What does it mean to be in a PNG village?

It was a chance meeting. He had come to this small town in PNG for a week's health workers training and is ready to carry back his knowledge and some drugs, back to his small village. I was supposed to have landed in his village to listen to stories, but due to heavy cloud cover, we could not and instead landed in the nearest airstrip a few miles away from the village. 

"Can I ask you a few questions, sir", I asked him. I was intent on listening to him. "Of course, yes," he said. We both sat cross-legged on the runway. Yes, in the middle of the runway. We were both waiting for a plane to take us. Yes, you wait on the side of the runway and do not have fancy terminals to protect you from the sun. This is a different world. 

The sun was beating down and 'S' found it difficult to face the sun. My Indian skin is used to more violence from the sun I suppose. I sat down facing the sun. We started talking. 

'S' is a health worker. He lives in a very remote village in PNG and worked there as a health worker. He had come to a neighboring town for some professional training and to collect vaccines and immunization drugs. Being the only trained health worker in his community (around 7 villages, each with a population of 200-300 people) his role entails administering vaccines and referring patients who cannot be treated by him. 

I was there on a mission to listen to stories! I sat straight. He sat straight. we started talking. 

"The nearest city to our village is a seven-day walk", he said. Our work is to collect coffee and sometimes betel nuts and sell them in the nearest market, of course, the nearest market is in that city seven days' walk away. Most of that distance is dense forest, and you have to cross mountains too. He paused! Perhaps he realized I was a little lost. I was just trying to understand what it means to walk for seven days. 

Ha, isn't life difficult, I asked him? He just smiled. I think by now he understood even comprehending his life is very difficult for me. 

"But our lives have changed after MAF came in", he completed. 

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) is a Faith based NGO flying small planes to the remotest corners of the world. So, these pilots, who have given their lives to the service of society, fly in small planes and land in complex, remote airstrips. 

"MAF means so much to us. We never knew the outside world till MAF flew in", he continued. But then, it is really costly for everyone in the community to afford even that small fee that is being collected by MAF. So the people who could not afford, put all the cargo(coffee) onto the plane, walk the seven days, and collect the goods back in the city. MAF has them stored in their place. Sell the products in the city, buy goods(rice and food and other store goods) for the household and the village, put them back on a MAF plane, and walk back the distance.  

There was nonchalance in his speech. I sat there in a state of shock. We both continued. 

So how do you book a flight? Is there a flight every week? How do you know the flight schedule? My mind was getting curious. 

Our airstrip is surrounded by seven villages. Two of them across a river. So, every day the village leaders walk about to the airstrip to meet the MAF agent and ask about the flight. So, how long will that walk be? I asked. "Short distance only, maybe one or two hours; crossing the river may sometimes be difficult", the nonchalant act continued. Cell phones hardly work in our village. The MAF agent talks to the MAF base on a radio. Different world this! 

 "Sometimes the flight tries to land, but due to the bad weather conditions, it could not land, as the clouds may cover the runway. In such cases, we wait longer; Till MAF comes in to help". He abruptly stopped. Perhaps he realized it was becoming a little too heavy for me to take it in. 

The sun was beating down on my face. I started to imagine what will life mean to me had I been born in that village? I'm sure he would have seen the reflected glint from the small teardrop peeping out of my eye. My privileges! My blessings! I'm grateful! 

Suddenly we heard the sound of the plane. It was coming down to pick us up. The plan was to pick us up, go to his village, drop him and then go to the base where I lived. The pilot got down and said, "Sam, we can't go to the village where 'S' lived today, the cloud cover is intense and quite low"; 

I turned to look at him. That smile was no longer there. His wait to go back to his village continued. To see his wife. Administer vaccines and drugs to his people. Perhaps a week more or even two. Till MAF could take him back.  If MAF is not there, he had to walk. For a few days perhaps. But he preferred to wait, for walking through the jungles could sometimes be dangerous. 

As I hugged him goodbye, I could see the despair on his face. I boarded the flight and flew away. To my world of abundance. 

'S' with the vaccines & Drugs for his village

Some store goods ready to be carried to the village

Getting ready for take-off

The run-way where we had our conversation

The walking path

Sometimes through a mountain

                                            

Sometimes through dense forests

Can you see the runway?

Random ramblings about my happy place!

Do you all have a place that makes your heart full, where there is unbridled joy, where you are your absolute self, without any pretense, and makeup. The last two days I was in mine. 

This was the place where many years ago, as a confused young boy, hurting from a stinging defeat in life, aching from the loss of my mom, I found true meaning in life! Did I find life's meaning? Okay, that is too much to ask for! In any case, I found Joy and some contentment. 

It used to be my workplace many years ago! Imagine the place you want to be, being your workplace? Ain't that fun? 

Well, dreamy me moved on from there! Leaving my heart and soul and everything else there. 

Dreams are made of sterner stuff I presume, for it pulled me out of the comfortable, happy, and the contented world I had lived in. Perhaps, once I stop dreaming, I will go back there and just hope and pray that the place will welcome me like they welcomed me yesterday. 

So what makes that place create that flutter in my heart, I asked myself! Here is me digging for answers. 

Is that a flawless place? 

No definitely not. It is flawed, as flawed as any other place is. Perhaps even more so than the various other places of work I had been in. 

Do they do pathbreaking work? 

I suppose they do? But so do many other organizations. Does pathbreaking meaningful work contribute to the happiness my heart warrants? Perhaps so; One box ticked. 

Perhaps these are personal preferences! Perhaps there isn't a perfectly happy place and I'm just emotionally attached to a place. Perhaps looking for reasons for one man's happiness and trying to replicate that is foolhardy. Perhaps, one human's happiness is another's sorrow. 

Yet the truth remains that there is a workplace on this hated earth, which gave me happiness like no other! For that I'm truly eternally grateful! 

This is what I had written about it then.

https://samszammy.blogspot.com/2017/01/dream-team-my-work-place.html

Random reflections on my Liberian trip!

If you grow up in a devout Christian household like mine, chances are you would have chanced upon a book about the missionary to Africa Dr. David Livingstone. The famous statement "Dr.Livingstone, I presume" still echoes in my ears. Sadly, that was my only African connection till 2 weeks ago. Africa, the continent of mystique and mystery; of dense forests and rough terrain; of innumerable people with thousands of dialects; of slave labors and diamonds. Ah, the innumerable stories we have all heard about it. 

As my flight landed in Nairobi, Kenya with all those primitive, childlike yesteryear thoughts I got off. Only to be surprised. High-flying expressways and swanky new malls welcomed me to the city. The proud Kenyan friend reiterated the fact that her country is among the most developed in the continent, and among the fastest growing in the world. After a few days of enjoying the Kenyan hospitality, I landed in Liberia. A western African country off the coast of the South Atlantic ocean. 

The next two weeks were spent in this beautiful country and more so in a beautiful compound right across the beach. This is what I woke up to every day. 

Yet, the country was very different!  As a student of International Development, this country made me think deeply, and here are a few of my brain's random scribblings.

At the outset there was poverty! Evident and on the face. Life had not been easy for the people. They had faced civil war and by the time the war came to an end after 14 long years, Ebola came about, and another few years of complete closure ensued. 

A generation or two has not seen the schools! How can a country grow if there is a young population without education? Can any country at all grow without concentrating on the education of its populace? Is education the be-all and end-all of growth and development? Can learning and thinking skills be taught apart from the schooling structures to fast-track development? The questions that thronged my mind were many. 

The roads were pathetic, to say the least. The less said the better about other infrastructure. Someone said they have 75% unemployment. Agriculture hadn't yielded desired results. Healthcare is abysmal. Corruption was rampant. Where do we even start, if there has to be some development in the life of the people, was a question I constantly asked myself! 

As I was typing this a feeling of helplessness swamped me! Sadly, life is not fair. Amidst the cacophony of noises in my mind, I heard a shrill clear sound. "Sir, food"! It was the air hostess. "Vegetarian for you", she continued. But I eat non-vegetarian, I protested. "Sorry sir, but we have only beef". It is okay ma'am, I eat beef, I said. "Are you sure sir?" Sure, please give. She gave me the beef meal and left me to my thoughts and beef. I was still lost in my thoughts, with the beef meal in my hands, when a minute or two later she came back again. "Sir, that one is a 'beeeeef', you got me well, right". I sheepishly smiled back.

 "India beckons!"

The impulsive road trip!

As I opened my Chrome browser late in the night yesterday this quote popped up! 

“Don't think about what might go wrong, think about what could be right.”

I smiled at it. Providence! 

Well, let me tell you the story behind it. So last Friday I submitted all my written work. Nearly 15000 words of writing in 15 days. I won't really say I had slogged it out, but surely worked hard for it. Friday night I met a friend at an Iftar party, and over biriyani, we discussed a road trip that we should do. Since it became late that night, we just slept over the idea. Literally slept over it! Next day morning things fell in place. We decided we will rent a car and do a random trip. A trip to nowhere in particular. 

And what two days! If you have not tried driving through the villages and towns of the UK on an English summer, you should. Beauty redefined! Well, beauty defined. 

And just before starting we wanted to include one more person. But nobody turned up. Everyone was sleeping after the tiring month I suppose. Few were drunk. And one even said, I can't take an impulsive decision like that. 

Well, that is the story of an impulsive decision to drive randomly for two days. 500 miles. Four friends! English summer! Greenery! A brilliant DJ with indie pop and Punjabi folk and razzmatazz Bollywood numbers!  And well, a whole lot of intense conversation. 

What if I had thought about things going wrong before deciding to drive! Thankfully I didn't. Everything went right. And I will let you decide why it is the right decision by looking at some of these photos. 

You got to admire the photographer! I meant GOD!

My driver. He used to be an IAS officer! Wink! Wink

                                                   

                                                   
                                                                Looking beyond!

                                                             No, we did not climb this cliff!

                                                   

                                         

                                The only word in the english language I know to describe this is 'wow'!

                                            The partners in crime! If impulsiveness is one.

                                       My wife thinks I'm colour blind. Clearly, I'm not. No?

                                                    Did I tell you it was green? All over!

                                                      Arundel fort from a distance!

Fancy Cars

                               This was what we saw on either side of the road. Serene and green!

                                                                     The drive!

Cambridge!

Life is never the same again! As I got back into the car and left Cambridge behind, I left a part of me, into that distant historic past of the Village of Cambridge. It is the story of a young boy growing up in a distant little town in South India. The story of dreams. He grew up dreaming of Cambridge. The Cambridge which taught his childhood hero, a brilliant mathematician who quit a glittering Cambridge career to serve humanity in the dusty lanes of his town.   

"What did it mean to be in Cambridge?" was the rhetoric often spoken about in that part of the land! "What did it mean to be in Cambridge?" was almost a talisman growing up. Cambridge meant history! The history, the boy in me so loved. History of so many years that both the hands with all its fingers each counting a century is not enough. And so, began my journey to this historic place, first in my dreams, much later in reality. This village has contributed to 118 Nobel prize winners, my tour guide said! I caught hold of every word of his, like life’s treasures. 118? Oh ya, he shrugged it off! There was an air of nonchalance in that body gyration. He went on! I stopped there. 118! I replayed that number in my mind again. The whole of my country have five, and we celebrate that number. A three-digit stat was beyond belief. I was just about recovering when he said Rutherford discovered electrons in the lab next door. And do you know ‘Watson and Crick’? they celebrated the discovery of DNA in the bar there right across the street. That man continued on his monologue. Not realizing the profundity of his own statements. After talking about Sir. Isaac Newton, Dr Stephen Hawking, Dr Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russel, and Charles Babbage he took a break! Maybe he realized I was still recovering from the number 118! Suddenly it hit me hard. The names do not matter in Cambridge! But it is the ideas; the convictions, that matter. Of course, Sir. Isaac Newton lives on. Yet the Idea of gravity that came out of the hollow blocks is the better optics for the village of Cambridge. Convictions are things certain! The certainty of the ideas which germinated in the minds of the people who lived in this remarkable village. Just to reinstate this, the street corner opposite to the most famous kings’ college is the corpus clock which shows the exact time only once in fifteen minutes. So that clock slows down and fastens up on time every fifteenth minute. And it is completely made of mechanical parts. How is that even possible? Well, In Cambridge it is possible! I took the quiet boat ride across the colleges soaking into the glory of Cambridge’s historicity. The stunning landscape. The refreshing greenery. The huge cathedrals. The old hollow blocks. Yet, when I closed my eyes, Cambridge meant something else. It meant dreams. For it is the place where dreams become reality and in reality, people dream. Dream about big ideas; until they become convictions; till those convictions conquer the world.          

In search of the addressless!

"I left house when I was eight", said that boy. In search of the illusory happiness and running away from the real world of schools, exams and homework! 

He had only one leg, One huge hump on his back when I saw him. He would have been around fifteen. May be thirteen. He din't know his age. I was twenty one.  Life was at a different pace then! 

That boy had run away from strict parents thinking life will be full of roses. Sadly he did not see the thorns of the world out there. He took the only train available in his small town and two days after that found himself in a remote land speaking a different language with a multitude of people, cramming for every single inch of space. Bombay! After spending many years by the roadside and eating the leftovers of those who can afford, he decided to go back home.

Home he thought will be where the train which he came from goes to. Sadly, the train went to another filthy city with people speaking another language and in the mayhem of coming out of the railway station of Kolkata, he met with an accident and lost his leg. 

In that lost state, these two nun sisters from the mother Teresa's home found him. They took him back home. Nursed him. Fed him. Till he became alright. It was there I met him, when I was volunteering with the Mother Theresa's home.

He never spoke to anybody there. Strangely enough he realised I could speak the language he knew. We became friends and on the day I was leaving he said, "Can you find my parents for me?" Teary eyed, he hugged me! And I promised I will.

So all he knew was his house was small, near a market and in the town 'V'! 

My mind wrestled with the stupid idea of searching for the addressless! How do you look for somebody in the multitude without knowing anything? Quit it sam! You will not find him, said the usual voice. Oh no Sam. What if you find him, said a strange voice within. I decided to give it a try. I was not doing anything anyways then. 

So with a bag on my shoulder, I went. In to the town 'V'. Searching for this small house, near the market. 

I quit often! You are a fool, sam! That voice often wrestled. What are you looking for? It asked me. Oh well! The other shrill voice, kept me going. 

Do you know, it is nine years to this date that I found his house. That small house, near the market, in the town 'V'? That mother hugged me and cried. I called the Nun sisters and put the family on to the boy. And the fool I'm, did not get their contact number and follow up on the family. 

Did the boy join the family? Did the mother go all the way to pick that boy up? Did the sister, who was not on talking terms to the mother, talk to the brother? Is the boy mobile now? What happened to his lump? Was it operated on? And I did not even get the address. Should I make one more trip to check on him now? Will I be able to find them now? What if the parents had not bothered to pick him up at all? Will he still be in the orphanage? 

So who is up for one more adventure in search of all these questions? To the small house near the marked in the town 'V'. In search of the addressless!

What did that man do?

They were all coming back to meet their alma mater. The Christian Fellowship Hospital (CFH) Oddanchathram. Everybody had gratitude in their eyes, every single one of them. That word 'CFH' was repeated thousand times. Almost all of them felt like coming home. Many said it is their 'Mothers place'. Some said they learnt their values there. Some said that place turned their career upside down. Some said their life began there.

Through out the three days of the alumni get together, my mind repeated the same question.What did that man do?

Dr.A.K Tharien came to oddanchathiram in the early 1950's to start a small hospital. That place was then very remote and had little medical help. He wanted to serve the people there. He could have chosen to be some where else. May be the US. May be Cambridge. He did not. He chose the needy and the neglected. He chose oddanchathiram. And the rest is history. HIS story!

From a small haunted house when it was started to the sprawling huge campus, from two doctors to 150 of them now. From a single nurse to a nursing college. From few patients to thousands thronging the place every day.

Not a single paisa of bribe has been paid. Not a single patient sent away for want of money. The focus on the poor has not been deviated from. The founder himself has not taken anything from it except his salaries. The cost for the health care is still affordable to the Indian poor. And the ethics of medicine have been strictly adhered to.

You can see doctors on cycles coming to work! The old man himself drove one till his death. The nurses and the doctors together joke around. The senior most teaches cooking 'sambar' to the Juniors. The ward boy also is found giving speeches. It was one family. One huge loving family!

Again the question comes haunting by! What did he do? How did he do? And more importantly, why did he do?

The answer for the 'why' question was there on everybody's lips. 'For the love of christ!' 'For the love of christ!' Yes, they have stood for the truth and the poor. 'For the love of christ!'

And the rest of the answers, well, go and find out!

Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital – Light amidst darkness

                          

                                It was a pretty long drive. Our famed Indian roads made us take five hours for the hundred kilometres, I travelled from Silchar city to the tiny village, Makunda in the southern most part of Assam. It was pitch dark when I set foot on the land; “Current nahin hain”, said the driver, only that he did not tell me that current had not been there for many days. Though, I was tired to the marrow of my bones, sleeping amidst the croaking sounds of huge lizards and howling foxes was always difficult.  Welcome, to Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital (MCLGH)! A hospital where foxes can be seen daily, but electricity had always been a guest;

                                After such an introduction you are bound to have doubts about the place, don’t you? But all those doubts are put to rest when you go around the serene, green 300 acre campus. You can see people thronging to meet the doctor. “We have been waiting for almost two hours and travelled two hours to meet the doctors here”, said an old man. “Four hours” just to meet the doctor (Leave alone the time taken for investigations, and other works) is almost a joke in my place. Why should he wait for two long hours? Can’t he go to any other place? Aren’t there any other doctors in the nearest vicinity? Questions, which can give a lot of perspectives.

                                The campus lies bordering the three north eastern states of Assam, Mizoram and Tripura. The place is so underdeveloped that you almost feel like living in the 80s. Credit cards are still an unheard of commodity, computers and the internet are for the educated upper class, the previous day’s newspapers are read the next day, IT means “it”, engineers are still revered and the threat of terrorists rise once a while. These states had to be among the poorest places in the country, my mind said. It is in such a dark backdrop lie this light. After all, lights burn brighter when the darkness is more profound, don’t they?

                                Just to think that it was an old, dilapidated building, closed for twenty years when Dr. Vijay Anand and his wife Dr. Ann Miriam took over in the early 1990s is mind boggling. The place is bubbling with energy. 300 Outpatients are seen every day, more than 300 deliveries conducted a month, almost 6000 ultrasounds are being done and more importantly almost 20 leprosy patients are given livelihood. When you begin to wonder at the numbers, somebody says hold on; you have not seen everything yet. When you finally see the primary school for the children around the place, which now is in its tenth year and a nursing college sending out 20 smart nurses every year who run to the every sound of pain, you are made to ask “ Is this it or anything else still remain”. It is no longer surprising to hear that more than half of the school children and all the nursing school students stay in the hostels and eat food produced in their own campus.

                                It is one big village out there inside the campus. They all work towards a single goal; the goal of improving the lives of the people around them. When I look back now, I am reminded of the saying that the light on top of the hill cannot be hidden. Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital was started as a small light in one of the darkest places of the world. No doubt, it was a small light. But a light which had burned brighter as the days progressed and more importantly a light which is showing the world its way!