Merrimack Valley Rotary' s Carl Good's latest report from his trip to Bangladesh to immunize indidual's against polio.Today is Sat the 15th of December and we are still in Calcutta (Kolkata). After breakfast we took a picture of the Rotary National Immunization Day group in our yellow shirts. We started the morning with a visit to the Sisters of Charity and the tomb of Mother Teresa. We participated in a prayer service by the nuns. Then we visited their orphanage at a different site close by.
Our Rotarians provided many gifts donated by the various Clubs represented in the NID group to the great pleasure of the children. I have some excellent video of the children receiving the gifts but it will need editing at home before I can put it on the web. An Indian Rotarian, A.J. Bhandari, led our group to the orphanage and provided background information about his past association with Mother Teresa which included being a pall bearer at her funeral. I presented him with a red socks T-shirt donated by a Merrimack Valley club member as shown in one of the photos. Another T-shirt was previously given to the head of the Polio Plus program in Bangladesh.
We then visited a hospice run by the Sisters of Charity to provide comfort and some times recovery for the very ill poor. It was a sobering sight with several beds containing the shrouded bodies of those who had died in the morning.
After lunch we took a bus trip to Humanity Hospital at Ghosepukur outside Kolkata. This Rotary supported hospital was started by a poor woman whose husband died for lack of medical care. Eventually one of her sons became an MD and runs this small charity hospital in the country. I presented him with one of the battery free flashlights provided by our club.
Later in the afternoon we went shopping and Ann Lee, one of our leaders had her arms painted as is done by Indian women for major occasions such as weddings.
Tomorrow we fly to Delhi and then on the next day return to the snowy US.
We then visited a hospice run by the Sisters of Charity to provide comfort and some times recovery for the very ill poor. It was a sobering sight with several beds containing the shrouded bodies of those who had died in the morning.
After lunch we took a bus trip to Humanity Hospital at Ghosepukur outside Kolkata. This Rotary supported hospital was started by a poor woman whose husband died for lack of medical care. Eventually one of her sons became an MD and runs this small charity hospital in the country. I presented him with one of the battery free flashlights provided by our club.
Later in the afternoon we went shopping and Ann Lee, one of our leaders had her arms painted as is done by Indian women for major occasions such as weddings.
Tomorrow we fly to Delhi and then on the next day return to the snowy US.
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