RATS

RATS
Not in darn-it, phooy, but the rats that creep you out. Healthy, robust, well-fed rats are what are here, BIG RATS.
But then, it’s really no surprise. The choice of the Abkhaz for clean versus dirty seem heavily weighted on the later. The rats are happy, happy, happy and BIG here.
Gabrava Indusha has rats. When we entered today there were shreds of bedding, sofa stuffing, scraps of food, paper, wood, plastics everywhere. Her “home” tops the list for the most unadulterated disgusting place yet.
Gabrava receives dry food (pasta, rice, flour, lentils) and fresh fruit (apples, oranges, bananas, greens) and hygiene products(TP, soap, cleanser) from the MSF social worker every month. She has NOTHING except a mattress, a filthy chair, in which of course she insist that I sit, and a little tiny table, full of moldy food, black, fuzzy stuff, shreds of who-knows-what, with the floor underneath and around the table also full of the same black fuzzy stuff.
Gabrava wants to give me SOMETHING, although she has NOTHING. Everyone wants to give me something, nuts, candy, flowers, something. I appreciate the gesture, but I (MSF) is supposed to be giving not receiving. I am learning receiving is a form of giving.
I have given up resisting gifts intended to express the happy-to-welcome-you joy. I accept a mushy, but not yet black fruit of some kind, probably last months delivery from our social worker.
In this moment, Gabi is a gracious hostess, hosting an Amerikankee. In her rat-infested, vomit-inducing hell-hole, she offers me her “best”.
While Olga. our national doctor, with whom I am working today, is talking with Gabi, (well-named - non-stop talker), I sneak in a bit of cleaning. I know I shouldn’t but my hands cannot stay still, they must do something. I put on a pair of thin surgical gloves we use for changing dressings on wounds, and they immediately rip, but here, where something is better than nothing, I forge ahead with clandestine cleaning (although we are all in the same room). I pick up a stinky, mushy Jehova’s Witness pamphlet in Russian of course, empty plastic bottles and caps, sticky stuff, mushy stuff, black stuff, really smelly stuff, rat poop, shreds of things……something that has become nothing….I am a fastidious fairy god mother. RIGHT?
After the exam and more gabbing from Gabrava, after she complained bitterly about the RATS, we prepare to leave. I pick up the large plastic bag with the grunge in it and am walking towards to door, and Gabrava intercepts me and the bag. I indicate I am happy to carry the bag outside, to the dump, for her.
She will of course not allow this. But I am your fastidious fairy god mother, come to heal your wounds, and clean your home…..NOPE. Instead of engaging in a tug of war with Gabi I relinquish the bag, I render the rubbish back to it’s rightful owner.
I am ashamed.
I am a “doctor without borders“, but am I also a “doctor without boundaries“?
Even though there was a part of me that said, “this is pathological hording, and she is at risk of disease and death because of her hording. I am there to help…“but somehow, when she took the bag, intentionally, deliberately, I knew I had crossed a line, she may be ill, she may have a psychologically diagnosable, unstable condition, but did I have a right to impose my values in her single room-home?

I am sure next month when I return all of this mush-rubbish will have found a new home in this room and the rats will have consumed a portion of it and the remainder will be taunting me once again.
Truth is, I am sure my well-intended meddling is something I have done in other’s homes, my friends, my family.
I hope, I pray next month I have the restraint to leave Gabi’s goop alone, and just focus on her.
This is hard. The medicine is easy, we have so little sophisticated technology to get in the way. We keep things simple, medically. It’s the rest that is hard.

Everyone, please just do a little bit of cleaning FOR ME today, for the world, make a little space a bit better than it was. Perhaps I can take comfort in this.
And let the grunge, the muck, the black fuzzy stuff just remain.

THANKS
g