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Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Don Gre



Every workday…and many weekends…we are greeted by Don Gre* who has been diagnozed with schizophrenia.  He is on and off his meds.  He is an older man and since our first year in Nicaragua he has been in and out of our lives…more in than out.

He comes by daily and makes proclamations about political issues, our work, the United States, Cuba and Fidel, Presidente Daniel, and the Bible…he loves for us to read to him from the Bible he carries everywhere. For the last few months instead of just making his announcements, getting a glass of refresco, and wandering away, he is now staying in our office lobby most of the day.

In the 1980s living in North Carolina we started three different shelters.  During that decade the Regan administration pushed to get the severely mentally ill out of government-run mental hospitals - where many of said hospitals would terrify a sane person, let alone a mentally ill person.  Supposedly the mentally ill would be placed back into their local communities where they would receive care.  This would have been a great idea except there was no funding in the communities.  Vast numbers of the mentally ill ended up on the streets and in our shelters.

Families could not cope with family members with paranoid schizophrenia, seriously bi-polar condition, and psychoses.  The local communities were way over their heads.  So many of these people were ridiculed, laughed at, shunned, and ignored.

Now I am in Nicaragua and - let me be quick to say - I would not want to suffer from a mental illness here because there is little to no resources to deal with all the problems that arise...little money for medications,therapy, or in-patient care...but at least in our office, Don Gre is treated with respect and kindness

All of us inwardly sigh deeply when he has interrupted the work for the 10th time that day to explain something or ask us to read some passage.  Becca says that she has gotten better at Bible Races** looking up verses for him.  Mauricio who works with the agriculture cooperative will stop what he is doing if he thinks Don Gre is getting agitated and sit him down and say, “Let’s read the Bible together, Don Gre.”  The hospitality crew fix refrescos for him and are ever so gentle with him.  And our sons greet him and shake his hand.  When he comes to our health clinic for his acute care he is treated with love and much tolerance.

All the kindness shown to Don Gre makes me proud to be part of this staff.  How we treat those who suffer more than we do is the measure of a people…of a nation...of a staff.
-Kathleen
*The “o” in Don is like “tone” and Don is a title of respect.  “Gre” is pronounced like “grey”
** A game to see how fast one can find a verse in the Bible