Slum school
1948, 38-year-old Mother Teresa left Irish loretto Abbey and came to Kolkata. The first thing she did was to take off the blue cassock that Sister loretto wore and put on the white cotton yarn that Indian civilian women often wear.
Mother Teresa works in the slum behind the station. There are shabby huts and dirty children in rags everywhere. One day, a Bengali-speaking child asked Mother Teresa for something. The child has only one leg, and the broken leg is still bleeding. When Mother Teresa was about to get medicine to dress him, the child said what he wanted to eat, pretending to eat as he spoke. At this time, she only had five rupees on her, so she said to the child apologetically, "I am a poor nun, and I can only bandage your wound." Just as he was about to help him with his medicine, the child suddenly grabbed the medicine, shouted "Give this to me" and ran to the slum on crutches. Mother Teresa wanted to know what had happened. She followed the child into a hut. It was dark in the shack, and a woman could be seen lying on the board, with a baby and a five-year-old girl beside her. These three people are skinny, glassy-eyed and very weak. She talked with them in Bengali and learned that the child's name was Babu, and she was eight years old. This woman is his mother, suffering from tuberculosis. The other two children in the shack are his brothers and sisters. Mother Teresa can only give them the vitamin tablets she brought. The woman was very grateful and took her hand and said, "There is a sick old woman here. Please see her. " Mother Teresa was shocked when she heard this sentence: Why do poor people have such kind hearts? I am sick and care about others!
On that day, Mother Teresa visited many families in succession, and Babu with one leg and some children followed her curiously. Babu also asked Mother Teresa to come back the next day.
The experience during the day made it difficult for Mother Teresa to sleep. These poor children not only have no food and clothes, but also can't even write their own names and count the simplest numbers. What should they do when they grow up? The fundamental way to save these children is to let them master knowledge! As a result, the idea of opening an open-air school in the slums matured in Mother Teresa's mind.
The next day, in the open space under a big tree, Mother Teresa announced that there was a classroom with a blackboard on the ground and people who wanted to study sat down. After her patient persuasion, Babu sat down first and then sat down with four children. Mother Teresa's interesting lectures gradually attracted them, and other children slowly approached the tree. When Mother Teresa came to the tree again the next day, she found that a tent had been set up with rags, boards and other things, and there were many more children sitting in it than yesterday. Babu told her, "Everyone helped build this shed, and I invited all my friends to class."
In this simple "classroom", Mother Teresa not only teaches children some simple reading and writing, but also teaches them hygiene knowledge such as brushing their teeth, washing their faces and taking a bath. She also personally took the children to the well and taught them to bathe one by one. Slum women took these things to heart, and soon they followed Teresa's example and bathed their children.
The story of Mother Teresa running an open-air school in a slum soon spread. A week later, more than 100 children came to class, and later it increased to more than 500.
Kolkata is a city where the poor in India gather. Because of poverty, there are so many abandoned babies, and the scene is terrible. It is really rare in the world. After establishing a school for the poor, Teresa, together with other nuns, took on the task of adopting abandoned babies who were skinny, sick and born with disabilities.
The nuns not only adopted babies abandoned at the entrance of the monastery, but also brought back abandoned babies they saw elsewhere. Some poor people even send children they cannot afford. More and more abandoned babies are adopted, which has a growing influence, so there is often a shortage of funds to buy medicines, milk powder and food. But strangely, whenever this shortage occurs, someone will send money, vegetables, medicine, clothes and so on to help them tide over the difficulties.
hospice
Outside India, Mother Teresa and her colleagues are widely known, which began with their reports of serving the dying. For most people, it is nothing special to feed malnourished children and send rice to the poor. However, in a country where the population has exploded to despair, it is unthinkable to build homes for some people who are dying and can only live for a few hours or days. Because, anywhere else in the world, you can't find the spirit shown by Mother Teresa in this work-unconditional respect for anyone who is in bad karma.
Reporter Michael Zuo Meishi once introduced Mother Teresa's first hospice hospital in Calcutta. He said: One day, a dying man was lying on the road next to Gambo Hospital. Mother Teresa tried to take him to the hospital, but when she ran back from the pharmacy with the medicine, the man was already dead, and no one was interested in him lying on the ground. Teresa was angry. She said, "They treat cats and dogs better than their brothers of the same kind. If it is your beloved pet, you will never let them die like this! "
This kind of thing often happens to Mother Teresa. One day, she found an old woman lying dead on the road, her feet covered with rags covered with ants, and her head seemed to have been bitten by a mouse. The bloody wound was covered with flies and maggots. Teresa measured the old woman's breathing and pulse, and found that the old woman seemed to be breathing, so she was rushed to a nearby hospital. When the hospital learned that it was a homeless old man, it refused to accept it, but Mother Teresa was firm: "It is not the responsibility of the hospital to save grandma, but it is necessary for the hospital to find a way to treat her!" Under the pressure of Mother Teresa's righteous words, the hospital treated the dying old woman.
Mother Teresa decided to improve this situation through her own efforts. Because there is more than one body on the street, collecting bodies on the streets of Calcutta every morning is like collecting garbage. The poor in the Pearl Sea slum once raised money to build a waiting room for the dying. This is just a simple room with two beds, but it has a poetic name-"The Heart of a Child". However, the waiting room was soon closed because of strong opposition from nearby residents, who were afraid of smelling the rancid smell of death.
Mother Teresa came to the Ministry of Health in Calcutta. An enthusiastic official of the health department received her and took her to the famous Kali Temple in Calcutta. The temple promised to lend the believers a place to rest after worship for free.
After finding this place to provide rest for poor patients, in just one day, the nuns settled more than 20 of the poorest and most miserable people.
One day, a few meters away from the garbage dump, Mother Teresa found a ghostly skeleton, almost a rugged skeleton wrapped in a paper-like human meat bag, but he still breathed a sigh of relief that maggots had begun to erode his skin. Mother Teresa moved the old man into a hall covered with a canopy, fed him, cleaned his poor, sticky body, and removed maggots from the old man's wounds.
"How can you stand my stink?" The dying man gasped softly.
"Compared with your physical pain, this is nothing at all." She answered softly.
The old man muttered confidently, "You are not from here. People here won't do what you do. " On his deathbed, he tried to make himself laugh: "You deserve praise."
"No," she replied with a smile, "it is you who should be praised. Don't praise me. "
There is also an old man who died at night when he moved here. Before he died, he took Mother Teresa's hand and whispered in Bengali, "I've lived like a dog all my life, and now I'm going to die like a man. Thank you. "
It is this humble nun who once made countless people abandoned by secular society get dignity compensation in the last few hours of their lives.
Leprosy rehabilitation center
Leprosy is also called candle disease among the people, because after people get sick, some parts of the body will slowly fester like candles melted by fire until they die. Around the middle of the 20th century, the disease was rampant in India. It is estimated that there were about 5 million leprosy patients in India at that time, including 80,000 in Kolkata alone.
The whole society is full of fear of leprosy: patients are abandoned by their families, living in the streets or hiding in the wild, or trapped in caves; And some healthy people will quickly avoid or even throw stones when they see leprosy patients; The police saw the lepers and even let them take guns to the concentration camp. ...
One day, an official of the health department of the municipal government found Mother Teresa, hoping that her "Charity Missionary Sisters" could help take care of those patients who fell ill in the street because of leprosy, and the government could provide a suitable gathering place for these patients. Young nuns feel embarrassed, because there is a lot of work in monasteries, besides schools in slums, Children's Home, and hospice, and now it is beyond their ability to set up rehabilitation centers for leprosy patients. However, Mother Teresa readily agreed to this official, because for her, selfless kindness is God, and she is more concerned with poor leprosy patients.
1969, Sisters of Charity set up the first leprosy rehabilitation center in Didaga, a suburb of Calcutta. The hut is located on an abandoned land near the railway subgrade. It is made of hemp bags, bamboo poles, iron sheets, tiles, etc. As a building material, plus rich imagination. The roof of the hut was built on a stake in the open drain.
Teresa and nuns began to look for lepers who were driven out of their homes by relatives and friends, and often walked into the stinking old houses to drive away maggots crawling on the wounds of lepers and flies licking the wounds, inject them with drugs, bind up the wounds and soothe their injured hearts.
On the day when the Didaga Leprosy Rehabilitation Center began to serve, Mother Teresa specially touched the body and hands of every leper to show her concern for every patient. She kindly said to everyone, "Please cheer up. God never abandoned you. Let's work together. " The women with rotten fingers, the old people who lost their legs, and the children with rotten ears suddenly felt a warm current flowing through their bodies, which increased their confidence in overcoming the disease.
However, for every leper, medical miracle can't scrape off the tattoo of leper on their forehead at the same time. After being cured and discharged from hospital, patients are still discriminated against in society, and no one wants to hire them. Therefore, in order to stay in a protected hospital, patients will tear open scabbed wounds. ...
Faced with the practical problems of leprosy patients returning to society, these rehabilitation centers founded by the Sisters of Charity Missionaries began to arrange vocational training for recovered patients-let some patients engage in simple work such as spinning bandages for themselves and making their own medicine bags; Some people work in wooden workshops, shoe workshops, brick kilns and small farms in leprosy rehabilitation centers to ensure their basic needs with their own labor; Or cultivate your own rice fields and wheat fields to be self-sufficient. Mother Teresa also got an old printing machine for patients to use to print some leaflets and newspapers, so as to get back into life and earn some money. In order to make patients live a normal life, Mother Teresa always arranges them to attend midnight mass every Christmas, organizes them to perform plays, helps nuns distribute Christmas presents, attends lunch concerts and so on.
In a word, leprosy patients living in rehabilitation centers can enjoy fun, live a normal life and enjoy the dignity of normal people again anyway.
Excerpted from A Kind Life, edited by Qu Yajun, Zhuhai Publishing House, 2002, 1 edition.
Mother Teresa's words:
We often fail to do great things,
But we can do some small things with great love.
Mother Teresa