I had a few interesting experiences this week. I went to another mobile clinic in a Muslim village, but this time I was the only “doctor” going! As I’ve mentioned before, the hospital is very short on residents right now, so there is no doctor available to go to the villages. Daniel and Goli (the physicians from Switzerland) have volunteered to go while they are here, but Daniel was sick this week and Goli stayed with the children. So that left me =) I was excited and a little nervous to be going alone. I’ve been to two mobile clinics before, and I knew that this one in particular has fewer patients that come every week. But I was thinking, “I’m not a real doctor yet! What if I don’t know what to do?” I said a couple of prayers on my way that there wouldn’t be anything really scary awaiting me, and that I would make good judgements. Praise God, nothing I saw threw me for a loop, and I think I managed the patients well. I referred one woman to the hospital to get an ECG because I think she has atrial fibrillation, so I hope she goes and has that followed up on.
After the clinic, we drove on to another village to attend a woman’s self-help group, which is part of a larger community health project led by people connected to EHA and Herbertpur Hospital. It was so interesting! This particular village is very large- over 7,000 people live there and it is a Muslim village. There are ten women’s self-help groups within this village, each with 12-15 members, and they have been meeting for 6 years. The groups primarily talk about ways to be economically self-sufficient (saving money, starting a business, etc), but they also address problems such as alcohol abuse and smoking. Women from this group have taken loans from a bank and started their own shops, and some have bought buffalo and sell the milk from the buffalo. Every month they deposit 100 rupees (~2 US dollars) into a collective savings fund. Over the past 6 years they have raised over 100,000 rupees (~2,300 US dollars)! That is a lot of money here in India, especially for impoverished people. It was so great to hear them talk about their plans to join other women’s groups and create a larger co-op where they could collaborate and invest in something larger to make money from. The women spoke of the difficulties they face- most are illiterate and uneducated, they all have families and houses to care for, and they have few resources. But their faces were glowing with their accomplishments. They asked me (through Mr. Robert translating for me) if women in the states sit together like this (they were all sitting on a dirt floor in a dirt and cement house) and what sort of jobs women do. I smiled to imagine women at home being comfortable on a dirt floor with flies buzzing around and going home to haul cow dung from the yard and spread it on the floors of their homes (this is what they do here)- I tried to answer in a way that was encouraging.
This weekend I’m taking a trip to Haridswar and Rajistan with Goli, Daniel, and the children. These are two cities that are part of the Hindu holy pilgrimage along the Ganges river. I’m really excited to see another city and learn a little more about the Hindu religion here. Pray for safe travels!
Prayer Requests:
- Angela left this week (she was another student from Texas here for 3 weeks). The day she left I started feeling much more homesick than I have in awhile. It gets lonely when everyone around me is speaking Hindi, allowing my thoughts to wonder towards thoughts of home. During these moments, I have been praying to the Lord and asking for joy and strength, knowing that He is all I need and He promises to fill me and lift me up. True to His character, the Lord has come through each day and made it wonderful, but I still struggle in the mornings. I would appreciate prayers for this during my last weeks here.
- Continue to pray that the Lord would provide more physicians here, especially in OB/Gyn and family medicine. (Two rural surgery residents that had been at another hospital for the past year returned this week- so that helps out a little bit!).
Praises:
- My Grandpa had a pretty major surgery last week, and it went as well as we could have hoped for! We were all very worried, considering his age and comorbidities, but God is so good and has granted us more time to spend with him. Grandpa got to celebrate sis 89th birthday on February 22nd! I wish I could have been there, but I’m really looking forward to celebrating with him when I come home.
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