Rohingya-The voiceless refugees

This was my last day at the  camp! It was clearer this morning.  In the corridor of the store-front leading to the beach in my run this morning, a few lumps of lifeless forms lay, bodies of homeless people sleeping together in a sack keeping themselves warm.  A few feet away a family slept below the shelter of a rickshaw under thin blankets and a couple of stray dogs also curled up close to them.  I did my 5K on the beach.  As always, there were already people walking the beaches with a few joggers. I thought since I had been to Obat for the last two days, it would be someone else’s turn. I was already in the van going to Hope Clinic and everyone piled in and only one doctor was getting into the van heading for Obat. The coordinator then asked me whether I would go to Obat, I hesitated since I thought I should say my last goodbye to the people I worked there at Hope Clinic.  Also I wished to visit the Malaysian Field Hospital on our way home....

I thought yesterday was my last time to the Obat clinic at Kutupalong Camp but at the last minute it seemed the three UK doctors decided they wanted to be together at the Hope Clinic so I became the default doctor to head for Obat.  We traveled for an hour and a half in a van to the entrance of Kulupalong Camp.  No one waited for us there. We walked towards the clinic which we could see as it was on top of a hill with flags waving.  It was not as foggy as yesterday.  Children girls and boys alike played at making shelters; they grew up fast in the camp.  Hasina was a 25-year-old woman, here in camp for 3 months.  She was near term when she ran away with 7 other children, walking for 8 days in her very pregnant state.  Some days, it rained and they were miserably wet.  They had little to eat and most days they drank only water.  They hid in the jungle for fear of the military and scarcely slept. We gave her a bag full of d...

It took us an hour and a half to get to Obat, riding in a van (an improvement over the bouncing Tom Tom) and walking through the Kutupalong Camp with Jasim, a volunteer.  We walked passed a learning center with about twenty children reciting their ABC.  Men, women and some children were diligently digging up gnarled roots of trees which had been chopped down to accommodate the huts. Without the roots, the slopes would be even more vulnerable to erosion when the rain comes. We immediately started to see patients with Faruq as my translator. I was given a bucket filled with hard boiled eggs, tiny Mandarin oranges, bags of groundnuts and small bottles of fruit-flavored drinks.  These were to be given to the patients who looked malnourished, almost all of them received their little gifts with wonder and surprise. A 25-year-old woman came in with four children ranging from 7 months to 7 years, so many children at such a young age. Her husban...

Today was very foggy, I could only see between 30 to 50 feet in front of me. I went running around 6:30 am, the air was moist and felt misty.  Despite the thick fog there were a number of people at the beach walking.  It was high tide. We drove through the near impenetrable fog all the way to the Hope Clinic. I had Hamid as my translator who had volunteered for 2 months now. He had seen enough patients  to say most Rohingya complained of the same ailments: generalized weakness, epigastric distress, and aches and pains. Fatema 1, 25-year-old woman, in camp for 3 months. She found her husband in a field with other dead bodies, his head was cut open she thought with an axe.  She was 6 months pregnant and she endured 15 days of trekking with her mother to the border. Ferani, 37-year-old woman, in camp for 5 months.  She had 10 children, 3 of whom died at childbirth and a fourth died during the 15 days harrowing journey of running away from Myanmar. I...

At the clinic, I ran into Bonnie, a familiar face, the mid-wife who was with me in South Sudan, she was volunteering with Hope Foundation as a mid-wife educator. Today I had a different translator who had been here for almost two months and said that 90% of the patients had epigastric, back pain and generalized weakness.  Indeed, we saw a number of patients with such complaints, including the very young ones.   When asked if they had seen horrific events that might have translated to somatic complaints, oftentimes they would say no. I saw Sawanter, a woman in her thirties whose husband was captured by the soldiers and jailed.  She had to take her 4 children, 2, 8 ,10 and 11 and walked for 4 to 5 days to Bangladesh. She did not know the whereabouts of her husband. A 35-year-old man came in with skin lesions which were present for a month, some small and some large ones in his arm and ankle, the large one on the ankle was oozing.  He adamantly de...

Most of last week’ volunteers stayed a week and left, three male doctors from UK joined us. Right around late morning at the Hope Clinic, two young men carrying a red velvet bundle into my room, preceded by a distraught middle-aged woman, brows knitted into a worried frown. When they unwrapped the bundle, it revealed a miniature woman, a 27-year-old woman with achondroplasia or dwarfism. sitting quietly crossed-legged on the floor. The young men reached down and heaved her to the bed by her arms.  With her puffy eyes lowered, she neither moved nor uttered a word. Using a thick branch threading through knots they made in the corners of the velvet blanket, they had carried her from the camp to the clinic. Mom said she had been bleeding for 10 days.  There was no actual bleeding when I examined her but her conjunctivae looked pale. Her hemoglobin was low, signifying that she was anemic. She was transferred to the Red Crescent Hospital, we did not know whether ...

I went back to Hope Clinic working with my translator Russel, saw 27 patients mainly aches and pains, respiratory infections and epigastric distress. NA in camp for 4 and a half months, he was 60 years old and he said he walked for 15 days and had to climb mountains to get to the border. JD 18 yo girl, in camp for 5 months.  Her cousin was killed while running away.  She walked for 2 days with 3 family members.  Her eyes still looked traumatized as she related her story, her cousin’s death still haunted her. Fatema 38 yo woman, in camp for 4 months.  She walked for 14 days with her husband and 4 children. They often went hungry and drank ground water. The memory of her escape still made her cry when she opened her heart to us. NH 68 yo man, in camp for 5 months.  He had 5 family members, 1 child died years ago from diphtheria.  They walked for 4 days.  From his hiding pace up on a hill, he watched the soldiers rounded up the...

I was dropped off Obat alone by the roadside to the Obat guest house even as the medical coordinator had not been able to get in touch with anyone. When I walked the long path and through the gate to the guest house, a man who spoke little English looked surprised when he saw me.  Through his halting English I learned that everyone had left for the clinic in the Tom Tom. The two other men doctors from MedGlobal who were regulars in the Obat Clinic having told them they would be coming in the afternoon and would find their way there by themselves after running some errand forgetting that one of us might still need a ride. After some to and fro, I was finally able to hitch a ride and arrived at the clinic at 11 am. Patients: AF, a mother who lost her husband, had 2 children, 5 years and 15 months, she walked for 3 days to border and had been in the camp for 3 months. She bore hunger for three days as she and her children had little to eat. HB, 17 ...

Four of us were dropped off at an intersection and five of us including a worker from Obat, another NGO squeezed into a Tom Tom to travel for 20 to 30 minutes to the entrance of the Kutupalong Camp.  I was sitting at the edge with no safety guard to prevent my falling into the road; I felt as though every bump was attempting to expel me from the bouncing vehicle. On the tarmac road, it was not as bad until we turned into a brick/dirt road when it became more precarious. We were then dropped off the entrance of the camp.  Crossing a bamboo bridge, we walked uphill into the camp. Tarp houses held together with bamboos scattered haphazardly over the slopes. There were shops selling snacks, bananas, vegetable and fruits.  The hills had been deforested to accommodate the flimsy dwellings, only dirt surfaces remained.  Through the doors of some houses, one could catch a glimpse of dirt floors, women hunching over cooking fires inside smoke-filled rooms.  Childre...

I saw a sea turtle on the beach on my run this morning, its eyes were gouged out and one of the front legs was partially chewed off and a big dent was evident in its carapace. I was not sure whether someone caught it (there was a flimsy rope loosely connected to its dead body) or it was beached. In some way its fate of being stranded and brutally hurt was not unlike that of the Rohingya. The Hope Clinic continued to be abuzz with people lining up patiently to be seen. A pattern of common symptoms and issues seemed to emerged.  Many complained about having burning pain in the stomach just below the breast bone, aches and pains, and generalized weakness. With some patients I continued to ask them about their life and death experiences, escaping being killed or burned. BB, a 30 yo woman has been in camp for 5 months.  She, her husband and 6 children walked for 3 days and then crossed the river.  She saw many dead bodies floating in the water. AR, an18 y...

There is a beach close by the hotel we are staying and after a few days of no exercise, I found my way there and ran early in the morning as a way to energize my day. Even at this early hour, there were many people walking the beach. The red ball of the rising sun rose above the skyline. I was still mesmerized by all the new huts that dotted the rolling hills, only a few lucky ones were on mounds of hills with tall trees, somewhat bucolic than the rest which looked stark naked. Some refugees had enough sense not to chop off the trees and they remained to provide shades and prevent erosion.  Addressing the medical issues of the refugees, some of them intrigued me so much I asked them to tell me of their experiences. I was careful not to dig deeper if they appeared to be pained but most were quite vocal and seemed willing to pour their hearts out. I even noticed that my able translator was fired up as well. SA, an18 yo man, in camp for 5 months. he has 4 sisters and 3 b...

It took us an hour and a half to get to Balukhali Camp. On the way we passed paddy fields, harvested long ago with cows and goats grazing on the remnants of the stalks.  It was quite chilly for this part of the world, in the 50s in the morning. The Mariner Drive was pleasant and offered an occasional glimpse of moon boats on the beach through graceful Casuarina trees. Farmers already up and about tending their fields.  Markets in the towns we passed were busy, congested with rickshaws, tom-toms, people selling and buying. The Malaysian contingent put up a field hospital near one of the established camps in the 1990s, Kutupalong Camp. They are equipped to do surgeries. We drove past the camp set up on mounds of hills where there used to be forests, now denuded, studded with orange and blue tarp huts.  Lines of refugees queued up for food from WFP.   It is said that twice a month, the refugees get a few kilos of rice, salt, dahl and oil. The Hope Clin...