Internship at Chisang Clinic – Harsh from NALSAR
How wonderful it is to devote time in translating various languages and be the only reliable source for conversations. Harsh is a law student who tries to bridge gap between different cultures and diffuse sense of responsibility in them.
Chisang Clinic is a non-profit organization that runs two clinics in the different landscapes of Terai district of Morang and the hilly district of Dhankuta. Both of these clinics function at very rural areas. They are one hour away from the nearest urban centre. Every alternate weekend I used to volunteer at Chisang Clinic located in eastern Nepal. It is important to note that in an area where health care facilities are few and prohibitively expensive; there a simple clinic can function beyond its intended function of dispensing healthcare to those who need it. A clinic can function as a melting pot, a united force and as hotbed of cultural and religious diversity. My primary duty was to act as a translator for the various doctors, nurses, medical students and public health students who volunteered at Chisang Clinic.
My command over several languages ensured that not much was lost in translation during hundreds of patient-doctor conversations. I also tried hard to bridge the cultural gap between the volunteers and the local population and it proved to be effective at making the volunteers feel as if they are at home. This resulted in more successful interactions between the village folk and the doctors. I believe that I aided the clinic’s role in promoting cross-cultural understanding and cooperation by working as a translator for international volunteers which included doctors, nurses and students from the US, UK and Canada. Thus I believe that during my time as a translator in the clinic I served as a bridge between different cultures and facilitated cultural exchange in an unlikely place. Due to the remote location, I was only able to spend a limited amount of time with Chisang. The doors of Chisang Clinic hopefully will always be open for me.
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