On May 15th I spent my afternoon reviewing the materials I have on "Healthy Living". This is a program that teaches health care and healthy living to people who's first language is not English. I reviewed the material and started creating some type of program plan for how World Relief would be able to best serve the clients in the health care world.
I was also able to accompany Meg Young and an Afghani family to Shands to get a "Shands Card" in order to have some type of health insurance. I really enjoyed seeing what Meg and the other employees do in order to assist their clients. If Meg was not helping them with these detailed and arduous documents, paper work, and questions, it would be nearly impossible, especially with their limited English. One thing that really put things into perspective to me was the young man that came with his mother whom was trying to get her Shands card. He was the bread winner of the house and has been working, along with his younger sister, for months in order to afford the small apartment they live in and food. I have no idea if he has any education or how long he was in the Pakistani refugee camp for, but when he showed me his ID I noticed we shared the same exact birthday. On September 11th 1990 we both were brought into the world; myself in Bronxville, New York and he in Afghanistan. Yet, though we share the same birthday, our lives couldn't look more different. I felt two things: first, a flood or gratitude that I have lived such a blessed life and secondly I felt proud of the young man who was working for his family and making a life for him in our country.
On May 17th I had an awesome opportunity to shadow Emi, a woman who does home and hospital visits. Emi can be used in a special way because she once was a client of World Relief from Burma and speaks Burmese and Chin. Though she cannot speak the other 6 languages of Burma, she understand the culture and ways of life which is almost equally as important. It was so sweet to watch the comfort and relief wash over some of the familiar Burmese woman's faces as they saw Emi walk into the apartment complex. Our purpose was to bring a Burmese woman back to her home because she did not understand that her appointment was at 1 pm. She showed up at 9 am ready to go to Shands for a pregnancy check up. However, one people saw Emi come into the apartment complex our purpose was extended. One woman who was 8 months pregnant needed Emi to let the apartments know that her stove was broken, one high school girl from Burma needed us to take her to get her immunization shots, one needed us to fill out her field trip form and another women simply needed a haircut. When we walked into one family's home who needed to be taken to see Wolfson Children's Hospital to be with their young daughter who was getting a series of surgeries to fix her hip, we discovered the hospital required this family to get deloused in order to visit. To be able to meet all of the needs, Emi and I decided to split the tasks. She was going to cut hair, deal with communicating hospital check ups and so on, and I was going to take care of the lice problem. Thank God I have some experience with lice treatment. When I lived in Egypt I worked with "street children" who had massive lice infestations and I picked it up kindly shared it with my darling roommate. We spent weeks going through each others hair and doing treatment after treatment and we survived. Lice does not have the power of fear over me anymore...well that is not entirely true...I did have a nightmare last night about lice, but my fear is not nearly as great! Anyway, I read the instructions and went to work on a little girl of 4. She was so stinkin' cute it was almost impossible to not swoop her up and shower her in kisses. I put in the timer and sat her down as I went through her little silky brown head of hair. She reminded me of my precious niece Meeky whom I have not seen in almost 3 years and I soaked up the time I got to spend picking through her hair and bathing her. I know it sounds ludicrous that I actually enjoyed doing lice treatments with this child and mother, but there was something so intimate about the trust they showed me to do this, and the vulnerability of letting a stranger wash your hair. I chuckled as I watched the mother eventually scrub down her daughter her own way. It was amusing to see the was they used American facilities. For instance, instead of filling up the bath tub to wash her daughter, she filled up a large Tupperware with water and a small plastic cup inside. She then proceeded to use one hand to scrub her daughter with soap and the other hand was busy splashing her down with a cup of water she was filling from the tub. This instantly brought me back to 2 summers ago in Rajahmundry, India. I remembered the woman who slept with me washing down the orphans in this way by the water pump, using one hand to scrub the squatting, and the other to splash cups of water on them.
Emi and I then took the pregnant woman and the mother and daughter to the hospitals they needed to go to. It was pretty cute to walk into Wolfson's and see the littler girl who was getting hip surgery watching the Disney Channel. I did laugh however when the nurses urgently told us to put on surgical caps and dress before entering (because of the lice issue). It looked like we were getting ready to enter into a war against anthrax. I couldn't imagine how silly making a fuss about little harmless bugs seemed to the family affected, but nevertheless, we all dressed ourselves in our cotton hospital armor.
We then took the pregnant woman to Shands and once again I felt so grateful refugees have a place like World Relief to be an advocate. I could not imagine how insanely foreign, scary, and impossible a American hospital would be to someone who has not only never been in one, but who speaks a very uncommon language and cannot read or write. We filled out her paper work, and while we waited, Emi explained what has been going on in Burma since 1962. That is a whole other topic for a different day but it was very eye opening. The prenatal check up went well and she was seemingly healthy but I wonder if she would ever actually take the vitamins given to her. We had a translator tell her what they were and why she needed to take them but I doubt she is. I think my favorite part of the visit was just watching her shyly and curiously giggle as we told her to do certain things like sitting on the table they have in doctors offices, urinating in a cup to check on her hormones, and taking her blood pressure. Though we could not speak words to each other we could communicate by playfully giggling at how strange certain hospital practices are.
I am not very good at concluding essays or summaries and I am especially poor at wittily ending a blog so I apologize in advance. All in all, I cannot believe I am getting this incredible opportunity to serve the Lord in being His hands and feet. I couldn't help but praise God the whole way through those two days for His goodness and beg Him for His strength.
Isaiah 40:29 "He gives strength to those who are tired; to the ones who lack power, he gives renewed energy."
