And that's how they rope you in...

After being in Rangpur, a decent sized city, for the last 9 days, I had almost forgotten how beautifully green this country is, and the drive to Kurigram was great for reminding me! The drive up was more or less in the countryside (still people everywhere of course) and the sides of the road were full of fields of rice and jute. Along the road were huge trees that were hanging over the road too, making a canopy of sorts. It was a nice drive and I would have takend some pictures if we weren't hurtling by at the breakneck (by Bangladesh standards) speed of 70km/hr. The rains which are becoming more frequent, and lasting longer with the approaching monsoon season, made traffic a little lighter on the highways so travel was a bit faster. Although it still takes over an hour to drive about 55km.

I was only in Kurigram for 2 days, and one of those days was the best of my trip so far, from a medical learning standpoint. Instead of standing in the corner of the OR watching a surgery (which was interesting, but got tiring) I went on rounds with the doctors, and the ones I were with that day were fantastic for explaining things to me and understood that I had done cardio and resp so let me examine those patients, look at chest xrays, and talk about treatments. It's not much compared to the early exposures people are having in Canada I am sure, but its the most medical interaction I've had since I've been here. I also walked out into the village to see a nutrition centre with both and inpatient and outpatient ward. The outpatient ward does workshops and screens for severe malnutrition in children under 5. If their weight is less than 3 standard deviations from the WHO average for their height, they are admitted and put on scheduled feeding protocols. The recovery they make is so rapid - within a week they are often discharged. The centre was staffed by what seemed like a great group of boisterous nurses. They were also giving out H1N1 vaccinations as they are apparently hitting their outbreak now.

The guesthouse in Kurigram is small - only 3 rooms I believe. The person running it, Joseph, was working in Rangpur when I was here last and he was very excited to see me. The perfect word to describe him is simply kind. He is soft-spoken and pulled out his camera to show me pictures of his daughter, son, and wife who he is very proud of, plus some pictures of the other U of M students who went through. I also got to meet his son when he came up for a visit. I had such delicious suppers there as he said that rice and dahl get so boring. It was a wonderful note to be leaving Bangladesh on. People like Joseph are what makes you keep going back to places like Bangladesh, even though I can say that, on more than one occasion I looked around and thought, "what the hell am I doing back here?" But because of people like Joseph, I may just be back again.