April 2 - "They don't know meat" (Village #1)

We had hardly arrived at the convent, when they announced..."We go to leper village now". We joined our traveling companions in the "Happy Bus" for a dusty drive into the back woods. We arrived at a central gathering place to a crowd of villagers clustered around bags of rice which had already been off loaded from a truck.



This was our first exposure to what our $15 food packets contained. They were supposed to provide survival food for a leper family for a month. By American standards we were skeptical about the adequacy of this food. They explained to us that each packet included rice, sugar, cooking oil, fish sauce, salt, noodles and dried fish. Gary asked them about the rest of their dietary needs beyond the rice and little bit of dried fish we were giving them. We were told that for the lepers "they don't know meat"...it is not even an occasional thing for them.



You can see it was all smiles and no complaints from these Vietnamese villagers as they graciously accepted their allocations.



These people were cleaner and not as emaciated as others we saw on later visits...but they were nonetheless needy and extremely appreciative of our presence.









We met this husband and wife, both lepers who arrived together. Note his hand and her missing leg in the following photos.



The stump of her leg was wrapped in an old ace type bandage which the nun removed in order to check her stump for abrasions.



It was then re wrapped in our of our hand knit leper bandages. The only bandages that had been brought along were the ones made out of larger yarn. It was much too rough and bulky making it difficult to get the stump back into the artificial leg.

Good example for our Bandage Brigade volunteers as to why we need them to use only the #10 crochet thread.



We spoke at length through an interpreter with the sister in charge. She said, yes she is able to get the leprosy medicine to use with these people. However the cost of taking them to the hospital in Qui Nhon for initial treatment is often a problem which they run up against.

They also distribute to the people the basic across the counter medicines for headache and colds at the same time as they work with them to check and tend their leper sores and amputations.



This final picture tells the whole story of this our first leper visit and the importance of your donations for the food packets which we delivered.