10
THE GUILFORD IAN
Clifford tells of India, of poverty, of hope
Surrounded by paints and the music of the Indigo Girls, Cary Clifford sits
comfortably on the floor of her room in Shore Hall as she begins her story.
She dabs the brush and paints while she speaks, making what appears to be a small,
multi-colored sign. All thoughts of the background disappear, however, as her memo-
ries of India and Nepal come into focus.
Like many high school graduates, Clifford took a year
off after graduation to word and to travel; unlike most,
though, she spent four months of that time in Calcutta,
India, working with the order of Mother Theresa.
Clifford saved up money for 10 months, and in mid-
March of last year, flew from Dulles International Airport
into a future that was as unfamiliar and foreign to her as the
diverse country to which she was traveling.
Being alone and not knowing what to expect, Clifford
admits she was scared, but those initial fears were also
quickly dispelled.
"After I got there, I asked myself what I had been so
scared for," she said. "I knew everything would be okay
because I felt really drawn to what I was doing."
And what Clifford found herself doing, specifically,
was working with the dying and destitute of Calcutta.
Mother Theresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity (which
is also the only growing order in the church), runs 16
houses in Calcutta alone. These houses cover the gam ut of
human services from medical clinics and orphanages to
houses for women, and even a leper colony, which Clifford
emphasized, "was one of the nicest places I went."
Her memory of the leper colony was so positive
because she had to face people with physical ailments and
mutations on a daily basis, but inside the house the patients
were well taken care of and even seemed fairly happy.
Clifford said much of their positive attitude was due
to the house's being practically self-sufficient. The pa
tients were able to establish a certain amount of economic
independence for themselves because they worked looms
and sold what they made. Among other projects, the
patients wove saris, many of which were bought by the
sisters themselves.
Though Clifford's main chores involved feeding and bathing the patients, and
though none of the patients ever spoke English, Clifford remembers her time at the
house with particular fondness.
Donations come from all over the world to the Missionaries of Charity, but in spite
of the amount of money coming in, there are so many causes it has to be spread thin.
Though much free medicine and food is given to the needy, the staple medicines are,
Clifford joked, "vitamins and holy water."
People in the Calighat house were usually suffering from cholera, typhoid, malaria,
or tuberculosis (and often a combination thereof)- Though these diseases may not all
be life-threatening to the rest of the world, in a city where a broken leg could mean death,
they are devastating.
Although the sisters give out free medicine for T. 8., many patients still die from the
disease. The shots need to be taken for a full year, and because many patients feel better
after only a month, many stop the medication and quickly regress to their previous
condition.
"And after a third time, a person's system becomes immune to the medicine... and
Week at the Hut
'-"J U : -£ v - 4:3opm §j||jj Mid-week meeting for worship ||p-
Monday 7:00 pm Canterbury Club 5:00 pm GCRO meeting
THttday-l?-' I '*':" s:lspm 11$ Episcopal Eucharist (Moon) • lilllplliMllIi*: •H ' jggfp g| Mass and student dinner $
■\StrSPS 830 JOT Hf Hilfcl (Passion Pil) ■(■§:/I> S:30 P m
Wednesday noon Campus Ministers lunch (Cafeteria) 9:00 pm Quaker Concerns
Brown bag lunch. Open discussion. Friday 1:00 pm Project Community
Eric Dawson
Features Editor
Features
V
photo by Joan Malloch
Having taken time after grauation to travel, freshman
Cary Clifford tells of poverty-stricken India.
that's when the disease becomes incurable," Clifford said.
If and when a person did die, they were usually taken to the city's "crematorium" (or, more
realistically, the city's wood pile).
When Clifford first arrived in Calcutta, "bombed city images came to mind," she said, but
she added that an El Salvadoran friend sarcastically told her that Calcutta wasn't even that
clean.
Though Calcutta has an official population of twelve million (and an unofficial population
of eighteen million), it possesses not a single stoplight. In spite of the countless people and
"And I don't want to detract from Mother Theresa at all," Clifford said, "but every day I
met people who were such saints.. .at least as far as that word could apply."
Another famous person Clifford saw in Calcutta was Patrick Swayze. While in Calcutta,
S wayze's new film City of Joy was being filmed, and Clifford mentioned the somewhat dubious
privilege of having seen him and talked with the camera crew.
Ironically, it was City of Joy, the novel by Dominique Lapierre, which helped her decide
she wanted to go to Calcutta and work with Mother Theresa. She had read much about Mother
Theresa, but the book had her address and the simple prerequisite: "You need nothing but loving
hands..."
And from this simple phrase, Clifford found the courage to travel halfway across the world
and immerse herself in a culture entirely different from her own. For four months she saw a
part of the world that most Americans don't get the chance to visit, and she not only saw, but
for a brief period of time, came to know its hungry and its dying as only an insider can.
Though much more could be said, Clifford finished speaking, and I glanced down at what
she had been painting. On the "sign" I read the lines from a poem by Walt Whitman, and
couldn't help but wonder at their appropriateness: "There was a child went forth every day and
the first object he looked upon, that object he became." ——
omnipresent poverty, though, Clifford quickly adapted to
her new environment.
She lived in a house that cost two dollars a day—a price
that was not even the city's cheapest. The two dollars
included two meals every day, and was mostly British fare
because the house's owner was an "Anglo" woman (half
British, half Indian).
After seven weeks, Clifford left the city on the Gangesand
went on a month-long trip to Nepal. Of the mountain
country's beauty, Clifford said simply: "it was sublime."
From Kathmandu, Clifford followed a rut-covered "high
way" on the side of a mountain to a small mountain town
called Pokhara. She hiked in the mountains with a friend
from Belgium, stopping at lodges along the way, until
sickness forced her to take a small plane back to Pokhara.
Perhaps the most negative aspect of the trip for Clifford
was the self-interested motives of many of the people she
met. From the richest woman in Calcutta who took Clifford
out to eat just so she could "find a job for her brother in
Baltimore," to an apparently nice school teacher who asked
her to marry her son, people often seemed to have ulterior
motives when befriending Americans.
After several marriage requests, Clifford simply told her
would-be suitors she was the wife of a doctor who owned
two factories (doctors and wealth both being highly es
teemed in Calcutta).
More esteemed in Calcutta than either doctors or wealth,
however, is one elderly, Albanian-bom woman known to
the world as Mother Theresa. On one occasion, Clifford
actually met Mother Theresa, and described her as ex
tremely short and "very wrinkly," but a woman who had
done an amazing amount of good in her life.
November 15, 1991