Lifesaving Gift From Sherpas’ Best Friend

By WILLIAMSON, Kerry

WHEN Mingma Gyalzen Sherpa first started practising medicine in the Himalayan village of his youth, no one would come to the hospital, no matter how sick they were.

Closed off from the outside world till Ed Hillary climbed Mt Everest and shone a light on the region, the Sherpa people relied on shamans (spiritual healers), and thought that if you got sick, the gods were punishing you.

They had never heard of modern medicine and were distrustful of this new magic supplied by Sir Ed, their burra sahib.

So they stayed away from the new hospital at Phaplu. Only the very sick — those who could no longer be helped by traditional medicine — would visit.

And only once those patients miraculously became well did others put their faith in the hands of Mingma Gyalzen Sherpa.

“People didn’t know what a hospital was, or even modern medicine. They had no idea,” says Dr Gyalzen, now in his 50s and the highest- ranking Sherpa in the Nepalese Government.

“They were still in the days of witchcraft, they still believed in ghosts. That’s what it was like before Sir Ed built the hospital. That was how they lived.

“Sir Ed changed that.”

The 20-bed hospital at Phaplu is just one of the life-saving legacies of the great New Zealander.

It is where Mingma Gyalzen spent 25 years of his life, where he came to know Sir Ed and where he saw first-hand the effects of the mountaineer’s work.

Sir Ed helped build the hospital with his own hands, often alongside his brother, Rex, and other members of the Himalayan Trust.

He was proud of it, even of the two modern toilets that were often broken because Sherpas would fill them with sticks and rocks, which they used instead of toilet paper.

He was working at the hospital when his first wife, Louise, and daughter Belinda died when their small plane crashed into a field on the outskirts of Kathmandu. It is where he first grieved, and even thought of dying himself.

Mingma Gyalzen is as much a part of the hospital as Sir Ed, and is revered himself.

He lives in Kathmandu now but still calls Phaplu home. He takes the 35-minute flight as often as he can, and hopes to retire there in six years. It is there that his memories of Sir Ed linger.

One of his favourite stories of his old friend is of the day he found him cleaning out the hospital gutters, which were blocked with needles from overhanging pine trees. The small-in-stature Sherpas would have had to use ladders to get up to the roof. Sir Ed was simply reaching up with his long arms.

“He was always working. He would be looking at the paint, repairing a wall, fixing the leaky roof,” Dr Gyalzen says.

The humble knight would even take it upon himself to clean out the hospital’s septic tank.

“The people in the village, they had never seen a septic tank before, they didn’t know how to clean it.

“So he did it himself.”

Dr Gyalzen says that when his friend wasn’t working, he was finding new ways to help the Sherpas.

He was often surrounded by a crowd of people asking for something.

They would cover his shoulders in silk khatas and give him glasses of chang or rakshi, the potent local brews. Sir Ed would drink with them, and listen to them all.

“People thought that whatever they needed, they could ask him. If they had a problem they would just come to him and ask him.

“And most of the time they got. He took it as a challenge to help them.”

Dr Gyalzen says Sir Ed took an intense interest in all of his charity work.

He was personally involved in every project of his Himalayan Trust, and would pay all the Sherpas involved himself, always giving them a tip. Though he never heard Sir Ed speak the Sherpas’ language, the New Zealander could understand them regardless.

“He read their heart, he read the person. And it wasn’t just about giving money and forgetting. He remembered everything.”

Dr Gyalzen now runs much more than Phaplu Hospital, which treats 80 to 100 patients a day.

He is in charge of buying medicines and medical equipment for the Nepalese Government, with a focus on providing healthcare to remote parts of the country still largely untouched by the West.

He says Sir Ed would be proud of his achievements. He represents what he wanted to see the Sherpas become — well-educated, working for his people.

“I will remember him as a best friend of the Sherpa people, a best friend of Nepal. And I will remember him as a best friend of me.”

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(c) 2008 Dominion Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.