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Click on this link to learn more about the Centre in Guwahati

I spoke about Nur in another post… The “world care” patient who spent 6 months in the US recieving surgeries.. Last week he flew back to India where we will continue his treatment here in Assam.. He is staying in Guwahati (about 10 hours from his village) away from his mother and siblings.. He is accompanied by his father who practices reading english through children’s story books in an attempt to speak english like his son. Nur retells his experiences from the past 6 months, from the plane he flew on to pizza and big houses.

Our Operation Smile Director sent this message upon his return to India and I wanted to share it:

I not sure if many of us will ever comprehend what goes behind taking a little boy (and his uncle) from Dhubri District,  Assam to Norfolk, putting him up with families ( 2 homes, 3 months each approx). Nur living in those homes as his own, playing with the children of the family. Running around the Operation Smile headquarter as if it was his playground. Becoming part of the schools program in Norfolk and so much more……

Today he is transformed physically, but that is the smallest change that has happened to him in the past 7 months. He has been exposed and has assimilated a world much beyond the imagination of his parents. He wants to study, do well in school and grow up to serve people who need him very much like you all served him like one of your own. To me it’s akin to being born again!

Nur’s spirit is heart warming and one cant help but fall inlove with this little boy.

Last night when we were playing with him he got hold of Susies camera. Here are the results..

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check out this link:

http://www.operationsmile.org/get_involved/student-youth-programs/final-mile.html

Holi

Holi. Hindu festival marking the beginning of Spring. Celebrated with colour….. Everywhere!!

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The Centre- a work in progress

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The Centre has been under construction for a sometime now, as we battle with the hurdles of building a first world centre in a developing country… but its in its final stages now and has come along way from an empty box when I first saw it in November..

Impressive!!

the most recent mission

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Shiva Puja

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Shiva Puja (March 2nd) hit the streets to celebrate the marriage of the Hindu God Shiva.

 

Father and Son

Family

This family’s son was flown to the US as a Operation Smile “world care patient” to undergo extensive surgery, as he was born with barely no facial structure including a nose and cheek bones. He is only 8 years old and has been living with foster family in the US whilst he undergoes a number of operations to fix his deformity. Operation Smile set up a skype “date” so they could speak to him, and see him for the first time since he left in September. I was told they travelled around 10 hours to be in Guwahati to make the call. Their smiles were contageous and the tears were impossible to hold back.

This picture is of his mum, and younger sister seeing him on the computer screen, the father standing behind. I never met the boy, only heard his story, but when they saw me, mum grabbed my hands in her’s and offered me prayers of gratitude.

A Thought

I wanted to share this piece of writing that one of my friends, David (Plastic Surgeon from Australia) wrote after a mission in Cambodia with Operation Smile.. (He is here in Guwahati right now)..

I open the door and slide a little less habitually to my kitchen and gratefully turn on the tap to the clean trickling sound of water filling my glass. Half full, I hold it to my lips…offering silent thanks for a luxury I often take for granted. And for a moment, with my eyes closed I am thankful for a moment. In beautiful silence.

I am home.

Missions to me are an amazing fugue that shocks me out of my complacency and daily routine. A bout of ECT that rattles my preconceived ideas and shakes my right to live a life of self imposed importance. A humbling. A reminder of what life is all about..

I have just returned from Cambodia. 10 days in a country where the people are the most gentle imaginable. Despite the horrific theatre of ”The Killing Fields”, arguably the most impressive display of mans inhumanity to man, these people are filled with a sense of peace, humility and gratitude. Like an abused child who has decided that instead of passing on the feeling he experienced and hated to the next generation, he will rise above, so too Cambodians seem to have forgotten past sins…and embraced new beginnings. A new time and the power of moving on. As you walk the streets, its impossible to detect the atrocities that might otherwise have scarred the social conscience of these people.

And it seems that this approach extends to the physically afflicted . I look so clearly into the eyes of young teenage souls who are painted horrificly by facial slurs, yet the smiles in their eyes dance free of judgement from their fellow countrymen.

It causes my soul to sing and soar. Really. I can’t believe it. I love it. It restores my faith in human kind. Usually if someone has reached their teens with a deformed facies, their visage takes on a mask… a frozen glare that protects them from reading the critical eyes of passerbys. Not in Cambodia. Here these same children laugh and play with their peers. Their playfriends don’t even bother more than a curious glance. It’s just another person. Onlookers pay no special attentions. And the facially afflicted are made to feel no different than their scarless counterparts….

I love it.

It makes me wonder why we are so critical of one another in our supposed privileged societies. The way we look at each other. Why do we assume so much from a face? And why can some believe that if someone looks a certain way, they deserve to be treated a certain way.

That makes me angry.

I walk out into the greenness that surrounds my home and life. I smile a bit more. I hold the eye of a passerby and try to infect them with a smile. Not this time. But it doesn’t matter. I have so much to be thankful for. So many judgements to reverse. So many ways to change. And all of it begins in me…

No words

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