Monday Old age leprosy colony

Monday 

Leprosy colony, dance, farm, shoes, saree, 

Today the leprosy colony that we visited Polombakkam home, a colony for the aged and they offer end of life care or for people with no families. It was a well cared for place with a paid director, Ilango who has been overseeing the project for 7 years. They employ a nurse, a cook, and three others. He had great pride in his "home" not a colony and instead of patients, they called the 24 residents "inmates" which in in Indian English a better word. In this southern Indian state, Tamil is the first language and English is the second language so many people speak English.   He had some outside funding to help build nice toilets and keep he place up. They had nice plants and no garbage strewn about and was very proud of the nice living conditions there. Ilango did show us a phone photo of a cobra snake that they found on the campus the previous week. 


We had extra people with us, the Smiths a couple serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.   They had never been to a leprosy colony before. There were several people who wanted their skin oiled. Leprosy causes the sweat and oil glands in the extremities to not function and they have no feeling  as well so their skin gets very dry.  It is an act of service and compassion that we can offer. The Smiths did the oiling today.   Their nurse was redressing the ulcers and sores of the "inmates" on hands and feet. Some of the sores were really huge and extreme.some were hard to look at.  Because the people affected with leprosy have lost their feeling in their hands and feet, it is easy to get sores that they so not know that they have and they are slow to heal. Remember all the people at these colonies are regularly monitored by doctors and do not have active leprosy, but are plagued by the effects of the disease. It is a disease that is hard to contract but is a bacteria that can be treated with medication. You can get it more than once though. After the oiling, some played a game made on a piece of cardboard similar to parcheesi. We also did a traditional colored chalk design on the ground called a rangoli.  One of the Indian women with us, Kavitha made up the design and set the color pattern and we filled it in. 














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