To the Doctor

For about seven weeks I had, every now and then, some pain in my upper arm. Dear friends, beloved family, and esteemed lovers of the Nepalese story, I had an annoying pain from my shoulder down to my elbow. After about four full days of complete rest, the pain only seemed to increase instead of decrease. The massages from my lovely masseuse, Doma, didn’t really help either (though she does her utmost best). Haterika (damn it), as they would say here. And so (and after persistent urging from the family), there was nothing else for it but to pay a visit to the local doctor.

I could have gone to the Guru first, but I don’t believe in that yet.

Doctor Raj is a real tourist doctor. He knows immediately what’s wrong with foreigners. But he also knows what’s wrong with Nepalese people, because he has a thriving practice. And again, within ten seconds, he knew what my problem was — and still is.
“You have a frozen shoulder,” he said.

At first, I thought I had misunderstood him, or that he was playing a joke on me. After all, here it’s more than 30 degrees every day, so there’s not much “frozen” going on. But when he mentioned the Latin name capsulitis adhaesiva, I knew exactly what he meant. Usually, it’s a problem for women between 40 and 65 years old. Well, age-wise, I fit right in there, but I’m not a woman. Although… This is now the second time I’ve had a condition more common in women than in men. Two years ago I had a virus that mainly occurred in pregnant or recently delivered women. Nepal truly is the land of women’s diseases.

Actually, a frozen shoulder is an inflammation that usually appears due to too little movement. But how can you have too little movement if you’re on a construction site every day? The healing process can also take a year or more. Doctor Raj suggested physiotherapy, and the next day I could already start. Just to be safe, I took Doma with me — you never know. But everything went so smoothly that she only came along once.

Almost immediately, the physiotherapist pulled out a little machine from the old days. I was already nervous just seeing the state of that device. “This machine gives electric shocks, or vibrations, to your shoulder and arm and relieves the pain.” And indeed, after half an hour of being hooked up to the power grid, there was already less pain.

Baba also has to go to the physio for his knees. But he goes to a bigger hospital in Tadi. He has to pay 320 rupees per session, while I have to pay 350 (probably because of my nationality or skin color). I do get a super-friendly, well-English-speaking young nurse in return. Baba has to make do with…

And suddenly, there were no women left in the house. Life is always full of surprises here. One morning when I woke up, there was much more activity than usual. Little Sarthak came to say goodbye to me:
“Poesa” (that’s what he calls me, meaning uncle), “I go Kathmandu.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t know that.”

So I went to Doma to ask for some explanation. In three days, Partik — Rita’s brother — was leaving for America to study. He was one of the last to get a scholarship before Trump permanently closed the borders to Nepalese students. Of course, there had to be a farewell for Partik, because there’s no money to pay for a return flight before graduation. So we had to do without Rita and Sarthak for a few days.

But even our Doma has once again left the house. When she went on a week’s holiday alone, she liked it so much that now she wants to go away for a whole month. So here I am, crying buckets and hoping she’ll come back soon 😊. Doma has gone to Pokhara for a month to take a mountain guide training course. It’s an official course, because they give it in Kathmandu — but we didn’t know that. This course is only for women, so once again, I couldn’t join. Men really are discriminated against here.

We’re now left with four men in our little house in Magarthole — just enough to play cards. Life is completely different without women in the house. Everything seems to go a lot smoother 😊.

Only, there are days when things don’t go smoothly at all — days that could make you superstitious. I’m not like that at all, but most Nepalese are. One of our guides once decided he wouldn’t follow superstitions anymore. Here, if you see a cat crossing the road, you have to let someone else pass first to let the bad luck go by. But this time he thought differently, and when he saw a cat cross the street, he just cycled on. When he was almost home, his handlebars suddenly broke, and he fell badly into a ditch, breaking his two front teeth. Since then, he’s been a bit more careful when a cat crosses the road.

Here in the house, it all started when I found a dead bird on the terrace outside my bedroom. I picked it up (with a dustpan) and threw the poor thing into a grassy area across the street. Then I wanted to put on fresh trousers, but the button popped right off (and it’s not because I gained weight). I wanted another pair of trousers, so I opened the wardrobe — and the door handle broke off. That was a sign I should take it easy for the rest of the day.

Everything stayed calm until that evening. Anyone who knows me knows I always wear long trousers, socks, and shoes. Bare legs, bare feet, and sandals aren’t really my thing. But in Nepal, I haven’t worn long trousers, socks, or proper shoes for weeks/months now. So that evening I wasn’t wearing them either. After dinner, as I was leaving the kitchen, I stubbed my big right toe against the screen door. On its own, not a big deal. But when I got to my bedroom and went to trim my nail, I saw it was completely loose. One small tug, and it came right off. My day couldn’t get any better — you’d almost think it was Friday the 13th. Maybe I offended some god here, or maybe I was also the first person to pass after a cat crossed the street — who knows?

The roosters are also back at the neighbors’. It had been quiet for a few months, but for the past few weeks, they’ve been back — and how. If there were a crowing competition, the neighbor’s rooster would win hands down. Man, oh man, can that animal make noise — all day long, and also part of the night. Especially in the last part of the night, starting around 3:00 a.m. From then on, he starts sending “messages” to his friend across the street. Real chatterboxes they are.

Maybe it was them (or him — get it?) that the snake was looking for, which was in the neighbors’ garden a few days earlier. I’ve seen many snakes, but this was one to be a bit scared of. I didn’t take a picture because I didn’t dare get too close and it was already dark, but I found one online to add to the photos. It was a banded yellow krait — an extremely venomous and deadly snake. During the day they often play with the snake and it’s not dangerous, but at night and in the dark, a single bite can be fatal within an hour.

The snake catchers were immediately called to come and take it back to the jungle. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived, we’d lost sight of it, so they had to go home without it — and we had to go to bed knowing a venomous snake was lurking nearby. Brrr. An hour later, the neighbors saw the snake again, and this time the specialists were able to catch it and take it away. Now I can sleep a bit more peacefully again.

There’s another little creature that caught my attention this past month — a pretty bird, about the size of a sparrow, but with a yellow head. Doma told me it was the Bio Weaver. I thought that was a beautiful name — a bird keeping up with the times. “Bio” from “biological” — everything has to be biological these days, even birds. But I had misunderstood — it’s the Baya Weaver. Anyway, one morning I was sitting on our terrace above the kitchen (the coolest place at that time of day), enjoying the morning coolness, when three Baya Weavers came to settle in the palm tree next to the terrace. One immediately began weaving a nest — and when I say weaving, I mean weaving. It’s amazing how that bird weaves twig by twig until it becomes a beautiful nest.

But his two friends had other ideas. One of them made an attempt at a nest but didn’t do very well, so he stopped and just watched the other. The third Baya (let’s call him Bartje) was a real rascal. He sat watching too, but every time the first bird flew off to get a new twig, Bartje would steal a twig from the nest and use it for his own. The more the first bird flew back and forth adding twigs to his nest, the smaller the nest seemed to get. Eventually, he figured it out, and instead of flying far away, he looped back and sat on a branch above the nest. There followed a heated conversation between the three Baya Weavers. Perhaps their chatter attracted the attention of another bird, because suddenly we saw a bird of prey high above the palm tree, and in a flash, the three little Baya Weavers disappeared. They still occasionally come back to the palm tree, but not to build a nest. Apparently, this tree is not such a good location after all.

Oh, and I also received post from Belgium for the first time — and guess who it was from? It was a letter from a certain Jan D., a representative of Father State, department of tax letters. Telling me I hadn’t filled in my tax return. I had done so, but somehow there’s a bug in the system that makes me receive a notice every year saying that I got divorced during the year. I then have to send a message back, to which they reply that they’ll fix the problem. But apparently there’s another department involved, and they don’t communicate well with each other.

Anyway, I’m now more than done talking. I’ll save the rest for another time. Because we have something else to celebrate again, but I’ll tell you all about it in the next message.

Greetings to everyone, and keep cool.

Greetings from Doma in Pokhara and a lonely soul in Magarthole.