Finally I arrived at the main destination. Ive been in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu one week already. Its lovely here, not the city, its too messy, but the Hospital is lovely. Lovely mainly because of the wonderful people working here. Its a private hospital, something i did not know before I came here. Private, generally means that its not over crowded by patients and better standard than Governmental hospitals. Its a nice and peaceful place, I can hide away from the load traffic ciaos in my neat clean room under a fan.
I arrived 28th of September early in the morning. It was a hard five hour train ride. I had 2 people sleeping under me, 3 snoring beside me and 2 people on the other side of the wagon. I was extremely scared of falling down so very little sleep was given me this night. The hospital send a car to pick me up. Morning rounds started at 9am.
First days I was having problems with the heat, Im more or less getting used to it now. And Im very happy to hide in the Operation theater with AC the whole day if I can. Actually the reason why I went to Surgery on Saturday was because I could not stand the heat.
The Doctors and Nurses are all very lovely to me, they speak and teach me very well. But they are especially happy when they can feed me. It seems like its all about food here. I get three warm meals every day. Suits me very well. I dont miss bread and cheese so far. But I miss boiled potatoes and my Dads' homemade pizza. I learned that Butter milk is not the right type of milk to put in Coffee, its like putting salty yogurt in it. And in the morning I never know if Im drinking tea or coffee, because both taste only warm milk and sugar anyway.
Im getting up 7am every day, the nicest time of the day, the coldest time of the day. Thats the best time for doing laundry, and yes Mum Im washing clothes every day in a bucket. Soap and water, scrub scrub. And then a shower, or more correctly, a couple of buckets of water over my head. Also Im blessed with a sitting toilet, not a standing one that is more popular here. I miss toilet paper, but I have resisted the urge for buying some.
Im turning into an Indian women. I wear indian clothes: churidars. I shake my head like an indian, to signal that information is understood or ok, I have to stop it before i come home, otherwise my Mum will putt an cervical collar on me. I speak indian-english in the hospital, to be able make my self understood. I eat spicy food three times a day, and I do like to think that I dont stink.
Navin is in town. He is here with his parents and pretty busy helping them with the house they are building. Its going to be an amazing house. I have already forgotten how many rooms, but it will at least be able to host 3 families. Nevertheless he takes time to show me around. He is very good at driving. He even let me drive, or that is an overstatement, I drove 200 meter, and I think I gave him a heart attack because I did not see a dark man, so I had to hand back the steering wheel to him. He has taken me to Kanyakumari, the southernmost city in India with the three oceans coming together and the only place in India you can see the sun rice from the sea and set in the sea. We have been on Mutton beach with great waves an a cute village. We wanted to go to a dam, but they denied me entrance since Im foreigner. We will may be try to go there again with a permission letter. We climbed the hills and jungle and I was very happy not to see any wild animals except some crazy monkeys.
I forgot to tell you that I went to church on Sunday 8am with my room-mate. A Protestant Church. I must say that they have understood the value of good church benches here, more than in Norway. The whole meeting felt exactly the same as at home, except that I did not understood one word. I think i have to bring my bible next time, so that I at least can keep up with the scripture they read.
If you want to take a look at the hospital internet page;
http://www.jeyasekharanmedicaltrust.com/
