The kids have gotten all their needed shots except for the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine, a rare but incurable mosquito-borne disease that is becoming a worsening problem around these parts. Climate change might be triggering annoying heat waves back home, but it's causing catastrophes over here (whole villages getting washed away by melting glaciers), and the spread of mosquitoes & the ickiness they bring is no exception. So, Laxmi & I have teamed up to get these shots to them. I started off the day by accompanying here on an ATM run into New Baneshwor to buy the vaccine vials and get the cash (US$100 aka 100 less beers when I get to Thailand) to do so. $100 to vaccinate forty-plus kids = I got my shots in the wrong damn country. Tej is gonna deploy the rarely seen car on Sunday and drive Laxmi & I up to the orphanage to start injecting the wee little ones. The bulky donation suitcase shall also be carried up there (finally) then, since we needed a car to carry it.
After this errand, I hopped on a bus back to Pepsikola where I rendezvoused with Emily & Lindsey for a bus trip up to OCRC. The kids up there are doing fine, but Sumit's chicken pox have gotten worse. After catching him using a sharp broken Lego brick to scratch breakouts on his arm, I shuttled him over to the medicine cabinet for some good ole calamine lotion. The lotion they have here is a bit cruder than the usual "rub until it disappears!" stuff back home, it was this bright pink, watery liquid with no instructions on how in should be used. The medical volunteers would know, but none of them were present. In a Battlestar-ish "I'm nyot a Doctor, sire!" Tigh: "Today you arrre." moment (sort of), I grabbed some latex gloves, cotton balls, got them damp with calamwhatever, and started patting poor Sumvit's arm down. The messy stuff seemed to help, but I wasn't completely sure if I applied it correctly or in the correct quantities. In any case, it was better than leaving him with the Lego brick. Elsewhere, the kids playing around outside started fixing giant banana leaves to their clothes. One girl made a mock-hula dress out of them, two boys stuck the leaves into their hoods like animal ears and started bouncing around bunny-rabbit style… great imaginative fun it was.
After a couple hours of playtime and some chatting with the older, less ADD orphans, we headed back to Pepsikola. It was on this journey that an errant cow whacked some manure on me with his tail, wrecking that NYC Subway shirt I wuv so much. I'm badly overdue for laundry anyway, so that'll give me good motivation to brave the manual washboards and do it. Brief hand-sanitizing followed, then a candle-lit hangout at the Hut to wish Christine a good rafting trip. It was one of the best Hut hangouts to date, with many giggles about toxic Indian beaches (the Brits were planning on traveling there after
Out of time, that's all for now.
----Vital Signs----
Mosquito Bites = 53
Yetis Scalped = 7
Tibetans Freed = 12,453
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