Everyday is a different and eye-opening experience here…even for me who’s been to and seen a lot of varied cultures over the years. We have continued to work in the operating room in the hospital and also had a few very emotional exchanges.   Its Pongal now, a Hindu/national holiday that lasts for 3 days. It signifies the harvest, the “new rice from the fields” so people decorate on the ground in front of the doors of their homes with beautiful designs in many colors and flowers and fruits as an offering of thanks to their Gods. Cows are sacred here, they provide milk and help in the fields to provide food, so no one eats beef and cows are allowed to wander all over the streets.

A few days ago we went to visit the Leprosy Colony in an area on the outskirts of Khammam where Habitat for Humanity built a small “colony” of 22 homes for lepers and their families to go live. Lepers are outcasts in society, even though they are not contagious, so they cannot find housing or get jobs because people don’t want them around, not to mention their hands and often their feet don’t work anymore so they cant do anything productive for work. Leprosy is caused by a bacteria that has a waxy coating on the outside of it and it is this waxy coating that eats away at the cooler parts of the body like the fingers, toes and nose. So even if the persons body fights off the original bacteria, the waxy coating stays in their system for life and affects the appendages. People with enough $ to buy antibiotics at the onset don’t have the side effects of the waxy coating. That’s how Dad explained it anyway. So we went there the other day and the lepers greeted us with their “band” of a few tin can drums and shakers. There were people of all ages, mostly the adults had the leprosy and the children were fine but still have to live in the leprosy colony because the whole family is considered outcasts. The children sang songs for us and one of the women in our group read a childrens story. I took a lot of pictures and the people loved being able to see it right away on a digital camera ( a huge benefit of digital photography!) One of John marks assistants has downloaded the pics from my camera and will print them for me to take back to the colony to give to the people before we leave.

We walked around their compound a bit, seeing their homes , outside kitchen with little campfire for cooking and 1-2 pots and pans, and 1 room under a roof where the whole family of 4-8 people sleep and keep their belongings, of which there are very few. Their toilets are cement stall outhouses with no roof, and a few years ago Dad used some funds he had raised in Savannah to buy doors for the outhouses (metal doors cuz wooden ones would just get eaten by termites). The people in the colony all love “Dr. George” because “many people come and look but Dr. George is the only one who actually does something to help us”. I got all choked up when i heard that and then i saw one of the houses (really just a cement room) that the family had to vacate because the rats had burrowed in under the broken slate floor and were biting the lepers feet (they cant feel it) and urinating and pooping all over their clothes and bed …then  i lost it…tears started streaming down my face. Thank god for dark glasses!

We were heading back to the vehicles when an older woman with no fingers came up to me smiling (they all knew I was Dr. George’s daughter), took my hands and put them on top of her head, and placed her hand stubs in front of her face and prayed, I think she was hoping my connectedness to Dr George would “heal” her. Again, I had to work hard to hold back tears. Its so very difficult to imagine life in their shoes.  Then back in the hospital., we are up to 75 cases or so by this morning (Saturday) so they will prob do between 175-200 between the 3 surgeons over the 2 weeks. They are doing 15-18 surgeries per day now and next week will get busier as word gets out that the American Drs at the Free Surgical Camp are leaving soon. I have settled nicely into my role as keeper of the Operations log and “runner” between the Screening Clinic down the hall and the OR getting whichever of the 3 surgeons is available to come down and look at a hydrocele, breast lump, burns, etc then I schedule them for surgery in the next few days. When there’s time I go further down the hall to the recovery wing to visit people in post-op and give little chocolates or silly bands to the children who had surgery.

Then back in the hospital, we are up to 75 cases or so by this morning (Saturday) so they will prob do between 175-200 between the 3 surgeons over the 2 weeks. They are doing 15-18 surgeries per day now and next week will get busier as word gets out that the American Drs at the Free Surgical Camp are leaving soon. I have settled nicely into my role as keeper of the Operations log and “runner” between the Screening Clinic down the hall and the OR getting whichever of the 3 surgeons is available to come down and look at a hydrocele, breast lump, burns, etc then I schedule them for surgery in the next few days. When there’s time I go further down the hall to the recovery wing to visit people in post-op and give little chocolates or silly bands to the children who had surgery.

Yesterday I just found out about a permanent patient at this hospital, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who had been left at the doorstep as an infant. She is the size of a very undernourished 3-year-old and she spends 24 hrs a day laying on a metal bed. She cannot sit up or talk. They don’t have diapers here so there’s a small hole in the metal bed for her urine to drain to the floor under the bed. Last evening I checked on her and she was covered in her own feces and being swarmed by mosquitoes. Using body language because they don’t speak much English I had to get one of the student nurses to take care of her and clean her up and get her a mosquito net. They do feed her 3 meals a day but I get the feeling she frequently gets forgotten about.

While helping in the Screening Room I made friends with a 59 year old “tribal” woman from a tribal village outside Khammam who had come in to get a huge lump (lipoma) on her shoulder removed. She wore a beautiful shirt decorated with mirrors, blue and purple colors, silver beads, etc. and white bracelets all the way up her arms — 1 bracelet for  each year shes been married. She said she would sell me one of their tribal shirts for $500 rupees ($10) when she comes back for surgery… we’ll see if she brings it.

Liz Johnson