Finishing after 1st Tibetan Medical Camp & Exhibition STORY OF A NATION February 13, 2015 at Sylviander House

The doctors have completed the consultations, patients have left with their medicines – the medical camp is over! 

After a delated lunch of 14 people, the tibetan team has to pack all remaining medicines, while Eswar happily rests for awhile. Far more patients have come this time than 2 months ago at Ernakulam. An exact number he will get to know later, roughly he counted around 150 patients.  

Sonam is busy with the final calculations … 

The big desk was shifted outside to the west verandah, then after all Dr.Dorjee Rapten puzzles the remaining bundles in their suit cases not to waste any space. 

After tea and snacks we make a farewell picture – together with our cat boy Simba and cat girl Moojoo. Only Dr. Phuntsok Dhondup is missing on the photo … 

Late afternoon, 2 auto rikshaws arrive in time. The heavy luggage has to be loaded in to the auto rikshaws … 

Elias, our friendly driver, has organized the needed transportations for the past days. Together with a fellow he will bring the tibetan team to the railway station of Alappuzha … 

Last words are changed … 

… good-bye begins … 

… Pinnekanam! 

We will see us again after 2 months … 

… when Dr.Dorjee Rapten will come with another team to Sylviander House for the next Wellbeing Tibetan Medical Camp in April … 

What‘s about me? complaints Elias. He too wants to be on the picture … 

Only six people are left … 

After our dinner, we are going to clear the exhibition in the museum. 

To remove the framed photographs of the exhibition from the walls was easy and fast done. 

But to put them back to their covers, in which Eswar and Sethu had brought them, posed a challenge. 

It seemes, either the covers had shrinked during the last days or the frames had grown by the many eyes seeing the exhibition … 

Everybody‘s hands are needed to manage this difficult puzzle. 

Finally some new covers for the biggest photographs have to be produced. 

That‘s why it is getting late, that‘s why this evening will be no film show.  We are tired and need sleep. 

Next morning after an early wake up, having a fast breakfast in a hurry in the kitchen, Tsundue digs a small Cashew plant and a young Punna plant from our garden. 

Alexander had told him, that some hundred years ago buddhist monks had lived in this area and used the oil from the seeds of the Punna Trees for their lamps, appreciating the golden light, this oil creates. 

Tsundue will take these plants to a tibetan refugee camp in Karnataka – I hope they will grow nicely in their new place … 

And possibly one day, the oil of Punna Trees will spark lamps again somewhere spreading a golden light … 

(Photos by Sylvie Bantle, Alexander Devasia, Sethu Das)

Impressions of Tibetan Medical Camp & Exhibition STORY OF A NATION February 11 - 13, 2015 at Sylviander House

Welcome to the 1st Tibetan Medical Camp at Sylviander House! 

As the tibetan team will practice every morning before consultation starts, they do their prayer in the room of Dr.Dorjee Rapten – beautiful murmuring sounds which remind me on a happy flowing brook … 

Kallianpur and Eldtho are ready on their place to welcoming the patients, then to explain to them the procedure of filling a form with their names, contact details and disorders for receiving afterwards a book, in which the doctors will note the medicines during consultation. 

The consultations can begin. If translation is needed, since the tibetan doctors and team don‘t speak malayalam, Eswar or Victoria will translate.

Sonam writes the bills according to the doctors‘ prescriptions to hand it over to Yeshi and Tenzin Dhonden, who will put the medicines together in the entrance hall and pack it in paper bags as the project doesn‘t allow any plastic. 

The medicines are stored in cotton bags labelled with tibetan characters, and for counting the pills, there is a special tool.

Because of the rush we have a delayed lunch, cooked by Lilama for around 18 people. It needs 3 rounds on our bavarian kitchen table until everybody has eaten – naturally the men have their food at first! 

After a short break, the consultations go on … 

The entrances to the doctors‘ rooms lay at the back side of the Sylviander House, where the patients can wait in the shadow of the verandah. 

For the Dr. Phuntsok Dhondup‘s consultation room we had prepared our massage room beside the kitchen.

A permanent coming and going of patients and visitors stirs the air with vibrancy … 

Constantly the campaigners of Friendsoftibet are busy. 

According to the sunlight, Kallianpur sometimes shifts his table to outside under the cashew nut trees, where he finds a shady place. 

During the consultations, the museum is open for the public. 

Photographs – with tibetan topic – taken by international photographers … 

… flags, coins … 

… and even the old radio of HH the XIV Dalai Lama used in Tibet and in exile is exhibited there. 

Often the visitors are interested to get to know more about, then Eswar will explain. 

Due to the number of patients it gets late until the doctors finish the consultations. 

After the dinner, Tenzin Tsundue – the tibetan activist and poet – entertains us with films he brought – together with a beamer – which he projects on the wall at the upstairs verandah, then we enjoy an open air cinema under a stary night … 

The next day after breakfast the consultations start punctually … 

Alexander assists where he is needed, I help Lilama in the kitchen preparing salad – tomato, cucumber, onion with french dressing or green papaya from our garden spiced according to a thai recipe I‘ve learned once in Thailand – and always I add my home grown herbals. 

Lilama too consults the doctor and here she is taking her first tibetan medicine after lunch, looking quite astonished about this experience. 

Breakfast on day 3 – the last day of the tibetan medical camp … 

Dr.Dorjee Rapten demonstrates the preparation of his favourite Tsampa, then Tenzin Tsundue shows how Tibetans use to eat it by making a roll. 

Dr.Dorjee Rapten leaves us his leftover of Tsampa, which we also like to eat, of course not prepared as dry as the tibetan style … 

… and he takes the chance to perform a handover ceremony!

The tibetan camp on this last day lasts up to noon, ending before lunch. While the last patients are consulting the doctors, the tibetan team prepares already for packing the medicines. 

Finally all patients have left. While everybody has lunch in the kitchen, our cat boy Simba wonders at the sudden silence after 3 days of rush. 

I am satisfied how clean it looks around the house! 

Typical for a German, it was my idea to install a waste bin next to the entrance area. While arranging a notice on it at the evening before the camp‘s start, this issue caused quite some confusion among my Malayalee friends of Tibet, since they had seriously to ponder for a long time about what could be the word for ‘waste bin‘ in malayalam language. After fussy debates and a look-up in the dictionary they found a word, which Alexander with the help of Sethu‘s spelling wrote on the paper I‘ve fixed at my german waste bin – which traveled from Germany to Kerala in a shipping container. 

(Photos by Sylvie Bantle, Eswar Anandan, Sethu Das and Prayag Mukundan)

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