Fire Ant Urine

What a title, I know ;) we’ll get to it in just a second!

Today was our first clinic day! It seems like we will be in different locations pretty much every day, which has provided some interesting logistics with moving our supplies, but our team is really working like a well oiled machine, so it hasn’t been a problem.

Our clinic today took place in a dump (no, literally, a trash dump) in the photo below, the “hill” is literally all trash. And you can see the wall of the camp in the left of the photo.

This dump is home to a refugee camp housing about 450 Burmese families. The dump was under armed guard because one of the stipulations of refugee camps is you cannot leave under any circumstances, including to seek medical attention. Upon arrival, you were instantly overwhelmed with so many facts of life for these families:

1. When they said we were going to a refugee camp called Trash Village, they really weren’t joking. It wasn’t just littered with plastic like in many slum parts of the world, the trash heap was a hundred feet high and provided an income source for the families who will sort through the trash looking for recyclable bottles and aluminum cans.

2. When they say the refugees can’t leave the camp, they really mean it. Like machine gun mean it.

3. The smell hits you as soon as you step out of the car: hot garbage, burning trash, and raw sewage are some of the stronger notes.

4. The smoke burns your eyes too, and we were given masks to wear because the pollution was going to irritate our lungs. (None of the refugees had masks though)

5. The need for medical care could not be understated. They really can’t leave, even if it’s a matter of life and death. Anyone who attempts to take them to the nearby clinic could be charged with human trafficking.

And despite all of this, these people are surviving. And they have so much patience and endurance and resolute spirits. The hardships they face do not deter them from taking care of one another and taking on each day with confidence.

After getting set up, we started seeing patients. My job was to triage: so we took blood pressures, temperatures, pulses, and the occasional glucose test and got to the bottom of their main complaint. Some had infected wounds, others had colds, one little baby had chicken pox, it was really a variety of illnesses and injuries. After they saw us, they then got to see a provider, either a nurse or a doctor, who worked through their diagnosis with them and then they got sent to pharmacy where they all received things like vitamins, prenatals, de-wormers, and specific illness-related medication.

We also had several people who received reading glasses and got rotten teeth pulled!

A few people had diabetes (sad after effect of the amount of rice in their diet) which is normally treated with Metformin, however, we had one lady who came in to get her blood sugar checked because she had diabetes, and her numbers were very normal! We told her they were and she told us that it was because she had been taking fire ant urine! (I told you we’d get around to it!) the translator was just as confused as I was!! Apparently, this was an old family recipe that her mother had given her to handle the diabetes. I have no idea the science behind it, and google had no clue about this treatment option but it seemed to work for her! In fact, when we told her her levels looked good and that the doctor will go over some options for treatment, she smiled at us and told us that she was good, she’d just keep using her family’s recipe ;)

In total, we saw close to 150 patients and got the opportunity to pray with them before sending them home. After we had packed up our mobile clinic for the day, we took a short drive over to the local Burmese clinic. This was such an incredible place! From blood banks to maternity centers, this place had a little bit of everything to try and bridge the gap for both the Burmese refugees living in Thailand and people currently living in Myanmar. Apparently, since the war has gotten worse, a lot of their patients cross the border to receive medical care, since the healthcare system in Myanmar is virtually nonexistent, and return to Myanmar after they are patched up. This clinic used to serve the refugees living in the nearby camps, but has had to stop doing that since the Thai government began clamping down on refugees leaving and threatening human trafficking charges.

After getting a short tour of the clinic and the work being done there, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the situation these refugees are in. I guess it boils down to the sacrifices parents are willing to make for their children. Every parent makes sacrifices, from difficult jobs and long hours, to moving to different areas for better opportunities, parents are willing to do whatever it takes to take care of their children.

It is no different in this situation either. While it is difficult to see how anyone would choose to live on a trash dump with no hope of leaving or getting a better job, there are probably hundreds of reasons. At the surface level, by leaving Myanmar and choosing to live in a refugee camp, their children are safe from the bombs. Safe from the violence of civil war. Safe from being conscripted to become child soldiers and forced to fight their own people. That alone is enough. But these parents are often sacrificing their whole lives. Children born to refugees in Thailand have the opportunity to secure citizenship and with that citizenship, can go to school, get any job they want, live anywhere they want, and the cost is simple: their parents give up their lives for their children, knowing they will likely never see their extended families again, or anywhere outside the confines of their camps.

It makes you think about the ultimate sacrifice our Heavenly Father made for us through His Son. Jesus gave up his life sacrificially so His children can have abundant life in Him.

I pray that through the medical care we were able to provide today that these people also understood the love that the Father has for them and the sacrifice He made so their lives can be more full. While we cared for their physical bodies, we shared about Jesus’ desire to care for their spiritual selves, and hopefully they heard that message, some perhaps even for the first time.