Maybe final blog post

Dear All,

The main thing this week was a couple of days spent in local poor villages doing basic medical screening. The children screened ( over 300) were a delight of course. And a variety of conditions were detected : conjunctivitis, TB, scabies, a damaged cornea which would have cost the girl her sight but will now get treated, a thyroid imbalance. A good many were malnourished and vitamins were given out.

It was a cheerful co-operative atmosphere. I had thought it may possibly be a sullen one. The children were with their parents. They are all sponosored children of World Vision who link with Kothara to do this. They had to be photo-ed too and stood deadly serious for this to happen. We sponsor a couple of childen with another charity and receive such photos of them. We had hoped they did not mind having to be photo-ed for our sake but these kids were OK.



The villages were an education. Cow dung houses with cow dung patios. Feels very nice underfoot. I'm going to apply to our Parish Council and the Diocesan Parsonage Board for a cow dung extension to our Rectory. Animals over the place as usual, oxen, goats, chickens, once a monkey on a chain picking the fleas off a dog's back. Low roofs of sheet corrugated metal covered with ceramic tiles of some sort. Then firewood on top, or drying hay, or cereals laid out to dry.Women in bright saris and jewels, amazingly clean and lovely like something out of Arabian Nights , slashes of colour in the otherwise drab squalor of it all. The men by contrast largely dirty sitting in groups on their haunches.

Tommorrow I preach in Chapel for the last time. In the evening we are being cozened out to Amravati for the graduation ceremnoy of some students from the Bible College there. We've spent a lot of time this week in a truck already and the invite is not from Kothara but a visiting cleric. Whatever, Monday sees away from here to Nagpur. Overnight there, then, Tuesday morning a flight to Delhi and linking up with the UK supporters coming out from London for a 10 day tour. Many thanks for previous prayers for our travel. we would appreciate them again, that we connect ok with the UK supporters who land at a different terminalNo promises we can get on line after this point. So - this may be good bye. We will try internet cafes and such but time may be tight. Will do our best.

Either way, thanks for all the interest and support and prayers. Glad we have done this blog. Both for you and us.

At the top is a photo of all the hand surgery patients on the hospital steps prior to discharge. They return for physio in 3 weeks. We did warn you! Here's us gowned up for the re-constructive surgery. The other two guys are Drs Kumar (the big expert, on the left) and Dr Steven Massey of Kothara here who is not a surgeon but helped at the "camp" with all the administration. We went out with him today around some local villages screening for medical needs, together with World Vision workers. The villages were fascinating, the photos show a classroom andone of ourteam puttingup an eye testing notice like an optician's here but only using one letter.. We have lots of photos of the lovely children but we aren't putting them on the web. Thanks for many kind responses re Kate and Omar, our daughter and son in law. It's all tailing off now thankfully we assume after the arrest and charging of a man for the offence.

March 4-7th

Dear All,
A quick post whilst we have internet. Connection has been very iffy for some days. First, thanks for a series of comments. Our recent e-mail has obviously stung you into action. We are very grateful and will reply to particular queries raised by e-mail.
Since our last posting we have been in the operating theatres again watching reconstructive surgery done. This a means of re-connecting people's fingers, feet and eyelids with live tendons where their muscles have been paralysed by the effects of leprosy. We saw the world's most practised and profficient reconstructive surgeon, Dr Vijaya Kumar, in action. He is much decorated for his work. He was also a very nice chatty man, cheerfully talking to us whilst cutting and sewing away merrily. He set up some good photos of it all for us. We are not puttingthemon the blog -they are not for the squeamish. We will however post some unflattering ones of us in our surgical gowns etc (not for the squeamish either) and one of all the post-operative patients , some 70 of them, in a group photo with their plaster pots on. The whole place has been flooded with folks going about with arms, feet, elbows (sometimes the nerves in the elbow are attacked) and faces swathed inpot and/or bandaging.
Dr V proved to love cooking after his 12 hour stint in surgery and cooked us up fantastic dishes here in the guest house on two consecutive nights.It was all very convivial ; we were seven around the table and in contrast to the two of us in "hill station" mode.
I preached in Chapel yesterday to a full house congregation swelled by the patients. It was a moving address in that most of them had moved out before I'd finished. Some before I'd really got started. Perhaps it's that it was in English untranslated. Or that they are Hindus. Or that they have innate good sense. I'm to do a Lent Prayer Meeting on Wednesday. I bet they can't wait.
The work for this week otherwise will be to try and get some of the long-stay patients to tell us their stories and to lead a couple of workshops for the opthalmic students. Snake-hipped young ment these, aged about 20/21, immaculate in white uniforms and black belts. On Wednesday and maybe Friday too we will go out with a team led by Dr Steven Massey from here into some local villages. We are not entirely sure just what to do. We think it is screening and education work, encouraging people to disclose and seek treatment if they suspect they may have the disease. It will be good to get off campus agin and to taste local village life.
Advance warning that we may be nearing the end of the blogging season. A week today we leave Kothara to go to Delhi and there join a group of TLM UK supporters on a 10 day tour of TLM India installations in the Delhi triangle area, plus a bit of tourism. We shall be seeing the Taj Mahal for instance. We are looking forward to it. We can't guarantee internet access and suspect the days may involve a lot of early starts and travelling. However we will do our best.
And finally..... we suddenly realised this morning that Elizabeth's back has given no trouble at all for three weeks. So, we praise God and thank you for your prayers. Funny how one takes good things for granted. We'll try and post the photos above mentioned this afternoon. Leeds United continue to slide in League One. One bloggee refused point blank to pray for them -what kind of support is that?

Wed 3rd March, 2010

Today is a day of preparation. The 70 or more new arrivals are being assessed for the surgery "camp" which begins tomorrow. It is essential that their ulcerations are free of all infection if the reconstructive surgery can go ahead so patients are highly motivated to clean their hands and feet thoroughly. Here is a young man cleaning what is actually quite a deep ulceration on his heel with a piece of roof tiling. We are privileged tomorrow to gown up and be observers of the operations. They will include work on the tendons of hands to rescue the facility to grasp, and to reduce 'clawing'; work on the tendons in the foot to avoid foot-drop and consequent lameness ; and work on patients' eyes to restore the ability to blink. Leprosy attacks the nerves which control this and sufferers, unable to fully cover the eye with each blink become prey to eye ulceration and infection and ultimately blindness. Apparently it's all hands on deck as the camp only comes around about quarterly. We were in physio this morning watching them assess people to see if surgery is actually required. There was a young boy who had been on medication for a year whose hands have not clawed and whose overall condition is such that he will not need sugery, just ongoing medication and diligent care of himself. We couldn't tell if he and his father were pleased or not with this news.

Pix of the Conference

On the left is a pic of the canteen where we ate lunch each day. The cook was really good and produced great meals including two barbeques in the evening. There was a TV in the corner of the canteen and Andrew watched Tendulkar collecting runs one day. We never quite mastered the art of eating with our fingers.


Below is a snap of the classroom scene as Rev Job is preparing to lecture. All was done much more formally than in the UK. On the right is the official photo of the conference with delegates, taken just before we left to return to Kothara.

As promised, some pix of our recent trip to Allahabad for the Conference. On this first post three of the city itself. On the top right is a snap taken through the windscreen of our jeep. It shows something of the congested chaos of the traffic. Unlike the M25 though, it all keeps moving - all of it, all of the time. And somehow nobody seems to get killed. Rule of the road seems to be - keep going where you want to go, no matter who is in the way and they'll get out of the way.

This second one is of the Ganges bank and a little of the huge open space which accomodates 30 M people every 12 years. Next one 2013 if you fancy coming. Long queue for the toilets at times. You can just see some of the many boats which ply a trade taking worshippers out and the rubbish at the fringe of the waters.
The light shirted figure at the left is Immanuel, a TLM counsellor from the far South of India, it took him nearly three days to arrive here. Next to him is Rev Job, with whom we co-facilitated.

This one is of Nehru's House, as mentioned in the earlier post.

Back from the Conference (2.3.10)

Hello everybody,
As we suspected there was no easy internet access all last week to keep up the blog.

We travelled to Naini a week ago for the conference and back again yesterday. Long and tiring journeys. I'll not be so quick to slag off Britsh Rail next time. We had hours of delays, which is we understand very much the norm hereabouts, and anyway the journey was twelve hours each way. Once on board all that time, we got to reading. I read "The Island" by Victoria Hislop (atrocious but for its leprosy content) and "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson (sublime).
We were very kindly received in Naini. It is a suburb of Allahabad, popn 1 million, on the banks of the Ganges. During a break in the conference we were taken to see Pundit Nehru's house. He was India first Prime Minister, father of Mrs Ghandi, a later PM and grandfather of her sons, Rajid and Sanjay both of whom were also PM for short times. Quite a dynasty. Indira Ghandi and Sanjay were both assassinated in office. Rajid died in an aircraft accident. So lots of tragedy too. Sonia Ghandi, Sanjay's widow, is the Chairman of the ruling Congress Party at the moment. She is Italian and had played no part in India's volatile politics prior to being widowed. She is proving to be a wise and acceptable ruler according to those we met at Naini. She is not herself PM nor holds any other office but is the power behind it all. The house was well worth seeing. Three tiers of balconies around a spacious villa. There is a square projecting bit of balcony on the first floor from which Mahatma Ghandi would address mass crowds from time to time, a thing quite easy to imagine when you stand on the spot. Ghandi and Nehru were political allies and much of the planning between them to agitate for Independence was done from this house. It all made me want to brush up on the fight for Indian independence and the tragedy of partition betwen India and Pakistan in 1947 onwards.
We also saw the Ganges. Allahabad is home to a confluence between the Ganges and another river, the Yamuna. This site is sacred to Hindus and every year there is a "mela" or religious gathering to which 2/3 million will come at a certain time of the year deemed to be particularly auspicious in order to bathe in the sacred waters for purification. Every 12 years there is a special one attracting, wait for it, 30 million or so worshippers. I must say the area beside the banks is huge, but 30 million I simply cannot imagine. There was an old sadhu or holy man down there. Some live there permanently, I think. He was just in a loincloth , had a dirty bag of kit beside him, a large white beard and was speaking into a mobile phone.
The conference itself was very worthwhile, we thought. Thanks for praying for us. There were 13 delegates who were all but one of the TLM Counsellors in India. Some had travelled just short of three days to get there. We worked with Karen Warne a NZ counsellor and wife to TLM's International Director and with Rev Job Jayaraj, from the Church of North India. Both were very impressive and a pleaure to work with. The counsellors themselves are humbling people to meet. They work under difficult conditions with an absolute passion. They described to us some of the cases emotional suffering as a result of the terrible stigma attached to leprosy. It's awful to hear and they live with it. Let alone the patients of course.They seemed to appreciate our stuff which was basic enough, but most of them have not had specific clinical training in counselling. We ended feeling the whole encounter was one to treasure. We hope to write it up more fully over time.
We are now back at the ranch in Kothara. This week we will be concentrating on the reconstructive surgery offered here periodically. Two surgeons are due to arrive tomorrow to strengthen the staff and some seventy or more patients have arrived in readiness. We were on the ward round this morning when they were being checked over. It was sad indeed to see mostly fit youngish men in need of the surgery and three young boys, about ten years old. According to the WHO and the Indian Government leprosy has been officially eliminated in India since 2005. Well, they should have been in that ward round this morning, is all I can say.
That's it for today. Thanks again for your prayers. We would value further ones for us observing these operations and learning about the surrounding and vital supportive therapy, largely physio.
Hopefully, we can post some of our Naini photos next time.