Easterine Kire
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]nce upon a time, there was a young boy named Mong. He lived in a house made of newspaper. Every night, when the stars multiplied until they covered the whole sky, the wind would begin to blow and blow on their house. When that happened, Mong would feel so scared that their house would fall down. It made him long to run out of the house and look for a tree to shelter them. Or a great rock which the wind could not blow over. But he never did this Instead, he lay beside his mother and hid his face in the nook of his mother’s arm and whimpered until the wind stopped blowing. His mother always spoke soft words to him and tried to calm him. She knew he was scared but they had nowhere else to go. If they left their newspaper house, they would be homeless. Besides, Mong could not walk or talk or move. He could not even eat by himself. He was severely disabled and his mother had to care for him all day long. Mong was six years old. His mother loved him dearly and hoped and prayed that one day he would be alright.“Look at the walls!” my sister whispered loudly, “They have pasted newspapers over the bamboo matting.”
“Oh that’s pretty!” I exclaimed as I looked at the carefully covered walls.
“It’s not to make it look pretty,” my sister hissed. “It’s to keep out the wind.”
That was the rude shock that I got when I realised that Mong’s family was so poor they could not make proper walls that would keep out the wind. As a matter of fact, their bamboo house did not even have a door. All they had was an opening with a thin curtain shielding the house from outsiders.
Mong’s mother ran home to greet us. She had placed Mong beside his father who was in bed with fever, and she had gone to the nearby jungle to collect pig fodder. We asked how Mong was, and she said he too had a fever. Nevertheless, she carried him out to meet us. The six year old boy greeted us with a wan smile. His disability is so severe that he cannot do anything by himself. There are no words to describe that sight of a mother with her crippled child in her arms. It has been six long years of waiting for change without any light at the end of the tunnel. It was impossible to sit dry-eyed throughout the visit.
We were accompanied by two skilled workers who I will simply call Mary and John. Mong knew the kind field workers who regularly follow his progress, visiting his family at an interval of two to four weeks. Mong has made very little progress.
Mary is in her thirties. She is kind and warm hearted. At the same time, she has an inner strength that helps her stay on course in this hard vocation she has chosen. Well educated Mary could have found a better paid job, but her heart is in her job of caring for children with disabilities. Sometimes John accompanies her and other times, they go on different routes. They are both trained to discern if their patients need corrective surgery or not. If a child’s physical disability can be corrected by regular exercise, they give training to the parents to conduct exercises on a daily basis. It is not an easy job. The parents are, for the most, from the uneducated, impoverished classes of society. They have other young able-bodied children needing their attention, and days can get too busy before they remember to exercise the child with special needs. Poverty means that the mother, the sole caregiver, has to divide her time between keeping the household running and looking after the child with disability.
Both Mary and John are very poorly paid. The government is not aware of the nature of the job they undertake or the hardships under which they work. The duo cover long distances to visit their patients. In the rainy season it is not possible to take an auto rickshaw to some of the colonies. Yet the organisation they work for cannot provide a car for them.
It was late when we returned home. The images of little Mong and his mother haunted me. What could be done? Where does one start?
Last week the glad news came that the Grace Covenant Church had visited Mong and his family, and built proper walls for their house. They had also built a door where the curtain used to flutter in the wind. I heard that Mong’s mother was speechless at this action. So was I. My faith in humanity is now restored. Mong does not have to live in a newspaper house anymore. The howling wind will no longer be a terror by night.
There are many Mongs out there needing our help. We may not have a lot of resources in our hands. But if we use what we have, it encourages others to join their resources with ours. We simply let our hearts listen to the hearts of the suffering. And do what our hearts tell us we should do. It is about becoming a part of the solution. Building a house for Mong was a project of Charis Connect Dimapur and Grace Covenant Church. In addition, Mong’s mother has been given a piglet to rear which hopefully will be sold ten months later for a good sum of money that the family can use. It is one drop less in the ocean of poverty. And if we care together, drop by drop, we can help to drain the ocean dry.
