April 2008 Newsletter

April 27, 2008
Dear family and friends,

Greetings from Prey Veng Province, Cambodia! It’s rice-planting season, so all of the farmers are busy. I haven’t been in any rice paddies, but I’ve also been busy nonetheless. For the past five weeks, with the help of my translator, Hun Fisk, I have been conducting interviews with mothers who have lost babies since 2005. Our goal is to determine the infant mortality rate, and how it specifically relates to beriberi (vitamin b1 deficiency). We are trying to visit every home where a baby has died in order to ask questions about the babies’ symptoms. This has been quite the adventure.

When we show up at a home, we are usually quickly asked to sit. Perhaps only the mother and a child or two are home when we arrive, but within minutes, there is often a crowd of neighborhood children, aunties, and grandmothers who have come to “help” with the interview and to stare and giggle at the foreigner and to listen to her speak in her funny language.
Before we leave, someone will probably ask me to diagnose their other medical problems or they will show me all of medicine they are taking and ask me to explain why. Usually I have no answers, but I have been able to help a few times. We arrived at a home one afternoon just moments after a 9-year-old boy was bitten by a dog. The mother wanted to put a camphor and menthol balm on the wound (Tiger Balm, a purported cure-all for everything from giddiness to gas that probably does more harm than good), but I suggested that it might be better to wash the wound with soap and water. I turned around to get my notebook, and when I looked back at the boy, his mother was about to wash the wound with laundry detergent! There’s just so much that we take for granted about basic medical care and first-aid.

There are occasional moments of humor. The schools out here don’t teach colors, so we have received a few responses like, “Oh, the baby seemed fine. His urine was blue.” Or “Yes, my baby had diarrhea. It was blue.” When we question them further, we discover the true color. Blue seems to be a default color.

We also run into frustrations. Sometimes we travel for over an hour, only to discover that the mother we need to talk to isn’t home, and it’s not like we can call ahead. Sometimes people are drunk. Sometimes we reach the end of the interview and we just want to get to the next one so that we can go home. But people have other ideas. They want to talk and get to know us. Occasionally, they ask for money. Some want to tell us of their plight, of how they had to sell their land so that their child could see a doctor, or of how they watched their daughter and then grandson die of HIV/AIDS, and now they have no more family left. So we stay and listen.

And there are other moments of heartbreak. On the second day of interviews, we spoke with a mother who had lost both of her children in a short amount of time. She just seemed so sad that I wished that I could speak fluent Khmer so that I could throw my arms around her and tell her that there is a loving God who knows the pain of losing a child. (This reaction scared me a little because I have never felt the urge to hug a stranger before.) We interviewed another woman who lost six of her seven children, five of them in infancy. And it looks as though all five of them could have been saved by a few simple injections of vitamin B1.

Overall this time in the countryside has been a positive, though eye-opening, experience. I am gaining a sense of what medical care is like in a rural, impoverished area. If I serve in a rural village after medical school, I will definitely have some awareness of what I shall face. Until then, I will strive to learn as much as I can about what God is doing in my life and in the land where I am living.

Peace,
Greta

Praises
--The EMM Asia retreat is April 30-May 4.
--My knee is almost healed after another minor moto accident.

Prayer Requests
--That the people of Mesang would find hope and freedom and life in the Lord
--For the courage to learn and speak Khmer