Saturday in Salavan

On Saturdays, it takes me a long time to get myself today. Even in laid-back Laos, I feel like I'm operating on split second timing and multi-tasking. While the people in my seminar would working in small groups, I was in our office, working on e-mails and reports.

So today, I'm in the office, mainly to use the internet. We had a small meeting with my staff to talk about issues for the coming month. The hospital wants to start having a continuing medical education program, so we discussed setting up a schedule. My mental health trainings will be once/ month, with other trainings offered by the hospital staff and my medical staff themselves.

The mental health training finished yesterday. Everyone was very happy about it - they all said it got them thinking. And the psycho-social development part was useful even in their own families. The last activity was to design a small interview form to assess psycho-social issues with one patient in the hospital, then try an interview. With the next class, the people will discuss the issues they had with interviewing - did they feel comfortable, what information did they get... And then I'll do the section on interviewing. Since they had this experience, they should have a lot to share!

I did take a long walk in the morning, and took a few pictures. There are several I'm going to post on Kilometers because I haven't posted there for a while.



I should have posted the above on ABC Weds - 'D' is for dangerous. It's a common sight though - one person drives the motorcycle, the passenger sits on the handle of the cart so they can pull it along behind. Surprisingly, there aren't that many people coming into the hospitals for treatment of these potential kinds of injuries. They don't happen? or are people embarrassed to go to the hospital for treatment?

This is a better way to use the cart:



And pictures from the TV. Earlier this week, the Mekong started to rise. In fact, on Monday, one of my staff got a call that the Mekong was starting to top the levee in a few places. This is a picture of the TV coverage on Lao Star:



We've been a little concerned because we decided to travel back to Vientiane by car on Monday. One of our groups, having finished a meeting in Savannakhet, are going back today so they'll tell us how the road is.