men at work

wotcha.

This week I have been mostly sweating.  I know I say it a lot but it is SO HOT here, and the humidity has just been hoiked up, so even more rancid.  I am sweating from my eyeballs.  The gross factor has skyrocketed, and I was already pretty gross to begin with

I havent done anything of interest, this is just a rambling post to fill time while I wait for Zolo to show up, so we can carry on with our ward visits.

So, I finished my 'initial programme' of training - this was, to recap for you, a series of lectures, discussions, demonstrations and assignments on five fundamental aspects of nursing,

1, the nursing process (assessment, diagnosis, planning, implemetation and evaluation)
2, Infection Control (basic microbiology, the spread of infections, the effective use of personal protective equipment, and how to deal with exposure to infection, eg, sharps injury.)
3, The physiology, prevention and treatment of pressure damage.
4, Safe moving and handling practices
5, Good practice for nursing patients with a disability

I then did three sessions of basic nursing knowledge, Vital signs, how and why we measure them, and the clinical implications of abnormal readings.  Coronary Heart Disease, phsysiology, signs and symptoms of an impending heart attack.  Respiratory physiology and common diseases of the respiratory tract, including TB, Pneumonia and acute Bronchitis, emphysema and Asthma.

I have also covered Wound Assessment and wound care and nursing documentation.

I have also started researching the WHO's (the world health organisation, not the band) recommendations for improving patient safety, and have written a proposal for the introduction of patient ID bands. 

Anyway, so now lessons are off for the summer, thank goodness, trying to teach when you have sweat in your eyes and you can feel your feet literally swimming in your shoes is NOT FUN. Although I have still been doing my Chingeltei lectures - more on the latest debacle there later.

So I have taken to ambling around the wards asking my students how they have been implementing and sharing the information I gave them.  In ICU they have totally taken on board the pressure area care stuff, and I nearly cried with joy when I saw how consciensiously they were applying all that I had taught.

In the Cardiac Surgery ward, the moving and handling techniques have been adopted, and appreciated.

It is such a buzz - especially since in a lot of the lessons they all just kinda sat there staring at me, falling asleep, or chtting on their mobiles.  Although as I said before, I did notice a definate shift after a while and they became more attentive.

Yesterday, after a comedy of errors, in which I forgot what day it was, lost my memory stick and threw one of my epic hissy fits, I had a lecture at the Chingeltei health centre.  It was on Diabetes, and it started off very well.  However, Zolo began to lose concentration after a while, and then my computer collapsed, and then I pulled the plug accidentally on the projector, couldnt access the english version of the lecture, so I tried to illustrate Ketoacidosis through the medium of contemporary dance, realised I couldnt remember exactly what it actually was, realised the next slide was hyperosmolarity and decided to quit while I was behind and while Z was still at least something resembling conscious.

Went home and had a lovely evening as I have had, for the past two nights, a couple staying with me.  they are friends of friends, but now I have adopted them as they are so lush.  I made a big beef curry, and we sat around my plastic table having some beers and indepth chats about life, love, the universe, party anecdotes and Mongolia.

* I have just been handed, by my colleague, a chocolate biscuit thingey, which was quite nice, and says on the front "It has been prepared with care with naturalness, freshness and lasting superior taste in mind".*

Oh, this is spiralling into another bohemoth post, but I have to add my photos, I saw these mongolian men painting a building the other day, and I loved the visual, so I want to share it.  I had to zoom in, so the picture quality isnt great, but it reminds me of this puzzle I used ot have as a child which was of men at work. Also I just remembered I went for a walk in the country the other day, and climbed up 666 steps to a monument on top of a hill, and then went to a bizarre little garden in the city, half real half plastic, but pretty pretty. So here are a collection of photos for your delection.  Enjoy.  Over and out.

buddha park

Buddha

Soldier dude

Zaisan Monument (thts Lenin and Sukhbaatar)

View from the top of the hill

A decorated hill

Centrepiece of the city garden

Mongolian Felt Slippers

Men at Work

Awright dawlin'

City street

City Slicker

(me)

random bits and bobs

I keep writing blog posts and they get longer and longer, and I still don’t ever say all the things I want to, all the interesting, weird, random things about Mongolia, the Mongolians, life in UB, etc etc.

Reading back over my past posts, I realise I didn’t say anything about the Theatre. I went to see the Ballet there, Swam Lake. It was beautiful. The set was modest but ingeniously expressive. The dancers were, on the whole, very accomplished. There were a couple, most notably one boy who played the court jester, who were a bit unsteady and ungainly..... I wondered if he was perhaps drunk, but his awkward landings and clumsy arm movements were not cringy, in fact they were endearing, as he was still utterly committed to his performance, and seemed to be oblivious to his heavy footedness.

The theatre itself is small but lovely, above is the auditorium, below, the corridors of the theatre...

The chandelier in the main auditorium.

The performance was good, but the Mongolians make an ADHD-esque audience. They talk and move around, and take calls on their mobile....there were a group of young children, perhaps between 5 and 10 years old, all sitting together, without adult supervision, who were just larking around throughout the entire performance. We made like grouchy old ladies and shushed them.

So, that was the theatre, I have been trying ever since to get tickets to the opera or to another ballet.

Restaurants were another thing I wanted to talk about. It is funny, it goes against the restrained and polite British manner, but in Restaurants you are allowed to bellow for the waitress, “zorchoooooo!”, and someone will come scurrying over immediately.

Service is hit and miss, and I still cannot wrap my head around some of the things that happen in restaurants....for example I have gone somewhere, walked in, sat down, the waitress comes over, notepad in hand, I make my order and they look pained, writing it down, they potter off, only to come straight back to say “багуй” (haven’t got) then they shake their head and cross their arms across their chest, the sign for “we’re closed”..... Ok, so why did you let me come in, sit down and order before telling me this?!?

Kate and I went to an “Italian” restaurant the other day, quite a posh one, as K was wanting to treat us. We were seated by a vacant looking young man and then left for ten minutes, we had to go and find him to try and place our order, we both wanted pasta, which we found was “багуй”. SO we went to another little place, that does cheap eats, and we both ordered the same dish of beef and rice. We both got different things, which were not beef or rice. This happens sometimes, we have ordered different things before, and been brought out the same dish each (not what either of us ordered), or one will order something and be brought something different. Most of the time what you get it perfectly nice, so its fine, but sometimes you get something truly weird, like spaghetti with cream and cinnamon....

There is a cheap burger place that we used to go to, that is run by an American Mongolian, but he has not been here for the last few weeks and the place is falling apart. Orders take aaaaaages to come, then they are put on the counter and left – it is tantalising to see the food you have waited so long for, and watch the waitress faffing about doing something else, every now and again she will look over, dispassionately, at the food, waiting to be delivered, and then go back to dusting the door handle or whatever other non-urgent task she is performing. Then you find that the burger is undercooked and the bun is stale. Bad news, we don’t go there anymore.

Sometimes I am left utterly non-plussed by the Mongolian ways.

The other day I mentioned to my over-zealous colleague that I felt run down, and wondered if I was slightly anaemic. He immediately whipped me off to the Korean Hospital for a blood test.

I had to go to the desk and “register” – this consisted of giving my name and date of birth to a girl behind a desk, and receiving in return a card with my name on it. I was sent off to another room where I poked my head in and told someone who was sitting at a desk that I needed a CBC. She typed something into a computer (while a Mongolian man leaned past me, talking roughly at her) and I then had to go back to a different desk to pay. Then I was sent upstairs to have the blood taken.

In the UK we take blood from the vein in the crook of the elbow, here the nurse put a small needle in the vein in the back of my hand and drew the blood through a tube into a container. She was very proficient, but seemed detached. I walked into the room while another patient was having blood taken. Normally (in UK) one would immediately retreat, apologising, but I knew that if I did this then someone else would just push in front of me – this is the Mongol way – so I stayed, neither the nurse nor the patient batted an eyelid.

I had a peek into some of the wards as I walked through the hospital, it is a private hospital, so much more snazzy than the one I work at.

When the boys heard I had been to the hospital they naturally asked what was wrong with me, and I had to say, feebly, that I was just feeling a bit wibbly due to the intense heat. I don’t know if I will ever live this down, every time I now say anything about the heat they ask if I need to go to hospital...or they will feign melodrama, put on a falsetto and say, hand on forehead, “ooh its so hot, maybe I should go and get a blood test”. Very funny.

But I do have to say, the heat is pretty ferocious. It has been in the high 30’s on and off for weeks now, too long outside and I feel like I am being cooked alive. The only reprieve we get is torrential rain every now and again, which is very annoying, but the Mongolians love it. I have a dark tan on my arms and shoulders, and feet, but the rest of me is still pretty pale as I only get the sun walking around town, there is nowhere to go and sunbathe. Although I plan to get out to swim in the river as soon as poss, and try and even up my skin tone as I am one stripy lady at the moment.

SO – there is a little bit more about day to day life. The other day I went to walk around the monastery and then went for a massage – but I am waiting for photos of these little trips, so will talk about them when I can illustrate them.

Work-wise, things are slow. No one seems to care what I am doing! Although my boss came to me the other day and said she had been talking to one of my students, who talked highly of my lessons and was implementing some of the things I had taught, into practice in her department. That was incredibly gratifying to hear. I did think, throughout the course, that the nurses were warming to me, and starting to understand why I was talking about these things, I tried to make what I taught follow a coherent pattern, and link up rationales for certain practices, but I didn’t get much feedback and had begun to get disheartened.

My boss also told me that she wanted me to stay for another year in my post, which was very touching. I don’t think I will do it though, as much as I like my job, I feel there are more things, new challenges, better opportunities, on the horizon. I don’t know what they are or whether I will even recognise them when I see them, but something will happen I am sure of it......

Nadaam pants and horses

Sooo, I have had a week off work, kind of enforced as my interpreter wanted to go on holiday, and there is not much I can do at work without her....

Over the weekend and mondya and tuesday it was nadaam, the manly sports festival of Mongolia, which was great.

I went out to the countryside with some pals and this is some of the scenes....

the wrestling ring. shame it was such an overcast day

some manly wrestlers.....

before they wrestle thay do a dance which is like an eaggle flying, it is hard not to laugh, as they look like kids pretending to be airoplanes...

can you see the guy at the far right of the pic

oh, and this is a shot from the van we came in, we got so many people in there it was sardine central.

this is a хошоор station, the fried dumplings, I dont really like them sice the food poisioning incident so i ate шорлог instead, a meat kebab which was so yummy, I had prok first, then lamb, and then later realised that eating only meat all day wasnt that great an idea.  aah, hindsight.

So, we watched the wrestling, then some horse riding and then just kinda wandered around taking in the atmosphere, everyone was chilled

the mix of modern and traditional was interesting, they went together quite seamlessly i thought, but then I have been here a few months now, and got used to it.

the mongolians go in for al fresco snooker in a big way, there are snooker tables dotted about all over the city, so of course it was only natural they would have some here too..

So - that was my nadaam, a good time.

the rest fo the week was pretty quiet, it was punctuated by the departure of a good friend.  The thing with this transient ex-pat life of exile, is that things are constantly changing.  I was discussing the other day how life here - and I would imagine in other places as an ex-pat - is like a soap opera.  Characters come along, and make an impressiona and then disappear.

I am very sad that J has gone though, probably sadder about it than I would be about anyone else.

We had his leaving do in the poshest bar in UB, a sky lounge with amazing views over the city, we dressed up nice, and pretended to be proper people for the night.

A live band played nineties indie ballads, and a storm raged outside, thunder and lightning punctuating the angst of the evening, a pathetic fallacy.

Then the "disco" and again, the strobe lights on the dance floor were so full on I thought i was going to have a seizure at one point, everyone gradually left as the visual assault was just too much.

The day he left we wandered through the city solomn and aimless, a group of friends soon to be depleted.

Then he left, and we stood in the street watching the taxi pull away. 

Anyway, to get over it I went to the countryside again, and this time the weather was absolutley gorgeous.

It was another sardine situation in the van though, and on the way there the door fell off...

welcome to mongolia!

We stayed in a ger camp, sunbathed and trundled.  I was bored after a while though, and got moody when we got stranded there, so I think I am going to stay in the city for the next few weeks, just venturing out to the hills a short bus ride away. 

I like to get some fresh air, but I feel unplugged from my life support if I am away from the smog and the crowds and the traffic for too long.

I have something in my eye

With all this dust flying around, I have permanently gritty eyes and it bugs me.

Anyway - life has been pretty quiet lately, just work and home and some meals at my house, and the pub quiz.  I was the question master the other day, for the first time, and it was a lot of fun, but hard work to keep the crowd in check!

This weekend it is Nadaam, a big Mongolian festival, in which the three "manly sports" are practised.  these are Archery, Horse Riding and Wrestling.

I am keeping keeping away form the big celebrations, as I have heard it is quite overwhelming - crowded, full of pick pockets, hot and stuffy, and expensive.  Instead, I am heading out of the city on tuesday with some "in the know" people, to watch a kind of mini nadaam, which I think will be a lot more enjoyable.

So - that will be the NEXT blog post, but for now I thought I would put us some photos that I took today, I just walked along snapping away, so this is a chronicle of my walk into town, starting from my front door....