Participants: Terry Benedict (Host)
Series Code: HIM
Program Code: HIM000020
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00:20 India is a land full of contrast.
00:25 It's a land of great mystery and beauty. 00:29 It's a land of unspeakable despair, 00:32 but traveling through India one thing is for sure, 00:35 it's a land filled with people 00:37 who should never be underestimated. 00:41 For the last 40 years, 00:42 Asian Aid has invested in the futures of people 00:45 who have never been given such a chance, 00:47 and their investment has proven infinite returns. 00:52 Driven by the vision of Helen Eager, 00:54 dedicated to helping those who have the least. 00:57 Asian Aid is an organization implementing 00:59 diverse development projects 01:01 and sponsoring thousands of children. 01:04 Their outreach expands from Bangladesh to Nepal, 01:07 Sri Lanka and beyond, 01:10 from remote villages and empty fields 01:12 to sprawling centers of education 01:15 from nothing to the unimaginable. 01:19 Now Asian Aid decided to document 01:21 the work it has been doing in all these years 01:23 with a desire to show the world what is possible. 01:27 By digging wells in remote villages 01:29 for clean drinking water, 01:30 and bringing much needed healthcare 01:32 to the women of Nepal. 01:34 By providing an education for orphans, 01:37 deaf and blind children, 01:38 giving them a sense of place, a home, 01:41 but what we really discovered was being given was hope. 01:45 Giving hope to children, giving hope to women, 01:50 giving hope to the ones who needed the most. 01:54 This is Hope in Motion. 02:02 I shot an arrow into the air 02:04 It fell to earth, I knew not where 02:07 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 02:10 Could not follow it in its flight 02:12 I breathed a song into the air 02:15 It fell to earth, I knew not where 02:18 For who has sight so keen and strong 02:20 That it can follow the flight of song? 02:23 Long, long afterward, in an oak 02:26 I found the arrow, still unbroke 02:29 And the song, from beginning to end 02:31 I found again in the heart of a friend 02:34 H. W. Longfellow. 02:38 We didn't expect to hear Longfellow 02:40 halfway around the world, 02:42 but there was something so peaceful about her smile 02:46 then she turned and I saw the scars on her cheek. 02:49 Her master had put a cigarette out on her face 02:52 for not working hard enough. 02:54 We sit down with her to hear about her journey. 02:58 Before I came to Sunshine I was 4 years old 03:03 and my mom she couldn't take care of me, 03:06 so she told my grandmother to take me 03:10 and put me in some other place. 03:13 And so one day this pastor asked to this grandmother 03:16 whether he can take me to his house 03:19 and so I went to this pastor's house and I stayed there. 03:25 And it was so horrible like this I became like a servant. 03:30 I was very small. 03:32 I didn't know how things were supposed to 03:34 and I didn't know how to do work. 03:37 So I always got beatings for it, 03:39 I always used to get banging, 03:40 sometimes I used to get with wire, 03:42 sometimes with slippers, sometimes they tie me, 03:45 they tie me fully and then they put the wire inside 03:48 and they leave one, like kind of get shocks. 03:52 He would shock you? Yeah. 03:54 Just like this electricity. 03:56 Electricity out of the wall? 04:00 I wanted to tell this all to my grandmother. 04:03 I wanted to tell her but some days later 04:05 the news came that she died. 04:09 So after that I didn't have anybody. 04:12 I lost my mom, I lost my grandmother, 04:14 now I didn't have anybody, I was all by myself. 04:17 You were how old? I was four years old. 04:20 Four years old? 04:22 These children, the stories about these children 04:26 that are put into houses to be servants 04:28 when they are very small, 04:30 some as young as about four or five years 04:31 just made me so angry 04:33 because more often than not they involve abuse 04:37 and then the children are just treated like dirt 04:40 and the work they have to do is just way beyond 04:43 what a child of that age should be expected to do. 04:46 And I guess for me the fact that the children 04:48 are not usually sent to school that's what 04:51 may be upsets me almost more than anything. 04:55 Unfortunately, Hema's story is all too common here, 04:59 but for the lucky ones there is hope. 05:03 Over 30 years ago, in the city of Bangalore, 05:05 it all started with one orphanage 05:07 and a woman who turned to Asian Aid for help. 05:11 I remember in 1980 or it was 81, 05:15 when Helen Eager came to India from Asian Aid 05:20 and we spent several days at Sunshine Orphanage 05:23 because I wanted Asian Aid to get involved with Sunshine. 05:27 At that point we had been struggling with, 05:30 trying to get sponsors here and there. 05:33 We knew it was a good work. 05:35 And yes, it grew more rapidly than we ever anticipated. 05:38 And it was just-- 05:40 it was a real problem in the beginning 05:42 finding a way to feed the children 05:44 and to care for the children. 05:46 And so I presented it to Helen 05:48 and she took it back to the Asian Aid board 05:51 and they took on the Sunshine Orphanage. 05:54 We got sponsors for the children 05:56 and then of course this building here was built 06:00 and the children were moved out here out of the city 06:02 which-- that was such a blessing for them. 06:11 Dorothy was just so grateful that Asian Aid 06:14 was able to come on board and provide the money 06:18 that was needed to keep the orphanage going. 06:21 Of course it was a blessing to Asian Aid as well. 06:23 That was the first project that we actually started 06:26 raising funds for and I guess Asian Aid 06:29 has just sort of grown from Sunshine. 06:33 It fell to earth, I know not where. 06:36 For who has a sight so keen and strong 06:39 That it can follow the flight of a song? 06:43 This story actually happened before Beulah 06:45 was put in as director of Sunshine. 06:48 There was a family of four children 06:50 and the mother kept coming to the orphanage 06:53 and pleading and begging and saying 06:54 please take my children. 06:56 She said, I'm sure my husband is going to kill me. 06:59 She said, I can't go anywhere or do anything 07:01 but she said will you please take 07:03 my children and save their lives. 07:05 So I took them to the orphanage. 07:09 Jayanthi along with her siblings 07:11 was taken in by Asian Aid 07:12 to start a new life at the Sunshine Home. 07:15 I didn't feel that I was being brought up in an orphanage, 07:18 rather than I felt I was brought up in a nice home 07:20 with lot of other kids, like we call them 07:23 brothers and sisters. 07:24 I'm happy that I was there and I always thank my mother 07:28 for putting us there. 07:30 It was a very short time after that, 07:32 that the father actually poured fuel on his wife 07:35 and set her alight 07:36 and she actually grabbed hold of him and she died 07:41 and then a few hours later he also died. 07:43 And I think she-- before she could die 07:46 she had told somebody, I think her friend 07:50 not to let her children be taken away from Sunshine Home 07:56 where she placed us. 07:58 And I think, I will always be thankful, 08:03 if not for anything for my mother making 08:05 that great decision for us and I'm thankful for that. 08:11 So which means my mother played a very important role. 08:16 I came to America in 2003 and now it's almost 5, 5½ years 08:22 and I'm currently in Baltimore. 08:25 I'm married and settled and I have a son 08:28 who is 16 months and I work as a nurse in Washington D.C. 08:34 Over the past 30 years, the lives of hundreds of kids 08:37 had been transformed, 08:39 much of the thanks goes to Asian Aid's Beulah Fernan, 08:42 Director of Sunshine Home. 08:46 As soon as you met Miss Beulah, how did you feel? 08:51 I like was so shocked. 08:53 I saw children going around her holding her 08:55 sari and they were hugging her, 08:58 they were talking so frankly to her like I got so scared. 09:02 When she came to Sunshine, 09:05 it didn't look like she was going to fit here 09:08 because she was kind of suspicious about everybody 09:11 and she wasn't trusting anyone. 09:14 And then as I stayed there, they told me about her 09:18 and I became close to her. 09:19 I was very close to her. 09:22 She's like a mother, like she's like my mom. 09:27 What love I didn't get, I get from her. 09:31 We've seen her blossom and she didn't know any English 09:35 or didn't know how to read and write properly 09:37 but she's put her heart and soul into studies 09:40 because she know that she will do well 09:44 if she's an educated person. 09:54 Before I came to this place Sunshine, 09:58 my father used to always drink and he used to smoke 10:02 and he used to come late at night 10:04 and he used to beat my mother. 10:07 The mother was traumatized by this that she drank poison 10:13 and when the father realized 10:15 that the mother had drunk poison and died, 10:18 he too drank poison and died 10:20 and that left these children without parents. 10:24 Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? 10:27 Pilot. 10:29 What? Pilot. 10:30 A pilot? 10:32 When Moses and his brothers came to Sunshine, 10:36 we noticed that there was something really wrong 10:38 with the little one, that Samuel. 10:41 He was crying and crying all the time. 10:45 He couldn't imagine his life without his parents 10:48 and especially his mother and in his own world 10:53 everything had collapsed. 10:55 What's Beulah like? She is like a mother. 10:58 She's taking care of us. 11:02 When we ask any thing she gives. 11:06 As of now, I can't see myself without these children 11:11 and they are part of my family. 11:25 Actually when I came to Sunshine, 11:27 it was Beulah aunty who has taken me to Sunshine. 11:31 What I'm today is because of her, 11:33 because of her support and because of all that. 11:44 She helped me throughout my studies. 11:58 I want to do medicine because Aunty Beulah 12:03 and all my brothers and sisters 12:06 who encouraged me, okay, you just take nursing, 12:10 whatever it is God has a plan for you 12:12 and if she was not there what I'm today, 12:15 I would have not been what I'm today, 12:17 it's all because of her. 12:27 The most important thing that churches can do, 12:29 that individuals can do, 12:31 that anybody else can do for India 12:33 is get the children educated. 12:36 With the right education 12:37 they can go anywhere on the planet. 12:39 And why should they not be able to do that? 12:42 Just because they are born poor with illiterate parents, 12:45 that has to be their destiny? 12:47 I don't believe that. 12:49 That is not what I understand 12:51 is a Christian philosophy of life. 12:56 One of the things we need to realize 12:57 that these kids who come from very poor families, 13:00 they are not stupid, 13:02 there is no lack of intelligence among them. 13:06 And what a loss to the world that so much brainpower 13:11 is going to waste in villages where kids are doing 13:14 manual labor who could be inventers. 13:59 Well, I'm here at Sunrise home 14:01 with Joshua and these two lovely girls. 14:04 And every morning their sponsors 14:07 make a big difference in their lives 14:09 providing accommodation, providing clothing, 14:12 providing food 14:13 and shortly they are going to walk down the road 14:15 to the local Bobbili Adventist School 14:17 and with sponsorship you can make a big difference 14:21 every morning in the life of the child. 14:44 One in ten women has prolapse. 14:53 600,000 women need operation now. 14:58 Undocumented may be crossing a million. 15:04 It was like a curse for the women. 15:06 It is still, it is a curse. 15:11 35, 40 years they suffer, they die. 15:21 So this is the situation in Nepal. 15:30 When it is Procidentia, a complete prolapse we call. 15:34 When the whole uterus and a cervix is lying 15:37 outside the introitus. 15:56 In Nepal, beneath the beauty of the Himalayans, 15:59 hundreds of thousands of women are living in pain. 16:08 We are in Katmandu making the final plans 16:11 to follow Asian Aid's Helen Eager and Rama Basnet 16:14 into the foothills of the Himalayans. 16:16 Their mission is to find and help women suffering 16:19 from a condition called uterine prolapse. 16:22 How many degrees are there? Three degrees. 16:25 Three degrees? Yeah. 16:26 The first, it just becomes loose. 16:28 The second degree it falls down. 16:30 The uterus falls into the vaginal area 16:34 and then the third degree is 16:35 when it comes right outside the body. 16:37 You remember that young women 16:38 that she told you she delivered the baby alone 16:41 on the mountain side when she was cutting grass. 16:44 She picked up the baby with one hand, 16:46 she picked up the grass with the other hand 16:47 and she got the prolapse right there on the spot. 16:50 So we go to parkrun on the way there, 16:53 we'll stop at some of these villages. 17:12 As we wind our way through these 17:14 beautiful mountain passes, the scenery starts to change. 17:27 We learned that one of the main ways the women of Nepal 17:30 get prolapse is because they're forced to carry 17:33 heavy loads, sometimes as much as 100 kilos 17:36 with a strap around their forehead 17:38 pressing down on their neck. 17:41 Often they have to continue with this heavy labor 17:43 right after childbirth. 17:46 The stress and pressure of this puts on their lower back 17:48 is a dangerous combination. 17:50 Ultimately their muscles cannot support their uterus. 18:01 As we travel on, we see this tiny young woman 18:04 on the roadside and decided to pullover 18:06 and see for ourselves how difficult 18:08 this hard labor really is. 18:10 Compress my neck. 18:12 So you're gonna try this? 18:13 So he just assigned us 50 kilos. 18:15 This little, she carries all of this. 18:18 You carry this? Yeah. 18:21 Yeah, come on, let's see. 18:37 It was heavy. 18:38 I could tell it was heavy and I just tried to pick up, 18:40 it was heavy. 18:44 How does it feel? Not real good on the neck. 18:53 Oh, that feels good. 18:59 The more we learned about the Nepalese culture, 19:01 the more questions we seemed to have about. 19:04 Can you carry that? Men will not do. 19:09 Why don't the men do it? 19:12 It's becoming clear that this is a question 19:15 not many people in Nepal wanted to deal with. 19:18 Men do not work, they sit by the riverside 19:22 or the roadside and gamble 19:23 but the women are the ones who lift it, 19:25 work in ethe field, take care of the families. 19:28 Is that a cultural thing? Yes. 19:30 That's accepted? Yeah. 19:32 It seems like they don't necessarily appreciate 19:35 the heavy load that their wives are carrying. 19:39 In remote areas, just they feel that their life partner, 19:44 their wife are as like a non-paid servant. 19:47 We have to educate their husband also 19:50 and so that they will not force the ladies to work hard. 19:55 It's the men that need to be educated, don't you think? 20:08 We head farther into the mountains following 20:11 Rama and Helen to where they're setting up a clinic 20:13 for these women. 20:15 Helen promotes a two pronged approach. 20:17 First, is to find the women suffering with prolapse 20:20 and facilitate their surgeries. 20:22 Second, she makes sure Asian Aid provides 20:25 much needed preventative health education. 20:30 Rama and a few other nurses start to gather information 20:34 from the women to discern 20:35 who maybe good candidates for surgery. 20:40 It is very important that we reach, we go to the field, 20:43 we go to the community village and find out these ladies 20:46 otherwise they are not going to appear at all. 20:48 As you have seen, 35, 40 years they suffer, they die. 20:54 When you're married you're totally matured, 20:57 you cannot have any excuses so at the age of seven and eight, 21:01 you have to carry everything, 21:04 carry heavy load like any adult. 21:08 She's a special case, married at the age of six. 21:14 Thirteen year old when she was married. 21:22 Her husband was 29 year old and she was 13 year old. 21:26 She had first baby when she was 17 year old 21:29 and she had nine children all together. 21:31 She suffered about 25 years to 45 years with this. 21:43 Her uterus was falling and fell out, totally fell out. 21:48 It was rotten. 21:52 Is she going to lay down? Yes. 21:56 She had nobody to take her so she is still here waiting 22:01 to be taken to hospital and now you can smell, 22:03 it smells terrible, terrible. 22:12 50 years she's been suffering like this, 50 years. 22:27 Mainly what happens if the lady has like this problem, 22:30 the man leaves her alone. 22:32 She is totally deserted with the children 22:34 and that he marries another lady. 22:41 Look at the social stigma, 22:43 especially this is not the fault of a woman 22:46 and in spite of that also they had been segregated 22:49 from the society from their own family 22:51 that is an inhuman thing. 22:57 They were totally excluded, you know, 22:59 like outcast in the society. 23:08 Through the work of Rama, Helen and others, 23:11 Asian Aid has provided surgeries for over 8,000 women 23:15 but hundreds of thousands more still go undetected. 23:27 Maili Tamang, the woman we met in the hilltop village 23:30 just days earlier is prepped and ready for surgery, 23:34 a procedure fully funded through the work of Asian Aid. 23:41 All right, we're getting ready to head into this operation. 23:45 We're gonna watch her prolapse surgery. 24:10 A prolapse surgery takes one hour, 24:12 just one hour to transform a life forever. 24:18 This surgeon can do up to ten surgeries a day. 24:22 It costs 17,000 rupees, only $300. 24:38 We saw her, we referred her, she came willingly, 24:40 now she's been operated and she feels okay now. 24:45 Asian Aid's plan is to work with the hospital to fill 24:48 all these empty beds. 24:51 The team is ready and waiting. 24:56 The number of the uterine prolapse is now till date 25:01 is 600,000 documented. 25:05 Undocumented is we don't know. 25:07 It maybe crossing a million, you know, a million. 25:11 A million population is suffering in our country 25:14 with this, documented is 600,000. 25:20 Prolapse has been an accepted way of life 25:22 for these women for too long. 25:25 Now through the work of Asian Aid, 25:28 more and more women are speaking up, 25:30 coming together, and finding what they really need... 25:33 hope. 25:35 This, I feel like I am 15 year old now, 16 year old now. 25:46 They get a new life. 25:52 They feel happy of course and we feel happy too. 27:39 Through my work for Asian Aid, 27:40 I am constantly being made aware 27:42 of the need and suffering around the globe. 27:45 Currently there is a desperate need in Nepal 27:48 to put an end to the sex slave industry 27:50 which is destroying the lives of so many 27:52 thousands of children and young women. 27:55 If you would like to support Asian Aid Safe Haven Project 27:59 in Nepal or any of our other current projects, 28:02 please get in touch with Asian Aid today. |
Revised 2014-12-17