to the centre very rarely and there’s generally only one home visitor in the district, sometimes walking 7 hours to visit one child. I’m not sure though because if I’m just confronted with cases like the one described above that I can’t do anything to help, I’m not sure how good that would be for anyone. We’ll see. It won’t be for a couple more weeks anyway so I’m going to seek advice before fully committing.

The ‘travelling’ bit
I’m not much of a tourist, once I’ve seen one temple I’ve seen them all, but we have been to some pretty cool places, and there are more in the pipeline. Last weekend we went to Pokhara, which is the 2nd biggest city in Nepal. It’s about 200km away and took us 8 hours on the bus. That’s how long it took us to fly from Heathrow to Delhi- insane! It was beautiful though, and SO worth it! Kathmandu is a horrendously polluted city, but Pokhara was nice and clean. It was less crowded and less expensive, and there were less people trying to sell you things at every corner. We went paragliding on the Saturday which was awesome. I hadn’t been sure whether to go for it or not because it was pretty expensive, but then I figured it was something I’ve always wanted to do, and why not do it in the Himalayas? It was worth every penny. The views were beautiful and it was so relaxing- the harness on your back turns into a little seat in the sky so you can just sit back and enjoy the ride! We went really high as well, and the flight lasted about 40 minutes. If you ever get the opportunity, DO IT.

The place where we live is a fairly tourist-y area but not the worst, but we do sometimes have to prove that we are volunteers to not have to pay 200 Rupees for the privilege of walking through Patan Durbar Square to catch the bus to work every morning. We went down one time and took some pictures which are in the album, and it was strange seeing the same place from a different point of view.

We do have some exciting plans in the pipeline… this time next week we’ll be in Thailand!! It’s coming up to the Hindu version of Christmas, called ‘Dashain’ at the minute, so we get 10 days off starting from next Friday so we figured we’d find somewhere clean and nice where lots of animals aren’t being slaughtered everywhere, and a beach sounded good too. I wasn’t sure at first but now I’m really looking forward to it- Nepal is great but it’s no longer a novelty and a little bit of time out will be lovely J. Ellie and I are also considering popping up to Hong Kong to visit a friend of hers after we leave Nepal before we hit India, since it’s so nearby and I’d love to visit China. Watch this space for developments there!

The ‘being a Christian in a Hindu country’ bit:
I was asked about this today, and I haven’t thought about it too much, but I guess it doesn’t really feel too different from being a Christian in a secular country, only the religion is different. I’ve found that there’s more spiritual awareness here among the volunteers I’ve come with as well, which is nice and has made for some interesting conversations.

My own faith has changed in ways that I didn’t expect before I came. The longer I’m here the more I’m realising reasons I came that I didn’t even accept myself before I left. One reason was that I was running away from the Christian culture around me- I saw people running for God and couldn’t keep up and couldn’t accept the help that I needed to be able to keep up. I thought that while I was here I would learn to make it on my own as a Christian, but instead I’ve been learning about the importance of community, either through having community or lacking it, but through it all God is being my strength. My new favourite verse is: ‘My gracious favour is all you need, for my power is made perfect in your weakness’. It makes me embrace my weaknesses rather than running from them. I’m also learning to be less independent, as I’m seeing that so often my independence is rooted in selfishness. I’m reading my Bible more because I can’t rely on other people to feed it to me already processed.

I have been to various church services and kind of got involved in a home group but it’s for couples really so although they’ve made me very welcome, I’m not sure if I’ll keep going. All the members of the group are from the USA and it was a bizarre kind of culture-shock I didn’t expect when I first went, it took a couple of days for me to work it out! I’m writing this on Saturday night but it will probably be Sunday or Monday when I manage to post it and this bit will be outdated, but I’m hoping to visit a different international church tomorrow where apparently all the young people are hiding so maybe I’ll get in touch with some other people then. It’s difficult because we’re away for so many of the weekends. But God is good and he’s looking after me :-)



Well this is officially epic, hopefully next time will be much shorter and sooner. Well done if you reached the end! In summary… Nepal’s great, whoever’s praying for my health is doing an awesome job so keep it up! Although I have developed a bit of a cold over the weekend, so prayers for a speedy recovery would be great too :) Please write back with news from home, it’s nice to hear about what’s going on and makes me feel like I won’t have too much to keep up with in December!

Love you all xx