ZD

I'm a little behind with blogging but as generally happens, I catch up while I am traveling.  Right now I am sitting on the floor of a bus station in Malaysia where I will be waiting for my bus for the next 10 hours.... sometimes I make really stupid travel plans and this is one of those time : ).  Anyway, just wanted to write about a couple of things that I haven't had a chance to talk about. 

In the beginning of May I spent some time up in ZD.  I love it up there because it is basically as close to Tbt as I may ever get.  The scenery is AMAZING... I love looking at the mountains and the people up there were really rewarding to work with.  While I was up there, I worked with an ex-pat who has been providing special education services for some of the kids at the rehab center.  Some of them also have speech needs so I did assessments, treatment plans and staff training.  It was a real blessing to see how involved two of the parents in particular were.  One of the girls is about 13 and has cerebral palsey.  She doesn't go to school but her family has taken the time to teach her academic skils at home and she is able to read.  This is pretty unusual so it was really encouraging to see them treat her as someone who can learn and lead a productive life.  There was another parent of a younger child that was so attuned to her kid.   This little girl has pretty severe cerebral palsey but does seem to have fairly good cognitive skills.  She is unable to speak and is also unable to use her hands... this makes communication tricky and it also makes it difficult to determine understanding since we generally have kids who are unable to speak touch pictures to request items and/or touch pictures to answer questions.  I was trying to encourage her to use her eye gaze to make selections and that was going pretty well.  When I asked her mom if she has found a way to communicate with her, her mom told me that the girl makes certain faces to communicate certain things... for example, there is a milk that she likes and the container has a person making a particular face so this little girl makes that face when she wants that milk.  This may not seem that exciting, but it is!  This mom considers her child a communicator despite her severe impairments and encourages her to use whatever she can to communicate (most parents want perfect speech or nothing).  Wait for it, it gets better.... We dropped in on this mom unexpectedly one day and she had made a tent in her front yard where she was doing physical therapy with her daughter when we drove up... she considers herself her childs teacher/therapist!  This is EVERY teacher/therapists dream... to have carryover at home!  I love this lady!  

During this trip I also had the opportunity to go to a leprosy village which was different.  There is still Leprocy here.  It's not that common but when it does happen its really sad.  People are forced out of their home villages and made to stay in a leprosy village.  This is done because of fear, the villagers don't want to be infected so they throw the infected person out.  This village was so far out in the middle of the mountains that we had to drive down this windy road, where we really also drove off of the cliff.... It was really narrow and it was muddy.  Driving through the mud felt similar to driving on ice... We were all silently praying as we felt the tires sliding.  If it slid too far we would go off of the cliff.  We couldn't even drive all of the way in, we had to park the car and hike to actually reach the village.  I will admit that I am not well educated on this disease and asked our team a lot of questions.  They were saying that actually 90% of peopleare immune to leprosy in the first place and that it isn't contageous once treated.  The sad thing is that even after these people are treated their home village wont let them back in so they stay in the leprosy  village forever : (.   Its especially sad to see kids of affected people there... they may never leave there because of the stigma of having a family member with leprosy.  Our team went so that the Dr. could check up on the villagers and also so that one of our team members could train them on how to harvest honey.  Since there is the social stigma around leprosy, its hard for people from this  village to have any source for cash.  They farm and herd for food, but if a need would arise requiring money, they don't have any.  One of the resources that they do have access to is bees.  So one of the team members brought in a bee hive and taught the villagers how to use it.  They had some older hives already but this new one allows for a greater return.  

Oh and on the way to this village, we found a man in a ditch on the side of the road.  He was on a motorcycle and had flipped it and cracked his head off of a rock (almost no one wears helmets here). His head was bleeding pretty bad and he was conscious but confused.  We ended up taking him to the ER and staying with him until he was stable and his family arrived...it was a long day!  Also, the ER never gave this guy any pain meds... His head was cracked open and not so much as aspirin!  I felt so bad for him, he looked like he was in so much pain : (

Here are some pictures of the leprosy village.  The government gave them supplies to make concrete houses which was nice because their old houses were pretty run down.