stories of YOUR GIFTS AT WORK
When Will Sanjay's Suffering End?
At 13, Sanjay has already endured enough suffering for a lifetime. His body is swollen and battered. He’s plagued by recurring fevers. The pain is constant.
From the time he was small, Sanjay looked after pigs in his remote village in Nepal. As the oldest, he cared for his brothers and sisters, too. One day, his father simply never came home. Destitute, his mother took Sanjay to a nearby town and sent him to work with a man who promised the young boy a better life.
Instead, the man — whose name Sanjay never learned — beat and starved him.
When Sanjay was finally able to sneak away, he tried to figure out how to get home. He wandered around Kathmandu, determined to find the bus station. But with empty pockets, Sanjay never stood a chance of finding his way home.
Then, a stranger who saw the helpless boy wandering about approached him.
“Come be my helper, and I will let you go to school. I will give you food and help you,” the man told Sanjay. “Come work for me.”
So Sanjay did.
Tragically, Sanjay’s trust was once more shattered by a man who also beat him — repeatedly and savagely. One day, the man noticed that Sanjay had severe swelling all over his body. Driven either by conscience or fear, he took Sanjay to the hospital and abandoned him there.
Worse News to Come
When Sanjay arrived, doctors tended to the wounds from his beatings. Then they discovered he also had advanced leprosy. The disease was destroying his nerves and causing a severe reaction. He was started on multi-drug therapy (MDT) to kill the leprosy bacteria that were ravaging his body.
But that was just the start of the healing Sanjay would need.
Leprosy is often called “the living death” because it sentences victims to a life of isolation and sadness. Though their bodies are physically cured, there is still a devastating stigma about the disease — a superstition — and it can marginalize someone so completely that they may never marry, work, or lead a normal life.
For Sanjay, it took months and months of rehabilitation, care, support, and encouragement to treat and transform him.
That’s where Ram Bahadur comes in. Ram has a cleft palate and a severe speech impediment. Most people don’t understand him. But Sanjay does. Ram is in charge of a pig farm at the hospital — and he helped mentor Sanjay as a pig apprentice. Tending to pigs is hard work, but the two always set about their tasks with quiet determination and pride.
And that’s enough for Sanjay. He is happy to be working — and to finally feel like his life is worth living again.
It costs just $25 to start a child like Sanjay on needed medicines to cure leprosy. And it’s just $300 for everything it takes to return them to a normal life: follow-up care, job skills training, therapy, literacy classes, and the spiritual encouragement they need to transform their lives. Thank you for joining us in touching and treating those who suffer so greatly.
