UhOh Albino

Had a bit of a foot in mouth moment the other day; we were on our way to NICU when I suddenly caught sight of a distinctly english looking man lying in one of the surgical wards. This was a bit puzzling, because if you had the choice, you wouldn't choose to have an operation at this hospital (although the standard of care is a lot higher here in Kathmandu than in the rest of Nepal). I thought maybe he might need rescuing, and had ended up here by accident. Anyway we went to say hi and see if there was anything we could do, only trouble was he didn't speak any english. There followed a slow motion moment of realisation, as he tiredly turned to his friend, with an air of resignation as though this definitely wasn't the first time this had happened, then turned back to me and said 'I Nepali'.

I did try and style the whole thing out, asking him then in Nepali how he was, trying to insinuate I'd known all along, but he definitely wasn't fooled, and neither were the rest of the patients on the ward, or the nurses or the doctors. So I aborted that rescue mission and went back to playing with kids, which is a lot less likely to end up in a pickle. But what do you do when you mistake an albino Nepali for a stranded englishman? I'm really not sure, I hadn't really thought about it, sounds like the beginnings of a good joke though.