This is My Life: I admire my friend and the reality of mental illness here
On one side of us, there is a huge, expansive house with chandeliers and multiple servants and a swimming pool. On the other side of our comfortable home lives my helper and her family in a small, musty wood house with holes in the floors and boards rotting away.
I've been listening to my helper a lot, lately. I consider her a friend and her value to me is far more than simple friendship or househelp. She's my mentor, my cultural buffer, my sounding board, my teacher, my advocate in murky relational waters. She's an example to me in her Christian walk, in her tenacity to do what is right despite huge opposition. She has such a different life - one I can't really imagine, no matter how often she describes it to me. How is it that somebody living just on the other side of my fence can have such a drastically different life? It is just one more strange dichotomy that defines my life here.
In the past month or so, her family has had more stress than usual with the arrival of her husband's youngest brother from the village. He's just a teen but his parents have already passed away, having had him late in life. The family members caring for him in the village had grown weary and so they sent him here. You see, he's extremely difficult to care for. He's an "orang stres" - a term that literally means he's stressed but loosely means he's got some sort of mental problem.
He eats all their food if they leave it out where he can find it (they have no food to spare as it is) and when the carts selling street food pass by, he calls them over, though he has no money of his own to buy food with. He drinks every last drop of their water or finishes off liters of soda until he vomits. Somehow, he can't seem to stop himself from binging on food and drink. He sits and laughs to himself during the day and spends all night either tossing and turning or knocking around the house, waking everybody. When he is awake, the whole household is. He rejected the navy blue towel I sent to him because it was "dirty" but gladly accepted the white sheet I'd sent along with it because to him only white can be "clean."
In desperation, they have sent him to a home that cares for people like him, a rare Christian ministry in an area where such help is seldom available. I'm glad he is getting some professional help and yet I know what a huge strain this is on his family. What is it like to have someone in your family be so dependent and helpless and to want to help when you have no resources yourself? What is it like to scrape together the monthly fee, knowing it is more than you can afford and fearing a sudden illness that could eat away at the little bit left over for food for your family once the bills are paid?
Last week, he came down with some sort of lung infection that the doctor first feared was tuberculosis. They had to take him to the doctor, who prescribed several different medicines and, until they were sure he was going to be okay, he had to stay in my friend's home again - yet more sleepless nights spent trying to calm him, working to convince him he could sleep. Unsure of what they were even giving him, my helper-friend brought all the prescribed medicines to me so I could look them up on the Internet for her - vitamins, antibiotics, drugs to reduce mucus, a drug for psychosis. "What do I know?" I told her. "I can only try to explain what little I myself can barely understand." Why won't the doctor explain these things, why are people not allowed to question him?
When it came time to take him back to the mental illness center, he did not want to go. On the road, on the back of the motorbike, he squirmed and worried, making the long drive all the more treacherous. When they arrived, they had to work hard to convince him to go into his room and then they hurriedly locked the door behind him. I think of him there, not fully understanding all that is happening, locked in a room with nothing but a mattress, spread with a white sheet and the towel his nephew traded him for the "dirty" blue one. Is he fearful? Does he even realize he is sick or that they are only trying to help in the best way they know how?
These are uncomfortable stories for which I have no answer and no solution. Life here is so raw, and yet I see beauty. I see it in this family, doing their best to help. I see it in my helper-friend, trying to love, trying to be patient on so little sleep and shouldering burdens that I'll never know -all for the sake of her husband's "crazy" brother. She speaks of hope and of the day this little brother is healed. She advocates on his behalf, trying to find a way to help him when others have given up on him entirely. She knocks on doors, calls relatives and inspires them to properly care for their baby brother, to give him at least a chance to be made well again.
How can one of my dearest friends, who I see almost every day, live a life so different from mine?
I've been listening to my helper a lot, lately. I consider her a friend and her value to me is far more than simple friendship or househelp. She's my mentor, my cultural buffer, my sounding board, my teacher, my advocate in murky relational waters. She's an example to me in her Christian walk, in her tenacity to do what is right despite huge opposition. She has such a different life - one I can't really imagine, no matter how often she describes it to me. How is it that somebody living just on the other side of my fence can have such a drastically different life? It is just one more strange dichotomy that defines my life here.
In the past month or so, her family has had more stress than usual with the arrival of her husband's youngest brother from the village. He's just a teen but his parents have already passed away, having had him late in life. The family members caring for him in the village had grown weary and so they sent him here. You see, he's extremely difficult to care for. He's an "orang stres" - a term that literally means he's stressed but loosely means he's got some sort of mental problem.
He eats all their food if they leave it out where he can find it (they have no food to spare as it is) and when the carts selling street food pass by, he calls them over, though he has no money of his own to buy food with. He drinks every last drop of their water or finishes off liters of soda until he vomits. Somehow, he can't seem to stop himself from binging on food and drink. He sits and laughs to himself during the day and spends all night either tossing and turning or knocking around the house, waking everybody. When he is awake, the whole household is. He rejected the navy blue towel I sent to him because it was "dirty" but gladly accepted the white sheet I'd sent along with it because to him only white can be "clean."
In desperation, they have sent him to a home that cares for people like him, a rare Christian ministry in an area where such help is seldom available. I'm glad he is getting some professional help and yet I know what a huge strain this is on his family. What is it like to have someone in your family be so dependent and helpless and to want to help when you have no resources yourself? What is it like to scrape together the monthly fee, knowing it is more than you can afford and fearing a sudden illness that could eat away at the little bit left over for food for your family once the bills are paid?
Last week, he came down with some sort of lung infection that the doctor first feared was tuberculosis. They had to take him to the doctor, who prescribed several different medicines and, until they were sure he was going to be okay, he had to stay in my friend's home again - yet more sleepless nights spent trying to calm him, working to convince him he could sleep. Unsure of what they were even giving him, my helper-friend brought all the prescribed medicines to me so I could look them up on the Internet for her - vitamins, antibiotics, drugs to reduce mucus, a drug for psychosis. "What do I know?" I told her. "I can only try to explain what little I myself can barely understand." Why won't the doctor explain these things, why are people not allowed to question him?
When it came time to take him back to the mental illness center, he did not want to go. On the road, on the back of the motorbike, he squirmed and worried, making the long drive all the more treacherous. When they arrived, they had to work hard to convince him to go into his room and then they hurriedly locked the door behind him. I think of him there, not fully understanding all that is happening, locked in a room with nothing but a mattress, spread with a white sheet and the towel his nephew traded him for the "dirty" blue one. Is he fearful? Does he even realize he is sick or that they are only trying to help in the best way they know how?
These are uncomfortable stories for which I have no answer and no solution. Life here is so raw, and yet I see beauty. I see it in this family, doing their best to help. I see it in my helper-friend, trying to love, trying to be patient on so little sleep and shouldering burdens that I'll never know -all for the sake of her husband's "crazy" brother. She speaks of hope and of the day this little brother is healed. She advocates on his behalf, trying to find a way to help him when others have given up on him entirely. She knocks on doors, calls relatives and inspires them to properly care for their baby brother, to give him at least a chance to be made well again.
How can one of my dearest friends, who I see almost every day, live a life so different from mine?
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