It’s called “Green Earth”, but there isn’t even a shadow of trees. In what is the greatest slum of Khulna, in Bangladesh, there is however a clinic where Sister Roberta Pignone, missionary of the Immaculate Conception and doctor, tries to cure illnesses and fight against degradation
Greenland is one of the largest slum of Khulna with about 20 thousand people, not very far from our hospital. From the first visit, it immediately entered my heart: many of our patients live there, treated for both leprosy and tuberculosis. My dream of opening a clinic there began in 2018 because people don’t have the opportunity to come to us easily.
Even today, every time I go there it is a blow to my heart: I always think that, after all, I only spend a few hours there, but the people there live there their whole lives. The houses have tin roofs and no windows. In the summer heat it becomes unbearable to stay inside, while in the rainy season the sewer, which is always open, floods the streets and consequently the houses. Family life knows no intimacy. Everyone knows everything about everyone. And if the sister – the nun – comes to visit, then everyone mobilizes, bringing beautiful glasses or cups for the guest.
Having returned to Bangladesh after Covid, I asked one of our boys to look for a suitable place to do a clinic once a week and where he could also welcome patients on the other days. We found a small school, a small sheet metal building, without windows, dark and gloomy, but which allows us to receive the sick. After some time, the building was closed for works and for more than a year I was a guest in the home of one of my patients, where nothing was ever clean and tidy, but where I was able to see up close how people live. Many things that are taken for granted for us are not there. The bathrooms, for example, are public and not always close to home, and therefore at night each family makes do as they can.
Going there is always a powerful experience. There is no shortage of patients. Komla comes punctually every week to take her therapy and she also offered us her house for a few months when the school was unusable. Mariam, her granddaughter, together with two other friends come to get sweets and sit there with me while I do the visits; it’s certainly not peaceful, but the girls bring joy.
There is another “fond” woman, her name is Mina Begum, and she is a psychiatric patient who has now become my friend: every week she comes for something different, even though I don’t think she even takes my medications which are usually vitamins and that he has a sizeable supply hidden somewhere.
So we are carrying out this new adventure following my heart’s desire to get closer to these people, whom we care for as best we can, even if we are unable to affect their living conditions. For this reason it will still take a long time, also to change the mentality. It will take many mornings in the clinic, with the puppies jumping up and down the table, but I’m sure that sooner or later something will improve.