Speck

Smog over Lake Banani

The rails rattle under the floor and cigarette smoke swirls - we're on a train heading North through the fog: our first time traveling with no one to hold our hand.  The hospital will be short-staffed over the next week or so, so I'll be taking call and rounding.

For now though, while we study, we stay in Dhaka.  I've been mostly writing about interesting differences and beautiful things here but, believe me, I could tell you about the lack of infrastructure, the grit and dust, the open sewers, the trash, and the dead rat I stepped on.  But I won't say too much about them.  Especially about the rat.


There are days when I feel quite small.  There are more than 14 million people in Dhaka and from a rooftop, if you sit and look for a while, the density begins to press on you.  So many people.  So I mostly think about the small details of our small life.

I haven't written (yet) much about the poverty everywhere, but it is everywhere.  In every neighborhood sidewalks have families lined up living under tarps.  From the beggars outside the bazar to the whole family that lives on our street corner, you are surrounded by it.  It threatens to overwhelm you - what can one person do against this tide? I can end up ignoring beggar after beggar out of a felt need to just keep my head above water.

Disease follows poverty, and what can I do against that flood?  Very little, in truth.

But while my human nature wants to be significant, to be somebody, I'm just one person.  OK, so we are six people, but we're still just specks.  It's not a bad perspective to keep.  I am just a speck.  Speck. Speck. Speck. This small speck will do its speck best to affect the specks around it.