The mind fails to see what it's not looking for.
A few minutes later, I went upstairs to grab my water bottle and heard some frantic shouting. Manu ran past me on the stairs carrying a large bamboo staff and hitting it on everything. The tail I saw had been attached to a monkey. Anna and Kristina had been on the roof and Connor was studying Odia in the room. I got upstairs just in time to see our visitor jump off the roof and got the story from the girls.
The monkey had showed its huge teeth and charged them. Kristina threw her gum at the monkey who stopped opened the package, took out a piece of gum, unwrapped it, and started stretching it between his teeth and his hands. Everyone hid in our room until Manu ran him off. The monkey spit out the gum before running away. Never know just what's going to happen here.
The monkey also snuck into Doctor Mohanti's room and ate his biscuits and an apple.
Last night we had a feast at the high school with a bunch of the guys. Many and Bikas did all the cooking while the other guys played Bollywood dancing music and hung around on a sheet on the roof. There are never any women at these meals or at any gatherings I've seen outside of school classes. The meal was spicy chicken and I ate what I'm pretty sure was my first chicken heart. It tastes a little like rubbery veal. We also eat on palm leaves and throw the leftovers to the dogs. There's also never talking during meals and dinner tends to mark the end of the day, which may be part of why it's served so late.
There were so surgeries today so we saw about 30 patients in the morning and I had some more practice with shots and changing dressings.
The nurses said they wanted to cook lunch for us, so we went to the half-built staff quarters next door and sat on the hard bed playing with Topu (he's six) and Izzie (he's 9 months.) kids here just wander through the hospital. Their parents don't mind the children being passed around among the other staff and patients. The saying "it takes a village to raise a child" clearly applies here.
Even though the nurses had cooked for us, they waited until we and the doctors were finished before eating the leftovers. It's been a slight problem that the staff thinks the Spanish nurses love eggs because we have them with every meal. It's only around lunch time and I've eaten six eggs.
After lunch we went to teach the first aid class to an older class.
There were no new patients when we got back so Biku and I checked on a few of the post-op cases while the nurses went to nap.
We went for a long walk to a neighboring village with lightning bugs lighting our way.
I'd been feeling pretty sick all day, so I debated going to sleep before dinner, because, as usual, it was served several hours after the time we all started getting hungry. But we watched a video Manu had made of a previous first aid class that had been taught here and then I had some rice and went to sleep. Goretti has also been feeling super sick and Doctor Mohanti has spent all day in bed with joint pain and nausea. Hope everyone feels better tomorrow.
-AB
Spector of sickness
Looks beneath all of our meals
Diarrhea fun
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