Hello all,
After our wonderful vacation, I travelled directly to the Buxa birth attendant training. Our trip to Goa had refilled my tanks and I was ready to get back at it. When it was finished, I was excited to get home, have a warm mug of tea in my hand and play with my boys. But a slow train pushed my return back from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. By the time the ambulance rounded the last bend before home, I was fidgeting in my seat. All of a sudden, I saw Sagar sitting there in the dark on edge of the jungle just before we started up the driveway. My mind cringed and thought, “Why couldn’t I have been asleep? Why wasn’t I looking the other way? Maybe I don’t have to tonight? Can’t I just have some peace and quiet in my own house with my own family!”
A voice in my heart said, “Ryan . . . .”
A voice in my heart said, “Ryan . . . .”
My brain squirmed in its casing, groping for any acceptable justification. It came up empty-handed, so the driver Saran and I headed back down the drive with a lantern and an umbrella. Sagar, the village idiot, was soaked to the bone, squatting in the dark, covered with leeches.
“Well there is no chance of taking him home tonight. Guess he’ll sleep at our house.”Even in the darkness his eyes gleamed, “Doctor Uncle, I sleep! I sleep!” he spouted off in a joyous rapid-fire succession. My visions of rolling around on the carpet, wrestling with the boys melted away into apparitions of cleaning Sagar’s bloody, muddy feet and making a bed for him. My brain sulked, my heart sighed, and we walked towards the house in the rain. The light of the lantern prompted an eruption of “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” from the house.
Sagar also erupted into a chorus of, “I sleep! I sleep! I sleep!”
My two-year-old son, Shepherd, was standing in the doorway and was clearly as excited to see the village idiot as he was to see me. In his expanding vocabulary he gleefully shouted out, “Hi, Sagar! Hi! Come in! Come in! Yeah!”
Then a verse of scripture rolled back into my heart, “Truly, unless you become like one of these little children you will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.”
My brain still grimacing, my heart cracked a smile and I was home.
In our absence, Sandeep, the driver of the Matri Yaan ambulance, had given free transport to eight laboring mothers. Since July 20, it had been almost daily. The vouchers were out and the Matri Yaan service was rolling. On Sunday morning another call came from Pakang and I decided to ride along in case anything happened en route and to see if everything was working properly. The Old Maternity Ward was packed in Kalimpong. The floor was full of laboring mothers. The security guard moaned as another was brought in, and he lamented, “They are going to have to put another hundred beds in this place. I guess we can find another mattress or something.”
Almost as soon as we walked through the nurse station doors, a nurse whom I’d had a heated encounter with in January shouted, “I’m not going to sign it. You take the ambulance voucher somewhere else to sign.”Sandeep stood there bewildered as the nurse let loose the wrath she’d been brewing up for several months.
“How dare you correct me in my mother tongue!" she shouted. "I’m not going correct you in English!”
“Even though Nepali isn’t my mother tongue, I can tell when someone is treating another disrespectfully,” I said.
Sandeep stepped out of the room. Blood and heat rushed to my face. It took all my will to control my anger.
“How dare you, an outsider, come in here and criticize our hospital and our work!” the nurse continued.
“I didn’t criticise your hospital or your work. I only asked for you to treat the patient respectfully.”
For the next fifteen minutes her tirade continued with barely a gap for me to speak. She exaggerated my actions and had conjured several new faults in her months of reflection. She had also forgotten her harsh treatment of the patient and the fact that she had refused to care for a mother who was hemorrhaging. But as her anger began to peter out, she slowly became more humane.
“And the thing you said about village women being afraid of us nurses, that they would rather stay home and risk death than come because of our treatment . . . that hurt me deeply.”
"Look," I said, "I didn’t make up statements just to hurt you. I just told you the perceptions of villagers as they express them to me. That is why we have to treat them kindly, so that they aren’t afraid of coming here.”
For a few minutes, we were able to have an actual conversation where I gained a bit of compassion for the government nurses, and she saw more clearly who we were and what we are doing.
"Look, we Nepalis are a grateful people. I’ve seen you coming again and again with patients. I know when you’re in the hospital, and I hear stories about you. We are glad when someone comes from so far away to help in such a way. Now, everything is out in the open. I’ve said it, and it’s done. Now there’s nothing between us. Just be careful not to injure relationships here, because it looks like we have to work together.”
I’d prepped a lesson for Health Club down at Asher’s school, St. Stephen's Academy. Clubs were then, of course, cancelled on the day I was free, so I went into talk to Father Felix. “Oh Ryan, there is something I wanted to talk to you about. It seems people have been talking.”
It seems people have been talking, I’ve learned in this context means, get ready for you are about to get hit in the face with a sand bag. Gripping the arms of the chair and wincing, I sat expectantly.
“Some men are making noise in Git Dabling (the second most ominous statement). It seems they are complaining that a government contract was given to an outsider, a foreigner. They are of the opinion that the work should go to a local.”
“The government called me because no one had applied for the Git Dubling post and the Matri Yaan program was going to be lost for our region.”
“They are saying that they didn’t receive the information in time, and that you snatched it out of their hands.”
“The information was published in the newspaper with an open invitation to all vehicle owners.”
“They are spreading bad rumors around saying, ‘Well, did they come here to serve us, or to make money off us after all?’ Insinuating that a rich foreigner is stealing work from the poor. They’re also upset that you placed a driver from another village.”
Again the blood rushed to my face and I swallowed hard to suppress the anger.
“If I hadn’t acted, nine mothers wouldn’t have made it to the hospital this month. How many more once the program is in full swing later this year? All the vehicles in Git Dubling are old, worthless heaps that aren’t even fit to be ambulances. I know these kinds of guys. They are in every town. They just wanted a way to get easy government money by doing as little work as possible. I’m running two, soon to be three, ambulances off of what the government provides for one! What do I have left to get rich off of?”
“You’re exactly right," Father Felix said, "Their claims are completely unjustified, but I wanted you to be aware . . . so you didn’t get caught off guard.”
“The irony of it is that I’d been working since last November to organize the village into a cooperative society. I told them that once they’d formed the society I could give the ambulance to the community. I wanted them to own and manage it. They did nothing! If they had, they could have put the ambulance in themselves. I looked for a driver in Git Dubling first . . . but they were all drinkers! So I was forced to put in a driver from another village.”
“Look, Ryan, I’ve been working in this area fifteen years. When I brought St. Joseph’s Academy up to the tenth standard . . . only opposition! When I started the first ICSE standard school in the region, our St. Stephen’s Academy, it nearly caused a war. I’m misunderstood and slandered in everything I do. But I do what I do because it is right . . . not for thanks or approval.”
Taking care of Sagar is frustrating at times. He’s mentally handicapped. We can’t fix him. He’ll never change. But as I tucked Sagar into his bed for the night, he had the face of a boy on Christmas morning. “Doctor Uncle! I sleep! I sleep!” At home Sagar is abused verbally, physically, and probably sexually as well. If he sleeps at his house, he usually rises just before sunrise and roams the village until nightfall. At our house he didn’t stir until 9 a.m., just as we were beginning to think he’d died down there. He came up dressed in my shorts, asking for a plate of rice. He smiled and laughed as he ate, “I sleep! I sleep!”
As a thank you gift he took a dump on the ground in front of the bedroom and headed out to roam the village.
After twenty years we ask ourselves how we are going to change the world, what contribution we are going to make. After thirty, the idealism and innocent optimism of our twenties has been tempered by some bitter and painful experiences. We ask ourselves why humanity is the way it is. By forty we ask, Why couldn’t I have been asleep? Why wasn’t I looking the other way? Maybe I don’t have to tonight? Can’t I just have some peace and quiet in my own house with my own family! And by fifty most people have fastened the dead bolt and stop asking questions. It’s easier that way.
Is it possible for our hearts to rejuvenate even as our bodies and minds age? Is it possible for me to become more childlike even as the hair on my head decides to transfer to my back? Or am I destined to experience entropy of the soul as well? At some point we all come to a crossroads, and at the crossroads we have to choose. The sign on the left says, “Humanity is rotten. They take all you have and then shit on your step. Don’t waste your energy. They’ll never change.” The sign on the right says, “Humanity is rotten. They take all you have and then shit on your step. Do what is right because it is right. Give everything. Expect nothing.”
My great hope is, at the end of my life, to be like my son Shepherd. That I will have the strength to draw a breath into my geriatric frame, the heart to sincerely say, “Hi, Sagar! Hi! Come in! Come in! Yeah!”
This post was originally sent out as an email on August 5.
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