Ponderings on the Village

Some thoughts on the village from Leah:

There was a man in the village who was dying. I went with Ryan to help him clean bedsores that had developed from being bedridden, and to inject penicillin into the flesh- now badly infested with gangrene. I did not know the man before this moment, but from what I heard, he was not a man of great character. He had left two wives and several children after abusing them, and when he married a third time, he produced more children that he neglected and abused. He had killed a man with a motorcycle chain. When he went to Assam to work in the coal mines, the money he made (which didn't amount to much) he just drank away. While in Assam, he contracted Cerebral malaria and fell into a coma. His family, already impoverished, took out more loans from money lenders to drag his body back to Daragaon. And there he laid before me, his body shriveled from dehydration and malnutrition, three bedsores open and gaping. One of them was so bad I could see the pearly white of the spinal column exposed at the bottom of the gangrenous crater. The smell of decaying flesh was overpowering.

We Americans leading our comfortable lives often wonder how people can live like they do in places like this. The truth is, how can we live our lives like we do?

I don't know much Nepali, but from what I understood, Ryan told the family that they have two options: they can spend hundreds of thousands of rupees to transport the man to a hospital in Delhi (in which case, the man will most likely go in shock and die on the way) or they can keep him alive by spoon feeding liquids and treating the gangrenous, rotting bedsores with a few vials of penicillin left from the medical clinic. Although medicine is cheap here in India, I still am struck by this ethical dilemma. This man is severely dehydrated, going into shock, and his body is ridden with bedsores that will only heal if they are operated on. I have heard about his life, and how he chose to live. Why should he get three vials of penicillin? Why not keep it on hand for someone who may need it more? This man will die in several days (I actually helped the family prepare food and serve tea for hundreds of people that politely arrived for the funeral 3 days later). Yet at that moment, I am caught in a web of ethics.

Then I realize- this man, despite his life and the way he chose to live it, deserves a small injection. He deserves, or perhaps his grieving family deserves, a small shot at hope, or the knowledge that this medicine was given freely. What makes him so different than me or the next patient at the clinic? We are all human. We feel pain, we see and hear the terrible and grotesque things that people do to one another. Why not hope? Why anyone else over this man? We are all the same. Flesh; bones; blood; hopes; dreams; downfalls, disappointments. We are all loved the same.

The time I spent in the village was bittersweet. I am reminded of how generous and amazing people can be. I also saw and heard how horrible people can be. I saw, and continue to see throughout my journey, abject poverty. I have thought long and hard about poverty. We Americans leading our comfortable lives often wonder how people can live like they do in Daragaon or at the Leprosariums in Nepal- no running water or electricity, no roads or healthcare, not enough food. The truth is, how can we live our lives like we do? What we have is not normal- the majority of the world lives day to day, meal to meal, moment to moment. The majority of the people in this world cannot imagine being able to choose what to eat out of a cabinet full of food, or the opportunity to travel to the other side of the world. Children go to bed hungry, thousands of people die each moment from diarrhea, malaria, malnutrition. Millions of people don't have access to clean water.

A girl, about 8 years old, comes into the medical clinic one afternoon. Her ear is crusted over with blood; two days ago she fell onto a sharp bamboo stick and tore her outer ear up. We help soak and gently clean it up. As it comes clean we see that the cartilage has been completely exposed, the malformation of her ear is not just from swelling, her skin is peeled away from small amounts of cartilage. The girl doesn't make a sound as her ear is cleaned and the dirty scabs cut away. A tiny tear drops when we pop the cartilage back in to the skin. She needed stitches two days ago, now all we can do is clean it well and tell her to come back for the next two days to keep it clean and dry for proper healing.

It is overwhelming. The hungry, dirty kids that show up to the clinic for food. The 100+ kids that show up to school. And I know only a few will ever dream of making it past the fifth grade. But what I do know, is that for this one day 27 children will eat a good, hot meal, one man will receive medical care despite his past, or future, and one little girl's ear will heal properly. This day matters. Each person matters.