Where Do I Begin…
to tell the stories of urban poverty…
the grimmest tales that tell of what the ‘We’ do to the ‘we’… Where do I start…?
(To be sung to theme tune of Love Story)
Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry………
This in an era of experts helping us towards reaching the millennium development goals……
My week began with two field visits with our ‘girls’ (community health assistants) to homes in K.G Halli. I’m sharing these stories because I think they give faces to the graphs linking urbanisation and poverty…..catastrophic health expenditure in 2012.
The first house was probably 10 feet square. Lined against one wall, were the total belongings of this 7 membered family,trunks, blankets, clothes, a stove, and assorted vessels. The youngest entrant in the family is tiny, all of 40 days. Josephine, our CHA, informed me that the mother, Shahina (name changed) had received 4 bottles of blood, while delivering this little one. Shahina’s husband, roughly 35 years old, prematurely aged is a wall painter, often out of work. Their older children, aged 14, 10, 8, 6 were lined up like sausages, with the father, sitting up at one end. Hastily, they drew out a mat to seat us and as always offered us refreshments. On enquiry we found everyone was fasting because of the holy month of Ramdan. Their problem was, they wanted no more children. It turned out that when Shahina delivered, she could not undergo a tubectomy because it would extend her hospital stay (and who would look after the family?) So, the staff fairly forcefully suggested the insertion of an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD). Shahina now has to look after the same family with profuse bleeding and a constant backache. It appears that our family planning services, far from a cafeteria approach really cannot meet the needs of an individual women.
Next we saw Aasha (Name Changed) pregnant for the fourth time with three little boys. She’s 2 months overdue her period and wants to abort this baby because she has had enough. Her husband to, probably not knowing the repercussions of such a procedure, both physical and psychological is urging her towards an Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP). The only thing holding her back so far has been the cost. She cannot afford to pay the 600Rs. Suggested in the nearby govt. centre. Aasha is thin, anaemic and probably representative of the chronic malnutrition or hunger situation that our country is screaming about. I ask her whether she is eating properly and she says, “I’m just so tired amma, I don’t have the energy to eat”. Interestingly Aasha is a Tamil speaker who has brought to the centre by her Muslim neighbour who speaks both Urdu and Tamil. Getting all these details is always in K.G Halli a three way translation discussion.
Our final halt for the morning takes us to the house of a young woman who is carrying on, despite all. Her father passed on three years ago, after “ keeping everything ready for her marriage” , simple kitchen utensils, a stove, a bed….. But he did not prepare her for a time she would need to fend for herself. Her younger brother committed suicide three months ago after a short- lived “love- marriage”….we do not know why, and now she and her mother have no source of income. The house, smelling of garlic from round the corner, is full of these pods as the two women peel four kilos a day for the royal sum of sixty rupees. There is a small bright lamp in this house with the oppressive atmosphere of unexpressed grief, in the shape of a young 12 year old boy, her cousin, who stays with them and helps with all the chores and running around…….His cheeky wit and quick answers bring andwering smiles from all of us……
And we walk back to the centre…….
to be continued…Where Do I Begin (part-2)
