Field Trip

Yesterday, at 830 in the morning after a night featuring football and an Everest (the local brew), I awoke and prepared myself for the day ahead. One of the other members of our cohort who was doing research on oral health in Nepal had organized a field clinic with a number of dentists in the village of Suldungal (spelling is probably incorrect). The plan was simple: set up a free, one-day dental clinic in the village for the villagers and require them only to fill out one small survey regarding their oral health. Simple. And, unbelievably, it was. Out of all the plans that had been made here for various people and their respective research, this one has gone by far the best. Over 120 people, young and old, came to the clinic to receive free dental examinations, and some even lost a tooth or two. As impressed as I was about this whole endeavor, two things stood out to me in particular. The first was the attitude of the dentists. It seemed as if they didn't consider this charity work that they were doing outside of their jobs. Rather, this, going to an under-served village and working without pay, simply constituted part of the job that they had to do. Signing up to be a dentist meant much more than simply seeing thirty patients a day in some sleepy suburb. This especially proved important and inspirational to both Megan and me as we look for different approaches to the practice of our respective medical interests. There's much more than simply working in an office for patients who can afford it. In less than an hour, these dentists turned a classroom into a clinic, and they treated, without stop, over one hundred and twenty patients. It was amazing.

The second thing that I noticed regards some of the boys who quickly developed themselves into my posse. There was a group of about six, including one who worked rather weaselish and one who was the spitting image of a Nepali Heath Ledger. Anyway, the weasel displayed a remarkable amount of pessimism about his country; he could not wait to finish his school and leave, resigning himself to the belief that this country would never get any better. It would simply languish in a garbage-covered backwardness. Heath, though, thought differently, and perhaps most inspirationally claimed, "This is our country; we are responsible for it. We can make it better, and we must make it better." Heath, you serve as an inspiration to this would be ex-patriot. What a great lesson for the 4th of July.