Day 3 in Nepal - Self Care & Travels to the flat lands.

I am currently surrounded by mint green walls, with the jittering fan whirring as it casts lukewarm air my way, and the irregular hum of motorbikes as they pass on the road outside my hotel’s window. 

Today has been an odd day, I woke up expecting to spend the day at Anandaban hospital, capturing some more of the work they do there with the patients.. but after the morning devotions I was told that I would be flying out to the Terai area to film a case study and to capture the work at the monthly satellite clinics they set up in the area. 

As I wasn’t to leave till 2pm I still spent some time at the hospital, this morning I visited the self-care unit and was able to spend some time photographing and capturing the stories of some of the people there.

The self care unit is a nepalese style house, the patients live in the house after their treatment so that they can learn how to return to every-day living in their communities. One of the issues leprosy causes is permanent numbness, so the simple task of cooking over a traditional Nepalese oven can be dangerous as due to the loss of feeling in these people’s hands they can get too close to the fire and burn themselves.

  

Another issue is that some leprosy sufferers loose the ability to sweat, so at the self care centre they are taught how to re-hydrate their skin and care for their wounds so that their skin won’t start to ulcerate.

After the morning’s visit to the self-care unit I squashed all my equipment and living supplies into a couple of small bags and headed off to the airport, back along the bumpy and crowded roads into Kathmandu. The monkey-covered domestic airport terminal didn’t take us much time to get through, thankfully, as Kathmandu’s traffic ensnared us for quite a long amount of time. After a clattery bus ride from the terminal this 60 seater “Buddha Airways” plane greeted us. 

When coming in to land I realised how different the terrain was to the hilly region where Anandaban is set, the Terai region is very flat with many fields and the odd village scattered around. 

Tomorrow, if all the plans stay in place, I’m off to the clinic which I am quite looking forward to as this is a side of The Leprosy Mission Nepal that I haven’t yet seen.