This is just an update. For more complete information please read the annual report of October 2002 and the reports that are linked from there.
If you want to read more details, please go to the site map and browse the "Latest News" of my previous journeys.

Latest News

(To be read from bottom to top!)

24.12.2002: No news today ...

Wishing all of you

Merry Christmas and peaceful holidays!

and ALL THE BEST for the coming year of 2003!

13.12.2002: I have come back home to Germany yesterday evening after a long journey, spending one night at the transit restaurant of Delhi airport and a few hours in Kuwait.
The last few days were very busy, cleaning things up and packing all my gear - all my personal books, trekking equipment etc., as well as all the toys and games, medicines and first-aid utensils that I use and keep for the children - because I still live in a lodge and the room must be empty if I don't want to pay for it while I am away.
Apart from some worries about some run-away kids (who should be at school), nearly everything was just good news - specially about that little girl with the heart surgery:

Shortly before being discharged from the hospital.
Just a few hours before going home
- only four days after the surgery.

She didn't have to stay at the hospital another ten days (as we had expected); her condition was so good and the doctor so happy about the outcome of the surgery, that she was discharged and sent home just four days after the surgery. Even by that time (and still wearing the big wound and the stitches), even I could easily see the success and the benefit of what we had done: Her face was fresh colours instead of grey, her finger-tips were red instead of the old pale blue; and that girl who could hardly walk 50 meters at a slow pace without being exhausted and having to rest, now was leisurely walking around the big central green of the hospital and wouldn't even feel tired.
On my last day her father visited me after they had returned to the hospital for the first check-up: Everything was fine and they should return only after two weeks to have another ultrasound. (The best News: He had wanted to bring the girl with him to say good-bye to me; but she was out and away playing with her friends and could not be found.)
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Now I shall be in Germany for nearly six weeks. Unless I get important news by e-mail either from Nepal or from Indonesia, I won't write very much on these pages. So even today I want to wish you - all of you!
All the best for this christmas season and for the whole of the coming year of 2003.
I would like to do this with one sentence that was very popular in Nepal under the former king who was killed in 2001:
May peace prevail on earth! - Let's hope for it! Let's pray for it!
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Please come back regularly to these pages after 20. January 2003, when I will be back in Nepal and report again much more frequently.

4.12.2002: Everything is going well - with the one exception that I am too busy with the ever growing number of children and hardly find the time to write the updates that should appear here more regularly...
Today I can give to you the happy news that the most difficult and most expensive surgery that I ever had done has been completed with success:
Last spring I was in a taxi with some of our children and the driver asked me (like so many before) who they were and what we do. I told him about our little project and he told me about his daughter: She has "a hole in her heart" since birth and needs surgery.

The girl's family in the garden of the hospital.
The girl (centre) and her family a day before the surgery
in the garden of the hospital.

During his first visit to my room some days later, he convinced me by having a file with all the papers of all examinations done since the girl was 3 months old. Now she is 11 years and he had all the papers, all the x-rays, all the ultrasounds of more than 10 years in good condition. The girl with a pale face and bluish fingers obviously needed help. I promised to do it.
SAHID GANGALAL NATIONAL HEART CENTRE is a quite new government hospital that has been treating heart patients for 7 years and been doing surgeries for the last 2 years. On 1. November I went with the girl and her father for consultations. On 20. November she was admitted for two days for an angiography (catheter from her groin into the heart). We were informed that the surgery could be done - but the waitlist was full up to the middle of 2003. With a letter that I wrote and a lot of talking, the father managed to convince the doctors: If for any reason I could not return to Nepal, the chance for this girl would be gone.

2 hours after leaving the intensive care unit
The little girl 2 hours after she
left the intensive care unit.

I was positively surprised when she was admitted the next day. The father is very clever, co-operative and reliable; without him I could not have done this with all the money in the world. He arranged things, he found 6 donors with the right blood group who would take a day off during the surgery because fresh blood was needed in addition to that blood and plasma that we took from the blood bank. He managed to take care of his and his family's living - though he stays with the girl all the time and cannot work and earn money; and he even had all the food for himself and the girl cooked at home and brought by his wife to reduce spendings.
This monday the girl was in the operation theatre from 8.30 in the morning until 3.30 p.m.; then in the intensive care unit until today. Now the worst is over, she is in the regular ward; the doctor says that he is happy and satisfied with her condition.
It will be another ten days until she will be discharged and go back home - and by that time I will have spent more than 150.000 Rupies (1900,- US-Dollar) on her.

16.11.2002: For today's program we had prepared the kids in many talks and had a poster on the wall of my room for the last two weeks: Free dental check-up for all our children.
The helpful man who always gives the tetanus injections to our children, as a health worker had some years experience of working in a dental clinic, and his daughter is going to be a dentist. Together they work on a research project on the influence of social environment, eating habits and other factors on the health of the teeth of children. They examined groups of children in towns and in villages, in cheap governmental and expensive private schools - and they wanted as a "mixed group" those children that come to my place every day.
More ... (and some photographs)

13.11.2002: Today is the last day of a general strike of three days. That means I could not go to many doctors since monday, could not buy any stationary stock or do any photocopies. All the schools are closed as well as most of those shops in which the children like to spend there time or in front of which they beg. So all the children come to my place and for the last two days we set a new record: 64 lunches every day!
Friday to monday we started a new round of tetanus-immunisation. 45 children got their first shot and if everything goes well and they all come for the following injections, there will be another 45 children who will be protected for up to 10 years.
Otherwise everything is normal and fine. The boy with the burned hands is doing well. Though he went back to the streets to stay with his friends, he comes every afternoon to have his dressings changed - and brings those friends with him, who also have wounds or scabies or any other problems.

Some of our girls dancing on the roof in front of my room.

4.11.2002: Tihar (in India Deepavali) is the second most important autumn festival in Nepal, worshipping Laxmi, the goddess of light. Thousands of candles, oil lamps and electric bulbs alight the town and adorn every house to show the way for the goddess to that one room where the offerings to her are held.
All the schools give holidays - and my room is more crowded then ever because all those children that usually go to school and come after 4 p.m., now come from 1 o'clock. But the general mood is at it's best, everybody is happy - and today the "afternoon girls" came in their best dresses and danced on the roof in front of my room.
Apart from this there is nothing special to report. It is still between 50 and 60 children every day. - And the boy with the burned hands takes me between 1 and 1½ hours every evening to clean his wounds, cut skin, and wrap it all in sterile bandages again.
Last week I took final responsibility of a new "case" that had been introduced to me in spring: The 11 years old daughter of a taxi driver who needs surgery of her heart. The father had known this since she was three months old, but could never afford to have the surgery done. (It will cost up to 1500 US-$!) He convinced me by showing me all the medical records, X-rays etc. of the last 10 or so years: He had them all and they were not damaged.
I will report on this again, once we have finished all the preliminary examinations.

27.10.2002: I arrived in Nepal nearly two weeks ago. The start was slow and easy because of some vacations and a big festival: Many children and their families had gone to their villages.
But meanwhile we have "full house" and my time is just running: Nearly every morning I go to the hospital or some doctor, and buy stationary from wholesale on the way "home" (to the hotel).
We have "open house" from 1 to 6 p.m. and up to 60 (!) children come every day to get their lunch, take a shower, have their wounds cleaned or their bandages changed. Mothers or elder siblings come (up to four in one day) for accountings or discussions. And in-between I update my file on all the kids with new photographs and informations on school, health, work of the parents etc.
I am still working on the translation of my yearly report into English; - it will take a few more days until you can read it here.

The burnt hand. (The scars on the chest are from burns in early childhood.)

At the moment we have three street children who used to come occasionally or rather seldom, staying at my room for good: One with an infected toe; one with multiple infected wounds who has to get his antibiotics exactly every 8 hours; and one who burned both his hands at a plastic-rubbish "camp fire"; one hand with just a few blisters, but the other one with 60% of the skin burnt with thick blisters close to infection.
Just cleaning the wounds and changing the bandages of these three children costs me about 1½ hours every evening.
You know me? - Then you know that I am fine and feeling well. - A day should have at least 40 hours and I would be one of the happiest and most satisfied people in this world!

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