Memoirs of a Nurse

"This picture was taken on 5/5/15. This is called “Gott” in lhotsham language and “Waa Brangsa” in Shachokpa. It is located in between Tonshingang village under Phuntenchu Gewog, Tsirang. It is actually three hours journey from Phuntenchu BHU. The road goes like ‘walk down the hill……along the river bank…..then climb up the hill…to reach the ORC in the village. And to return to BHU just reverse it. We took almost six hours in the hot scorching sun at a snail’s pace with a walking staff in one hand and an Umbrella in other, and I did manage to carry a small back pack with juices and water bottles".

Though tough given the hefty structure like mine, I thoroughly enjoyed the tedious journey. Mr. Nim Dorji, caretaker of the Phuntenchu BHU knows the owner of this Cow Shed; He offered us the fresh yoghurt and told us to drop again on the way back. So we did as invited, this time father had gone to his home, perhaps to bring in more stock. There were two boys, both educated, class VIII, X had replaced. They offered us yoghurt with fresh cooked rice which we relished it with so much pleasure. While enjoying the yoghurt, heart wrenching guilt was running through my spine as the mother cows were trying to break the fence to reach the six beautiful calves tethered to wooden pegs, innocently nibbling the fodder.
I gave the boys some money, few packets of Koka and resumed the journey. The boys seemed to be happy with the small tips I gave.

On that night we got a call from these guys that our porter has fallen down and he is unable to walk, he brought our things all the way up to BHU at around 9:00pm. I wasn’t worried about my imported sleeping bag but I got dread worried about the articles that I will need to conduct rest of the camp. But the mistake was mine as I had already paid him, thinking that it would be too late by the time we reach BHU. The porter was actually drunk with “Bangchang” which is very popular in their locality which they start to drink as early as 7:00am.

Anyway, the camp was very successful as the turnout was quite good. It was more than the HA over there estimated…………I am hoping to go back again.