“The only thing I can’t treat with my first aid kit is a snake bite…” –Srijan
This was one of the first things we remembered after our first village casualty just a few minutes ago. Cathi was standing on our beds while we were preparing our mosquito net for the night. She reached up with the middle of the net right at the exact moment a blade from the fan came wizzing by, slicing into the side of her right wrist. Before we even realized what had happened she fell to the bed with a thump, grabbing her wrist. Our initial reaction was to laugh, as this now marked the third “incident” involving Cathi (the first was when I was trying to fix a clothes line on the roof of the Grameen building we are staying in, when the wooden pole slipped and smacked her in the head, the second was when we were taking pictures of a little boy who had climbed a tree outside our bedroom window to see us, and she hit her head on the bed). But then we saw a slow trickle of blood start to drip down her arm…
The first time she took her hand off her wrist we realized this was much more serious than first imagined. The swelling began almost immediately, making the chasm in her wrist even more apparent. For a few seconds I wondered if the fan blade had actually cut her all the way down to her bone, but I kept that to myself so as not to add to the list of emotions she was already feeling.
Even after all of the bleeding the wound was still dirty from the filthy fan blade. I convinced Cathi that she needed to wash her arm instead of just putting anestheptic on it, so we used my bar of trusty Irish Spring to clean her hands, and bottled water to rinse off her arm until it no longer looked as grimy.
We kept her arm raised, put some ice (yes ice! In this small village apparently there is a freezer) in one of my Ziploc bags that I dumped all of my toiletries out of, and hoped it would stop bleeding. This was about the time I had a chance to call the boys who are staying about 10 km away in the next village over, to ask about Srijan’s trusty first aid kit.
We were really just wondering if they had any Neosporin that we could put on before we bandaged it up. This could help prevent infection as much as possible in a country that sprays antibacterial air freshener into the vents on all of the buses, yet that doesn’t regularly use soap or wash their hands.
Nicholas proceeded to tell me all about his friend’s experience with his travel insurance company, and how we should call our own to ask them what we should do about Cathi’s cut. At that point we really didn’t think that was necessary (ok so I may have made it sound like Cathi’s hand was a tendon away from being severed off her arm) so we arranged to have our Branch Manager drive over to the other village to pick up the Neosporin from the boys.
After a couple rounds of rubbing alcohol and iodine, we bandaged her up and it was time for dinner. The power went out and candles were lit, a nice unintentional romantic first dinner in our village. Shortly after we finished dinner the Center Branch Manager and two of the other women from Grameen came to visit to see how Cathi was doing. Then there was another set of visitors, just to make sure she was ok. Russel, our translator, said everyone had already heard about the incident, even in the next village over because that’s where the boys (and the Neosporin) were!
Earlier this morning, before all of this excitement happened, we took a bus from Dhaka to this remote village about 70 km away. We checked out our new home for the next four days (upstairs from the Grameen center office), and then went back downstairs to observe the tail end of a disbursement meeting of women who were receiving loans that they had applied for the week previous. Then we were told to rest (after all, we had had an extremely tiring day of sitting on a bus for 4+ hours).
After our mandatory rest we walked down into the village center with one of the Center Managers, to visit a village called Pachdona. This was one of the nicest villages we have seen on this trip (i.e., many of the houses were made out of concrete instead of corrugated steel, there were various ponds placed throughout the village, some with ducks swimming in them, and everything generally seemed cleaner and less dusty than just a few steps away back at the village center.
We made our way through the village to meet with a “Struggling Member” success story (a woman who had previously been a beggar, but then after receiving loans from Grameen was able to work her way out of poverty and out of begging). We passed by a few boys who were studying their English lessons (ex. ‘Read: Samyr has the pencil.’) which was quite impressive.
When we ended up at the Struggling Member’s house, we drew another crowd who watched as we conducted our interview of a woman who looked well into her 80’s, yet she guessed she was somewhere between 50-55 years old. Years ago her husband had died, her only child (daughter) had married and had moved away, and she turned to begging to help her meet her basic needs. Other members of her community had taken Grameen loans, and had encouraged her to become involved as well. Six years ago she received her first loan with which she bought chickens, ducks, and biscuits/cookies. Grameen encouraged her to sell things to the people to whom she would have previously begged, so at least she was offering a valuable service. She paid back her loan, then took out a second loan with which she bought a thread spinning machine.
A few years later she became sick as well and could not continue selling the thread she spun, so her daughter moved back to the village to learn the art of spinning as well. She has repaid her second loan, and has now passed on the spinning business to her daughter and granddaughter.
We left this woman’s corrugated steel house, and walked back to the village center, with the town’s children always in our shadows. Our translator, Russel, brought us to the market to get the best cha (tea) in town. The tea man had a cauldron of simmering milk, two kettles of cha, and a canister of white sugar. We sat on a wooden bench in front of the tea man and watched as he put a scoop of sugar in each glass topped with a ladle full of milk. After the milk had melted the sugar, he poured the cha in each glass, and topped the glasses with a piece of film from the top of the milk cauldron. Voila! It felt like the entire population surrounded us and watched as we drank the most incredible tea I have ever had in my life. Two boys who were watching had picked flowers from a local tree and gave me a bouquet of them. After our second helping of cha, the sea of people parted and we made our way back to our village feeling like local celebrities.
This joyous feeling was soon replaced with the adrenaline surrounding Cathi’s fan incident. Only hours before we had all been saying “Do you really think you’re going to need all of those medical supplies for this trip, Srijan??” We soon discovered that yes, we really would need them all, and this was only Day 1!
