|
September 10, 1999
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the lush Bangladesh countryside! Les, Stewart
and I have just boarded the Jamuna express train for Rajshani
after four days visiting several small Christian congregations
in the Rajbari and Faridpur districts and listening to their lay
pastors and other members discuss their communities’ health
problems. We’re working with the Bangladesh Baptist Fellowship
to help devise a new plan whereby CHASA (Christian Health and
Agricultural Services, the project where we lived and worked our
first three years here) can assist local churches to minister
through health services to their poor neighbors, Hindus and Muslims
included. There are 10 congregations in the Faridpur District
Fellowship that are part of this outreach, and over 2000 people
will be blessed by the fruits of their service.
Rice, sugarcane and jute fields pass my window as the train gently
rocks on. Men are standing waist-deep in ponds, skillfully pulling
the long fibers off of the soaked jute stems. The pungent smell
of the drying hairlike fibers fill the air.
We’re on our way back home, to Christian Mission Hospital
(CMH) in Rajshani. Having been there 6 ½ years, it’s
the longest I’ve ever lived in one house, and the only home
Stewart really remembers. He’s 10 now, and Les and I are
teaching him 5th grade with the Calvert Home School curriculum,
the same that Laura and Everett "graduated" from when
they completed 8th grade. It’s been a while since we’ve
taught school as we had Emily Farmer Frye, Arloa Sikkema and Tamela
Thompson’s gracious help over a 4-year span; in fact, it’s
our first time to have Stewart as a student, and we are both enjoying
it thoroughly, as he’s quick and attentive in his studies.
Next week I’m to lead the hospital’s "Baby Friendly
Hospital Initiative" (BFHI) committee through the training
of half the hospital staff in a 4-day course on breast-feeding
management and promotion. It’s an 18-hour course sponsored
by UNICEF and the World Health Organization and will help assure
that all of our staff and midwifery-nursing students are up-to-date
on current breast-feeding knowledge. In October we’ll repeat
the course for the other half of the hospital staff, and soon
afterwards for our community health workers as well.
Training is a big part of what I do these days. It’s a neat
thing to be in a position to share the gift of knowledge with
individuals who can then share the concepts and practices with
others. The Primary Health Care Program has recently hired a newly
graduated nurse as a health education organizer, and another as
a nutrition services organizer. Through these workers, CMH is
now able to provide health education sessions daily on the wards
as well as in the outpatient clinic waiting areas. We’re
also able to screen all new patients for malnutrition and supplement
their nutrient intake with "chatu," a high-calorie powder
made of rice, lentils, peanuts, and sugar. We also have food preparation
demonstrations for mothers on the pediatric ward, and can better
supervise the nursing students as they learn to weigh infants
in our weekly under-5 clinic, where children are brought for their
baby shots.
Les and I each continue to see patients in clinic at CMH twice
a week (while the other is teaching school), and to round on the
patients. Since my year of training in pediatrics, I’ve been
able to focus more exclusively on infant and child care, and I
enjoy it immensely. On the ward now we have a boy named Durga
who is about 12 years old (no birth records and never been to
school) who suffered an extensive electrical burn over his back
and right thigh from an errant live wire out in a rice field.
He’s been here for over two months already and though the
stench of his grossly infected wounds has gone, the risk of his
dying hasn’t. Another child, Arobi Rita, is from one of our
community outreach areas and has visceral leishmaniasis. When
I visited her home in Astapukur, I found her suffering from prolonged
fever and loss of appetite. Both of these patients are getting
"chatu," as they are severely malnourished. We also
have two children admitted with acute watery diarrhea (from being
fed with over-diluted cow’s milk in contaminated bottles),
and two other infants with meningitis.
In just a couple of weeks I’ll be traveling with Stewart
to southern India to visit Laura, now a senior, and Everett, a
freshman, at the Kodaikanal International School (KIS). Everett
started there this past July and seems to be thriving in the milieu
of friends, numerous extracurricular activities, fresh mountain
air and challenging classes. His daily upbeat e-mails have helped
me with his move out of the "nest" immensely!
We’re due to come back to the States on furlough next June.
At that time we’ll get Laura settled in college, and will
hopefully have the opportunity to travel and visit a lot of you
all! In November, Les will be taking his recertification exam
in Internal Medicine, and I’ll be sitting for the American
Board of Preventive Medicine certifying exam. Hence, as of now,
we plan to stay in the United States through Christmas of 2000.
The letters of encouragement you all send have been a real blessing
for me. Often at a time when I feel especially low, a letter comes
assuring me it’s really worth it. And I infer from some of
your letters that somehow our just being here makes life more
meaningful for you there.
It’ll be 10 years next February since we first came to Bangladesh.
There seems to be no clear end in sight, as the work just gets
richer. Thanks for all you do to help make our ministry here possible.
With Gratitude,
Cynthia L. Morgan, M.D., M.P.H.
Christian Mission Hospital
G.P.O. Box 25
Rajshani
Bangladesh
E-mail: clmorgan@citechco.net
The 2000 Mission yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 148
|
