August 16, 2011
I just lit incense to give thanks for our safe return home after the most terrifying ride of my life. The micro (small bus) driver tonight sped at maniacal levels through narrow, dark, mountain roads with plummeting mountain drops on either side. He did this while passing huge trucks and just barely missing oncoming trucks headed towards us. I lost track of how many promises I made to god in exchange for our safe arrival in Kathmandu.
Can’t say I was surprised when, after the 10th near-death incident, as our van tried to pass yet another giant truck on the one-lane road, our driver finally plunged the van into the storm drain on the right side of the road to avoid an oncoming bus. Needless to say, I was in shock, and hanging in a very precarious position at the top end of the vertical van, so I wasn’t sure what to do. We finally got down just in time to see Menuka stopping a black SUV and asking for a ride to Kathmandu.
This is the same road that used to be full of Maoist ambushes during the ten-year conflict here. Bus-fulls of people were burned alive when they could not give money to the insurgents. Earlier, on this same road we also saw a group of people carrying a woman to the hospital. She was having a difficult pregnancy and was being carried in a sack held up by a long stick that two men carried. In the rural villages it is difficult to access health care, even during emergencies. Most of the hospitals in this country are located in the cities; nobody wants to open them in the rural areas because they are difficult to access.
Menuka tells me, “Women here survive by the grace of God.” Many women here die during pregnancy and labor because they lack access to healthcare. Menuka’s own mother walked herself into the fields each time she was in labor, and gave birth to 8 children by herself in the forest.
I once heard one of my Peace and Justice colleagues ask, “Why do you consider maternal healthcare a human right?” I was never able to formulate a response to that question until now. When we have an epidemic of women dying during childbirth – dying from something that is easily preventable, but inaccessible due to poverty –the domestic government is responsible for providing them with the care they need. In Nepal’s case, the domestic government is unable to provide this. Therefore, the international community has a moral responsibility to prevent these deaths from happening. We have the equipment that would alleviate their suffering. To prevent these women from receiving it when they need it the most, due simply to their economic status, is inhuman.
I once heard one of my Peace and Justice colleagues ask, “Why do you consider maternal healthcare a human right?” I was never able to formulate a response to that question until now. When we have an epidemic of women dying during childbirth – dying from something that is easily preventable, but inaccessible due to poverty –the domestic government is responsible for providing them with the care they need. In Nepal’s case, the domestic government is unable to provide this. Therefore, the international community has a moral responsibility to prevent these deaths from happening. We have the equipment that would alleviate their suffering. To prevent these women from receiving it when they need it the most, due simply to their economic status, is inhuman.
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