Kathmandu City "Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day." Psalms 25:5

We are on the ground and rarin' to go.  Our Didi Rukmina, and her husband Hari our guard are going to  meet us and take us to our house, but wait...first the luggage.  We find the luggage conveyor and watch carefully for our bags.  The conveyor starts and we watch, here comes a large red one, then Janet's new burgundy power bag, my large blue one comes around also. We don't see the black bag of Janet's yet watch the conveyor go around again, not there.  We keep checking, and checking, and checking no black bag.  Finally we ask the airport worker...who speaks English with clarity and understanding...NOT!  I guess I'm being a little over dramatic, but we went through the declaration stage, then the visa stage, everything was going well and very and smooth.  Then the culture shock.  I think the airport worker was speaking English but what form I did not know.  You know I have a hearing loss anyway now this, with my neck craning I listened carefully and thought, what do we do now?  He looked here and there, we looked where we could, finally we decided to make a request for lost luggage "I think".  The airport employee took some information and then gave a printout with some information regarding our luggage and phone numbers to call and told us to leave and then call the airport about 8 pm tonight.  Here's the great part of the story, the man that was trying to help us was so concerned about the amount of time involved with the lost bag he went with us and helped us get through all of the other checks and customs as well, he was very helpful.  We now walk in faith hoping the people that were going to pick us up would still be there.

l to r Hari, Kent Ruxmina, and Janet

Here we are.













Hari and Rukmina were there with smiles on their faces and scarves and Lei's in their hands. Off we go to our new home, our first glimpse at what awaits us, the world that we haven't met before, things to come etc., etc..  The following are a few pictures of our ride from the airport.  This video is on the ring road, it forms a ring around the city, with roads obviously going into and out of the city from this road.  The idea is good but lots of different people over time created the roads, so.. it is a spider web of sorts.

This road, Bansbari road, turns out of the city from a choke which is like unto a round about.  The similarities end with the name.  The name choke is exactly that, a choking point.  There are so many cars and they all want to get through the choke first, which brings them all to a crawl and frequently jams and stops traffic for long periods of time. Once around the chokes they move along well in a chaotic sort of way.  The traffic police are there to help but no one seems to watch them, they just dart in and out of the choke.  If you are going around in the choke you have no more right of way than any other car on the road, if another car can wiggle their car in front of you they will, it is astounding.  If you are walking most often you will go to a cross walk, they are usually found at chokes. The purpose of the crosswalks is get more targets in one place. Cars always have the right of way.   

Driving along Bansbari road, which is the road in the picture above, there is a lane with no name. It is very difficult to find because there are no address like we would have in SLC.  They use reference points to get to destination, ie.,our house would be referenced by the hospital across the street.  So to get to our house you would say Bansbari road by Gandalal Heart Hospital, you would then be dropped off across the street form our house.  OK, to find our lane from this street look for the blue dump truck, then find the men on the bicycle, one with a yellow shirt and the other with a blue shirt, then find the motorcycle just ahead and to the left of the bicyclists.  The motorcycle sits on the lane leading into the street you see in the picture on the left.  I am about 25 meters from Bansbari road taking the picture looking down the lane.  On my left which you can't see there are three shops a produce store a coffee shop (sort of) and a cosmetics shop.  You can tell by the distances that the shops aren't very large.

If you walk down this lane about 55 meters you will see this gate with the number 14 on it, that is our front gate.  This gate is always locked to keep unwanted guests out.  So high fences and gates are the norm.  Another thing I found out today is they will throw their garbage over the fence if it is a low fence.  If you look closely you will see a fence to the bottom left that is lower than the other fence, that is also our property.  Since we haven't used it a neighbor has come over and pulled weeds and planted a garden even though they have been told by the owners of this place not to do it several times.

This is our house complex, as you can see it is a very large house by anyone's standards.  It is well kept by our gardener/guard/teacher.  He is a great man he keeps telling me not to go walking outside alone he thinks I will get lost.  I guess some of the other couples here got lost a couple of time so they worry a lot.  You can see we are in good hands with these people.  I probably should have taken you on a tour of the house but I want to move on with the week.

We arrived on Sunday the 26th of August just in time to begin the Helping Babies Breath Project.  Just a bit of information for any of you that don't know Sunday here is a normal working day, the Sabbath is Saturday and our worship services are held on Saturday.  Again that will take some getting used to.  

We brought our luggage home, then we  pulled out fresh clothes, took a quick (cold ) shower and headed to the Nagarik College of Health Science where the training was in progress.  I'll write a little about the education in Nepal at a later time.  The training is to train trainers, that's a mouthful, in a program called Helping Babies Breath.  It was first developed by the LDS Church and then adopted by the USA pediatrics association and developed a little more.

Here is what we have been doing in pictorial form:

These are nurses and doctors being trained in the  HBB process, which is in it's simplest form is to stimulate the baby to breathe and if the baby hasn't begun to breathe within in that first "golden minute" then they need to help them breathe with a bag and mask.  There are other procedures they are taught if the baby has labored breathing and other kinds of issues.

 The training is being done in at the Nararik College as well as the Nagarik Community Teaching Hospital.  These pictures are at the teaching hospital they allowed us to use their beds for training tables, it was very kind of them.  I'm not sure if you can see that there is no glass in the windows, it helps keep the rooms cooler.  This last week has been very hot and the breeze through the windows helps a lot.

In the picture above you will notice they are using a mannequin and a bag and mask provided by LDS Charities When the training is done the idea is that these people will go to their various hospitals and use the equipment to train others in their facilities in the principles of HBB.  Each facility receives the equipment for training based on the amount of births per year.  The more births, the more staff need to be trained.

Dr. Robert Clark is standing with a Dr.Shakya from Kist Medical College and Between is the director of the Kathmandu Pediatric Society.  The picture below is a gesture of their appreciation for the work he has done in the hospitals teaching the HBB program in Nepal.

This picture is of the Training staff and the LDS Charities  workers receiving appreciation for all they do.  If you  look at the person to the far right he is the branch president in Nepal.  His name is Bishnu.  He is a great person an very helpful to us and our efforts

These are the people that were trained and will now be the trainers and the trainers.

Next Chapter trip to Pokhra and will the luggage ever get here?