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.