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| Stories From Nepal |
| Beena and Naani |
 Soon after I arrived at Shoba’s house, she led me upstairs to a small room. I sat in a chair and waited. It was a corner room and its two windows each opened onto farm fields. To my left were rows of long-tasseled, ripe corn. In front of me, terraced paddies of pure green rice fell away towards the distant city of Kathmandu –– a brown smudge across the valley floor.
The room contained a small table, a bed, my chair and another chair. In turn, one by one, each girl entered the room, closed the door, and turned towards me. They were curious about what would happen next. I tried to explain. Some sat on the bed, and others expressed a strong preference to remain standing and would not even accept my alternate offer of a chair. They were young, smooth-faced Nepalese girls –– among them there was not one you’d call a woman. Many were beautiful girls from the mountains.
They’d all arrived in the last week aboard a plane from Bombay. A relief organization had “rescued” 96 Nepalese prostitutes and brought them back home. Shoba took 12 into her home, a shelter for women. She asked me to come to examine them for illness. She didn’t want to bring them to the hospital, for fear that they might be accosted by some of the same men who’d taken them to Bombay. Shoba said that the word was out that the girls were back, and that I should not tell people that some were staying with her. In the coming weeks, she said, the police would ask the girls to identify their pimps.
Beena was in her mid–twenties and has lived with Shoba for several years. She accompanied each of the girls into my examination room. I wrote out short histories on separate white sheets of paper. Each girl had two names: her original Nepalese name, and another, similar sounding name given by the brothel in Bombay. Although I started by asking each for her Nepalese name, several girls remained confused about which name to give.
Beena interjected sharply, “Look. The doctor just told you: give your Nepalese name, the one your parents gave you.”
She moved them in and out as if they were small children, tolerating a minimum of frivolity. Together we tried to figure out their ages, which ranged between about 15 and 18 years. One year, two years, four years in India. Lured with an offer of a job. Kidnapped by a stranger. Sold by the family. Most came from villages in the mountain districts surrounding the Kathmandu Valley. They are not as shy as the average Nepalese female. “Weight loss? Sure I lost weight! Who wouldn’t lose weight in a place where you never see the sun or sky? They beat you. You stay inside all day.” “Do you know how much weight you’ve lost? 5 kg? 10 kg?”
She looked at Beena and giggled at my question.
“Doesn’t know weights,” Beena says.
Another girl came in.
“Hello, brother!” she said to me with a twinkle in her eye. Throughout the examination, a smile or a smirk turned up the corners of her mouth. She left at the end of the examination with “See you,” spoken in English, and a wry smile. Most of the girls had no symptoms and appeared to be fairly healthy. Beena left me alone in the room to write on my pieces of paper. I segregated the records of those who would need to come to the hospital for further testing, and I looked out the window onto the swaying fields.
The first time I met Beena, she had thick, rubber gloves, the kind worn by dishwashers in restaurants, pulled on up to her elbows. She used them to clean up the mess that her friend Naani frequently got herself into while on our medical ward. Five or six girls took their turns with Naani –– coaxing her to eat, turning her to prevent bedsores, washing her up after diarrhea, and cajoling her to get better so they could all go home. It appeared to me that Beena drew extra turns in the bedside duty rotation, but her smile remained.
Naani grew up in the hills of central Nepal and was married off at the age of 12. The story goes that she misunderstood what the wedding night passion was all about, and ran in panic from her new husband’s home. She fled to the nearest big town. Alone in the city, she was offered a night out at the movies. She accepted and the man loaded her into a bus headed south for India. Weeks later, she found herself a prisoner in a Bombay brothel. Naani spent the next 18 years there, bore a daughter whom she named Pinkie, and contracted the virus HIV. She eventually became skeletal and of no use, so her employers turned Naani out and she returned to Nepal.
Her family brought Naani to the hill hospital in Amp Pipal, where tuberculosis was diagnosed. Doctors mailed her blood sample in to Kathmandu, and two weeks later her family learned that she had tested positive for HIV. They made plans to take her home where they thought to keep her in a shed at the back of their farm. A nurse presented them with another option, and they all agreed to Naani’s coming to live in a hostel in Kathmandu. Carried down the mountain in a basket, and then into the big city by bus, she came to our hospital three years ago.
Back then we at Patan had only seen AIDS in a few Western patients. We were beginning to educate our staff about this disease, in anticipation of the waves of patients that had already hit our neighbors in Thailand and India. Stories had been circulating about the rampant kidnapping, sale, and export of girls in some hilly areas of Nepal. An estimated 100,000 Nepalese worked as prostitutes in Bombay alone.
Naani moved into the home that was run by a British missionary Sharon and her Nepalese co-worker Shoba. It is a shelter for women and girls, who, for a variety of reasons –– orphaned, bad marriage, destitute, or unknown –– have nowhere else to go. Living there is no free ride. Everyone is supposed to pitch in and help. Sharon and Shoba also took their turns at the bedside when Naani was in Patan Hospital.
After seeming to recover from her tuberculosis, Naani was admitted twice for pneumonia. She got better after we gave her routine antibiotics. I was thankful, because our basic lab tests and medicines don’t cover the many types of pneumonia that patients with AIDS may get. Naani was slow to bounce back and spent about twice as long in the hospital as a patient with pneumonia normally would. Our nurses had started to become accustomed to caring for HIV patients, but I could see that they were still a little afraid.
Beena was a farm girl. Out at the women’s home she was the one who went and bought the rice. She’d hoist a 110-pound bag onto her back and carry it back to the house. When I came on ward rounds, I would find her standing upright and attentive at Naani’s bedside. She knew the answers to my questions about what had happened in the night. Naani was a bit demented. The girls used to put a doll on the pillow beside her, and she, thin and floppy as her Raggedy Ann, would cling to it as she struggled to breathe.
One morning I came to her bedside and asked “Hey, where’s your baby doll, Naani? Did she run away from you?”
When I returned in the evening, I found that Naani wouldn’t talk to me. Examining her, it didn’t appear that her illness was preventing her from speaking. I glanced at Beena, who explained to me that Naani was angry with me over my comment about her doll having run off. I waited for Naani to say something more, but she just lay there stone faced. I began to explain that I wasn’t serious. It was only a joke about her doll running away. Naani held out for a few moments more, and then she let a self–satisfied grin spread widely over her face. I was forgiven. Raggedy Ann turned up the next day. One day Shoba and Beena appeared outside our clinic. As I walked past, I glanced around but saw no sign of Naani. They let themselves into the room and sat in front of my desk. The week before, Naani had gotten sick in the night and died the next morning. As I heard this, I felt left out. No chest X-ray, no blood cultures, no chemistry tests, no intravenous antibiotics in combination –– she’d just died at home, watched over by friends who were praying for her. Shoba had come to see me because they needed me to sign some papers about Naani’s death. They appeared about ready to get up, when Shoba said, “One more thing, doctor: Beena has a rash. Would you check her over?”
“Shoba, why don’t we send her to the skin clinic? It’s going on across the hall right now.”
“I’d like you to take a look at her, doctor.”
I looked around the room at patients sitting packed on both benches.
“Well, OK, it’s just that we’re kind of busy today, Shoba.”
She leaned towards me, trying to be patient, and hesitated. In a soft, apologetic voice, she said, “Doctor Mark, Beena is HIV positive.”
I stole a look at Beena. It was long enough to read embarrassment and shame. Tears welled up in her eyes. Later, after I’d examined Beena, she went out. Shoba told me the story of Beena’s journey to Bombay and back.
A month or so later I looked out into the clinic waiting area and saw Beena sitting there alone. Wanting very much to make her feel welcome, I gave her a silly frown. Her almond eyes disappeared suddenly into the crinkles of a smile. |
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| NSI Activities >> Rural Retention Support |
| Beena and Naani |
 Soon after I arrived at Shoba’s house, she led me upstairs to a small room. I sat in a chair and waited. It was a corner room and its two windows each opened onto farm fields. To my left were rows of long-tasseled, ripe corn. In front of me, terraced paddies of pure green rice fell away towards the distant city of Kathmandu –– a brown smudge across the valley floor.
The room contained a small table, a bed, my chair and another chair. In turn, one by one, each girl entered the room, closed the door, and turned towards me. They were curious about what would happen next. I tried to explain. Some sat on the bed, and others expressed a strong preference to remain standing and would not even accept my alternate offer of a chair. They were young, smooth-faced Nepalese girls –– among them there was not one you’d call a woman. Many were beautiful girls from the mountains.
They’d all arrived in the last week aboard a plane from Bombay. A relief organization had “rescued” 96 Nepalese prostitutes and brought them back home. Shoba took 12 into her home, a shelter for women. She asked me to come to examine them for illness. She didn’t want to bring them to the hospital, for fear that they might be accosted by some of the same men who’d taken them to Bombay. Shoba said that the word was out that the girls were back, and that I should not tell people that some were staying with her. In the coming weeks, she said, the police would ask the girls to identify their pimps.
Beena was in her mid–twenties and has lived with Shoba for several years. She accompanied each of the girls into my examination room. I wrote out short histories on separate white sheets of paper. Each girl had two names: her original Nepalese name, and another, similar sounding name given by the brothel in Bombay. Although I started by asking each for her Nepalese name, several girls remained confused about which name to give.
Beena interjected sharply, “Look. The doctor just told you: give your Nepalese name, the one your parents gave you.”
She moved them in and out as if they were small children, tolerating a minimum of frivolity. Together we tried to figure out their ages, which ranged between about 15 and 18 years. One year, two years, four years in India. Lured with an offer of a job. Kidnapped by a stranger. Sold by the family. Most came from villages in the mountain districts surrounding the Kathmandu Valley. They are not as shy as the average Nepalese female.
“Weight loss? Sure I lost weight! Who wouldn’t lose weight in a place where you never see the sun or sky? They beat you. You stay inside all day.”
“Do you know how much weight you’ve lost? 5 kg? 10 kg?”
She looked at Beena and giggled at my question.
“Doesn’t know weights,” Beena says.
Another girl came in.
“Hello, brother!” she said to me with a twinkle in her eye. Throughout the examination, a smile or a smirk turned up the corners of her mouth. She left at the end of the examination with “See you,” spoken in English, and a wry smile.
Most of the girls had no symptoms and appeared to be fairly healthy. Beena left me alone in the room to write on my pieces of paper. I segregated the records of those who would need to come to the hospital for further testing, and I looked out the window onto the swaying fields.
The first time I met Beena, she had thick, rubber gloves, the kind worn by dishwashers in restaurants, pulled on up to her elbows. She used them to clean up the mess that her friend Naani frequently got herself into while on our medical ward. Five or six girls took their turns with Naani –– coaxing her to eat, turning her to prevent bedsores, washing her up after diarrhea, and cajoling her to get better so they could all go home. It appeared to me that Beena drew extra turns in the bedside duty rotation, but her smile remained.
Naani grew up in the hills of central Nepal and was married off at the age of 12. The story goes that she misunderstood what the wedding night passion was all about, and ran in panic from her new husband’s home. She fled to the nearest big town. Alone in the city, she was offered a night out at the movies. She accepted and the man loaded her into a bus headed south for India. Weeks later, she found herself a prisoner in a Bombay brothel. Naani spent the next 18 years there, bore a daughter whom she named Pinkie, and contracted the virus HIV. She eventually became skeletal and of no use, so her employers turned Naani out and she returned to Nepal.
Her family brought Naani to the hill hospital in Amp Pipal, where tuberculosis was diagnosed. Doctors mailed her blood sample in to Kathmandu, and two weeks later her family learned that she had tested positive for HIV. They made plans to take her home where they thought to keep her in a shed at the back of their farm. A nurse presented them with another option, and they all agreed to Naani’s coming to live in a hostel in Kathmandu. Carried down the mountain in a basket, and then into the big city by bus, she came to our hospital three years ago.
Back then we at Patan had only seen AIDS in a few Western patients. We were beginning to educate our staff about this disease, in anticipation of the waves of patients that had already hit our neighbors in Thailand and India. Stories had been circulating about the rampant kidnapping, sale, and export of girls in some hilly areas of Nepal. An estimated 100,000 Nepalese worked as prostitutes in Bombay alone.
Naani moved into the home that was run by a British missionary Sharon and her Nepalese co-worker Shoba. It is a shelter for women and girls, who, for a variety of reasons –– orphaned, bad marriage, destitute, or unknown –– have nowhere else to go. Living there is no free ride. Everyone is supposed to pitch in and help. Sharon and Shoba also took their turns at the bedside when Naani was in Patan Hospital.
After seeming to recover from her tuberculosis, Naani was admitted twice for pneumonia. She got better after we gave her routine antibiotics. I was thankful, because our basic lab tests and medicines don’t cover the many types of pneumonia that patients with AIDS may get. Naani was slow to bounce back and spent about twice as long in the hospital as a patient with pneumonia normally would. Our nurses had started to become accustomed to caring for HIV patients, but I could see that they were still a little afraid.
Beena was a farm girl. Out at the women’s home she was the one who went and bought the rice. She’d hoist a 110-pound bag onto her back and carry it back to the house. When I came on ward rounds, I would find her standing upright and attentive at Naani’s bedside. She knew the answers to my questions about what had happened in the night. Naani was a bit demented. The girls used to put a doll on the pillow beside her, and she, thin and floppy as her Raggedy Ann, would cling to it as she struggled to breathe.
One morning I came to her bedside and asked “Hey, where’s your baby doll, Naani? Did she run away from you?”
When I returned in the evening, I found that Naani wouldn’t talk to me. Examining her, it didn’t appear that her illness was preventing her from speaking. I glanced at Beena, who explained to me that Naani was angry with me over my comment about her doll having run off. I waited for Naani to say something more, but she just lay there stone faced. I began to explain that I wasn’t serious. It was only a joke about her doll running away. Naani held out for a few moments more, and then she let a self–satisfied grin spread widely over her face. I was forgiven. Raggedy Ann turned up the next day.
One day Shoba and Beena appeared outside our clinic. As I walked past, I glanced around but saw no sign of Naani. They let themselves into the room and sat in front of my desk. The week before, Naani had gotten sick in the night and died the next morning. As I heard this, I felt left out. No chest X-ray, no blood cultures, no chemistry tests, no intravenous antibiotics in combination –– she’d just died at home, watched over by friends who were praying for her. Shoba had come to see me because they needed me to sign some papers about Naani’s death.
They appeared about ready to get up, when Shoba said, “One more thing, doctor: Beena has a rash. Would you check her over?”
“Shoba, why don’t we send her to the skin clinic? It’s going on across the hall right now.”
“I’d like you to take a look at her, doctor.”
I looked around the room at patients sitting packed on both benches.
“Well, OK, it’s just that we’re kind of busy today, Shoba.”
She leaned towards me, trying to be patient, and hesitated. In a soft, apologetic voice, she said, “Doctor Mark, Beena is HIV positive.”
I stole a look at Beena. It was long enough to read embarrassment and shame. Tears welled up in her eyes. Later, after I’d examined Beena, she went out. Shoba told me the story of Beena’s journey to Bombay and back.
A month or so later I looked out into the clinic waiting area and saw Beena sitting there alone. Wanting very much to make her feel welcome, I gave her a silly frown. Her almond eyes disappeared suddenly into the crinkles of a smile. |
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