Breaking the waves Vol II!
I suppose the other sort of wave breaking this last week is really a reference to the Lars Van Trier film (haunting but worth watching if you have not seen it) dealing with the nature of close community and the pain of exclusion from that community. This week, I have spent at Jeevan Sahara Kendra (JSK) or Centre for Life and Hope – the HIV community outreach project attached to Lok Hospital, and I have seen the reality of that kind of exclusion and isolation first hand. JSK has a number of full time staff who visit the patients in their homes and follow them up with support and advice where necessary. The other part of the work is based in the centre running an outpatient clinic and providing access to free HIV testing and referral for the free medications for anti-retroviral therapy (ART), as well as giving counselling and prayer for those affected. If you try to imagine the ostracism, the untouchability factor of AIDS in the UK, and then multiply it by 1000 you would still only be scratching the surface of the social implications for these individuals. If their families find out, they often want nothing more to do with them Their friends won’t visit them anymore. They lose their jobs if their employers find out. If it is disclosed at the majority of hospitals, they are often either booted out on the street or not treated properly because even the healthcare staff participate the stigmatisation culture. Most of their basic human rights are denied them. This despite the government policy to provide free anti retro virals to all those diagnosed and counselling services etc.
I am not really sure I am going to be able to convey the experience of going out on visits with the JSK workers but I will do my best. The first day I found myself picking my way up a dirt track among brick shacks with corrugated roofs, over muddy rivulets of waste effluents up into a village on the hillside above where we are based. With me was Daniel, a compassionate and godly young man who has been working in this often thankless task for over 3 years now. He was taking me to the home of Raju. Finally we arrived at a small dark doorway in the brick wall of one such shack, or Zodpadpati as they are known. As we stepped inside and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out a dirty quilt on the floor of the shack on which Raju was reclining. Raju is 30 years old. His home is a 1.5 metre by 2.5 metre brick shack, with no running water or lighting. Bizarrely an ancient television and a ceiling fan suspended from the roof rafter suggest there is an illicit electricity supply somewhere. Efforts have obviously been made to brighten the walls – strips of advertising for pepsi or Delmonte fruit – any pieces of cardboard with some colour in them are tacked up around the place. A small wooden shelf holds most of his possessions – a few cooking pots, a small pile of threadbare clothes, an ancient wristwatch which looks as though it has seen better days, and a few pictures which might be photos or might be Indian Hindu deities, it is hard to tell in the gloom. Raju found out 4 months ago that he was HIV positive. His wife has tested negative and has left him with their small 6-year old child, who has not been tested, to go back to her village. When JSK got to Raju he was on death’s door with a raging case of pulmonary tuberculosis and barely able to breathe. His CD4 cell count, a measure of his immune system function, was 54 (yours or mine would be over 600, usually around 1000-1200), meaning he was able to mount almost no immune response of his own. He looked skeletal and the team admitted him to one of their care beds without the slightest doubt that he would be dead within a few days. But God had other plans. Raju is now on ART and his CD4 count is climbing steadily, last measured at over 330. Raju’s family have left him and he is unemployed – he was doing piece work as a labourer – with no income, dependent on his aging mother and friends in the village for support. When he first met Daniel, his outlook was bleak. I examined him and was delighted to find that he has had no recurrence of infection or breathlessness, and that his lungs were completely clear. As we spoke about how he was feeling in himself, he described the hopelessness and bleakness he had felt when he first came to JSK. Now, he says he has hope. Raju is a Hindu, but he says that since coming to JSK he has started praying to Jesus because he knows that Jesus is with him no matter what, and has brought him in contact with the centre and free ART treatment which is working. Daniel and I spent some time sharing the gospel with him and encouraging him to continue seeking Jesus. I can’t describe to you what it feels like, how humbling it is, to come on your knees before God with someone who has needs like Raju’s and plead with Him to meet them. Or to see the hope and seeds of faith in Raju, despite his circumstances.
Our next visit was to one of the Chawls (brick built urban slums) in the Narpada district of Thane. Much more crowded than the villages, these slums have piped running water in places, but open sewers run down the middle of many of the concrete paths between the shacks and dogs and chickens are running around everywhere. Tiny little grubby children are running about half clothed between washing lines and folk going about their daily business. Sanjay is in a much sicker state than Raju. He is lying on the bed, (at least what passes for one - a sort of wooden trestle with a small ticking pad underneath him and a filthy quilt over him) and he is barely moving. When he does move, it is with that slowness that accompanies a deep ache in all his muscles and joints. Sanjay is also recovering from suspected TB and has had treatment for it but because his breathlessness has not completely resolved, Dr Sheba at JSK had a chest X-ray done which did not show up the expected changes for TB. This leads her to suspect Sanjay has PCP, a rare form of pneumonia from an organism which you or I would fight off with ease normally. She has started empirical treatment and wants me to check on Sanjay to see if there is any improvement. Sanjay too is on ART. He says that apart from some shooting pains in his legs which have kept him awake all night, and have persisted for the last few days, his breathing feels much better. But he is still very tired all the time, and finding it hard to have energy to do anything. His check-up shows a massive improvement in his breathing. He was a chronic alcoholic, but for the last few months has been so unwell that he has been unable to drink. He says he has not had anything recently. Daniel asks him whether he has been asking for God’s help in his situation. Sanjay nods sullenly. As Daniel and I share about the hope there is in Jesus Christ and about God’s love for him and concern for him even in these circumstances, he takes on what seems to me a familiar glazed expression; one of sullen rejection of what we are saying, that I have seen all to often in the faces of people in the UK. Still, when we ask him, he says he would like us to pray for him. Amongst many things, we pray that God will open Sanjay’s heart and make himself known in his life.
It is interesting to observe the effect of such visits on the community. Apart from the obvious curiosity as to why a white person should be there at all, there is another very beneficial effect. A doctor (or what passes for one in their eyes) has a very high social status. For someone like that to visit someone in Sanjay’s condition makes a powerful statement to those around. We are able to explain to the neighbours family and friends, some of whom are now stepping inside Sanjay’s small room and asking after Sanjay, about some of the help they can offer him, and one of them immediately goes to a pharmacy to buy some anti sickness drugs for Sanjay’s nausea, which he cannot afford. The love and compassion that those like Daniel show people with HIV, touching them, praying with them, drinking tea in their houses from their glasses, sends a message of reassurance to their friends that it is possible to love these people without becoming infected. This is vital as it restores a lifeline in the Chawls – community spirit is already very strong here. Being included in the community can make the difference between surviving and not. One of the things which amazes me constantly on our visits is that as we build rapport and talk with these people, who often have less than nothing, they will insist on making us comfortable, offering us tea and biscuits or water (a precious commodity when you have to pump it from a well or go to a tap that supplies 5000 people and only works for 3 hours a day). Humbling doesn’t begin to cover it. Since none of this is filtered or sterilised, I am constantly thanking God for the miracle that my health seems to stay intact.
Two days after my visit to Sanjay, Daniel comes back and shares with us that Sanjay asked him to pray with him. He said to Daniel that he had been thinking and had decided that he needed to ask the Lord Jesus into his life – please could Daniel help him to pray and do that.
One of the other things which JSK does is educate the local churches and pastors about HIV so that they can get involved in supporting our positive friends in their communities. Sadly, churches have a history of often conforming to the pattern of the world in this area and shunning those with HIV in a similar way. But Daniel is able to put Sanjay in touch with a pastor from a local church in the Chawl who has been to one of the HIV training weekends at JSK and is passionate about being involved in ministering to HIV sufferers.
Another highlight of my week has been having dinner in the home of one of the JSK workers. His name is Suraj, and he is Nepali by birth. He worked for Operation mobilisation for 8 years but has now come to work with JSK. I can’t really explain what it feels like to be invited to an amazing meal of rice chicken and daal, eaten on the floor of a chawl room not much more plush that those I had been visiting during the week, and to listen to this amazing young man recount how God had changed his life. His testimony is a tremendously challenging one – about tremendous hardship and the anger he had against the world, and the perseverance of a pastor in showing him love when no-one else would. I couldn’t really do it justice in a few lines, and since this blog has gone on for quite long enough already, those of you who are interested (or even still awake at this point!!!) can ask me about him when I get back.
I could go on and on about the various visits and patients I have seen this week. It has been a disturbing roller coaster of emotions and experiences. But one overwhelming thing has come across to me. The power of God revealed in the love of those who are serving Him here is changing lives. Often it is those who have the least and are the most desolate and bereft who have the clearest understanding of their need to be in a right relationship with God. The stigma that goes with HIV is a lot like the lepers at the time of Jesus (and since!) – and it is an awesome thing to be involved in God’s work of reaching out to those left alone and ostracised, and revealing Him to them.
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I have honestly been at a loss for quite what to feel or think for large parts of this week. Some of the experiences have been rather like having your head turned upside down and inside out. God in His wisdom has been really dealing with me here over these last weeks. I am still not sure where the process will end up, but I realise my world is somehow not the place it was when I left England.
I guess this will be the last post for a while as Jess arrives tomorrow (Yippee!!!) and we will be travelling with limited Internet access...thank you for all your prayers. See you in 3 weeks!
I am not really sure I am going to be able to convey the experience of going out on visits with the JSK workers but I will do my best. The first day I found myself picking my way up a dirt track among brick shacks with corrugated roofs, over muddy rivulets of waste effluents up into a village on the hillside above where we are based. With me was Daniel, a compassionate and godly young man who has been working in this often thankless task for over 3 years now. He was taking me to the home of Raju. Finally we arrived at a small dark doorway in the brick wall of one such shack, or Zodpadpati as they are known. As we stepped inside and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out a dirty quilt on the floor of the shack on which Raju was reclining. Raju is 30 years old. His home is a 1.5 metre by 2.5 metre brick shack, with no running water or lighting. Bizarrely an ancient television and a ceiling fan suspended from the roof rafter suggest there is an illicit electricity supply somewhere. Efforts have obviously been made to brighten the walls – strips of advertising for pepsi or Delmonte fruit – any pieces of cardboard with some colour in them are tacked up around the place. A small wooden shelf holds most of his possessions – a few cooking pots, a small pile of threadbare clothes, an ancient wristwatch which looks as though it has seen better days, and a few pictures which might be photos or might be Indian Hindu deities, it is hard to tell in the gloom. Raju found out 4 months ago that he was HIV positive. His wife has tested negative and has left him with their small 6-year old child, who has not been tested, to go back to her village. When JSK got to Raju he was on death’s door with a raging case of pulmonary tuberculosis and barely able to breathe. His CD4 cell count, a measure of his immune system function, was 54 (yours or mine would be over 600, usually around 1000-1200), meaning he was able to mount almost no immune response of his own. He looked skeletal and the team admitted him to one of their care beds without the slightest doubt that he would be dead within a few days. But God had other plans. Raju is now on ART and his CD4 count is climbing steadily, last measured at over 330. Raju’s family have left him and he is unemployed – he was doing piece work as a labourer – with no income, dependent on his aging mother and friends in the village for support. When he first met Daniel, his outlook was bleak. I examined him and was delighted to find that he has had no recurrence of infection or breathlessness, and that his lungs were completely clear. As we spoke about how he was feeling in himself, he described the hopelessness and bleakness he had felt when he first came to JSK. Now, he says he has hope. Raju is a Hindu, but he says that since coming to JSK he has started praying to Jesus because he knows that Jesus is with him no matter what, and has brought him in contact with the centre and free ART treatment which is working. Daniel and I spent some time sharing the gospel with him and encouraging him to continue seeking Jesus. I can’t describe to you what it feels like, how humbling it is, to come on your knees before God with someone who has needs like Raju’s and plead with Him to meet them. Or to see the hope and seeds of faith in Raju, despite his circumstances.
Our next visit was to one of the Chawls (brick built urban slums) in the Narpada district of Thane. Much more crowded than the villages, these slums have piped running water in places, but open sewers run down the middle of many of the concrete paths between the shacks and dogs and chickens are running around everywhere. Tiny little grubby children are running about half clothed between washing lines and folk going about their daily business. Sanjay is in a much sicker state than Raju. He is lying on the bed, (at least what passes for one - a sort of wooden trestle with a small ticking pad underneath him and a filthy quilt over him) and he is barely moving. When he does move, it is with that slowness that accompanies a deep ache in all his muscles and joints. Sanjay is also recovering from suspected TB and has had treatment for it but because his breathlessness has not completely resolved, Dr Sheba at JSK had a chest X-ray done which did not show up the expected changes for TB. This leads her to suspect Sanjay has PCP, a rare form of pneumonia from an organism which you or I would fight off with ease normally. She has started empirical treatment and wants me to check on Sanjay to see if there is any improvement. Sanjay too is on ART. He says that apart from some shooting pains in his legs which have kept him awake all night, and have persisted for the last few days, his breathing feels much better. But he is still very tired all the time, and finding it hard to have energy to do anything. His check-up shows a massive improvement in his breathing. He was a chronic alcoholic, but for the last few months has been so unwell that he has been unable to drink. He says he has not had anything recently. Daniel asks him whether he has been asking for God’s help in his situation. Sanjay nods sullenly. As Daniel and I share about the hope there is in Jesus Christ and about God’s love for him and concern for him even in these circumstances, he takes on what seems to me a familiar glazed expression; one of sullen rejection of what we are saying, that I have seen all to often in the faces of people in the UK. Still, when we ask him, he says he would like us to pray for him. Amongst many things, we pray that God will open Sanjay’s heart and make himself known in his life.
It is interesting to observe the effect of such visits on the community. Apart from the obvious curiosity as to why a white person should be there at all, there is another very beneficial effect. A doctor (or what passes for one in their eyes) has a very high social status. For someone like that to visit someone in Sanjay’s condition makes a powerful statement to those around. We are able to explain to the neighbours family and friends, some of whom are now stepping inside Sanjay’s small room and asking after Sanjay, about some of the help they can offer him, and one of them immediately goes to a pharmacy to buy some anti sickness drugs for Sanjay’s nausea, which he cannot afford. The love and compassion that those like Daniel show people with HIV, touching them, praying with them, drinking tea in their houses from their glasses, sends a message of reassurance to their friends that it is possible to love these people without becoming infected. This is vital as it restores a lifeline in the Chawls – community spirit is already very strong here. Being included in the community can make the difference between surviving and not. One of the things which amazes me constantly on our visits is that as we build rapport and talk with these people, who often have less than nothing, they will insist on making us comfortable, offering us tea and biscuits or water (a precious commodity when you have to pump it from a well or go to a tap that supplies 5000 people and only works for 3 hours a day). Humbling doesn’t begin to cover it. Since none of this is filtered or sterilised, I am constantly thanking God for the miracle that my health seems to stay intact.
Two days after my visit to Sanjay, Daniel comes back and shares with us that Sanjay asked him to pray with him. He said to Daniel that he had been thinking and had decided that he needed to ask the Lord Jesus into his life – please could Daniel help him to pray and do that.
One of the other things which JSK does is educate the local churches and pastors about HIV so that they can get involved in supporting our positive friends in their communities. Sadly, churches have a history of often conforming to the pattern of the world in this area and shunning those with HIV in a similar way. But Daniel is able to put Sanjay in touch with a pastor from a local church in the Chawl who has been to one of the HIV training weekends at JSK and is passionate about being involved in ministering to HIV sufferers.
Another highlight of my week has been having dinner in the home of one of the JSK workers. His name is Suraj, and he is Nepali by birth. He worked for Operation mobilisation for 8 years but has now come to work with JSK. I can’t really explain what it feels like to be invited to an amazing meal of rice chicken and daal, eaten on the floor of a chawl room not much more plush that those I had been visiting during the week, and to listen to this amazing young man recount how God had changed his life. His testimony is a tremendously challenging one – about tremendous hardship and the anger he had against the world, and the perseverance of a pastor in showing him love when no-one else would. I couldn’t really do it justice in a few lines, and since this blog has gone on for quite long enough already, those of you who are interested (or even still awake at this point!!!) can ask me about him when I get back.
I could go on and on about the various visits and patients I have seen this week. It has been a disturbing roller coaster of emotions and experiences. But one overwhelming thing has come across to me. The power of God revealed in the love of those who are serving Him here is changing lives. Often it is those who have the least and are the most desolate and bereft who have the clearest understanding of their need to be in a right relationship with God. The stigma that goes with HIV is a lot like the lepers at the time of Jesus (and since!) – and it is an awesome thing to be involved in God’s work of reaching out to those left alone and ostracised, and revealing Him to them.
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I have honestly been at a loss for quite what to feel or think for large parts of this week. Some of the experiences have been rather like having your head turned upside down and inside out. God in His wisdom has been really dealing with me here over these last weeks. I am still not sure where the process will end up, but I realise my world is somehow not the place it was when I left England.
I guess this will be the last post for a while as Jess arrives tomorrow (Yippee!!!) and we will be travelling with limited Internet access...thank you for all your prayers. See you in 3 weeks!
posted by Duncan at 8:48 am
1 Comments:
hey, really good to hear you are having a good time. we were praying for you in the prayer meeting last week. hope jess gets out to india well and you both have a well deserved break.
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