Namskaar Kolkata

My final days in Kolkata turned out to be no less exciting than the preceeding month. I worked my last day up on the roof of the orphanage washing and hanging laundry. There were only a few people working and it was a very peaceful, sunny day. Manjri, the litle girl who would run around and play an imaginary game of Duck, Duck, Goose was up on the roof as usual, weaving her way silently between the laundry as the wind played its own game with the sheets. I will miss this spot most of all.
My last day at the medical clinic turned out to be a doozie. On the good side of things, I had these two little girls come in, one was about 7, the other 5. The 7 year old had been in a few days before when I had bandaged up a cut on her finger. Now she was bringing in her little sister who had a big scrape on her elbow. As I cleaned her scrape the 5 year old was crying and her older sister kept making fun of her. It was hard to keep from laughing. I took out my digital camera and took pictures of them which when I showed the 5 year old, made her stop crying. By the time I was done bandaging up the 5 year old's scrape she was crying again and her sister was back to making fun of her. I laughed with the older sister and then told her I wanted to look at the cut I had bandaged a few days ago. Her facial expression went from making fun of her sister to a serious, "Uh, oh, I'm in trouble now" look. She shook her head 'no', grabbed her little sister's arm and darted out the door. I'll miss those kids too.
My second to last patient on my last day of work at the clinic was the worst I had to deal with in the month I had been here, and if you are faint of heart or have a weak stomach, you can skip this paragraph(seriously). This man had been in a motorcycle accident and had split his head open ear to ear. The cut went over the top part of his head and was all the way to the skull. When he showed up, his head was wrapped in a dirty bandage and the smell was the worst I had experienced yet. When I got the old bandaging off, I could see that someone had stitched his head up with literally with about 7 or 8 stitches. This wound should have had over 200 stitches in it. His whole head and forehead from the top of his crown to his eyes moved around like a mask in a horror movie. It had become so infected that it was bloated and the puss just poured out of the wound and it smelt as if someone had shoved human excrement in my nostrils. It was so bad that I had to call over the Spanish nurse who was volunteering with me that day and have her help or should I say take the lead. It took a while to clean him up and bandage him up and I have no idea how he will do. I will never know.
Half of me was relieved to walk away from the clinic that day. The other half of me wonder how could I possibly leave? All of me knew I would be wrestling with these issues for a long time to come. The patients I met in the clinic live lives filled with more pain and suffering than I could ever have imagined and they will continue to do so long after I am gone.
I loaded up my backpack and hopped on a bus heading south out of Kolkata. For the first hour or so of the trip, the bus paralelled a large, stagnant black river of raw sewage. On the other side of the road were giant heaps of garbaged that were burning as street people picked through them looking for whatever could be reused or eaten.
After about 2 plus hours of the trip, the city gave way to a continual stretch of farm land. Endless patches of green and brown vegetation with the occassional cluster of people working in the fields.
The Bengali term "Namskaar" is used when greeting and saying goodbye to someone. It means 'The God of my soul recognizes the God of your soul." It's a beautiful word that hold so much more in it than just 'hello' or 'goodbye'. I said Namaskar to Kolkata today. It was bittersweet to be leaving.