My New Red Bicycle
Saturday, February 09, 2008
I bought a new red bicycle today for all of us to use. The bike has a rack on the back to carry vegetables and such from the market and is soo old school. Apparently, they don’t make bikes with gears in Surkhet but it will still save me a lot of time, especially with all of these trips I’m making to and from the hospital and around the city. The family I’m living and working with never learned how to ride a bike. Tonight after everyone was sleeping we took the bicycle out on the front lawn and had our first official lesson. We all practically peed ourselves laughing. Ubjikala, my main woman, kept pedaling backward and Prithi her husband fell every single time he got on the bike. I should have taken a video.
Riding a bike is one of those things that’s really hard to teach. I feel like you just have to fall a gazillion times until you get it. I have memories of my dad running alongside me on my first pink bike and screaming at him not to let go. He always let go and would just yell “PEDAL PEDAL PEDAL!” So that’s all I do. I scream pedal, pedal, pedal, and laugh.
The woman above’s husband passed away six months ago from AIDS, leaving her with five small children. Today we went to the local medical clinic for her first HIV test. The wait from the moment they took her blood was 15 minutes and it felt like the longest most terrifying 15 minutes of my entire life. When they told us the results came back negative we both started crying tears of joy, jumping up and down and screaming. All the technicians and nurses looked at me with a blank stare. Suddenly one of them explained that since her husband had HIV and the test is only 99% it would be better if we took another test in a week. Talk about a buzz kill. Really. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers and send some love and light her way. She’s a kind and loving mother who asks for nothing and works hard to provide for her children.