Friday 19th February

Evening all.
Main thing today for us was doing our first seminar. This was for the nurses and was on basic counselling skills. We have done loads of such things before in our time so why we were so nervous is a mystery, but we were. It went off all right too. The nurses were fine, intelligent and co-operative. The nurses hold a key position as they are on the wards for long hours and often enough the patients will unburden to them. As one of them said today,
" Yes, they tell me when they are thinking of committing suicide."
Suicide has been selected as a topic for next week's conference, asked for by the counsellors themselves we understand, so it sounds to be a real problem. We had not heard much about it until arriving, not that we've picked up anything about it happening on site. It certainly must be shattering to realise you have this dreaded disease and it is no surprise that many must contemplate ending it all. So, if we assisted these nurses at all with some basic skills then, well and good.
The hot weather continues and we are glad of the cool in the guest house. We have now tried two indian breakfasts, poha which is fried curried rice and nuts, and patatas, which is curried mashed potato and is salty and had with chapatis. Walking round the campus we came across a teak plantation, planted by a former general secretary of TLM. Teak is grown all over the area and looks suprisingly wandy and not at all solid. Lots of trees are beginning to lose their leaves as the weather hots up, but thankfully it is still cool at night. We keep reading of the freezing temp in the UK and hope things improve for you soon
Bye for now
A & E