On our last day in Norway, we returned to Laerdal to hear some of their ideas for potential project areas to collaborate on and heard the preterm team present some of the projects that intrigued them at the Saving Lives at Birth conference in Washington, DC last Friday. We then did some breakout sessions to discuss the topics of kangaroo mother care and preterm management, training for complicated births, especially those that involve the vacuum, and the implementation and infrastructure around the partograph and ePartogram, one of the projects that has come out of our joint work with Jhpiego in the past. All three of these sessions led to some promising ideas, all of which we will be investigating on our immersion trips!
We are very thankful for the hospitality of Laerdal and are excited to continue working with them as the year continues and we delve into the needs in the realm of global healthcare. Tore and his team have been an amazing resource, and we will not hesitate to reach out to them with our ideas, even while we are still here in Nepal.
Tore Laerdal with Team Nepal, holding
NeoNatalie and the MamaBreast trainer |
Tore was kind enough to send us out to Pulpit Rock for a fantastic hike overlooking the fjord, and some of the Laerdal team joined us, including Sunny (Hopkins alumnus), Helge, Ida, Carolyn (Hopkins alumna), and Paulina. As I hiked up the large slabs of stone that comprised the steps along the mountain, Helge told me that it was actually sherpas from Nepal who had placed the stones and built the entire trail over the years. He said they had come to Norway for a few months each year to work--fitting that we learned this the day before we embarked for Nepal!
View in Stavanger on our way to the hike |
Looking down from the first leg of the hike |
Sign at the halfway point to Pulpit Rock |
Once we made it to Pulpit Rock, the view was breathtaking. Hundreds of people stood, sat, and ran around. Families, couples, even pets made the trek to look down over the fjord, and we gladly joined them, leaning back onto our nice blue backpacks (thank you Laerdal!) and eating our packed lunches. Some chose to look over the edge and pose for pictures leaning over or flying (Aaron), while others chose to sit back and enjoy the view. Some of us even went up above Pulpit Rock for an even better vantage point!
View from most of the way up the trail looking down to the fjord |
Pulpit Rock from above |
Team Nepal on Pulpit Rock |
Swimming hole on the way back down |
Nepal, here we come!
Sunrise in Delhi, India |
The Stavanger airport was just like the rest of Norway--everyone was kind and helpful, and above all, accommodation and efficiency were clearly their goal. Outside the gate, they had chairs and toys for children and even a screen for them to watch movies on, and provided an air hockey table and 3 foosball tables right next to the area for the older kids while they waited to board. Naturally, Aaron and I played some foosball, even at 6:30 in the morning (Aaron won, but it was still the best airport gate experience for me in a while).
Flying Air France was much the same, accommodating and comfortable. Although we only spent a couple of hours in the Paris airport, Allie managed to see the Eiffel Tower out the window. That counts, right?
Anyway, once we landed in Delhi, explored a little, and took a nap, it was suddenly time to board. We snapped a few pictures of the sunrise and boarded Jet Airways for Kathmandu (still hadn't hit me yet).
Once we finally arrived in Kathmandu, it hit me--we had made it to Nepal! A car from the Kathmandu Guest House was there to pick us up, and we were on our way to the hotel. With no lines to divide the street and cars and motorcycles everywhere, it was pretty impressive how our driver wove through traffic and got us to Thamel. It was strange for me to get used to driving on opposite side of the street too--Nepal driving really is either crazy or impressive, it just depends on your perspective. Once we had made it to the hotel, we met up with Aakash, a student interning with Jhpiego who will be working with us on our trip, and our group was ready to go.
The square in Thamel |
Lesson learned: Guides on the street aren't free
Luckily, he brought us to the momo place directly after and told us how to get back to Thamel, so we moved past our unfortunate first experience in Nepal and got ready to eat. Since each order of momos was only 60 Rupees (roughly 100 to 1 USD conversion), we assumed we would get one or two per order, so we each ordered 2 orders for ourselves. The first plate came with 10 momos, and so we thought that was our entire order and dug in--they were like dumplings but even better! Five or so minutes later, they brought out 9 more plates...each plate was one order, and each order was 9 momos. We had ordered 90!
Lesson learned: Find out how many momos there are in an order BEFORE ordering
After a brief return to the hotel to shower and get ready for our meeting, we took a cab to Jhpiego in Patan, a district within Kathmandu. We met Chandra Rai, the country director, Dr. Kusum Thapa, our main technical advisor and guide for the trip, as well as many others in the local Jhpiego staff, including Sheetal, Jona, and Sanjay. We were briefed about the logistics of our trip and the status of healthcare in Nepal, and we will be meeting again next week after our first week of immersion. We are excited to collaborate with them, and ready to get to work!
Delicious momos at the Small Star |
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