Greetings once more from LAMB. This is a time when we are looking very much to see where God wishes us to work, but first in this newsletter a bit of an explanation about what is happening.
Here in Bangladesh as in many countries, the weather makes a big difference to life. Now in monsoon season here, we have been reminded of the realities.
At its simplest, we see the number of patients coming to LAMB Hospital drops a lot when it is planting season, as now. The same will happen at harvesting time – since both planting and harvesting, and the gleaning that follows, are all completely manual. Planting and harvesting, twice per year in this region, take priority over almost anything – good health can wait.
With the monsoon, in one of our community areas, maybe less than 20 miles from LAMB, the clinic which in the dry season is a pleasant walk or rickshaw ride from the road and a bamboo bridge, is now already extremely difficult to get to and by a long round about route, because of flooding and the fast flowing river. It is easy to understand why common the commonly used term here for such areas is ‘a remote area’, despite seeming physically close to help.
But there are more difficult places. In the past month, LAMB has been asked by two international organizations if we would be interested in setting up health systems in new areas much further away from LAMB. For one, we are told that much of the district is under water for 6 months of the year. For the other area, two of our Directors visited to understand the challenge of getting healthcare to the communities. From the road in a fairly remote spot, it’s a good long walk, then a 30 minute small boat journey across the big wide river to one of the small islands. On this island alone there is a village of 5,000 people – and all the islands are similar. Life for these people is very tough, and if the river floods high and all the island goes under water, then it gets tougher. They have no real money, even to travel by boat, so they need healthcare to come to them. But in emergencies it is very difficult. People would live elsewhere if they could but it is a small country with 150 million people, so there is little choice for land. It is easy to see why mothers, and babies, die in childbirth at much higher rates than in more developed countries.
We wait and see if these are places are where God leads us to work.
Trying to do God’s will is a normal way of life for LAMB. It is sometimes easy though to get sidetracked into ‘interesting areas’ of work. In these, we no doubt do good, but are they what we are here for. There is now new effort both by management and the LAMB Board to refresh the focus on those areas that we believe we are here for – health and justice, and focusing on the disadvantaged, in particular women, children, and the poorest of the poor. As we look afresh at the direction that LAMB overall should be heading, we keep needing to be reminded - and fortunately there are many who will remind us - of what we are here for.
