December 2008 Newsletter
NEPALESE KITES
This autumn the Drachen Foundation helped me raise money for a medical mission to Nepal. We gave a kite for every $50 donation to the Sherpa House Calls Foundation, and the donors wrote messages on each; they were then given to 
children as I traveled. Happy poor kids, flying messages of peace (which they couldn't read) all over the mountains of the Khumbu Valley. Although the winds in the inhabited valleys didn't cooperate, I know they flew high and strong above the towns on the mountaintops, like prayer flags, sending hope on the wind.
The Sherpa are a delightful community of hard-working impoverished Buddhists who live in the shadow of Mt. Everest. We went to provide free medications and healthcare to them in their homes and small clinics. Their response was overwhelming, their gratitude exceptional. A blind woman walked with her daughter four hours to the small Thame Clinic. Even though I could not remove her cataracts, and she had to walk home again on the difficult mountainous trails, she was thankful for the attention from a western physician. She alone could have prompted me to return next year (with an ophthalmologist), but there are so many others I want to see again. With more kites.
