Class #1 finished!

At the end of Aug. 2006 we finished up the first Emergency Medical Pre-hospital Care Worker class in Sri Lanka. It's the equivalent of the EMT-basic course that you must pass in order to work on an ambulance in the U.S. and most developed countries. I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed being involved with this project.The people in the class were all very talented, extreamly eager to learn and really just SUPER nice people. The two other white faces you see in the picture are Heidi and Travis Gullet. They are a husband wife M.D. team finishing up their respective residencies at Oregon Health Sciences University. They arrived in time for the last half of the class. They were a huge help, and great to work with. They are back off to school now. Sean has gone home early because of the deteriorating security situation here in Sri Lanka i.e., there is a war going on in the North and Eastern areas of the country. This wasn't the case when we left, or when I origonaly signed up for the job but unfortunately it just worked out that way. I obviously haven't included any pictures of the conflict and am not talking about the war in this "blog". I want to focus on the positive parts of the trip, besides it makes my wife, daughter, freinds, and me nervous.


The kids above are our "helpers" They live near the temple were the class was held, and we enlisted their help as pretend patients for a "mock" motorcycle accident, (around here a lot of the motorcycles carry mom, dad, and 2 kids), they even let us pour fake blood on them and strap them to a back bourd. They got cake the next day for their troubles and of course never left from then on. On the last day Heidi and Travis bought them two soccer balls as a going away gift. Thats me and Sean in front of a "dagoba" beside the building were we held the class . They have one at every monastary and Buddhist shrine all over the country. Some are large some small, some very old and some new. This one is over 200 years old. The last picture is of the usual lunch time "cricket" game. The guys are all experts and are teaching Sean and me the finer points of "wicket keeping", "bowling", and what "overs" are.

Kandy Perahera

Kandy is an ancient kingdom in Sri Lanka. It is situated on a lake high up in the Hill Country about a 3 hr. train trip from the bustling city of Colombo. The train trip is really a"Trip" all itself. It's like going back in time to the early 1800's as the train is almost that old. The scenery id fantastic as you climb up out of the flat plains and rice feilds surounding the city and on up into the hills and up to the cool fresh air of Kandy at about 4000 ft. The perahera is a huge week long Buddhist festival that requires reservations for hotels many months in advance. Fortunately a member of the office staff had family up there and we of course were in typical Sri Lankan style, totally set up for the entier stay! We stayed at the Hilltop hotel which was fantastic with pool, great food service and views. The parades go every night from 800-945 pm but you have to be there by 6 pm to get any kind of aa decent seat. We were there on Fri. and Sat. which was not as good as the following Wed. which is the full moon and final best night of the parade. On that night you'd need to bee there in morning to get the best seats fort the night parade. On the night we watched we counted 55 elephants. On Wed there will be over 80 and many more dancers and drummers. It will be televised that night all over the country live. Sunday were requested to go to check on and help with an IDP (Internaly Displaced Person) camp about 3 hours East of Kandy which was rapidly filling with people from a recent conflict problem on the east coast.

Hikkaduwa EMT Class

The Emt class is 1/2 over and whent very well so far. About 15 students not including Sean, 3 student/ translators and two RN's plus me and a powerpoint projector are what we have to work with. Class is held in a spare hall of a local Budddist monastery. It has some windows and a flat concrete roof left over from the Tsunami. At 0800 when class starts its about 90 degrees and 90% humidity and things rapidly get less comfortable as the sun heats things up. We have to be inside for the power point which I use LOTS of pictures for. Then try to get outside for practical stuff when possible. But we have to fight for space with the monks, dogs, trains and cows. The 300 year old monastery is really a neet place to have the class. It is considered even more holy as everything around it including including a large train with 2500 people on bourd were killed or flattened to ground level. Getting the message across from Engish to Singhala and also getting a new medical vocabulary established is a tough, but it's working out because everyone really wants to learn. The pictures above are of water rescue practical labs at the beach, an anatomy and physiology lab which was made a lot easier by a quick trip to the local butcher shop to get some cow "body parts". (Don't wory we checked with the monks first and they said it would be o.k.) The other picture is a local boy very interested in our mock scenarios at the train track near his home..... a future EMT?