I’m skipping ahead in our India experience.  To go in chronological order was getting a little monotonous in my thought process while writing about it.  I found myself saying, “Then we did this, and after that, then we did that.”

Which made it hard for me to be enthused.  So, from now on, it may be a random hodge-podge.  Ha.  I bet that could be said about anything I write.

*****

We started getting things around the evening before, checking inventory, talking over what to take and what not to take.  Of course, it was Bryce, Derek, and Jenny checking it out, because I had no clue what to check for, much less what we planned to do the next day.

Early the next morning, sometime around 5, alarm bells started clanging around in the lower and second story of that cement built, three story house Bryce and his mission family stayed in.  By then, for me, jet lag had sort of eased off a little, and I was able to roll out of bed comparatively easy, and in a decent mood.

Themeri, pronounced as Tim-a-ry, was outside the compound, waiting for us in his diesel minivan.  He and the boys looked over the supplies to make sure they had what they needed and then some of us piled in with him, and some in the Scorpio, a diesel 4runner type of vehicle. 

We got started on our journey, eastward, at least if my directions were halfway correct, to a little town called Jaigaon, which as situated right up against the border of Bhutan.  Bryce said it was about 70 miles away, but took them four hours or so to get there the last time they had gone that way.

We moved from the warm, dusty streets of Siliguri onto a nicely paved road that wound past beautifully trimmed tea gardens, all trimmed to perfectly level waist height, and then on past into a towering jungle with huge trees arching over the road at least a hundred feet over our heads. 

The jungle soon gave way to occasional rice fields with domed rice shucks scattered throughout the field.  All along the way, scattered at haphazard intervals, were large convoys of semi-trucks and trailers.  Huge rigs, coupled to two trailers at times, with the windows all shuttered.  Bryce told me that India has a law that only allows these rigs to travel at night, a fact which I was to find out firsthand later in the day.  For now, though, we passed them and saw the random, sleepy looking driver standing by his truck, or, occasionally saw a rig with its engine being stripped down right on the side of the road in a quick repair.

We arrived in the general area of where we thought this medical camp would be held, and the boys started looking for folks standing along the main road we were on to guide us in.  Sure enough, they soon spotted a couple of guys standing and waving their arms and we hopped out to see if they were who we wanted to see.  They were, and we turned from going east into a southerly direction for a few kilometers.  In that time, we left any remnants of civilization and were soon bouncing along in a deeply overgrown road. 

Our guides pulled over to the side of the road where a couple of houses stood.  So far, I hadn’t seen any people and wondered how this was going to turn out. 

The boys got started scrounging around for things they knew they needed.  I didn’t know what we needed, and when they picked up an old bed frame and said they thought it would work, I nodded dumbly in agreement.  They set it on its legs, found a piece of wood and put it on top, saying that it would work just fine as a table, albeit a quite low one. 

By now, a number of locals had arrived.  I gathered as much that they were somewhat involved in helping get the show going.  They brought a blue tarp and set it up over the area we planned to work as sort of a shade.  Bryce and Derek were busily unpacking all the meds we had brought along in all the big plastic packing containers and arranging them on the low slung table/bedframe.  I could hear them discussing about what should go where and what they used the most of last time.  Again, I was totally out of the loop; didn’t have a clue what this whole thing was going to look like.

A nicer vehicle rolled up and Themeri said the Doctor was here.  A lady got out with him, and I correctly guessed her to be a nurse.  A quick conference was held, and a game plan was decided upon.  A table was set up at the 4 o’clock position from the bedframe.  Another couple of tables were set up at the 8 and 9 o’clock positions on the other side of the bedframe.  At the first of these some folks from a local church group sat and then at the last one, Themeri sat. 

Part of the supply we brought along included small, neat plastic sacks with nice handles on them.  We quickly laid out some gospel literature pamphlets and formed a line picking up and making a bundle of the different titles before putting it into the sack.  I would guess we had close to a couple hundred, maybe more, of those sacks filled with literature and stacked up behind the bedframe, together with all the meds still left in the containers. 

Themeri told the local pastor that we were ready.  That pastor asked if we could start with a prayer, which we did, and also asked if we would be so kind as to take our noon meal with his family.  To which we agreed.  The pastor then gave the word to a few locals, and the folks started trickling in.  First bashfully, but as the day wore on, determinedly.

It finally became apparent to me what the plan was when I saw it in action.  A local person would step up to the nurse, tell her and the Doctor their ailments while the nurse was taking their blood pressure and writing notes.  They would move over to the Doctor who would tell them to stick their tongue out so he could look at their throat.  Next, he listened to their heart, and palpated their stomach.  Finally, he reviewed their case, scribbled something quickly onto his tablet, tore off the sheet and handed it to them, at which point he directed them to the low-slung bedframe table. 

The ’patient’ gave their script to the boys, who quickly deciphered what the Doctor had written, reached behind them for one of those plastic bags, and reached down and over the many different medications to fill the prescription.

The boys asked me if I wanted to help, but it soon became obvious to me that the crazy blue light under the tarp, coupled with the script that intermittently morphed from English to Hindi and then back again had me lost in at sea in a storm of unintelligible mutterings and disorientation.  I assured the boys that they were doing a fine job and said I was sure my good wife would need to go for a walk soon. 

From the script table, the ‘patient’ moved on to the pastor’s table where he offered them some literature from their church.  Then, from there, they went to Themeri, who read again the note from the Doctor, transcribed it into local speak and wrote it out for them to reference later while verbally telling them how much to take and how often. 

Let’s just say that the restrooms had the women perplexed.  There was no throne whatsoever.  Just a hole, about a foot in diameter, in the middle of a concrete floor.  Due to the humidity, and possibly other factors, the cement was quite slippery around the edges of the hole, which seemed to limit the ability to release what a person had entered the room to release. 

I soon picked up on a couple of very decent boys who were helping here and there.  One, I think, was the pastor’s son.  The other was a local in the village.  When it was time for our noon meal, these two fine young men showed us back into the jungle to the residence where we were to take our meal.  They offered us two dishes, one was chicken curry, the other goat.  They offered us a couple of spoons to share amongst ourselves, but Bryce told them we had learned to eat with our fingers.  They seemed relieved to know that.

I chose the chicken, being (and still am) a little leery about goat.  The scars on my good wife’s arm are mute reminder of a day when a goat and a dog at our place became inseparable until death did one of them part, and my good wife tried to intervene.  Images of that fight, and the general diabolical look and nature those animals have compromised my appetite for the dish that day. 

Bryce took the goat meat and was instantly blessed while I was instantly transformed into a human inferno as soon as I took my first bite of chicken curry.  He said his goat meat tasted just fine and wasn’t very spicey at all.  Let’s just say that the effects of my meal lingered well into the next day or two as it eventually exited my system.

People kept coming to the clinic.  By midafternoon, I had no idea how many we had seen.  I definitely saw some repeats come through a few times.  Most of their ailments were rashes, or stomach problems.  Bryce told me many of them have stomach issues for life due to the poor quality of water they drink. 

One older fellow, not looking well at all, said he thought he had something wrong with his heart.  And indeed, I could see the Doctor looking over him very concernedly.  But the meds we brought along were of the general salves and low strength pain relief.  Also some for stomach problems.  Themeri came over and whispered, “Just give him some of everything.  It won’t help at all, but maybe it will help him feel like we did what we could for him.”

Warm, humid darkness settled in on us, but it didn’t abate the flow of humanity to the table, now lit by a single incandescent bulb hung with the wires feeding it it’s electricity.  It soon winked out for good, so we strapped on some headlamps and carried on.  Finally, Themeri said we had to stop, or we’d be there all night. 

*****

Three faces stay with me from that day.  Those of the two boys I mentioned earlier, and that of an older Mama.

She was so respectful. 

She had watched, just on the fringes of the crowd, for most of the day. 

Her back had a deep indention through layers and layers of muscle to her backbone, and yet she was so thin. 

I surmised her life to have been one of extreme hard labor, and possibly hardship from other avenues, based on her timidity. 

Finally, when we were packing the meds up, and Themeri had shooed the rest of the people away, she approached the doctor.  They talked quietly for a bit, and then the doctor came over, himself, to the med table and looked for what he wanted.  Not finding it, he rummaged in the packing crates until he found it.  Gently he handed it to her and in quiet Hindi told her what to take and how much. 

And then she vanished into the darkness.

As I type this, on Sunday evening, September 18, I realize that tomorrow will be the Queen of England’s funeral. 

I think of all the pomp and circumstance that will surround that event and possibly, from a human’s way of thinking, it is right and good.

But I think of that dear Mama, over there, almost 10,000 miles away.  Does she deserve any less?  Is she any less of a human being? 

And I am comforted in this thought, that it’s not so much what the sendoff from this side is like, but it’s the arrival, on the other side, that makes all the difference.

I like to think that, like it says in a Book I read that ‘When sheawakes, she shall be satisfied with the likeness she looks upon.’ Ps 17:15