Brianwongderlust

One of the staff members took a picture of me to remember my unconscious hours.

Of all the times I’ve been sick and feverish in Korea, my first trip to a hospital abroad was surprisingly in Nepal. Two days in.

So here’s the thing. I sweat. Like, a lot. And in unforgiving, unrelenting sun, I don’t really tend to stop. Remember my Philippines trip where I didn’t stop sweating for the entire month? Well, it happened again, but this time in Nepal. And I had no fan. And I slept in a shed.

Anyway, the fan and the shed have nothing to do with the trip to the hospital, but the heat does. As you know, I volunteered in Nuwakot, Nepal with All Hands Volunteers for my summer break from teaching. For two weeks, I was part of a team building a school just north of Kathmandu, and the worksite was hotter and sunnier than anything I had ever experienced.

My first day on site, I was careful. I remembered my massive dehydration (read: unofficially diagnosed E. coli) stint during my first week in the Philippines, and I wanted to make sure my stomach was in tip top shape. Little did I know that my stomach would be the least of my problems.

Leave it to me to get massively dehydrated the old fashioned way – by shoveling and carrying buckets of gravel. In the Philippines, we would often get some shade or rain to keep us going throughout the day, but in Nepal we were exposed and vulnerable.

So the day started fine, working in the workshop area making form boxes out of wood. After our morning break (aka “tea time”), we did our first cement pour of the day, and off of a high from yesterday’s gravel shoveling team, I eagerly joined the cement prep squad. On the first day of pouring, we had four people on cement, but today we only had two, so the pressure was on. As it turns out, shoveling gravel is about the only thing that I excel at (or so I thought) on a construction site, so I figured I’d go all out. I’d fill three buckets while my partner filled two and we crushed the first pour. Water bottles (750ml) consumed: 4.

After the pour, we ate lunch, where I sat in a chair directly in the sun instead of the ground in the shade, which looking back may not have been a good idea, but still probably wasn’t the last straw. After lunch, we coated form boxes with oil so the cement could set in them but not stick to the sides, but that shortly ended to do another concrete pour. However, we first had to transport concrete from the warehouse to the mixer. Being more than capable of carrying 50 kilo bags of cement during my time in the Philippines, I saw no issue with the transfer and volunteered to carry bags to the pour site while others used wheelbarrows. Turns out my muscle memory from Tacloban didn’t stick and I ended up exhausted before the second pour.

I ended up making it through the second pour, shoveling gravel with my partner and then taking a break afterwards to refuel. At this point, I didn’t feel dehydrated, but you never know I suppose. Usually I can feel the onsets of serious dehydration early on as a runner, so at this point I thought I had nothing to worry about. (Normally, when I’m running and need water and electrolytes, my fingertips will start to tingle and then my hand goes numb. This is probably not normal, but what can you do?)

So with 30 minutes left, I joined a gravel transport team, shoveling gravel and then wheelbarrowing it over to another spot on site. While this was definitely hard work, I still felt fine after we were done. Exhausted, but that’s expected for this kind of thing.

Now that the day was over, we packed into one of the trucks to head home. This is where it started. First, it seemed innocent. As I entered the truck, my leg cramped up, but it didn’t last very long so I thought nothing of it. It felt like a normal day but about ten minutes from base, my hands went numb. Five minutes from base, my feet and legs went numb. Two minutes away from base, my arms went numb, and by the time we were unloading the truck, I couldn’t move my body at all. I got some help out of the truck and then a group of volunteers and staff fed me rehydration salts while keeping my joints moving to increase circulation. Eventually, feeling returned to my body and I thought the worst was over.

I made my way down the hill to base and kept drinking liquids, dousing myself with water, and awkwardly making dance-like moves to stay mobile and keep my blood circulating. However, my head had started to tingle, and a headache had set in quickly. I continued “dancing” for about 40 minutes, but the headache eventually worsened and I started to get dizzy. After a couple more minutes of this, I began to feel bloated and was unable to consume any more liquids, leading to nausea and balance problems. It was at this time that the numbness had returned to my arms and legs, so I got in a van to be driven off to the hospital, with my leg cramping as soon as I entered the car for good measure.

What followed was perhaps one of the most difficult 20 minute drives I have ever experienced. After only 3 minutes, my dizziness mixed with the bumpy Nepal roads resulted in me having to request an emergency stop to possibly throw up. As I stood bent over on the side of the road trying to maintain consciousness, I wished so badly for all of this to just end and everything to go back to normal. When I wasn’t able to throw up, I got back in the car and cramped up again, creating an incredibly painful remainder of the ride.

While I did manage to control my nausea for the remainder of the trip by alternating breathing exercises with brief periods of involuntary unconsciousness, I did in fact throw up as soon as I exited the vehicle just outside the hospital. Although I didn’t realize it at the time in my haze of dehydration, I guess I ended up throwing up all over one of the staff members who had brought me to the hospital. This also made my stomach muscles tighten and cramp up as I continued to throw up the electrolytes and water I tried so hard to pack into my body earlier.

As soon as I had emptied my stomach, I was whisked into the hospital by the volunteers and placed onto the bed. At this point, my hands had begun to twitch involuntarily – my fingers clenching and moving without my permission. The next 3-4 hours were a blur, but I remember closing my eyes and seeing mixtures of red and black shaped while feeling like I was shoveling gravel (go figure). I remember slipping in and out of consciousness and feeling needles stuck in me for injections, an IV, and a blood test, as well as a quick finger prick for added torture. Apparently I woke up and asked for the time multiple times as well as asking where I was. In my incoherent babbling, I also tried to explain what I was feeling with the shapes and the gravel, but I’m fairly certain I was only spewing nonsense.

The entire 3-4 hours from around 7:00 – 10:30, my hands were shaking uncontrollably, so I was pretty concerned about what was happening. Every time I regained consciousness, I wanted to lose it again. My head hurt, I was seeing shapes, and my body was moving without me telling it to. I also remember feeling panic, anxiety, and worry about if I was going to make it through the night, but I luckily slipped back into unconsciousness before I was able to think too long about the worst case scenario.

The most vivid thing I remember about these few hours was waking up to a sort of cream being rubbed on my chest and different clamps being applied to parts of my body. I remember this because I looked around the room at people staring at me, panicked and thinking that I was about to be given some sort of electro-shock therapy. In my futile attempts to remember how defibrillation worked on television, I was convinced it began with cream being rubbed on a person’s chest and then clamps being applied. I asked repeatedly what was going to happen to me, if I was actually getting shocked. I had justified it by thinking that I was passing out so much that maybe they wanted to shock me to keep me conscious for some reason. No matter how many times they told me no, I was convinced that any second someone was going to yell “clear!” and I was going to start convulsing uncontrollably. It ended up being something they used to monitor vitals, but the fear in that moment was real.

Around 10:30pm, I woke up tired and fatigued, but the shaking had gone. During those brutal 3-4 hours, I had been fed pills and not given one IV, but three IVs of sodium chloride and dextrose, which I’m pretty sure means sugar and salt water. After that, I slept and went to the bathroom every hour, hydrated but still incredibly tired. I was able to leave the hospital and return to base around 10:00 the next morning. Looking back, it could have been a lot worse, as I had it better than the woman next to me, who was suffering from the exact same thing but in her entire arms and legs rather than just the hands.

For the entire experience, the All Hands staff stayed with me, from helping me out of the truck on base, to giving me liquids and rehydration salts, and all the way through the drive to the hospital and the stay overnight. I will forever be grateful to these wonderful people who made me feel safe and cared for in a time when I thought the worst was happening, and I don’t know how I could have dealt with this without them.

Also, the actual hospital facility was great. The treatment worked, and the staff didn’t seem to mind working with a smelly, unshowered, dirty foreigner caked in mud from the day’s volunteer work. Oh, and it only cost 1,650 rupees, which is about $16.50.

I don’t really remember any of this at all.

      Keeping with All Hands Volunteers blogging tradition, I’ll be following up my Nepal introduction with a Nuwakot base overview. Apologies that this has taken some time – I’ve been busy since getting back to Korea but am hoping to get on a regular posting schedule soon. Here we go.

Home sweet pink home.

The All Hands Nepal base is three stories tall. There are bedrooms on the first and second floors and a single large bedroom on the top floor that can probably hold over 30 people. Everything is open air, so whatever temperature it is outside is also the temperature in the base. There are bathrooms and showers on all floors. There is also living space in the backyard of base in the form of four sheds (each with two bunkbeds) and a camping area for those who want to sleep in tents.

Second floor hallway with bedrooms on both sides.

Second floor bathroom area and drinking water.

The top floor – over 30 volunteers can stay in this room.

All bedrooms are coed and dorm-style. I ended up telling the base manager on my base tour that I didn’t care where I slept, so I was placed in one of the sheds in the backyard. Although the shed was hot and stuffy and sometimes smelled like wet dog, I was able to call it home by the time I had finished my time in Nepal, and I’m glad I was placed there instead of in a room in the house.

Sheds out back. Mine was the first one on the left with the door flap open in this picture.

Best shed. Appropriately named “Paint the town shed.” Also, home.

Inside of our cozy little shed. My bed is on the top right (later moved to the bottom left when roommates left project).

The first floor is where most of the fun happens. It contains the kitchen, staff offices, eating/lounging area, a common room, and the laundry/dishwashing stations. After work, most people hang out somewhere on the first floor, though there are balconies on the second and third floors that are used by a few people as well.

AHV Staff office space.

Shoe area for all of our work boots.

Eating/lounging area.

Another view of the eating/lounging area.

The smoking area.

First floor common room. It looks dirty and smelly because it is. But had some of the best nights here with the best people.

View while sitting in the common area above.

Although running water isn’t always guaranteed, we only lost water for short periods of time during my stay. We also experienced a few brownouts, which also only lasted for short periods of time each time. As expected, hot water was not available on base, though the heat and work we were doing made cold water showers extremely welcome and even preferred. Most bathrooms had Western-style toilets, but the one on the first floor I ended up using a lot (closest to my shed outside) had a squat toilet, which I can now confidently use!

The tap water isn’t safe to drink, but we’ve got filtered water in jugs at the base. Meals are served on work days, so we are left to our own devices to cook or buy food on Saturday, our day off. Luckily for us, we are located near a small town where there are two or three restaurants that are used to volunteers ordering food. Most of our schedule can be found on the first floor, where there is the classic AHV whiteboard detailing the different projects the All Hands is doing and who is assigned to each project.

The mighty AHV job board.

The people here are from all around the world. During my stay, I met people from Iran, France, Spain, Singapore, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, the US, Canada, and so many other countries as well. The best part about the international projects is that everyone is from all over the world and comes from different backgrounds and cultures. On base, all of these cultures and lifestyles come together and create something magical.

There are so many different ways to spend the time we are given on this earth, and living on base, even if only for two weeks this time, was a great way to learn. This is a place where people wake up early, cover themselves in dirt, sweat, and concrete all day, and come home exhausted to a small house where we all live together in close quarters. And everyone does it for no pay. It’s great to see a place where everyone has a different story, a different past, a different way of living life, but we’ve all gathered in this remote pink building because our different experiences have led us to believe that we are here to give.

I never thought I’d find a place like Alex Garland’s “The Beach,” but here I was, living it for a second time in under a year. All Hands Projects showcase true community, where everyone knows what’s happening and everyone has bought into the same way of living – of giving without expecting anything in return. These are people who have realized that there is more out there than suits and ties, or fanny packs and tourist attractions. The wanderers, the nomads, the optimists, the fearless, most determined, crazy-wonderful, weatherproof bunch of friendly strangers that the world has to offer, all living under one roof. When you bring together so many good people from so many different places, what else can you expect but to create magic?

One of the only places I’ve felt truly “home.”

Sometime back in May, the volunteer bug bit me and I knew I couldn’t let summer vacation pass without spending some time on an All Hands base. While teaching in Korea has been incredibly fulfilling and rewarding, there’s something about working with people from all over the world to rebuild lives after a natural disaster that I can’t turn down.

I think the decision to join another project was a gradual thing, starting with seeing pictures of repeat volunteers visiting different projects online, with my mind being made up when I practically binge-watched all of the videos on the All Hands Youtube channel. Life in Korea is comfortable, and I am privileged to be here, but it felt wrong to take my vacation to travel and be a tourist in other countries when disasters happen every day. Since I had the time, money, and resources to get me to a disaster site, I decided to go for it. So, I applied to Nepal.

Well, I actually applied to Fiji, but the Fiji project responded saying that they would be ending before my Korean school’s summer vacation started. I immediately applied to Nepal, and after I was accepted, Fiji wrote back saying that they could actually take me, but if you recall, the same exact thing happened last year. In 2015, I had applied to Nepal as my first choice and ended up going to the Philippines in a similar situation. The Philippines ended up being the best month of my life, so Nepal 2016 was looking pretty promising already.

The team in Nepal has been in the country for over a year, but there is still work to be done. On April 25, 2015, Nepal was hit by a 7.8 earthquake, killing over 9,000 people and injuring over 25,000. The worst earthquake since 1934, the devastation worsened when a 7.3 aftershock hit only 17 days afterwards on May 12^th. After the initial disaster, the Nepali government asked for support from international organizations, and All Hands was one of many to answer the call.

In April 2015, All Hands Volunteers sent their Disaster Assessment Response Team (DART) to evaluate the situation on the ground, and they decided that there was need for All Hands contribution. So, in March 2015, they began to take day volunteers, rubbling and cleaning up where they could. In June, All Hands began to take residential volunteers and set up bases in Kathmandu and Melamchi, finishing each project in November 2015 and April 2016 respectfully. The volunteers worked to rubble damaged structures, distribute food and water, build Temporary Learning Centres (TLC’s) and temporary homes, and whatever other work was needed. In November 2015, the project in Nuwakot, Nepal opened, which is where I volunteered this August.

So, on August 7, I boarded a plane to Nepal.

The trip was long, and I could barely hide my excitement on the three different flights plus the 4-hour bus that I had booked to my final destination. When I walked up to the All Hands Nuwakot base, a day and a half after I had left my apartment in Korea, it felt good to be home again. I was quickly greeted by the base manager and shown around the building (base tour coming later) before being briefed on the current active projects.

The main project in Nuwakot is the Prithvi school build, where we are rebuilding the only public school in the area. The children are currently attending school in Temporary Learning Centres (TLCs) that were built almost immediately after the earthquake. The reason that TLCs are built immediately after earthquakes is that child trafficking peaks after natural disasters in Nepal. With all of the confusion and struggle to restore normalcy after a disaster, children are particularly vulnerable. During this time, schools are able provide a safe, productive space where children can remain during the day under the supervision of a teacher. However, the TLCs will be removed in December 2016, so the timeline for All Hands to finish the permanent structure is tight.

The TLCs, made with metal and extremely hot during the summer.

The school we are building will comprise of two buildings that will be two stories each, so this is the first time I have worked on a multiple floor construction site. The buildings are being built on new land that the school owns right next to the TLCs, rather than where the original school once stood. The foundations and floors are being built with concrete reinforced with rebar, and the walls are being made with bricks. We are working with local Nepali masons on the project who live within walking distance of our Nuwakot base.

Local masons having a meeting on site.

Site rules.

Everyone working hard in the workshop area.

Two buildings – one is just hole in the ground with columns and the other has two stories already.

Stairs to the second floor of one of the school buildings.

The second floor to one of the buildings – by the time I left, the entire concrete slab was poured for this floor.

Our partner and sponsor for the Prithvi school build is called Room to Read, an organization centered around improving literacy and gender equality in the developing world. This means that, as with most All Hands projects, the service to the community does not end with us simply constructing a building and leaving. After construction is complete, Room to Read will continue to work with the Prithvi School to provide training for teachers and books for the school’s library. This organization aims to not only help students develop their literary skills, but also to create an environment where children want to read. Long after we have put down our hammers and drills, Room to Read will be running its programs to continue making a positive impact on the community. And Prithvi School is not the only school we have planned to build with Room to Read – at the moment, All Hands hopes to construct five different schools with this organization. In fact, one has already finished since I have left Nepal, and another is currently being constructed in addition to Prithvi. You can learn more about Room to Read here.

Although this post has been largely informational, there will be more reflective entries coming. I was only in Nepal for two weeks because that was the length of my summer vacation from school in Korea (the kids got five weeks but I had to teach camp for three of them). While there were a lot differences with my Nepal experience compared to my Philippines All Hands trip, there were also similarities. And like every All Hands Volunteers trip I’ve been on, I know that this will not be my last. Stay tuned!