Kalighat

I have worked a few days at Kalighat so far, and thought some of you might like to know what it is like there. Russel and I are the only two from our team that work the morning shift there, and there are about 20-25 others that join us at 8am. The first day Russel and I went there a young man had passed away, and since the workers there already knew Russel they asked us to take is body to the crematorium. That gave me an idea of what Kalighat will be like for the next 3 weeks pretty quick. When we first arive every day (after catching bus 45B from the mother house) we walk for about 10 minutes to Kalighat, which is ironically located adjacent to the Kali temple, which is the temple where Hindus worship the godess of death (Indiana Jones anyone?). When we enter in we go right to work serving each person breakfast, and many of them need assistance. The house is split up into male and female wards because of the nature of care that is performed. After meal time, we bathe those who have not had a bath in a few days. This is quite a task because more than half of them must be carried across the home into the room where they are bathed. We then dress them and carry or help them walk back to their beds. I would say that there are about 40 males and I cant really say how many females because I dont frequent their ward. Other tasks include dressing wounds such as burns or open sores, and this is mainly done by volunteer nurses and there is one bengali doctor. We also pass out medicine that has been prescribed to each patient. We then serve them lunch at around 11:30, which is usually the standard rice and curry, although they had fish the other day.

It is hard work, and I have decided to take the afternoon shift off for a few days to rest and read. I talked to a missionary that works there with us and she urged me to consider taking it easy the first few days because she has seen people get sick from working to hard. I have realized how tired I really am from travel and dont want to push it too hard. More of my team (about 7 others) work at Kalighat in the afternoon. So far serving these men has been gratifying, but challenging. The challenges come mostly from the language barrier. I want to talk with many of them to hear their stories, but a lot of them only speak Bengali or cannot speak at all. Today one man would not eat and coughed very violently when I gave hime water to drink. It was hard to see him this way because he is very unhealthy, and couldnt respond when I asked him questions.

Tomorow is a day off so we decided to see Prince Caspian! Keep us in your thoughts as we continue to serve at Mother Teresa's homes. We love and miss all of you.
-Jimmy B