It's well into my second week as a volunteer at the Missionaries of Charity in
Kolkata. I had to escape to the
cyber cafe to run away from the humid sauna our apartment has turned into. It is so unbelievably hot, it feels like your body is boiling inside and bubbling up through your skin. Gross, I know. All I can think about is standing under a waterfall and drinking a cold beer, or floating down a cool silky river on an inner tube. It's amazing the things you start to miss once you don't have them anymore.
Again, for lack of words, I'm just going to add a little of what I have been writing in my journal so bear with me...
I wish I could take a photo of each of their faces and hold in my memory; as a reminder of them and their
unknown struggles, and as a reminder of this place in time in all of their lives, and in my own life. Sometimes I have to escape to the rooftop to hang laundry out to dry, like I did today. As escape from the sticky hot air distilled with
disinfectant. I can stand there and watch the streets below, busy as bees swarming on a hive.
Meena passed away yesterday and today I saw them carry her body away. Encased in a white wrinkled cloth, she lay on the stretcher made of thin wooden rods, covered head to toe in white. Her body was so small, so frail, so lifeless. As if they were just carrying a tray of feathers. She will be cremated, and according to Hinduism her body will be reincarnated in 13 days, when her soul can finally be freed from her tired body.
She died of malaria, and here I am, reluctantly scratching away at the maze of mosquito bites running down my legs. She died of malaria, a treatable disease, and there was nothing anyone could do. This is India, and there is nothing anyone can do most of the time, at this 'Hospice' where we work.
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Shundar, she is 30 years old. She had a life one time. She had a family one time. She was married to a husband, one time. That husband, he stole her life away, and now she sits in
Kalighat, day after day in tormenting pain, outcast from her family and friends, alone. Her husband, in all is glory, poured acid over her. He poured acid over his
wife's body, drenching her skin from her neck to her waist. From her neck down, her skin is pink, red, open flesh, blistering slowly as it begins to heal. Her head cannot move from side to side but is stuck looking straight ahead, slanting down towards the floor.
Her hair, black as night, is cut closely to her head, and her skin is the color of dark chocolate melting on a hot day. Her small child like hands have begun to turn white at the fingertips, where most of her nails are missing. There are splattered white spots running up to her wrists as if someone spilled milk on her hands and it danced from her fingers up her skin. There are open holes, scars, in her ears and nose, where jewels used to live; a token of prosperity and marriage. She is only adorned now, in a brightly colored flowered
Salwar (Indian style long shirts) frock, with a delicate tie laced at the back of her neck. Her small wrists hold a few bangles, like many of the patients; they clink up and down clapping
together as she moves, slowly, slowly.
Today the sisters were put to task to
re bandage her wounds, a daunting duty brought forth every few days, and only to those with the skills, patience, and compassion to complete it.
I want to tell her that I could kill her husband. This kind of thing, tragically, happens often in India, in Nepal, and as far as I know around the world. How can we live in a world that permits this kind of thing to happen to women, and as if the woman did something wrong, like
Shundar, she is discarded to the streets like a limp rag.
I will leave it at that, and if you are still reading then I applaud you. Sometimes it seems only the truly shocking things are worth putting into words, when really, there are some beautiful and amazing things happening every day all around me. Maybe since I am no doctor or nurse, the wounds and pain I witness every morning truly were shocking at first, but like anything you must build up a shield over time that allows that pain to float away, and the healing to set in. Who knows, but at least I have narrowed out one field of work, medicine; definitely not my thing, it's official.
If I mentioned all the diseases that run rampant in this country, it would be as if we were back in time on the Oregon Trail, or during the Civil War, when people died of incurable diseases like TB, typhoid, cholera...and now AIDS, malaria, scabies, and other unmentionable conditions I have never even heard of. And now, this ungodly thing called 'swine flu,' is this really happening. I left the dark ages of Nepal which had suffered from bouts of the BIRD FLU a few months ago, to now reading of the swine flu, potential 'pandemic' spreading around the world. That is some scary shit.
Even though some of the women live with the most grotesque and disturbing wounds I have ever seen, the most shocking realization I think for many of us volunteers, is the age of many of the patients. They are our age. A new patient that came in a few days ago is 19 years old, with a body smaller than an anorexic model, and tuberculosis. We have our entire lives ahead of us, and there are women and men
whos dreams have been dashed in the muddy waters of
Kolkata. It's hard to grasp now, but the intense feeling of gratitude and appreciation for the lives we lead at home, is to say the least, indescribable. We have everything at our feet.
One week to go, I'll keep you posted.
