Monday, September 1, 2014

Manual Scavenging - a Hazardous Occupation


LUMIERE HAS RECEIVED REPORTS of many trapped in the poverty cycle, having to manually clean human waste from dry toilets. Health issues and financial poverty is the lot of many who undertake this work. What can be done? Why not consider getting involved and working to improve the lot of those at present occupied with this work.
Water and sanitation facilities are desperately needed in many poor areas. Much can be done to assist with this; why not fund a sanitation network, or sink a well?
Health personnel and facilities are needed in poor areas. Why not donate some of your time and offer health services in one such area? Another option is to build a clinic/ hospital.

It can be done
Many years ago, I was working in Charity when I was approached to assist in an outlying area where there was no health facility. I drove out with a volunteer colleage. When we got to the area, we found the following;
- no health service
- shacks and plastic bags as homes
- no sanitation
- no water except for a small spring which the shack dwellers used as a toilet as well as for drinking and cooking water, and from which the animals drank water
- no school

Under a Thorn Tree
We started the Clinic right there under a tree. It was late evening, there was a watery gleam from the sun as rain spat down from the grim skies. When the word got around that two health workers were in a combi and had come to help, people flooded in from all over the region. We luckily had some supplies in the car. By eight that evening I looked out. A column of people stretched as far as the eye could see. Dying babies, sick people, people hacking with tubercular cough, suppurating boils. One lady who was in the last throes of dying was on a pallet surrounded by her relatives. I anxiously asked the relatives what they wanted me to do for her; why had they brought her all this way in her extremis in the rain? The relatives told me she had heard of the two ladies who had come to the shanty town; with her own eyes she wanted to see them before she died. She asked that I would lay my hands on her head in blessing, and then she could die in peace. 
"For," she told her son-in-law, "God has remembered us. We have been forgotten for so many years. Now we will never be in want again."
As I looked over the many people, I thought of the people who flooded to the back door of the village for Divine Providence on earth to heal. Here, too, were the blind; the lame; the infant sick, the youthful adult in suffering, the dying.  How would we ever be able to help each one? We only had minimal supplies. There were only two of us. There were so many - easily over a thousand - needing help.

We are not alone
That night, we packed up the combi. I well remember that we had one small supply left. The rest had all been used up. I had learned that in Charity work many wonders occur. I hesitate to claim any unusual event. However, the fact remains that I had brought supplies for maximum twenty people, and we had assisted about a thousand two hundred. That evening I learned not to worry any more. In Charity work, I truly believe, we are not alone.

Beautiful Hospital
Suffice it to say that, after highlighting the need and working in the area for about six years, I had seen a small Clinic founded there. I then moved on to another Charity area. Last year, I happened to be in that country again, and opened a magazine. I read an article on the area. A full Hospital now thrives on the site, which boasts built houses, sanitation, electricity, schools, shops, and a computer school. From a rain washed settlement next to a tree and polluted water supply, a beautiful and thriving community with children now in the second generation of receiving education now stands. My colleague and I did not do this wonderful work. However, to us fell the inestimable privilege of being the sower of the seed; of seeing the need, and beginning the momentum of bringing help to an area in desperation.

PERHAPS DIVINE PROVIDENCE HAS LED YOU TO READ THESE WORDS.
Maybe you are meant to be the Sower of a Seed leading to the betterment of all in your area.
In the Spirit of Lumiere, is there anything you can do? 

Freeing from Cleaning Human Waste
http://features.hrw.org/features/Witness_Freeing_Women_From_Cleaning_Human_Waste/index.html

Manual Scavengers 
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28892321

Manual Scavenging 
http://www.dalits.nl/manualscavenging.html

Dalit Netwerk Nederland 
http://www.dalits.nl/

Cleaning Human Waste "Manual Scavenging" 96-page report 
http://www.hrw.org/node/128150



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