I went to Teaching hospital this winter for a regular eye check up. There were few opticians working who were Bangladeshi. The thing that struck me was that they could hardly speak or understand Nepali. One of them did my check up. He was asking me questions I hardly understood. I couldn’t even figure out if he was speaking Nepali or some other language. I gave up and asked him if we could converse in English. That is when I asked him where he was from. He was certainly happy that we could finally converse and he said to me, “Not every people come here can speak English you know.” I said to myself, “Hell ya! Where do you think you are? In United States? This in Nepal and if you do not know Nepali then you are in wrong place.”

I mean think about the kind of people that goes to teaching hospital for check-ups. If a patient can’t communicate with their doctors about their complications, I wonder how good of the diagnosis those doctors are able to make. I mean, how dumb can the administration be to not understand the necessity of communication between the doctors and patients. In a hospital like teaching, where majority of the patients are typical lower to middle class Nepali family, how can they appoint somebody who can hardly understand Nepali!

There are so many other things going around in our country that is not right. But this was in hospital! A place ran by the most educated people in the country! Them being so careless reflects how badly our country needs reformation.

This is just a clue as to where our country is heading towards.