Yesterday, I spent the day and night at a rural hospital, founded by one of the trustees of the organization I work for. I am here this morning still, having spent the night outside of the city where I woke early to the chilled sunrise, morning noises of birds, and the sounds of boiling chai. While I was told to be awake at 7:30, nothing will actually begin to happen here until 9:30 – so after a breakfast of chai and poori (fried-dough-like-chipattis), I am sitting on a quiet bench, overlooking the morning routine of the hospital, writing.
Patients are up and out of their beds, walking around the campus. Women are sitting on their haunches talking rapidly– pointing and gesturing me as always, and as always, I do not understand, but smile and laugh. Men squat outside the hospital smoking bidis and drinking chai, wrapped tightly in their long shawls against the brisk of the morning. Young boys walk around carrying brooms and buckets, singing songs in Hindi, which adds some loveliness to their morning routines.
I have been shown around by a man called Adha, the trustee, the man who started the hospital, whose name means “elder brother,” or “father.” The name is fitting – he is so kind, and shuffles around the hospital freely distributing affection and kisses. I am really taken by him, and have now put him in the category of people who have undertaken beautiful work in India.
Adha reminds me of a man named Vinayekbhai – who I met in a village called Vavar in Southern Gujarat – right before I left my placement with the previous organization. Both men are incredibly kind and humble, and have improved the lives of so many people just be being in a place, putting together resources, and in believing in the deepest sense of equality. They seem to believe that everyone not only deserves access to health care, or access to opportunity or education, but that everyone deserves access to kindness and to love and to guidance. I am creating a group in my mind – compiling the experiences of meeting people like this, and think it will serve well in providing examples of the most noble work.
Adha is not a doctor. He was once a business man in Mumbai. He had never done this kind of work before, but one day decided it was necessary. When I asked him how he might’ve learned to actually start a rural hospital, he said simply, “the need was there, the donors were there, I just bridged the two together.”
His hospital specializes in eye-care and surgery, dental care, and women’s gynecological problems. They run health camps out of the hospital, in which a hundred or so patients will come on the same day to have surgery done and will then rest at the hospital, recovering for a period of about a week. Today, there are about 30 women patients remaining after the gynecological health camp. Many of them have had surgeries to fix something called a prolapsed uterus – where a woman’s uterus essentially falls out of her body because her muscles cannot hold it inside anymore. It is a problem common in women who have many children, and who do so much physical work throughout their lives. Others have surgery to remove cysts or to address other ovarian issues.
The hospital also specializes in eye-care because there are so many eye problems in people who live in this area. It is incredibly dusty and hot, and many women embroider late into the night, which can also cause a great deal of strain on the eyes.
Adha has taught me all of this while I’ve been here…He knows a great deal about health now – and even counsels some of the patients who come into his hospital.
Yesterday, he sat in his office speaking to a young man about the importance of being faithful to his young wife – who will undergo surgery to widen her cervix, so she and her husband can have sex. She is worried that her husband is going to sleep with other women because he is not enjoying sleeping with her. Adha has arranged for the girl to have this surgery, at a cost her family can afford. As he councils the boy, he speaks softly to him, with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, as if he were transmitting responsibility and loyalty into the boy through his firm hand.
His approach is so holistic. Everything that should be important in health care is there – the services are being provided, but so is the education, the kindness, the respect and equality. That one person can not only encompass this approach, but be a model for others who are working here, in the center, feels extremely important. It is, I think, what makes this place different from others.
He also runs a hostel and school for boys with down-syndrome. The campus of the school is unlike anything I’ve seen in India. It is beautiful, with manicured landscaping and lots of space to play. When we walked into the campus, all the boys ran up to Adha and gave him great hugs. They are definitely the happiest children I’ve ever seen here. We spent a while sitting with the boys as the sun set yesterday evening. We watched them practice long-jumping for the specials Olympics which they will attend in the coming days. After each boy jumped, he would run to Adha, who would shake his hand and give him a kiss on the head.
He told me later that we shouldn’t try to make these boys fit into our world. They have their own world, he said, and we should let them create it here. They do indeed seem to live in a different world – it is playful, green, and filled with laughter and friendship. The campus they live in was actually designed for paraplegic patients after the earthquake. All of the rooms are therefore designed as dome-like structures – so that if there is another disaster, the structures won’t fall, trapping the people who cannot move out from under them. Now all the paraplegic patients have left, and the boys who live here sleep in the domes, which now have glow-in the dark stickers of stars and moons all around. It feels like a magical universe inside the dome and I imagine the boys lying awake under the dome sky, pointing at the stars.
…..
I spend the afternoon with the team of nurses – who have stayed a few weeks after the gynecological camp to assist and monitor patients who are in recovery. To my surprise, I am invited into one of the examination rooms to stand and watch as women come in one-by-one to have their bandages changed, stitches removed, and discharge forms filled out. It’s not the first time I’ve been invited to watch a medical procedure. When I was staying at my previous NGO, I was allowed to watch as the doctor took sonograms of pregnant women. There are no regulations here, official or customary, that prevent a curious visitor like myself from entering the procedure-room. It is strange at first, to be so warmly welcomed into a space that to my Western-self still feels so secretive and intimate. It also makes me wonder why we have such notions of secrecy…I accept the offer as an incredible learning experience.
The patients are Kutchi women of all shapes, sizes and ages. They come into the examination room, pull up their gowns and exposure their healing scars. It’s difficult to describe how it felt to see those women there…to see the beauty of a woman’s body, and so many of them, and their scars - each one almost identical to the woman who laid there before her, and the process of healing that the body undergoes. How strong our bodies are! That scars can heal, that we can recover, that with proper rest, we become healthy again, in such a small and humble little hospital in the middle of a rural desert. It’s amazing. And that these scars represent the betterment of women’s lives – they represent the fact that someone has finally recognized the value of a woman’s body and life, and the ease with which a major problem has been fixed.
It all comes to me as I watch each woman lay herself down on the table, make the same grimace in pain as her bandage is removed, some of them saying “Ayyee, Baghwan!” (ooh god!). Sometimes I reach down and hold her hand, which is probably an odd gesture here, but I do it anyway. Some, I stroke their heads, a stranger trying to show affection in some universal way.
While I am in the room, I am also offered a look at their case-files. Again, the absence of confidentiality feels odd, but I flip through the files, reading the notes written in English. I find myself particularly interested in the age of the women – noting what it looks like to be 45 in India, the number of times a woman has been pregnant, and the abortions she has had. One woman had 5 pregnancies, 3 abortions and 2 living male sons. This is a big problem in India.
After we see each woman, myself and the nursing team go for lunch. After lunch I sit outside with the group of women who are to leave that day. I am happy to see them outside in the sun, dressed and ready with their bags – scars hidden under a variety of Kutchi outfits. They are not patients anymore, but women returning their lives – healed. I worry though, what will happen when they return to their homes. Will they get to rest enough? Will they remember to take all of the medicines in their discharge baggie? But I take assurance in the fact that the hospital will always be there if they need to return.
I left the hospital after lunch today, but imagine I will come back again. Adha has told me that if anyone is interested in coming, he or she is welcome to stay here in the guest-house for as long as s/he wants. Have I convinced anyone?
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