p. 14 | In Famine-Stricken India by DELLA BURROWAY

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 6, 1908

In Famine-Stricken India

By DELLA BURROWAY

DELLA BURROWAY

No doubt you who know that there is famine in India, have wondered if our Seventh-day Adventists have come in contact with it. I am sure you will be interested to know the conditions as they exist among the heathen about our Karmatar orphanage, and the work being done to relieve them; also something of the work done for the sick, and how God's blessing has attended our work.

Last year, because of very little rain, the rice crop was almost a failure. Consequently rice that usually sells at the rate of nine or ten seers (a seer is one and one-fifth quarts) for the rupee, this year sells at six or seven seers for the rupee. Then, too, when there is a good crop of rice, it has to be harvested, which gives the poor people work. Last year, not having this work, they have very little money with which to buy rice at any price.

Not being in the famine district, those about us have not been provided for. As we have gone among them to minister to their sick, we have found families of six or eight persons living on one pint of rice a day. This they cook into a soup, and it furnishes the only meal of the day. Little children cry from hunger. I asked them what they did for the children when they had no food. They said, “We give them water to drink.”

We have appealed to our people here in India, and a sum has been raised to help these sufferers. We buy rice, and sell it at the price it could be bought for in other years. The people come to us with two pice (one cent), four pice, eight pice, to buy rice. Of course to those who can pay nothing, we give rice. Every Sunday we have from one to two hundred seated in our compound at one time, waiting for their weekly allowance. Many of them have become so thin that every rib in their bodies can be counted. After we give them the rice, we try to point them to the Saviour, and the new home where hunger will not be known.

One day in the crowd about our door we noticed four little children seated together who were mere skeletons. We talked with them, and learned that they were brothers and sisters whose father had deserted them, and whose mother was ill. Later we visited the family, and found them living in a tumble-down mud house, the mother ill in one corner, and her baby ill in another. The only furniture was a single bed. We did what we could for them, and told the eldest child (a boy of eight) to come to the house daily for rice.

I praise the Lord that I am now able to speak a few words to these people in their own tongue. As the sick come to us day by day, I try to use what I have learned, and God is blessing abundantly. I want to relate an experience I had in treating a sick child, and the blessing that attended my work. I am not a trained nurse, but God has seen fit to place me here, and has given me some wonderful experiences in treating the sick. This child seemed to have typhoid pneumonia, and was so ill that I despaired of its life. It was tossing from one side of the bed to the other, apparently unconscious. We were four miles from home, with a bath-tub, fomentation cloths, and very little experience for such a case. I ordered hot water, and we put the little one in the full bath. While the child was in the bath, suddenly a storm came up, and the temperature fell, perhaps twenty degrees. We had nothing to wrap the child in when we took it from the bath, but a few old rags that would scarcely cover the body. I knew if the child took cold and died, the entire village would censure us for giving the bath. As I held that little one in the tub, I realized my utter helplessness, and I prayed as I never prayed before. I clung to the promise, “Ask, and it shall be given you.” In a few minutes the child fell asleep in the tub. We carefully took it out, covered it with the rags, and sat down to watch. Again it began to toss, but I clung to the promise; and as we left the house, I told the parents that I thought the child would rest that night, and it did. From that very hour it began to mend, and to-day is strong and well.

Because of the scarcity of rain this year, cholera is raging all about us. In our immediate vicinity from four to five die daily. This terrible disease will carry off strong men and women in a few hours. I have visited many cases in the past few weeks, and by the help of God we have been successful in saving a few. We have a medicine which, if it can be taken in the first stages, will often check the disease, but after it has had two or three hours' start, nothing can be done. In one home five were carried out in a few weeks. I went into a home this morning, and was met by the aged father, who, moaning and striking his breast, said, “My only son is dead.” He led me in to see another member of his family, who had been taken ill in the night, and was then in the last stages of cholera. The mother of the home is also ill, and unless God works for her, she, too, will die. A daughter in this home has recovered with the help of the medicine and the blessing of God. We have tried to point them to the Burden-bearer, but they can think only of their grief. As we go among them, they fall at our feet and plead for help.

The Indians are a very superstitious people, and only we who are on the ground can realize the progress our manner of treating the sick has made in their midst. A few years ago, when we began work among them, we found their sick prohibited from drinking water. The patient might have a very high fever and beg for water, yet none would be given him. We visited patients who had not eaten

a mouthful in a week or ten days.

Almost without exception the sick were shut up in the little mud house without a breath of air. Instead of a good soap wash, the dirty body was greased with some foul-smelling oil. When we first attempted to give the soap wash, which is necessary in almost every case, the people would not permit it. “No, the patient will die,” they said. We had to allow the oil to be used after the wash, in order to get their consent to use water at all. At first a cold compress on the head in fever was forbidden. Now we are permitted to put it on the abdomen as well.

We have tried to gain their confidence by telling them we will do for their children just what we would do for our own. You will realize something of the progress we have made when I tell you that the people expect fomentations when they have pain, often having hot water ready for us when we arrive in their homes. One of our patients who has money has purchased from us fomentation cloths, hot bags, and enema fittings. Thus the confidence of the people is being gained, and the way opening for God's message to go. Although few can read, we always make it a point to supply with literature those who can read.

We are of good courage; for we believe that just as surely as these people have been won to our treatments, so surely will they be won to our Saviour. What we need is workers who will master these languages; for how can these people hear without a preacher?

Karmatar.