Sickness

It was inevitable that someone would get sick. Dan woke up with a runny nose and sore throat yesterday morning and saying he’d been up several times during the night blowing his nose. After breakfast at the hotel I went off for a massage (Ahh!) and when I got back he was complaining of a headache. I gave him some Panadol and then Nev took him and Tom to this brand new shopping centre they’d been desperate to see. I tried to go out shopping on my own and got lost. I was re-directed by a kind stranger and found my way to an ATM only to find that the machine wouldn’t accept any of the pin numbers I gave it.

So I made my way back to the hotel where Christopher was veging out and waited for the others to return, which they soon did. As soon as they arrived at the shopping centre Dan had vomited. He then said he felt better and that he still wanted to look around. Nev said the place is exactly like a shopping centre at home (except for the metal detector at the entrance)—clean and new, unlike everything else here that looks like it’s come under extensive shelling and then had fifty years of garbage dumped on it. Well of course Dan vomited again—in the nice clean, modern toilets—so they got a taxi back to Thamel with Dan vomiting a couple of times on the way. He came in and went straight to bed shivering with a fever. Thank God we are in this hotel and had decided to pay a little extra to keep one room til 4 o’clock. I was able to have lunch sent up and he managed to get down a bowl of miso soup and some boiled rice after which he looked a bit better. But ten minutes later it all came back up again.

Thankfully I came to Nepal armed with every medication I thought we might need. Dan started complaining of feeling thirsty but couldn’t keep anything down, so I gave him some Zofran, which is an anti-nausea drug that comes as a tiny wafer that just dissolves on your tongue. He would never have kept down a Maxolon tablet and the only alternative would have been a trip to the medical centre for an injection. One of the best things about coming to Nepal with Projects Abroad is that we have support while we’re here. There is a particular medical centre they always use, so we know we have somewhere safe to go for treatment—otherwise you might be taking your chances with used syringes.

The Zofran worked and I was able to get some fluids into him. But he was really miserable so I gave him one Mersyndol and he settled down and went to sleep. There had been a Nepalese wedding going on next door right outside the boys’ room. It was incredibly loud, with two bands playing at once—a bagpipe band and a Nepalese band! There was this really harsh sounding trumpet that didn’t seem to be playing along with either of them and would just blast its way into the mix whenever it felt like it. Thankfully, this wasn’t the actual wedding venue and at about 7pm they all set off marching down the road so poor old Dan could get some rest. We rushed out to have a look at the procession, which created a traffic jam in the narrow street as everything stopped to let them by. The bagpipe band went ahead followed by a Mercedes decorated all over with fresh red and white roses. Either side at the front of the car were two men all dressed up and each carrying a tall red candle. Another man walked beside the car holding a large, red umbrella-shaped canopy over it. There were three men in the back, all dressed up and wearing fezes and a woman in the front holding a large ornate golden…er…thing. We guessed this was the groom setting off to the bride’s house. All very interesting but thank God they were gone.

So here we still are at the hotel and I doubt we’ll be leaving here today.

On Saturday we went for a tour through the ex-Royal Palace. The building itself looks rather Soviet—all harsh lines and little colour. By European palace standards the place is pretty shabby. The velvet was even worn off the big cushion on the throne. The wallpaper, which looked like it had been a shoddy job from the start was peeling in places and most of the furniture had the brocade edges coming away and threads hanging off. I could imagine the Queen and Prince Phillip lying in the visiting head of state bedroom and her nudging him and saying, "Can you believe this place? What a dump!" The actual King and Queen’s bedroom looks like your grandmother’s bedroom—really quite small and daggy. We asked the guy sitting there minding the room if the door off to the side was the bathroom. He said ‘yes’ but that they had to keep it closed because people kept asking if they could use it! (And rolled his eyes). Above the bed was a rather appalling painting of a woman down on one knee, her hands held clasped in front of her as though pleading for something. Inspiration I would suggest. The man told us that the Nepalese people knew their Queen was a poet but it wasn't until she was kicked out that they found out she was also an artist. I stared at the painting still trying to figure out how they realised that. The background was that horrible dark green that people who can't paint end up with when they try to mix colours. Tom summed it up later: "That painting was crap!"

The Palace was finished in 1969 and they never thought to update the décor. The garden furniture consists of those chairs made from green and white plastic strips woven over a metal frame. It reminded me of the hotels I stayed in with my parents back in the 70s, the green/blue colour scheme, the wood panelling and the bright red carpets. One room reminded me of an RSL club.

But most sobering was the area behind the Palace. This is where, in 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra, after several hours of heavy drinking, took a gun and shot his entire family and then himself. No one is sure why, but it’s rumoured to be because they wouldn’t allow him to marry the girl he loved. The actual building was demolished after the shootings but the spot where each of them were shot and the place where the Prince was found fatally wounded are all marked. He shot his brother/sister, Narajan, in the garden (perhaps he/she was trying to run away) and the bullet marks are still there in the back wall of the Palace. The smashed glass is still there in the back door.

In the afternoon Nev, Tom and I took a taxi up to the Monkey Temple, which sits on a hill overlooking Kathmandu. The stairs are so steep they’re almost vertical by the time you get to the top and everywhere are monkeys scampering about. At the temple itself there were just more people trying to self you stuff, people crouched over fires and the smell of burning fat from all the butter lamps. And of course there are more dogs and it was here that I saw what brought the whole thing down on my head. We watched a skinny white dog stand up and try to walk. It staggered like someone with cerebral palsy, listed sideways and fell down again. It kept this up trying to get where it wanted to go and it was probably the most heartbreaking thing I’ve seen. I wished I were armed with a syringe of Pentabarb, the stuff Dad used to use to knock dogs off. The poor creature will no doubt die a slow death from starvation.

And that night I couldn’t stop crying for all the children I’d been looking after who I knew would never get the care they needed and for that poor, helpless dog.