Surgery and Healing in the Developing World - Dartmouth-Hitchcock

Field Notes on a Typical Day in a Himalayan Medical Mission
469
Old-Fashioned Robbery of Trekking Foreigners
Four days before our arrival in Ladakh, a nasty event took place that had the
military on higher alert, with a midnight to 5:00 AM curfew in Leh and other parts
of Ladakh when we arrived. Three monks were killed in a murder that was carefully
planned and then carried out, even though everyone seemed to be trying to head it
off by cooling the reactionaries. A Buddhist monk near Leh had made a comment,
that the Koran “should have said” something in an interpretation heard by a group
of Moslems from the Shey area. The monk’s superior, the Chief Lama of the Gompa,
had already apologized for his monks’ reinterpretation of the Moslem scripture and
had sent a notice to the newspaper recanting this statement —but just ask Salmon
Rushdie whether such niceties constitute an exculpatory “I’m Sorry!” within Islam,
or any plea of artistic license to say “I was only kidding, or was just making a literary
point!” Despite the apologies, the Moslems banded together and returned to murder
the three Buddhist monks who had been present during this incident, which the
Moslems regarded as a blasphemous offense.
It was feared that there might be an anti-Islamic backlash in retaliation for this
counter-blasphemy of murdering Buddhist monks in their Gompa, which is the
reason there is a heightened tension of security with an even invasive military presence
here that is the reason for the nighttime curfew.
If that were not bad enough, nearly simultaneously, another sordid incident occurred
that made each of the manned posts at the bridge crossings and mountain
passes on higher alert, with soldiers carrying ammunition clips in their automatic
weapons and checking passports and plans of passing trekkers. Four days before our
arrival, a German tourist was killed in the mountains while on trek just North of
Manali. It seemed that two German men were trekking and met up with an English
fellow who trekked along with them for a ways but separated when they each rolled
out in their sleeping bags at different campsites. When the Englishman continued
on in the morning, he came upon the body of one of the German men and the other
was also found, badly injured but still alive. It seems that some local “dacoits” had
tried to kill them both in an old-fashioned robbery attempt.
When I had been in Northern Ireland and in South Africa during their very
intense struggle with terrorism, such an event would have been called—with the
British penchant for understatement if not humor— an “ODC.” When I had asked
in Belfast what the meaning of the term “ODC” meant when applied to a casualty
coming into the Queen Mary Hospital, he smiled and said “Just an ‘Ordinary Decent
Criminal’ Old Boy, to distinguish these blokes from the dastardly terrorists
who sometimes do a rather similar sort of thing.”
So, I am in Leh, Ladakh with a few issues of some tension having preceded my
arrival—each of which might resemble a terrorist campaign, but turn out to be
religious bigotry and ODC at work.
The Official Welcome Mat for the Medical Mission Despite
These Background Distractions
To contrast what that may mean to us and our work, I immediately point out
that we were joined at dinner upon our return from the Khardungla (at least for
those of us still interested in eating rather than going directly to bed holding both
temples with a nauseating pounding headache from not yet having acclimatized to
this altitude and its brief excursion by Tata to 18,380 feet, and the limited exertion
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