Jennifer Hicks’ Blog

June 29

June 29, 2007
I have no idea when this email will finally be sent.  Communication is such
a huge frustration here, both with the people that don’t speak English, the
people that know but refuse to speak English, and with the internet.  All
that aside, I’ve been dying to share some things with you.  It seems way too long since I last wrote.  A lot has happened in the past week or so.  I went out to see what the community health programs are doing.  One group teaches midwives safer practices, a skill here that’s passed down generationally with no formal training.  I think maybe I told you about this already..but they are so ignorant about deliveries.  It’s a really good target to reduce maternal deaths.  There’s also a physical therapy team and these guys are so cute!  They’ve trained two or three guys on exercises to do with disabled kids and they go out on their motorbikes to visit each kid weekly.  The families are generally very receptive.  It’s really important to motivate the family to take interest in their kids; otherwise, it just doesn’t work. On my last trip to the community I remember the last two houses clearly. The first was such a cute baby!  Dipa.  She’s a cerebral palsy patient. Once they started coming out and made some progress with her the family got so excited.  When I was there, the grandpa came running and couldn’t wait to show us that she could stand by herself.  They work with her every day and are so proud of her.  I couldn’t wait to find a connection that worked so I could write home about the poster child for physical therapy success.  Then I got to the next house.  The girl that we had come to visit died four days before.  I stood there like a total intruder, a foreigner in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Even if I’d known the language, I wouldn’t have known what to say.  I wanted to cry with them.  The family was so upset, especially the grandmother.  I waited while Silas offered condolences and collected her little wooden yellow chair.  The hospital loans out these chairs for physical therapy.  He strapped it behind me on the motorcycle and off we went, that little yellow chair slapping me all the way back.  I think I still have a bruise.  I was so uplifted before we got to that house, and then so so humbled.

I spent the first part of this week in OB/GYN.  One patient that came in a
few days ago is still haunting me.  Asha Devi (everyone here is either a
Devi or a Khatoon).  Anyway, she’s 20 years old, married, 30 weeks pregnant with her husband’s child, and her chart reads, in broken English, ‘wants to abortion’.  Dr. Anand counseled her for a long time and gave her a track about Christianity.  She cried and cried.  It was obvious that she doesn’t want an abortion.  I learned something new about the culture here.  Girls are married off as early as 13, but they don’t join their husbands until later; they continue to live with their families for some time.  When they do come together, there’s a ceremony and until then they are not supposed to consumate the marriage.  They hadn’t had their ceremony yet.  It’s so sad. She’s so far a long.  Everybody has to know she’s pregnant anyway.  Please pray for her and all the other women here.  Their husbands and families dictate everything for them.  They’re so ignorant, but even so, I see some hope in them from time to time, some obvious desire to do what’s right for themselves and their kids.  The next president of India may be a woman. Things may be changing, slowly, but non-the-less…

I keep noticing children that come in, girls dressed like boys..I can’t get
a straight answer about why, nobody seems to know.  I’m wondering if it’s
because people want boys so badly that they just want people to think they have a boy or maybe they’re so ignorant they think if they dress like a boy they’ll be a boy.  Nobody here seems to have much regard for the
intellegence of people here.  They really are so so ignorant, but if having
a girl is such a hardship for the family (because of the dowry they have to
pay for marriage), I don’t understand why they don’t just keep their girls
at home.  I’d like to think that maybe they’re being sneaky and trying to do
that by letting people think they have sons instead of daughters.  Maybe
not, but as wierd as these people can be, I have to think there’s got to be
a reason.

Now that I’ve written a novel for you…it hit me yesterday that I’ll be
coming home soon.  I’m going to miss Raxaul.  At the same time, I’m really excited to come home again with a new appreciation for the things I’ve taken for granted.  Even here, I think I take things for granted, like electricity and food and showers and toilets, things that aren’t an issue for us in the hospital compound, but are hard to come by on the outside.