Lunch walk? I asked my friend on a summer afternoon. She immediately said, not today, I am heading to Karunashraya…This naturally triggered my curiosity & I asked her, what’s that? She said, Oh… that’s the cancer hospice center. People who are at the last stage of their life, who would not survive for more than 3 months come here, stay here & die here… Being myself, I was pulled by depression as soon as I heard that. But, I pulled all my courage & wanted to find out what she was going to do there… She said, oh nothing for the patients, we are going there to train the nurses. We are going there to teach them how to use computers & its basics.
I then went to another friend of mine, who is also interested in some social activities & told her about everything my other friend had told me. We discussed this over the lunch walk (that’s what we say when we go for a small walk after having lunch). She immediately said, hey why don’t we also volunteer to teach them. I was thrilled by this as I got a company to go there.
So we did some ground work, asked our friend to give more details, registered ourselves as volunteers for training the nurses & we were all set for training them on a Friday afternoon.
As a part of preparation we met & went through the training material, what to teach them etc. We reached Karunashraya by 1.35 as planned. Our other colleagues who had also volunteered for the event were also there. So quickly had a discussion on how to spend next 3 hours there & we went to the administrative office to let them know that we are there to teach them. Since it was the last day of the training, we had multimedia/power point presentation to be taught to them. Our co-ordinator had also informed us that few admins are also interested in learning the power point as they would be using it. When asked, few admins said, yes, we are interested.
At 2, the training started. We had a quick round of introductions & I asked, “Do you want to learn new topic or do you want to brush up everything that was done from day 1”. They immediately said, new topic. Their eagerness to learn new stuff moved me.
One of our colleagues gave a quick talk on the topic & we started the practicals. We divided the team of students & instructors & started the practice work. I got 2 students, rather health assistants & I started with how to navigate & open a power point presentation. Initially, when I opened the power point, they didn’t look very excited as I showed them blank presentation. When I started opening the templates & pre-loaded themes, they caught more interest & they got involved in the learning process. I showed them how to insert a table, animate, how to include a movie, a media, a file, a chart & all the basic stuff of power point presentation. I showed them how to change the font size, how to make it bold & italics… They were thrilled. When I showed them the slide show part of the presentation they were in awe…
I then asked them to try it out themselves. One of them started & she managed to create some stuff. She was finding it really difficult to use the mouse & I helped her through that. Once she was done, she wanted see how her presentation looks in slide show. She was thrilled when she saw her work in slide show again… She was so excited that she said, I know computers now J
Another health assistant who was waiting for her turn now started creating her presentation. She did almost the same stuff that I had done. She 1st opened a blank presentation, tried to insert a table, a media file & a chart. She then changed the font of the 1st slide, which just had her name. She chose Comic sans, increased the font size, selected Italics style & changed the color of the text to RED. I guess she got what she wanted. She had such a wonderful smile on her face. She had a sense of achievement. Her smile said, today I have done something that I hadn’t done in my life time. Her smile had a sense of confidence. Her smile showed that she can also achieve something in life. I looked at her eyes & saw a sense of thankfulness in her eyes. I was speechless… I kept looking at her till she told me, chechi (she meant, elder sister, in Malayalam), thanks. I will never forget this afternoon. I told her, I will also not forget this afternoon… I have also learnt a lot from you this afternoon.
While the others continued to do some practice work, myself & my friend went to meet the manager to find out if we can contribute something to the patients. The General Manager, said, you can get anything to the patients. But more helpful would be if you can get something for these health assistants. Their life is really miserable. They come from a very rural are with no exposure to anything. They live all their life here in this place. For us, when we go back home, we have a change; we can forget this world for some time. For them, even when they go back to their room, they discuss only about the patients… this patient had this problem, that patient might die today etc. For them, any change is a welcome change. So anything that you can do for these health assistants would be helpful. This totally made sense to me. We again asked the manager, can we get fruits for the patients, she said, you can get them fruits, sweets which are soft etc. they will eat that. We don’t have dietary restrictions for them. For a person who is going to die in few weeks, what is the meaning of having the dietary restrictions? Yup, she is right….for a person who is dying in next few weeks, is there any meaning in putting a restriction on saying, don’t eat this & that? Life here has a totally different dimension... With so much of stress there for all the nurses, health assistants, manager there, I could still see the genuine smile in their face. May be they have a sense of achievement & that’s why they can have a genuine smile. Manager was very sweet to explain their part of life at Karunashraya. Starting from patients, to nurses, to the sale that carry out to the way they get money to the auto driver who stays there just to do all the work & to pick up patients… She has an amazing sense of satisfaction when she spoke all this. Here is their website http://www.karunashraya.org/NewSite/Index.html
After talking to the general manager, we came back to the training room and have a mini quiz to the students… This quiz was more to give away the prizes then to test their knowledge, just so as to give them a kind of motivation. We took feedback from them on the training we conducted & then had a photo session with them & finally a time had come where we had to say bye to them.
We call ourselves as computer savvy & may be creating a power point is left hand game for us. We have seen good part of life. The health assistants have also seen a part of life, which we have not seen. They see dying patient everyday in their life. Their world is just with the dying patient who comes there & there are absolutely no hopes of surviving for any of the patients who come there. Unlike, all other hospitals, where patients actually get well & go back home, here when a patient enters, they know for sure the patient is going to die in next few weeks. But this doesn’t stop them from doing they work with dedication. They continue to help the people in need. They have dedicated their life for the need. This brings me a thought, have we seen life or have they seen life? Who has seen the real meaning of life?? Definition of life for me is kind of redefined after this visit. I am sure; it would be the same feeling for others who had come with me. Afternoon of Friday, the 25th of March 2011 is an afternoon to remember.
