Kolkata, India Feb 9th-18th

We arrived into Kolkata the morning of Feb 9^th after a 14 hour overnight train ride from Varanasi.  From the train station, we caught a ferry across the Ganges and then walked over to the Sudder Road area.  After looking a couple of hotels that had nice lobbies but not so nice rooms, we finally found the Sunflower Guesthouse a couple of blocks away.  The building was extremely old, but the rooms had been remodeled and were spotless.  We took a little nap and then walked over to the Motherhouse were we had volunteer orientation for the Sisters of Charity.  Mother Teresa founded the Sisters of Charity and their mission is to help the poorest of the poor.  The sisters welcome anyone who wants to volunteer, even if it is just for a day.  The sisters run several facilities, some concentrate on children, some on adolescents, some on handicap adults, and some for people who need hospice care.  I was placed at Prem Dan on the women’s side.  Prem Dan is set up for people who need long term care because of disabilities or the women were elderly and their families no longer would support them.  Jeff was placed at Kalighat, which was Mother Teresa’s first home she established to help care for the dying.  The original facility was under renovations and the patients had been shuffled over to the same complex as Prem Dan. 

Volunteers met at Motherhouse at 7am where we would get a breakfast of bananas, chai, and bread.  Jeff usually decided to stay in bed an hour longer and make his way to Kalighat, skipping breakfast.  After breakfast was served, one of the sisters would lead us in a short prayer, followed by one Hail Mary, and a short song.  If it was your last day of volunteering, everyone would then sing a song thanking you for your time and wishing you well.  Breakfast time was also a time for chatting with volunteers you wouldn’t see for the rest of the  day because they were at different facilities.  Volunteers came from all over the world, America, China, Europe, Korea, India, and so many other places.  It was amazing to see how many people just wanted to give back.

We would take a 20 minute walk from Motherhouse to Prem Dan.  I met some wonderful girls Jessica, from Texas and Annie from Australia who were at the same facility I was at.  Both were nurses and it was always great chatting with them in the mornings on the way to volunteer.  One of the first duties of the day was laundry.  The laundry was placed into a large basin filled with soapy water and then someone would stomp on it.  It reminded of crushing grapes to make wine!  The laundry was then placed into a sink to be rinsed.  One volunteer would ring out the clothes, pass them along were they were scrubbed by hand, and placed into another rinse sink.  The laundry was rinsed and scrubbed through 4-5 sinks, rung out and then taken in buckets to the roof where it was hung to dry.  Then the beds would need to be changed and the floors scrubbed in the main room.  Prem Dan had about 150 women when I was there, so the laundry, the changing of beds, and scrubbing of floors could take some time. 

On my first day at Prem Dan, I informed the sister in charge that I was a nurse and would be willing to help with dressing changes if help was needed.  So for the rest of the week, my morning were filled with helping two other nurses and the sisters change the patients dressings.  Some were simple dressing changes and others were much more complex.  One patient, had her sari catch fire.  She had a huge burn from her waist to ankles on her backside.  It took about an hour for me, Janet the nurse from Italy, and Naomi, the nurse from Japan to change her dressing.  In the states, a patient with such a large burn would be receiving IV pain medications and probably would be put to sleep for some of the dressing changes.  It really made me appreciate the resources available in our healthcare system.  Over the course of the week of my week there though, her wound was much improved, although she still had a long road ahead of healing ahead of her. 

The patients would call most of the volunteers ‘Aunty’ as a form of respect.  Once they put together that I was helping with the dressing changes, most patients started to call me ‘Sister’.  A lot of the sisters have had no medical training and learn from the few that have received training or from volunteers.  I loved talking to the sisters about what I knew about wounds and dressing changes.  The other two nurse I worked with spoke broken English and it was harder for them to communicate with the sisters about why dressings were being changed they way they were. 

After dressings were done, it was volunteer chai break-time. The volunteers would sit around the patio chatting with each other.  During this time, Jeff and I meet another two really cool girls, Mary from Wisconsin and Megan from Portland.  These two girls where on a exchange program with their universities.  In the mornings they would volunteer and in the afternoons they would go to class.  Chai time was over when lunch arrived.  It was the volunteers jobs to deliver the plates the Sisters dished up to the patients.  Some patients needed to be fed as well.  Once everyone was done eating, dishes were collected, washed, and put away.  We were then free to enjoy our the rest of our day.

Jeff and I would sometimes share a tuck-tuck back to where our hotel was, sometimes we would take the streetcar, and sometimes we would walk.  We would spend our afternoons wandering some the markets, hanging out in the cafes along Sudder street where a lot the other volunteers hung out, or even take a nap.  It felt good to be able to give just a little bit back.

Morning laundry time

Mary (on left) & Annie (on right) making beds

Afternoon chai break Annie (sitting on floor on left), Jessica (sitting on bench on left), unknown volunteer (sitting on bench on right), and Megan (sitting on floor on right)

Mary (standing in center) playing soccer during chai break with the Prem Dan facility in the background