Wednesday 16th January

Today we went to another leprosy colony called Burla and we gave the kids a cricket bat and some balls to play with, then Ps. Bev and myself were bought into the handclapping hypnotism with the girls and Mahalia gave some small sweets to the oldies. We were only there for one hour. [editor’s note: I have never before seen anything like the gross deformities of hands and feet that I saw today. Leprosy is a most cruel disease. Even though these people are cured of the leprosy bacteria, it continues to ruin their lives because the nerve damage that was done is irreparable, so they continue to injure themselves by simple steam burns to the fingers, thorns in the feet, stubbed toes etc, but because they can’t feel any pain, they don’t attend to the injury, therefore infection sets in and gets into the bones. Ulcers are also a major problem which can be caused to their sensitive feet simply by wearing shoes that rub a little bit in the wrong place. One lady I saw had 4 gaping holes in the soles of her feet that will never heal, another ladies toe nearly came off in my hand. (seriously!) The New Hope crew are training up one of the lepers who still has fingers to be the official “wound dresser” for the colony. They also give everyone a small mirror to put at the foot of their beds so that they can self-inspect the soles of their feet for any damage each night.]
For lunch we went down to a HUGE dam. Beautiful. High, higher even higher... walking all the way to the top of a tall tower, we could see the whole dam and more. If only we could take some photos, but we weren’t allowed... everyone was tired and worn out so we went back to the hotel for a nap. Dinner and then bed. Xoxo Maddi(Don’t forget to keep posting comments because i want to hear from you all)