Dr. Sherpa

Becoming the world's first Sherpa doctor isn't that big a deal to Kami Temba Sherpa. "It's nice, but what's more important is I'm now able to help people a lot more," he wrote in an email from Namche Bazaar, a Nepalese hillside village that's an administrative center of the Khumbu District and the gateway to the high Himalayas.

The Makings of a Sherpa Doctor

Born in the village of Thami, Nepal, in 1959, Kami was the youngest of four children. His father died before he was born, leaving his mother alone to raise him and his three sisters.

As a 14-year-old boy, he walked six hours back and forth to school in Khumjung each day. His hard work paid off with a Hillary scholarship to high school in Salleri. After finishing high school, he worked as a teacher and a part-time village health worker in the community where he was born.

It was while working as a health worker that he began to dream of becoming a doctor, like the men and women he met in the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation (SEHF) hospital in Kunde, which had been established in 1966. In 1978, Kami was offered a job at the Kunde Hospital, and for the next 19 years he worked as a paramedic. He also proved himself a capable administrator by managing the hospital's finances and overseeing the SEHF's re-forestation program.

But in his heart, Kami longed to be a doctor. Doctors at the Kunde Hospital taught him a great deal over the years, but he knew he could never learn it all on the job. Seeing how hard Kami worked, the SEHF offered to pay for his medical studies at the Fiji School of Medicine. He enrolled in the medical school in 1997, leaving his wife and family behind in the mountains of their homeland.

Since Kami had never been to university, it was a big adjustment. He spent his first year studying biology, anatomy, and chemistry. "It was hard, not only the courses, but the fact that it was all in English," Kami says. He was living in a land of palm trees and white sand, far from the snows of home. But he wasn't the only student feeling homesick. He studied alongside others from developing countries from around the world, Kenya, Mongolia, and Bangladesh.

At the end of 2000, Kami graduated with an MBBS degree, finishing at the top of his class. He returned home, and began a 1.5-year internship at Patan Hospital in Kathmandu, which he completed in 2002. After passing his exams, he became the first qualified Sherpa doctor in Nepal.

New Man at the Helm

In 2003, Kami took the reins at the Kunde Hospital. "Now that I've been to medical school, I'm going to be able to do so much more for my people," he says.

And more is to come. Generations of Canadian and New Zealander doctors have volunteered with SEHF and run the Kunde Hospital. SEHF Founder and President Zeke O'Connor says this work has been invaluable, but that it's time things changed. "For our programs to be really successful, the Sherpa people have to take control. By 2005, the plan is for Kami to be director of our medical programs in Nepal."

Foreign doctors will still come and volunteer their services, but Kami will set the agenda for programs in Nepal. With his insight into the community, he will identify the types of programs the people need and the best way to deliver them.

While his work as a doctor is important, the example he set has been truly invaluable: already, it has prompted two more Sherpa to study medicine, one of which is his son, Tsering Wangdi.

The Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation (SEHF) Since its inception, the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation (SEHF) of Canada has funded more than $6 million in projects in Nepal. The story of Canada's involvement begins in the sporting goods department of Sears. Hillary was a paid consultant to Sears, which sold a line of camping equipment that bore his name. In 1972, he invited former CFL Toronto Argonaut tight end, Zeke O'Connor, a Sears employee, to join him on a canoe trip in La Vérendrye Park. As paddling partners, the men had much time to talk. Over the course of the trip, Hillary constantly turned the conversation to his favorite subject: the Sherpa people of Nepal. At the journey's end, O'Connor was invited to visit the country with the Everest hero. Hillary took him on a tour of the hospital he had helped build in Kunde, just above Namche Bazaar. O'Connor was impressed, but he also knew more could be done. Upon arriving back in Toronto, he founded the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Canada. He told his bosses at Sears Canada what he wanted to do. They wrote him a check and gave him office space in their headquarters in Toronto – where the foundation still works today. O'Connor then approached the Canadian International Development Association (CIDA). He applied for a grant to improve the hospital and CIDA promised two-and-a-half times whatever money the foundation could raise. Today, a much-improved Kunde Hospital is completely funded by the Canadian SEHF and CIDA. "Canadians have funded and directed about 40% of the Hillary projects in Nepal. And that doesn't count Canadian doctors or teachers who we've sent over," O'Connor says. "We should be very proud of this."

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