The hill overlooking Vellore |
The story
of how Ida Scudder started the Christian Medical College Hospital of Vellore
has a distinctly biblical quality. The daughter of Christian medical missionaries
serving in Tamil Nadu early in the last century, Ida grew up planning for a
very different future than that of her parents. While studying in the US as a
young woman, she was called back to India to care for her ailing mother, which
she did on the understanding that as soon as her mother was well, she could
return to her life on the other side.
One night
at a late hour, there came a knock at the door. It was a Hindu Brahmin.
"Please come to assist my wife. She is labouring and the baby will not
come. There is nothing more the midwife can do." Young Ida said, "I'm
not a doctor; let me ask my father to come to your home." The Brahmin was
aghast. No man could see his wife; only a woman might be permitted. Ida was
distraught and helpless. The man left.
Later
that night, there came another knock at the door. Hoping it was the Brahmin
changing his mind, she opened the door to find a Muslim man. "Please
help," he implored her. "My wife is trying to deliver and something
is wrong. There is nothing more the midwife can do." Distressed, Ida
replied to him that her father was the house's only medical professional and
asked him to allow her to call on him. The man would have none of it; no man
had set eyes on his wife except he, and so it would be. He left.
When a
knock came the third time, Ida did not wish to answer it. It was a third man –
a high caste Hindu - begging her to come and attend his wife in labour.
"Something is wrong with the delivery. There is nothing more the midwife
can do." Nothing could persuade him to allow her to send for her father.
Ida collapsed in bed that night deeply troubled in spirit. She awoke the next
morning to the dull thudding of drums. When she descended to the village
square, she heard the news that she had feared: All 3 women had died the night
before in labour.
Ida
Scudder's comfortable life was shattered; her previous plans seemed trivial.
She returned to the States to attend medical school, vowing to return and set
up a hospital to serve the women of India. She was true to her word. After her
graduation in medical studies, she found sponsorship in the Dutch Reformed
Church and a patron to begin the creation of the Mary Schell Hospital for Women
and Children, and the building was begun in Vellore.
Aunty Ida
is truly beloved at the Christian Medical College Hospital, where staff and
students have a deeply lived sense of her motto: "Not to be ministered
unto, but to minister". Her ministry moved out into the rural areas where
she had a mobile clinic (horse and cart) that served in the shade of the
village tree.
Yet she knew that, for every person helped in the village, there were a thousand other people not receiving care in other villages. So she applied to start a medical college for women, whose programme she would oversee. Though her proposal was met with a certain degree of cynicism by local authorities, women signed up in numbers and the college was launched.
Ida Scudder's Mobile Health Unit (before the motor car) |
Yet she knew that, for every person helped in the village, there were a thousand other people not receiving care in other villages. So she applied to start a medical college for women, whose programme she would oversee. Though her proposal was met with a certain degree of cynicism by local authorities, women signed up in numbers and the college was launched.
Today the
breadth of the ministry is incredible: a modern facility with a staff of 8500,
1500 students, with a daily caseload of 6000 outpatients, 2500 inpatients, 150
surgeries, 50 babies delivered – and a staff of 20 chaplains.
With this
image of Ida Scudder and her travelling clinic in our minds, David and I have
decided that we will go to the CMC Rural Health Unit for a day of visiting and
experiencing this campus of the Vellore mission.
It is an hour and a half drive
outside the city, along narrow roads of palm trees, busy stalls and small
industry, school children returning home in uniform, enormous brick kilns
beside great stacks of newly made bricks with pieces artfully removed leaving
the shape of a temple.
We join
the RUHSA staff in their regular morning devotion. The keyboard is fourteen
inches long, however one of the chaplains is playing the harmonium, squeezing
air into the back of the organ with his left hand, playing melody with his
right. And still another is
playing tabla, with its deep interrogative sound. To be accompanied in our
choruses by harmonium and tabla - along with David on the percussion chair - is
a first for me.
The group
that follows is the local "Community College", whose composition I
have misunderstood and for whom I have mis-planned. This group is a one-year
residential programme for young men who have not been able, for various
reasons, to complete their public school training. It offers them the skills of
air conditioning repair and auto rickshaw maintenance. I reflect a little about
how we come to know God's direction for us in life, but David is the hit
telling the guys the story of how he had his plans all laid out for himself
when he was their age (it seems the Tamil translation for "rock star"
is "rock star"), and how God moved him in a surprisingly different
direction. "Still, I realize that I got what I asked for – but by an
entirely different route than I expected." I tell the story of Elijah passing
on his mantle to the next generation. God steers us where we need to be – if we
will stay tuned, and pick up the mantle that falls near us. "Pick it
up," I say.
Community College - Cultural Afternoon |
Later in
the afternoon, we wander past the CC men sitting in a covered workplace, where
normally they would learn the fine points of motor mechanics. One of their
number is standing and singing a local song; it is weekly shared cultural
afternoon. He is followed by another, pulling lanky hip-hop moves to Indian
quarter-tones on the CD player. Never would we see this in a 2&4-stroke
engine class in Canada.
So, RUHSA
is based on the belief that overall health depends not only on freedom from
illness, but a combination of education and access to services, opportunities
and employment. We hear about this from Reta Isaac, the director of RUHSA, and
we eat with our host chaplain, Mr Joseph, who thinks he just might take some of
my rendition of the Elijah story to the student retreat up the mountain this
weekend.
Waiting Room at RUHSA |
Our days
begin with a savoury breakfast, and a cup of chai mid-morning. Lunch is at 1pm,
some snacks around 5 perhaps and a dinner at 7pm or later. We tend to sing in
the mornings and with student groups in the evening – keeling over in our rooms
in the afternoons, yielding to the heat. It takes me a while to realize that,
if adventures are going to be had while we are here, we had better get
planning. One night, I invite anyone who will listen to come wander around
Vellore by night. David and I get on the first bus coming across the front gates
of the campus.
The bus
(which costs 4 rupees or 8 cents a ride) drops us at the chowk (market) closest
to the hospital, whose intriguing shops I have seen as we passed by it every
morning. Fabric and saris, shoes and sandals, cameras and electronics, a fruit
stand where we sample jackfruit for the first time and buy goa (guava) for the
kids – all are bustling in the evening hour. In an open area on the other side of the wide street, an
enormous stage and seating have been set up, with a huge light-bulb silhouette
of 2 local politicians poised at the gate. A crowd has gathered for the rally,
music and voices blare, fireworks explode in the distance.
We are
looking for an odd thing: a large jute bag to cover a box for couriering. This
takes us off the main drag and further into the market each time we ask for
directions. As we make our way along lefts and rights, we begin to find
ourselves in a kind of market inner sanctum, an almost Dickensian labyrinth,
covered with thatch and tarpaulin, where bright lights cradle stalls of every
kind: stainless steel pots and pans throw a wide silver aura
an emporium of
plastic and packaged household items almost obscures the shopkeeper in its
midst, an orderly pharmacy sells remedies, a vegetable seller sits cross-legged
amidst his bananas, cauliflower, chilis and papaya
while at another stall a man
meticulously prepares waxy green leaves which he tells me are curry.
The tailor
is surrounded by fabric of every colour, his pedal sewing machine before him
and the Muslim brothers next door display fabric for the custom sewing of a
"suit", its exquisite embroidery ready to become the neck edge of the
camise, or overdress, for salwar pants.
A cow
sits languidly in the middle of the walkpath.
It is
sheer magic. I am caught up in the mystery of every turn, a laugh caught in my
chest the more I ask shopkeepers questions or request a photo. 'Yes,' they say
in whatever language we've got. 'And take my buddy's photo, too! Smile, would
you?!' they jostle each other. There is an unguarded willingness to be seen and
known in India, the impulse for privacy satisfied at other times and seemingly
disjunct from these open moments.
It would
take a Canadian a lifetime to understand the subtlety of this public-private
distinction. My own need for privacy is found most obviously in my wish for
"personal space" – an elbow in my back in a line-up sends me into a
silent tantrum, dignified old women ramming past my shoulder on a train baffle
me. The rampant public throat-clearing causes me to want to turn to my
neighbour and warn them never to move to Canada.
Back on
campus, the tamarind trees are dropping their brown pods on the pathway every
morning. The security guard who stands resolutely at the front of Alumni House
has taken one apart and is sucking the sticky coating off its seeds. To my
question, he nods and smiles. Yes, they are the very ones tamarind sauce is
made of – acerbic, biting.
Mrs
Jennie greets us at the Low Cost Effective Health Care Unit one bright morning,
offering chai as soon as we arrive. The facility is small, but treats a large
number of people for medical and dental issues, dispensing at the pharmacy or
referring on to the CMC Hospital as necessary. In the open courtyard, David and
Nicole and I sit down, this time with no keyboard, with guitar and a bucket. A
group comes to sit on the stone before us, parents and family mostly of
patients, largely Hindu, entirely non-English speaking. I am getting used to
this. I tell a Jesus healing story and sing a well-known chorus that I know can
be found in Tamil and Mr Raja interprets for me. There is one comic moment when
I say a single short sentence in English which takes him 5 minutes to render in
the other language – to which I respond that I should know better than to ask a
pastor to be my translator. He laughs and refuses to translate this.
When I
sing Patrick's song "I Hav Luv and my house does too", throwing in
the Tamil word "Anbu" for love, I have won them over. It occurs to me
that it doesn't really take much to make friends if you really want to. When
our presentation is over, we make to leave, but there appears a small crowd in
front of me and Mrs Jennie explains that these people are asking for my prayer.
My prayer? For sick people? In a hospital? I am thrown off by this request –
unprepared, unworthy. But how could you say no and why would you? What have I
been doing all these weeks at the two CMC Hospitals but turbo praying,
reflecting, bible studying, relying on the Spirit, re-receiving the faith by the act of sharing it? I reach out and touch each face, praying for God's healing mercy,
extremely moved, changed, baptised by the trust God has shown in me.
A Blessing |
Rev
Giftus, the world's most gentle man, has taken us up on our offer to return to
Vidialayam School on campus, to sing with the elementary children a second
time. We are wishing for some re-connection with these children, especially
since everything we do is with a new group each time. Giftus tells us that the
teachers were reminded at our last visit of how they used to have visiting
musicians and performances very regularly at the school, and how that practice
had fallen off. "She brought the music back," they said, making plans
to pick it up again. I do believe this might be some of what we have been
feeling our way into: What is the mission of people coming from so far away,
from a culture in many ways different, hoping to avoid past abuses of western
arrogance but having a unique set of gifts to offer? Simply reminding people of
what they care for and who they are? I spend time with the teachers, telling
the story of Mary and Martha - two sisters who care about the same thing but
approach it completely differently. In your heart of hearts, which of these women are you, I ask.
It is
this story that I think of again, as we prepare to join all the chaplains for a
farewell luncheon on Friday. My notes of reflections and recollections,
encouragements and future directions get lost on the way over to the hospital
and the only thing remaining is the image of the hospitality that we have
received at the CMC. "As we arrived at the Low Cost Effective Health Care
unit this week," I say, "we were asked if we would like to sit down and have a cup of
tea. My thought at the time was that we should perhaps do the work that we had come here to
do and have tea later. However, my host was firm: 'The tea is hot now.'"
It was then that it occurred to me that I come from perhaps a bit of a Martha culture – one in which work holds a high value and gifts of hospitality come as
something earned. I have experienced India and the
CMC to be a Mary culture - a place where hospitality is what comes first – regardless of who
you are and what you have come for. The tea comes before you do anything at
all."
Our many
hosts thank us for our time at the CMC and – in that way that comes so
naturally to Indians – each and every one of them stands and sums up some
aspect of the work that we came to do and thanks us in detail. It blows me
away. They remember things large and small that we did, comments that
participants have made, music that we have brought from Canadian composers to
be used freely. I particularly appreciate Rev Sarah's observation that, while
this trip must be a pleasure for our whole family, it also must have involved
sacrifice for each one of us to be here. This is certainly true for Patrick,
Nicole and Isaac, to whom home beckons all the time. Rev Finney remarks aloud
that one of the things they have experienced in us has been, for Indians, a
non-traditional family with a woman at the front of the stage, supported by her
husband. I appreciate this bold acknowledgment of some of the subtle complexity
of the Jonsson-Good ministry.
And so we
load up a taxi to leave the Christian Medical College of Vellore on Monday
morning, with encouragements about the next portion of our family's journey –
into the unknown of free travel for the next 3 ½ weeks. This CMC has been a
place of hospitality, of challenge, of prayer and tending the fires of faith,
of ministering to people in the setting of a hospital – so often a literal
cross-road of life. Still, there is no question that despite the
intensity of the work, the striving and flexing of cultural understanding, the
constant preparations and then throwing out the preparations, and the hours of singing – still – we have
been ministered unto in this place.
I think perhaps Ida Scudder might
not mind that at all.
Goodbye to the College Chapel |
The story of Ida Scudder is taken from the booklet found at the CMC: "Doctor Ida of Vellore" by Sheila Smith, Eagle Books No. 63. © 1950 Edinburgh House Press, London.
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