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
