I spent six weeks
learning basic patient care in a well established leprosy colony in
Andhra Pradesh, moving on for a planned quick visit to the brand new
site at Titilagarth.
Monsoon rains washed away the railway bridge I'd crossed only hours
before causing massive flooding and the death of 6,000 people in an
afternoon. My planned visit of a week or so became four and half months
in which time the number of patients soared from a handful to about
78 and the railway bridge was repaired.
A few months
before I'd been a factory worker; now here was I seeming to many patients
as if I was chief medic. How many, I wonder, ever realised I was muddling
through each day hoping that my basic care was a slight improvement
on the horrendous suffering and loss of everything they had because
of leprosy.
Eventually surgeons and qualified health workers were able to get through
to us.
They worked outdoors, amputating where necessary, stitching, diagnosing
new cases, giving advice on how to deliver our first baby - a breech
birth at that. I was awe-struck at the hours they worked and the perfection
they expected of themselves and others.
News would come
down the railway line of new cases coming to us: a mother dumped in
the night beside the track because she reeked too much from infection
to stay on the train. We fetched her with an ox drawn cart and brought
her home to the colony. I remember that walk as if it were last night.
The mother's eyes were glazed in semi-consciousness in the light of
my lantern. The men guiding the cart chatted and cajoled the ox to struggle
through the massive ruts in the track. I looked up into the vast starry
night and felt truly thankful that we were not in a war zone. This was
very little to deal with compared to doing the same job with bombing
and artillery fire all around you as of course so many others do.
Life slowly improved for the mother after losing the front half of both
her feet and slowly being nursed back to health and having customised
upholstered sandals made for the remainder of her feet. Her husband
came to look for her and brought one of her children. My happiness for
her being reunited with her husband was tinged by my hatred for him
dumping her.
At twenty three life's challenges are very much put into perspective
by the suffering of others on a grand scale.
I returned to England
at the end of the year too sick with hepatitis and malaria to take up
the post of auxiliary nurse that I'd hoped for.
It seemed a strange irony after the past 6 months work, but over the
ensuing years I found other jobs, was married and had two children.
Within this period I registered a charitable trust in the UK. It was
to be the sister trust to the New Hope Rural Leprosy Trust in India.
This was the start
of the New Hope Rural Community Trust - more broadly named than 'Leprosy
Trust' because we were serving a rural community with all the needs
that impoverished people have with nowhere else to go.
Thanks to so many
people from all walks of life and age groups, their generosity and hard
work the Trust has raised many thousands of pounds over the past ten
years.
Leprosy and polio victims have found new lives, not just through improved
health and living conditions, but through vocational training leading
on to successful employment. The greatest recuperation can often be
restored dignity.
The generous support
for New Hope's work has meant that thousands of children have been immunised
against killer diseases, help for the victims of the 1999 cyclone, enabled
orphan care for children of all ages and physical/mental abilities and
brought clean water supplies to areas where once there was none.
Throughout the past
twenty years I've been a small part of New Hope's work in the UK. I've
been kept well informed by mail and photos and word of mouth of it's
striding progress - but nothing prepared me for my more recent visit!
Much of India looked the same. Its natural beauty aside, apart from
technological advances, motorised rickshaws and bottled sterilised water;
the streets were very much as I remembered them. Some excellent efforts
to green up city centres have been implemented, but the scrawny dogs,
the homeless elderly and the livestock live and sleep in the roads.
But take an eight hour train journey out of Vishakhapatnam north-east
to the small rural town of Muniguda in South Orissa, get away from the
shanty area of the railway station, about 25 minutes by vehicle to the
New Hope Community Centre and you will believe you have reached Paradise.
I arrived late at night.
India is in its fourth year of drought and the electricity installed
by New Hope to this area was off again.
By first light the
full glory of the carefully thought out planting of dust-absorbing palms,
vitamin bearing plants and bushes, vegetables and exotic flowers became
apparent. Butterflies the size of my hand and parakeets sauntered between
the trees. The dirt roads winding between buildings were being swept
and the home made litter bins (two gallon size cooking oil drums, ,
made safe, painted and fixed to poles every 200 yards along the road
side) were being emptied.
The area is a wide
valley with horizons of sugar loaf hills thick with forests volcanic
in a forgotten era. I spent a couple of days in the Centre discovering
its management, facilities, dedicated workers and its inhabitants. My
mind kept flashing back to the sights and smells of 20 years ago. Could
this be just a couple of hours by train from the colony I had worked
with then? Immaculate operating theatres, wards with ceiling fans for
summers that can see temperatures of 42 - 45 degrees C, running water
and electricity. It was more than I could have hoped for in my wildest
dreams!
On the third day
I was driven out to the Raghubari Centre - the reason for my visit this
many years later. I had been invited as the UK representative to see
the work and forthcoming plans with Orissa's most impoverished - its
tribal people. I am to be the liaison for a Community Fund Grant application
to upgrade the lives of the tribals of this area from subsistence level,
and sometimes death by starvation, to self-sufficiency. It will be a
massive project, but after my week's stay with New Hope, I realise it
is very achievable.
The distances and the terrain of India are hard to maintain in the memory.
The one and a half hour drive to the tiny health-cum-training-centre
with a newly installed water pump (thank you to the children of Mount
Pleasant Junior School, Southampton) was a journey of massive ruts and
no tarmac often brought to a halt by herds of bony cattle. To my inexperienced
eye it was a long way.
