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Tepasai Medical Camp
Saturday, 17 March 2007
Lighting the Lamp
Lighting the Lamp
18th of February, 2007, morning 7am: The LAA Medical team of doctors, pharmacists and volunteers leave in 4 Sumos and a Toyota Qualis for Tepasai via Chaibasa. We have packed breakfast and stopped at Chaibasa for some tea at about 9 am. The road thereafter is along the hilly terrain of the Saranda forests. We reach our destiation at around 10.45 am and are greeted by the school children.

The camp is being held in a school run by Jesuits. Before begining with the camp we had a prayers, followed by a lighting-of-the-lamp ceremony, which was jointly done by Fr. Augustine Vattamatam S.J., Dr. Anand S. Prasad and Mrs. Katy Narielwalla. The function ended with the children singing a few songs.
There was a huge rush of patients outside. The registration counters were manned by ex-students (Girls) of the school. The total no. of registered patents was 1270, the highest in recent times. This was far more than what we had expected or planned for. Few groups of medicines got over and had to be substituted with some others.

Patient Registration
Patient Registration
The Priests and Sisters of the school there offer us a good meal of rice, dal, alu gobu and appams. This is complimented by the chicken curry and fried rice prepared by Sanjeev Singh (1983) who had brought along his cook for the purpose.

We start our return journey at about 4 pm and choose to take the Chakradharpur route in the hope of a better road. But it turns out to be worse. And to add to our agony two of the Sumos loose their way. In that desolate area for stretches there is no mobile connectivity and we have some helpless moments. But after about half an hour, we have moved a little and the mobile network comes alive. Soon the adventure ends and we are able to trace our missing friends and guide them back to the correct road. At 7:30 pm we return to the School campus and are dog tired.

The LAA Team at Tepasai Camp
The LAA Team at Tepasai Camp
 

Even though it was a tiring day the feeling was of satisfaction, the satisfaction of successfully completing the season of camps for the year.

This camp was sponsored by Vijay Trehan (Class of 1971), LAA Executive Committee Member.
 
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