Longwan Caring Home is located in Dahua County, which was listed as one of the poorest counties in Guangxi Province. Longwan Caring Home is a big family consisting of orphans, single parents, and abandoned children. The normal expense of the Home is sustained by plantation, breeding, and small business. Longwan town is situated in Yao tribe Dahua autonomous county of Guangxi province. It is part of LongMa village. For generations, people there are planting corn plantation on barren land, nearly 90% of the land are rocks, only 10% soil. Throughout the years, the main food source is corn porridge. AiHua Ban, the founder of Longwan Caring Home was born here. Below let me share some of her experience. AiHua Ban’s living condition is extremely difficult. People there are very conservative and superstitious. When they get sick, they don’t have money to see doctors. Instead, they go to witch for help. For instance, if you have headache, witch tells you someone put rocks inside your head and need to use chopsticks to take them out. If people with cancer, the witch would say you’re framed by someone who put your soul side bamboo tube and burned it in a fire pit overnight. Therefore, the witch needs to perform some ceremonies to win back your soul. Finally, ceremonies were performed and people lost life in the end. Similarly, they don’t go to hospital to give birth. Instead, they have midwife help them out at home. They don’t know how to disinfect and sometime the baby died of tetanus. In AiHua Ban’s childhood, there was a cemetery designated as baby burial ground. The worst thing is that this town is small and dead people got buried in the ground right above the underground water. As result, rain washed them into underground water and people drinks contaminated water from there. At present, total population of this small town is 400. About 50% of them lost their spouse before reaching their early 30’s. On top of all this, people are lack of education and this is the root cause of extreme poverty. Little Red Scarf is in Lanzhou, Gansu province and provides financial support and encouragement to children suffering from congenital heart disease. In addition, they provide families with post-operative care and help the children sustain a healthy lifestyle. Xiaoqin is 26 years old and very talkative. Chatting with Xiaoqin makes you feel very relaxed. The main difference between Xiaoqin and other patients is that she always expects she can receive surgery someday. She said: “Teacher Yuin, my suffering will be behind and I will have a new beginning. My life will be normal and I can get married with children like many others”. To most of us, there is nothing unusual about this kind of wish but this is what Xiaoqin has wished for in the past 10 years. Today, she can finally make sure her dream will come true. Tomorrow, Sept 05, 2014, is the big day … the day she will have surgery and the day her new, normal life will begin. When Xiaoqin was 16, school had physical examination for students. She is like other students dreaming about one day they will attend college. After the physical exam, she was singled out and called into teacher’s office. She got very nervous since she had always been falling behind when played with her friends. At home, she always has the privilege of resting at home when her sister, brother help their parents with farm work. Back in her junior high, she became short on breathing in school morning exercise after a short run. Her teacher concerned about this and asked Xiaoqin not to join morning exercise. Her father discussed this with teacher and took her to county hospital for ultra sound checkup the following day. She was diagnosed with congenital heart disease. Doctor explained what is wrong and suggested heart surgery as early as possible. Xiaoqin’s mom passed away about two years earlier and her father was still recovering from the loss of his wife. Now, her father needs to deal with Xiaoqin’s heart surgery. The whole family seemed to be in a black hole all of a sudden. A simple frolic became a luxury. Xiaoqin told us the person who suffered the most is her father. He needs to deal with the pressure from both physical and mental. This is something hard for children to understand until one day they become parents themselves. |
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