Health Check and More

Every Saturday is the children's 'holy day'. They do not go to school and this day is full of bathing, washing clothes, beating mattresses and other various chores. I got to the Home bright and early, in time to witness their bathing regimen. As part of the health team, we are responsible for keeping tabs on their regular hygeine and I wanted to be able to report my findings. It was such a cute sight to see. All the kids, boys and girls, are in lines. There were about 4 lines of 5 kids, evenly spread like peanut butter and jelly. Dai has them to an exercises routine: jumping jacks, leg kicks, running in place, frog jumps. He says this will help them warm up before they wash with cold water from the tap. They have so much fun with this! And Dai is such a smiley man that laughs all the time, so I can tell he really has fun with this routine as well.
The children one by one come to the water supply and crouch down, like they are using the charpi. They do this so they can utilize all the water poured on their body. I helped scrub their heads and backs, and the children helped each other as well. I was impressed with their method of bathing, and utilizing all of their resources (not many) to make their weekly 'shower' worth it. The water supply is limited, especially around the Swayambhu area, so bathing only happens on Saturdays. Its the same with my host family.
The children are all laughing when the cold water hits their skin and they look intent when they are scrubbing themselves. They take bathing seriously and do a good job.
After that, the children washed their clothes, and did some random chores while we were waiting on the doctors to come for the health check.
We do a health check at every home once a month. We keep variables like height, weight, skin condition, eyes, GI problems, scabies, lice, worms, etc, documented and updated. The two doctors finally showed up, along with the rest of the Health Team. We took 2 kids at a time and the doctors performed their assessment, while P and I were coordinating and writing down. Some of the kids needed de-worming pills, eye checks, antibiotic creme for cuts, wart removal creme, anti-histamines for allergies, and ear drops. P and I documented all of this on a white erase board so that we can keep up with the 19 children for the rest of our time here. We are implementing multi-vitamins daily and vitamin B syrup at least every other day (we have a low supply of this, so we have to ration out until we can get more donations.) So, overall, our chilren were fairly healthy with only a few minor medical conditions. Probably the most significant one, is one of the disabled children and incontinence. This presents a major hygeine problem. But we are doing our best in physio and with the consultation of local physicians on how to make this better for everyone.
I am heading back to placement now after a day off yesterday in thamel. We had our weekly volunteer meeting and then went to dinner to eat 'real' food (pizza) and have some much needed adult beverages and social time. :)
I sort of miss my dal bhaat, though. I never thought I would say that out loud.
Love,
Jessi