Final report from Kathrin Koller

Her stay lasted from April 30th - July 15th 2006

It´s two month ago since I left this beautiful place. It was very impressive and now nothing is like before. It was a reaction from the guts. I just glanced over this article in the Physiotherapie Magazine in March ´05 and sent all the important stuff to Karola.

And then the journey began. I got a unpaid holiday and put some of my savings in my pocket.

I din´t know what to expect but on the other hand you never know what will come to you anyway. I knew that this trip would change my point of view in every way.

The first breath I took on the airport and I had the feeling to be at home. I was surrounded by an amazing mountain scenery. After a while I started to come down and pick up the “ladakhi way of life”, which is really slow for our taste.

The first contacts with the children where somehow shocking. The hygiene... wet pants and blankets made me feel uncomfortable at the beginning.

The more I began to understand the culture, the more I got used to the way they thing, act and live. This made it easy for me and put me to basic.

Jessica left and Nicole arived and brought some change. She was already familiar with the country and the work since she had been in Ladakh a year before for three month. It´s important that therapists comie back reapeatedly, because they know what to expect and they are known. Now it was just the two of us, a “dreamteam”, working together with “Nirlac”, handling two "healthworker camps" with the CMO office, one "mother and child camp" with Skiarchen (which was organized by Catherine Gunkel), one trip to Timosgang, working together with Cynthia Hunt and of course - Dolker!!!

During all this time the contact to Karola and Juergen Kostial was very good. It is very important to look at this project from every perspective: the German and the Indian one! Karola and Juergen are the "parents" of this organisation. Without them, none of us would have had this experience.

Everything was and still is going very well. It is important to have engaged people there to give them help for self help. It´s like a cultural exchange for both sides, Ladakhi and German.

So I really enjoyed every second up there and I´ll come back next year. I would like to say thank you to everybody I met there and to everyone, who has been a part of this project so far. All the best to the ones that follow, bring lots of good energy and you find a life above your expectations.

Back in Germany everything is same but seems different…