Medical camps

In the last two days I have been working at two mini medical camps. (This is what all my fundraising went towards, so thank you if you were one of the people who contributed to this :)

 Yesterday I thought I was going to work in a school, but it was in fact in a slum near one of the 'informal' schools run by the team here. I had a whole team of people with me including two Indian doctors, translator, people looking after registration and pharmacy etc. It is only the second time they have run a medical camp here but it was superbly organised. We had 400+ people coming throughout the day. There is no other free medical health care available in the area so people had come from surrounding neighbourhoods also to avail of our services.

As a result of the school which is run in this slum area, a church has been planted which now has around 120 people. The pastor, originally from a Muslim background, has been working in this community for 5 years and it is clear to see he is completely accepted, trusted and respected among the population. After a long period of negotiation with the Hindu land owners the church have been able to purchase a plot of land where they are now building their first proper church building, with a vision for women's work and other activities within its walls once completed. I loved meeting this humble man and his beautiful family.

Medical camp in the village

Today's medical camp was held in a village an hour's drive from Lucknow. In this village the camp was also attached to a little church plant - 80 people or so meet outside the pastor's house every week. The village, like most other villages here, was extremely primitive with no running water, electricity or sanitation.

The animals live pretty much alongside the humans  and we erected our camp amidst the cows and the goats. As we were driving up towards the village I even saw a wild baboon walking across the rice field. It was a beautiful and peaceful place, but life is oh so hard for the people who live there. I saw some conditions I have never come across before but thankfully I had three Indian doctors working with me today and could defer any difficult cases to them. Again today we had hundreds of people coming for help. Many really were sick. I was able to pray for some of them.

Village children

From a medical/nursing point of view I have found the last couple of days a little frustrating. We are only able to give out a small amount of medication, and give very short term help in most cases. I was chatting to our trip organiser about this today and he helped me see it from a different perspective. (Maybe when you live in India and you have always been aware of the country's massive problems you see it differently from us in the West.) He said that we will simply never be able to meet all the medical needs of these people as we are not a medical mission. We do this as an act of love and kindness, as part of the holistic outreach of the church there. We offer to pray for people when our own resources run out. We offer to love and help them in any way that we can. We show them the way to spiritual healing. We educate their children. We speak on their behalf to governments in India and abroad (leaders here will be involved in high level human rights meetings in Delhi next month).

Even though rural India is beautiful, and even though in the dirt and noise of the city there is something to catch your interest  everywhere you go, I doubt that I would ever choose to come to India as a tourist. It is the complete contrast to the peaceful serenity I grew with in Sweden! But yet... when I'm here I just feel as if I am right in the middle of God's story! He is championing the cause of the Dalits, bringing justice and restoration to a people who have been oppressed for thousands of years, and it feels so fulfilling to be  a small part of that.

Medical Camp Team