Mother Teresa’s sisters the “only hope” for the poor and ill
Dushanbe (AsiaNews/Ucan) – Unable to walk and stuck in a hospital short on medicine and equipment, 75-year-old Alia Ibragimova looks forward to little except visits by two foreign women dressed in blue-bordered white saris. The two women who visit Ibragimova and others every Sunday at Dushanbe Nursing Home are Missionary of Charity (MC) nuns. "The sisters are the only ones who help me," Ibragimova said. Her left side is paralyzed and her legs are hugely swollen, so she cannot walk on her own. "If I lie down, I start to suffocate, and I can't walk because I'm too heavy and my left leg doesn't work. All I can do is sit and look out of the window”. The old woman feels abandoned. "After 45 years of working for my country, I have a monthly pension of 35 somoni (about US), absolutely nothing," she lamented. "It is impossible for me to pay for good treatment”.
The stench of urine and sickness overpowers anyone stepping into the two-story government facility. Stretching across one floor are three four-meter long rooms, each with 10 beds for people living on the streets. The other floor looks much the same, but its patients are simply poor, not homeless.
MC Sister Rosarius told UCA News her community has been buying the medicine patients at the nursing home need. The nuns had to stop this practice last January for lack of funds, but they managed to resume it in September. “We need prescriptions signed by doctors," Sister Rosarius pointed out, "because we buy only the medicine they really need. Some have asked for medicine they didn't need and then sold it”.
Taisia Lagunina, another resident, awaits cataract surgery. The 77-year-old widow was left alone in Tajikistan when her son went to Russia. "The sisters save my life," she says "With my 43-somoni pension, I can't buy all the medicine I need. God bless them and their work”.
Two of the four Missionaries of Charity nuns in Tajikistan are from India, while one is from Pakistan and the other from Kenya. Their main ministry has been to the elderly, providing free food through a soup kitchen, and medicine and help with household chores during home visits or at local hospitals. They visit the sick at home and do their chores. Now they are trying to find a wheelchair for Ibragimova. Rustam, Ibragimova's husband, said: "I will pray to Allah for the sisters all the time if they find a wheelchair for my wife. It will be the only way for her to move."
But the nuns also bring something of no lesser importance, as patient Brauer Elena observes: “The sisters help us a lot not only by buying the medicines we need but also by showing somebody cares about our lives”.
Galina Kirsanova, a nurse at the home, says most of the patients are homeless or alcoholics living on the streets. "After they improve, we can send them to a home for the elderly or let them out," she said. "It depends on them, but usually those who return to the streets come back here again."
Muslims, mostly Sunni, account for 96 percent of Tajikistan's 6.5 million people. Russian Orthodox Church believers make up another 3 percent, and Catholics number only about 250.
I 6,5 milioni di abitanti del Tagikistan sono per circa il 96% islamici, soprattutto sunniti. I cristiani ortodossi russi sono stimati intorno al 3%, i cattolici sono circa 250.
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