'No one will hate me anymore...'
“…no one will hate me anymore. I don’t want to die now; I want to live long and enjoy the new life which I have been given...”
Hello church friends
Jesus often used stories to illustrate what he meant by the ‘Kingdom of God’, so I was excited earlier this week to read a fantastic story that really illustrated what I was saying in my recent blog, ‘What do you mean by, ‘The Kingdom of God’?’
In my blog I said:
…when the Kingdom of God starts to appear, such things as violence, selfishness, domination, sickness, poverty, disrespect, exclusion, persecution, loneliness, pollution, climate change, discrimination, and lack of dignity start to disappear.
and
‘The will of God done on earth’ includes anything that undoes or counters the things in the above list e.g. pursuing peace, resolving conflict, sharing, improving livelihoods, embracing difference, affording dignity to all, treating our world with respect, and reducing our demands on it.
The following account comes from one of our mission partners in Nepal, Shirley Heywood, a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology. It’s a story of the goodness of the Kingdom of God drawing near to an elderly lady who has suffered much in her life.
The story of Kumari Pun
Kumari is about 70 years old and lives in Rolpa, a remote rural district in Nepal. Married at seventeen she has born nine children.
She is a frail looking, tiny woman and it is easy to understand why she should have experienced difficult labours to deliver each of those babies – all born at home with only family support.
At that time there was no hospital in the district should a woman have difficulty in labour. Too often babies died, and sometimes the mother as well. Three of Kumari’s sons were born dead or died very soon after birth and a little daughter also died in infancy.
In her second delivery Kumari developed an obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal between the vagina and rectum, ureter, or bladder, resulting in incontinence.
After five days of pain Kumari’s baby son was born. He did not cry at birth and her mother-in-law told her that he was dead. Two days later she found that her urine started to leak continuously, and she could not control it.
She developed ulcers from the urine burns and was in a lot of pain. Despite this she soon had to take on all the work in the house as well as gathering firewood and grass for the animals.
Her husband did not help her but spent his time playing cards and drinking alcohol with friends. At times Kumari was so ill and weak that she could not cook food for her children. Occasionally her mother would visit and take Kumari home with her, covering the bed with layers of cloth so that Kumari could sleep without ruining the bed. Those visits gave her a brief opportunity to rest, but otherwise life was very hard. She had to walk far to collect water, carrying her babies as well as the water pot, while urine soaked her clothing and ran down her legs.
As her children grew up and married, they didn’t know how to help their mother and Kumari had no chance to seek treatment. There was no money. The little that she earned tending the land was just enough to feed the family. Kumari told us ‘I wished I could die but I still lived - for fifty long years.’
Last year some of the local health post staff received training about obstetric fistula and learned that there was treatment for women like Kumari in Surkhet, in a special Fistula Treatment Centre run by the International Nepal Fellowship (INF) at the Provincial Hospital. A nurse gave Kumari a phone number she could use to make contact and find out more.
Kumari hardly dared to hope that there might be help for her. But then the coronavirus pandemic reached Nepal and the country was put into lockdown. Kumari was longing to go for treatment but she had a long wait. At last, in February 2021, borrowing money from her neighbours to pay for the journey, she travelled with her husband and son to Surkhet.
In the fistula centre she was prepared for surgery. She had such a little hole in her bladder, yet this had destroyed fifty years of her life. After the surgery there were two more weeks to wait until the catheter was removed and Kumari knew that she was cured.
Kumari and her husband, ready to go home.
“I am really dry, no leaking at all! I never dreamed that I could be really well. It cost us nothing. Food, travel cost and surgery, all was provided free of cost.
If I had had to pay, I could never have had this treatment.
Only I know the pain and burden of these fifty years of incontinence and struggle. Now I can live a normal life and do all that I need to do, and no one will hate me anymore.
I don’t want to die now; I want to live long and enjoy the new life which I have been given and I am so thankful for the Surkhet Fistula Centre”.
John Reynolds
International Nepal Fellowship
