1.Arrival at RTC ( smart hire car)
2. Sunny & Me on a big pile of poo
3. Khampuan holds court at lunch
4. Some patients wathcing French movie on Chris's laptop
(No I am not making that up)
5. Irish spot the ball
6. Chris, Souly & Sunny attampting to re activate my spell checker
7. I have no idea apart from 125 cc Honda
8. I'm sorry your morning swim is cancelled
9. first SEDA/EWB meeting
10. Chris with Noi & Ven
It’s been a busy couple of days so I haven’t had time to blog. But it is Monday morning and I have a bit of me time so I’d thought I’d try to get a few words up into the ether. I have met up with what could loosely be described as the ‘team’ which is Sunny, a really cool dude from Canberra, and was instrumental in the instigation of the RTC biogas project, and Chris nationality indeterminant but it is somewhere between French/Swedish and American, although at the current time it is definitely Laos. Permits organised and a hire car found (Souly had a meeting to go to so we had to make our own way up there). When the phrase ‘hire car’ was banded round and images of Getz, Barrina and excel’s come to mind, completely forgetting what the access roads are like to the hospital, so I was pleasantly surprised when a Ford Ranger got delivered. As I’m the only one with the international licence, I had to drive. So the four of us set off, that is myself Chris, Sunny and Somkid from SEDA who was there to ‘keep an eye’ on us and act as interpreter. The trip is a lot more unpleasant than it sounds, I have got used to the VT traffic on a bike (a lot more scarier than anywhere I have been so far), and all of a sudden I’m in a huge 4 wheeled drive, left hand drive with manual gearbox with about a zillion different drive options, instruction book is in French. No problems I can do this. The hospital or RTC as it is known is not far from VT, a left turn at KM 52 on the way to Louanphrabang, the turn off is not marked at all. Then about 10 or 15 Km of some desperately bad road, the Ranger or its ilk are the only tool for the job.
We were welcomed by Master Khampuen and his wife (wife# 5 or 7 we haven’t quit deciphered that yet, seems although being a remarkable doctor, personal relationships are not his strong suit), he is an unbelievable young looking 78 year old and exists on a diet of hard work, Lao beer and local brand of cigarettes called ‘double lucky’, you may be surprised to learn that they do not have a health warning. I have heard a good deal about Khampuen from Souly, Sunny & Chris and was keen to see for myself the work which was being done there, the only diagnostic tool he has is a blood pressure measure kit and some remarkable claims were being made about his abilities. I will state for the record that he is medically trained, he uses a combination of western medicine knowhow and traditional medicine and his own diagnostic abilities, I will come to that later. My personal interest is not in the medical aspects of the centre but the biogas and electricity generation side. But the fact that the place exists is a tribute to local guile, ingenuity and support from donations and of course the work of Master Khampuen. It is a true collective built with next to zero finance. The good doc was in consultations until 2:00PM when we would have lunch together so this gave me ad Sunny some time to shoot the video about the Biogas project. There was a problem with the system as the pressure was down, either there was a leak in the distribution or there was a problem with the fermentation chamber, after some discussion we concluded that the first and obvious thing to do was to put a pressure gauge on the outlet of the fermentation tank to see if the problem is up stream or downstream. I could prattle on about the workings of the biogas system and its construction but that would take forever. The most important thing to know is that every morning 100 kg of cow poo and 100 litres of water are poured into the fermentation chamber and as it breaks down it produces methane, the shape of the fermentation chamber is such that a pressure build up in the dome forces the gas through the outlet and into the distribution system which are then used in a number of burners for cooking and gas lamps, the idea is to convert their small diesel 11.5 hp to run on a mixture of the biogas and diesel as well.
It was a very hot and humid day so lunch was a nice diversion. Khampuen speaks very little English so we worked a lot through Somkid and Sunny who speaks a little Laos, my Thai was useless. We had been chatting and eating for about 30 minutes and Khampuen turned to me and grabbed his right knee. Somkid said “he says you have broken right knee”. I thought I’d seen enough in the world not to be too surprised anymore but I admit to being genuinely surprised on how he would know this. I was wearing tracky dax so you could not see the scar, I do not have a limp at all and I have not told anybody in Laos about my unfortunate drinking injury sustained at the Belgium Eurodemo in ’96, there is no way this man could have been told this. I did a mental double check to see if there is any conceivable way that he could have been told this and again negative. Khampuen pointed to my right eye and said he could see the injury there. Without trying to offend anyone I am not at all spiritual at all and have a severe problem with Runes, Voodoo, hex’s etc etc. This does not include what could be classed as ‘alternative medicines’, the Chinese have been using them for over 5000 years and if they didn’t work they wouldn’t still be using them. So I don’t believe there was any ‘magic’ in his ability and I understand that there is a branch of medicine where the eyes reveal a good deal about your health (name escapes me) but top Kudos to Khampuen for being unbelievable good at it. I still am wary about the claims of some of his work, he has patients recovering from Cancer, diabetes, HIV and the effects of Agent Orange, but I will keep an open mind, especially having had personal experience of his diagnostic abilities.
Looks like the team are turning up, we are making a simple water filter today from clay, coffee grinds and cow poo, what is with the cow poo. Next blog more on poo powered things.
We were welcomed by Master Khampuen and his wife (wife# 5 or 7 we haven’t quit deciphered that yet, seems although being a remarkable doctor, personal relationships are not his strong suit), he is an unbelievable young looking 78 year old and exists on a diet of hard work, Lao beer and local brand of cigarettes called ‘double lucky’, you may be surprised to learn that they do not have a health warning. I have heard a good deal about Khampuen from Souly, Sunny & Chris and was keen to see for myself the work which was being done there, the only diagnostic tool he has is a blood pressure measure kit and some remarkable claims were being made about his abilities. I will state for the record that he is medically trained, he uses a combination of western medicine knowhow and traditional medicine and his own diagnostic abilities, I will come to that later. My personal interest is not in the medical aspects of the centre but the biogas and electricity generation side. But the fact that the place exists is a tribute to local guile, ingenuity and support from donations and of course the work of Master Khampuen. It is a true collective built with next to zero finance. The good doc was in consultations until 2:00PM when we would have lunch together so this gave me ad Sunny some time to shoot the video about the Biogas project. There was a problem with the system as the pressure was down, either there was a leak in the distribution or there was a problem with the fermentation chamber, after some discussion we concluded that the first and obvious thing to do was to put a pressure gauge on the outlet of the fermentation tank to see if the problem is up stream or downstream. I could prattle on about the workings of the biogas system and its construction but that would take forever. The most important thing to know is that every morning 100 kg of cow poo and 100 litres of water are poured into the fermentation chamber and as it breaks down it produces methane, the shape of the fermentation chamber is such that a pressure build up in the dome forces the gas through the outlet and into the distribution system which are then used in a number of burners for cooking and gas lamps, the idea is to convert their small diesel 11.5 hp to run on a mixture of the biogas and diesel as well.
It was a very hot and humid day so lunch was a nice diversion. Khampuen speaks very little English so we worked a lot through Somkid and Sunny who speaks a little Laos, my Thai was useless. We had been chatting and eating for about 30 minutes and Khampuen turned to me and grabbed his right knee. Somkid said “he says you have broken right knee”. I thought I’d seen enough in the world not to be too surprised anymore but I admit to being genuinely surprised on how he would know this. I was wearing tracky dax so you could not see the scar, I do not have a limp at all and I have not told anybody in Laos about my unfortunate drinking injury sustained at the Belgium Eurodemo in ’96, there is no way this man could have been told this. I did a mental double check to see if there is any conceivable way that he could have been told this and again negative. Khampuen pointed to my right eye and said he could see the injury there. Without trying to offend anyone I am not at all spiritual at all and have a severe problem with Runes, Voodoo, hex’s etc etc. This does not include what could be classed as ‘alternative medicines’, the Chinese have been using them for over 5000 years and if they didn’t work they wouldn’t still be using them. So I don’t believe there was any ‘magic’ in his ability and I understand that there is a branch of medicine where the eyes reveal a good deal about your health (name escapes me) but top Kudos to Khampuen for being unbelievable good at it. I still am wary about the claims of some of his work, he has patients recovering from Cancer, diabetes, HIV and the effects of Agent Orange, but I will keep an open mind, especially having had personal experience of his diagnostic abilities.
Looks like the team are turning up, we are making a simple water filter today from clay, coffee grinds and cow poo, what is with the cow poo. Next blog more on poo powered things.
No comments:
Post a Comment