Nyhetsbrev fra vårt arbeid i Himalaya

Anyone who’s been to India, knows how Indian clinics usually look. Very plain, very basic. That’s how the clinic we sponsor in Sonada is. Everything is minimal. And I am sorry to say unclean. In addition there is a lot of dampness in the building. This week we have been working with the surroundings. Nurse Ambika, Tibetan healthworker Dolma and I went shopping for newness and beauty. We bought linen and blankets for the rest room beds. We all agreed on bright green curtains, instead of “hospital green”. They are now being sewed by the tailor. We bought first aid medicines and dressings for the children who live in the hostel . Hygiene is a major issue. So hot water is a must. One day we drove down to Siliguri to buy a water heater. It is a 2-3 hours drive (only 67 km, but the road is very bad), a steep climb down the beautiful hills through the tea plantations, reaching the planes and the heat, and the extreme buzzle of a big Indian city. A lot of traffic, and cows in the streets. Here we found the geyser, as they call it here, the hot water tank. In the shop the electricity had failed (as it often does in India), and we had to look at everything in candle light. If I hadn’t been with friends, I would have been afraid of getting scammed on the deal. In India you have to keep your eyes open doing business. I realized why they call it geyser, of course it comes from the Icelandic geyser – hot water sprouting from the earth.

I went to Dharamsala to have a meeting with the Health Department in the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), to secure money transfer from Shenpen to our project in Sonada/Darjeeling through them. This to avoid corruption. The meeting was a success. I was introduced to the Health Minister, dr. Tsering Wangchuk, who took great interest in Shenpens work, and called me back for a second meeting with the “Kalon Tripa”. I didn’t know who that was, but dressed up in a proper outfit, and was very surprised to meet the Prime Minister himself, dr. Lobsang Sangay. It turned out he had gone to school in Sonada as a young boy, where we have our main project, and even been to Norway. In fact both of them had been to Norway on different occations. We had a dharma-talk. I felt I was among very kind hearted and intelligent men. The Prime minister was elected in August, just 43 years old, after the Dalai Lama had announced that he wanted the new political leader to be democratically elected. We talked about education and our common aim to improve secondary education. And I remembered a lecture I went to last year, about secondary education as the most important factor in the improvement of global health, along with preventing child pregnancies.

Just arrived in Delhi, starting my 9 month trip to India to work for Shenpen Tibet Aid. Yesterday, just before leaving Oslo, I wanted to withdraw cash from the ATM-machine, but got the message that my card was “invalid”, the same card I had just used to pay for the airport train. It somehow had gotten “demagnetized” at the most crucial moment…. Desperately calling the bank while boarding the plane, a very kind young Norwegian lady spontaneously gave me a hundred dollars, enough to get me through the first days in India. Thank you Lene! As soon as I get contact with the bank, you will get your money back! Arriving in Delhi in the middle of the night, I realized I had forgotten to get the name of the Tibetan settlement where I would go to spend the night, I saw a Tibetan monk in the airport, and asked him for directions. Just come with us, he said, and there I went with a bunch of monks in the taxi, who put me up in an hotel room at 03.00 in the morning. What luck, and the funny thing was that this monk, Yeshe, actually knows Lama Changhcub, the leader of Shenpen, and has been to Norway! He sends his regards.