1 February 2001
Rajshahi, Bangladesh

Dearest Friends and Family,

After a 36-hour flight and a lost (and then found!) trunk, we’re finally back "home," safe and sound! Our six months in America seem almost to have been a dream. What we experience there is so different from what is the "norm" for us here. The marvel of a mere American grocery store, in its abundance, will always bring us to pause. The choices I was confronted with—with or without added calcium, regular or reduced sodium, and most recently, high-fat foods with or without fat, kept me in constant deliberation!

And now that we’ve left the world of automated doors, malls, and sinks with warm water, to what have we returned? My first day on the wards at Christian Mission Hospital (CMH) I admitted a child, Sonjita, with corneal ulcerations due to vitamin A deficiency. She is two-and-a-half years old, but weighs only thirteen pounds. She had a prolonged bout of diarrhea just before Christmas that depleted her vitamin A stores, and her eyes paid the price. With special milk feeds every two hours, the swelling in her legs from her malnutrition is now gone. After receiving special vitamin and mineral supplements, and passing loads of round worms, her appetite is ravenous and she’s gaining weight at a phenomenal rate! Sonjita’s mother gave birth to her sixth child just as Sonjita’s illness began, and after receiving some counseling from our staff, underwent a tubal ligation. With that simple procedure she received not only a free sari and four dollars (in Taka) from the government, but also some peace of mind!

What else is different here? The song of the kingfisher to awaken us, sunset walks by the Ganges, and "hartals" (country-wide shut-downs of the country by political activists). We’re back to sleeping under mosquito nets and drinking water from a hand-pumped tubewell in our back yard. We’re back to no TV, radio, or videos; so we once again have time to read together as a family at night! In fact, just this week we finally finished the book One Thousand and One Arabian Nights that we started reading last July just after our arrival in America!

Stewart’s Calvert School books arrived this week and Les started teaching him today. It’s a new experience for us to pick up teaching a grade from the middle of the year! We’ll each teach him two mornings a week, leaving him three days free to play with his friends, and to do his homework. Meanwhile, Everett is back in southern India finishing up tenth grade with his friends at the Kodaikanal International School. Laura completed her first semester at Colby College in Maine, along with the winter "Jan Plan," and is arranging to take a semester off to come visit us here in Bangladesh, and to see her friends in India, this spring. She’s wanting time with me out in the rural villages to learn from the women as she structures an independent sociological research project.

Besides our usual clinic and ward duties, Les and I have been asked to serve as advisors for a community health project in the southern part of the country, and a project in the far north has asked us to help them address their severe malaria problem. Those, together with the areas we were already visiting, will put us on the road quite a bit soon.

Last week I attended the CMH Primary Health Care meeting in Paitapukur, a small rural village about 15 miles west of Rajshahi. I sat with a group of about forty people on the floor of a tin-roofed church to discuss what the Bible has to say about health, to review the current health status of the women and children, and to brainstorm together for new ideas on topics they’d like to address. Issues that came to the forefront were: cigarette smoking, lack of latrine usage, and the consumption of homemade liquor. We’ll soon be choosing one topic to focus on for the year. Might it be "The Year of the Latrine?"

This week I taught my first classes on nutrition to first-year nursing students, and next week Les is to begin teaching a medicine course for the second-year students. Tomorrow a medical student from the UK is coming out for three weeks of practical experience in our hospital, and the following week an orthopedic team from Japan is coming to treat patients with limb deformities. As you can tell, our lives are full of diverse and fascinating opportunities! To enrich the potential even more, I just received word that I passed the American Board of Preventive Medicine certification exam that I took in November! With this in hand, numerous other avenues of service are now opened up to me.

Upon our return, my friend Fulmoni, a 13-year-old girl crippled with rickets, was still lying on her verandah, just as I had left her in June. Though once a source of song and laughter, now she somberly lies in her own urine and feces. As it hurts her anytime someone touches her bent limbs, she doesn’t tell anyone when she needs assistance. With her severe contractures, she can no longer even feed herself, hence she is thinner than ever. I made a special visit to see her this week, and with the help of our village health worker, Minoti, I bathed her, shampooed her hair, brushed her teeth, manicured her nails, and placed her on clean towels and in new clothes. She was radiant! Now I’m to order her a special little bed so she can be carried to church and to visit others in her village. We’ll connect mosquito-net poles to her bed, and cover the top with a canopy of red ruffles, her favorite color. She will be as a queen on a palanquin!

What a precious gift it was for us to have time with many of you while we were in the States. Speaking with you once again affirmed our calling. We really are meant to be here. Although we realize we touch but a fraction of the pain that surrounds us, we pray that our presence, both here and in America, somehow makes the broken body of Christ visible.

Thanks for all of your support.

By His grace,

Cindy and family

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 152