The things you see in Kathmandu can be startling and horrifying. For one, the construction here would crumble with a moderate reading on the Richter scale. You thought the wreckage in Haiti was bad? On a more serious note is the begging. At first there wasn't anything too, hmm, disturbing. Then I got us sidetracked and into a large bazaar. At one busy intersection, I saw people stepping over an old woman. Through the moving crowd we could catch glimpses. Her one leg, badly mangled. Disease? Accident? We walked by. Her other leg had been amputated, skin stretched over a jagged bone that was trying to break free. It had not been handled by anyone with medical schooling. She had been set there on a blanket and left to beg. On the same corner laid a man with serious skin problems on his feet and legs. Gangrene. It hadn't bothered me that they were there. What bothered me was that someone, probably family, carried that woman out of her home and left her on the street. Not only that but no body noticed or cared. Those people can't move for themselves. Even if they had wheelchairs, there is no possible way they could maneuver over the uneven sidewalks or cross any traffic to return home. I wished I could pick her up and take her back to her bed. In a city with such poverty, people don't get close to the care they need. This was just one corner. What tragedies lay on other corners, or under those tarped rooves? It would be wonderful to be able to help these people but where would you begin? We forget how lucky we are because we have to pay for healthcare, college, taxes. Until now, I was forgetting how luck i am to be able to spend 700 rupees for a bus upgrade. For many of these people, that is a dream that will never happen. One misstep in traffic could land them on a corner, begging at the dusty shoes of strangers.
Happily, we are out of Kathmandu. We will return there in about 40 days.
No comments:
Post a Comment