That left Gary and I to travel with the nuns to visit another village. Just prior to our departure, another priest showed up and decided to accompany us on our trip.
First challenge was trying to get up the slight hill out of the convent grounds. You see they have a 1995 Vietnamese produced vehicle that they use for these visits and it is badly in need of major repairs or replacement. Since they no longer produce that vehicle, repairs are nearly impossible.
Well our driver repeatedly put this vehicle into gear and lunged it forward but only to have it die on us again and again. I was expecting a walk up the hill but finally after several tries we made it out. The only security against breakdown and getting stranded on this drive, was that we were following a van which was carrying the food we were delivering.
The van has its limitations also as it is limited to two passengers and cannot always negotiate the roads they need to travel to get into these remote locations, especially during the rainy season.
You can see the aging 4 x 4 in the back ground of this picture. This is the priest who went with us. It ended up he was there special to give Mass the next morning at the convent so we spent some time together and have garnered another new friend...English speaking even!
Typical dwelling we saw at this village location was more substantial than the former huts and the one I looked into actually had a concrete floor.
This lady is so skinny from malnutrition that you can hardly tell for sure that she is a woman.
These ladies were proud to put their best outfit on to meet us but shy with the camera.
These people were very poor and their leper wounds had not been tended in quite some time. The sisters got right to work sitting them down and cleaning, redressing and wrapping their wounds.
The nuns used Betadyne for cleaning the wounds and were always careful to wear gloves.
Again it was rewarding to see our hand made leper bandages in use, but again they were the larger ones and too bulky causing some problems with the straps on sandals.
Since two of the nuns had traveled in the truck, they were able to stay behind and spend more time with the lepers as their wounds were in such bad shape and needed additional attention.
The nuns set up a make shift table from which to dispense a variety of common across the counter aspirin, tylenol and cold medicines.
Knowing we were there with the intent of helping them, a number of the lepers came over and showed me the shape of their foot wear. I was aghast at the fact that some had none and some wore broken sandals or even torn flip flops. Note the foot on the right in this picture. It appears to be a standard man's sandal, worn backwards!
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