From Vasco Pyjama:
Two years ago, when I was in the Philippines, I didn’t help a friend enough when she was sick. And she died. It is something I regret deeply, and have carried with me ever since.
Yesterday, as our para-vet stopped to vaccinate a flock of sheep and goats, a woman came up to me and asked me if I was a doctor. I said no. She points to her bulging belly. She says she has had a problem. Her belly has swollen up suddenly. There are pains in her abdomen. She does not know what it is caused by. It’s not a pregnancy. But she has had seven children, of whom only three survive.
I don’t know what the problem is. But she does not look well. She can’t walk, but only shuffles. And I think it might be gynaecological. There is no clinic within two days’ travel. I tell her to see a doctor. And a good one. For that, she would have to go to Kabul. Three to four days’ travel. She tells me she can’t. Too far away. I fear she will be dead by next year.
I have interviewed so many communities in the area. They all speak of the same problems. If they get sick, they don’t have a clinic nearby. So they just wait and see. They say sometimes the sick recover and live, sometimes they die. But there is nothing they can do. In winter, the situation worsens. Once the snow starts, it comes impossible to leave the area. Money or no money, car or no car, one cannot get a doctor.
I look at the women’s three young daughters who have come to stare at the strange foreigner. The youngest is about seven. I don’t want to repeat mistakes of the past. So I go off on a tangent. “Do you spin wool?”, I ask. I ask her to show me her wool. She brings out three giant balls. Each ball is about the size of a volleyball. It is of good quality. Thick yarn. Perfect for my next crochet project. I tell her that I would like to buy the largest ball. For USD100. On one condition. That she sees a doctor before winter.
She looks at me puzzled. She doesn’t understand. After some more explanation from my driver cum interpreter, she realises what I am asking from her. Her face lights up. She promises to leave to see a doctor this week. It might be too little too late. But we can only try.
The things we do to assuage guilt. Guilt of privilege. Guilt for past inaction. Guilt for inability for action.
… wotw:
Slightly off topic, but I love that phrase “Guilt of privilege.” I think it’s one of the causes of the “war on terror.”
When, in the 17th C or thereabouts, landowners started to kick tennant farmers off their land in England and use itinerant labour for harvest etc. (because it made them more money), much of the social structure which provided a rural poor safety net was lost. A widow or an “idiot” would have been provided from the church poor box, but now there were large numbers of very poor people travelling from village to village looking for work and food. It made people change their attitude to the poor, from a communal responsibility to a communal problem.
Hence the “vagrancy” laws, and the demonisation of the poor. Personally I think it was one reason for the witch crazes of the time.
Put it this way: it’s much easier to hate the “other” than feel the guilt of responsibility refused. If they’re all out to get us it becomes simple and black and white. If they all want and worse deserve something from us, then we have all these feelings we don’t want to face. I think Israel suffers from that in regard of the Palestinians, and it’s been a stumbling point or at least a reason the government has been able to get away with being so intransigent.