Prepare!

    "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.  Matt 25:13

   This verse refers to Christ's return, but foresight is a valuable quality at any time.  This past Sunday, SPPC conducted an information session on emergency preparedness.  We do live in an earthquake zone, after all. 
   Even if the big one doesn't hit in the next few years, there will undoubtedly be power outages this winter, so it is a good time to think of how we can care for ourselves for 36-48 hours.  Guests from the Sidney Fire Department brought examples of survival kits, some small,

And some large, all approved by both the Canadian and US Coast Guard.  If you're like me, you put off assembling a kit yourself, so it's great to have the opportunity to buy one already put together.   The food and water inside are guaranteed for five years so you won't have to replace it in a hurry!  Joe McCracken from our Session is taking orders for anyone who wants to purchase an emergency kit.  He suggested they make a perfect gift for that someone who has everything. 

      For more information, or to order a kit, call the office at (250) 656-2241

From Linda in Nepal

 I thought I would try and give you a run down on the day in the life of our time so far in Chitwin. Chitwin is a southern province of Nepal. It is a jungle region and very flat. As a  matter of fact we have not seen the mountains yet! The weather in Kathmandu was both foggy and smoggy so we did not see them and here the weather has been foggy in the morning and overcast most days. This is unusual for the region. We have even had rain which is not typical.  We also experienced a earthquake. I felt it.  In fact, I thought an animal had jumped on my bed!!!


Now a snapshot of our days......

 We get up around 0730 as we need to be either in class or at the hospice at 0900. Breakfast is a simple affair of instant coffee or tea, instant hot cereal and fruit. We do not have cooking ability and eat everything we prepare out of a teacup, now we have 2 cups so we can have our coffee and eat our cereal at the same time.


Showers are an adventure. There is no hot water.  There is a large tank on the roof 1000 litres and if it has been a warm day the day before and not too cold overnight you can get this not so cold water. There is an art to a daily shower in cold water. You do not stand under the nozzle, you do soap yourself all over then you rinse in parts. For hair you just take a deep breath and go for it. The air around you is warm so it is not as cold as it would be in Victoria. Also you are not in a stall, the shower nozzle is in the middle of the bathroom and you just turn it on.  There's a toilet on one side, sink on the other so there is room to stay away from the water and just rinse in sections. Believe it or not when done you feel just as clean as you did at home, just more invigorated.


We walk to class or the hospice unit, very pleasant but there are still a lot of motorbikes and bikes on the road so you have to watch where you're going. The hospital system here is one of lining up rather than appointments, so the roads and side walks are full of people going to the cancer hospital. The flow of people seems to start at about 0600 in the morning so there is a lot of activity.


We eat lunch and supper in the canteen attached to the hospital. The menu rarely varies so our diet consists of: chow mien, daal bhat(rice, vegetables, daal, a spicy pickle), pohokora. samosas, chicken some days and our favourite potato chop which is like a croquette. We ask for potato chop every day, and the canteen manager will say ready at 2 o'clock. We go back and he says ready at 6 o'clock, and when we go for supper he says tomorrow. This means everyday we are excited when we arrive at the canteen only to discover tomorrow will be the day! Every other night we eat western which means cup of soup, chips, crackers, chocolate bars, peanut butter in our little house. You can only take so much rice in a week.

Laundry is another of our weekly challenges. We have 3 choices: the bathroom sink, a bucket at the tap in the yard or wear your clothes dirty. Since the last is not an option we find that one of us is doing laundry everyday. The pastor's wife loaned us a clothes hanger so we look forward to warm days to dry the clothes outside. The locals are always walking by our little house looking at us.  I don't think they are used to westerners doing their laundry in the front yard. Of course when you do laundry you run out of water in your tank. The first time we made a panic call to one of the nurses and she came over and showed us how to fill up the tank, so we have developed a routine to ensure we have water when we turn on the tap. We boil all of our drinking water and have a wonderful hot water dispenser so never have to worry about that.

Electricity has been good. There are random outages daily but we have our flashlights handy. There was one during the teaching day so we went to a building that has a generator and carried on.


Our evenings have turned out to be a great part of our day. The three of us Marjorie(RN) and Ellen(Dr) sit around and prepare our lectures, read, do sudoku, knit, and visit. When we arrived none of us were well versed in the use of power point, flash drives, or writing presentations. So we sat at the computer and tried all the buttons and now we can all write a presentation, do clip art, change the background and we are so proud of ourselves. When I think of all the years I worked and could never find the time to learn these skills. I can't believe I had to go to Nepal to learn powerpoint.

Bed time comes early, as the days are busy. The nights can be noisy with howling dogs and jackals, and all of the things that go bump in the night, and there are a lot of them. But morning comes and we start again. I can say we are loving it!
 We are off to the animal reserve in this week where we will ride on the elephants, see the rhinos and bears,  and, hopefully, get a hot shower!





The adventure continues.  Watch this space for the next installment.