Burned Mother and Son

Burned Mother and Son
Originally uploaded by interplast

Dehradun, India-Nicole Friedland, Interplast chief development officer. Photo by John Urban.

The trip is very inspiring but also deeply disturbing. I found myself having trouble sleeping last night because it is so overwhelming. This morning we started to interview the patients to get their stories and photos. The first one was a mother and son who were both badly burned. The mother was sharing her story of an exploding stove. Our local partner came by and told us that he had learned through a source that she had actually put the child in her lap and self immolated, probably due to marital abuse. I actually was overcome and had to leave the room to compose myself. Of course, we can't know the real story, but her little boy's face is just destroyed.  He's just five years old and so adorable behind all that terrible scarring across his face. Such a tragic story. Some of these people are grossly disfigured but they are just humans. I feel so badly for them. Both I and the translator were crying several times this morning. These stories are hard to hear and to see, but what is hardest is to see how much suffering is in the eyes of these people.

Comments

[Samuel]

04 Jan 06, 2009 4:18 pm Anne Bruce I was very moved by your blog about the man you found on the road. How awful for you. The experience must live with you.It made me think about the road to Dehradun (in every plbsisoe sense of the phrase), the darkness, the strangeness of it all – I was on that road myself exactly a year ago today. Wondering how it would all be, and so full of angst. And it turned out so well; I could never have foreseen what a pleasure was in store for me.But it also made me think of the tiny chink of Indian society I did see in that short time I was there, and how your experience reflected it. How you could be bowling along in the relative civilisation of a taxi, warm and safe, thinking about and talking to Kathleen in the States, when really there is only a paper thin wall between you and potential violence of the worst kind. And death. I used to walk along the road in Vasant Vihar in the quiet early mornings, past all those big houses and trees and gardens, get into the KV van, and be whisked into the most appalling corners of the town to pick up children. Through into an entirely different world, yet only five minutes down the road.What an extraordinary place India is.

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