Petay Betha and Margin

resting 

Petay Betha (belly pain)

Opportunities to help abound.  Choosing how or when to help or whom to help is often more challenging.  Today was easy.  My tutor and I were out running a few errands and on the way home our rickshaw-wallah was clearly ill; I've never seen someone have as much trouble pedaling a rickshaw (though I'm not permitted to help - talk about uncomfortable).   Of course he must work even when ill, or he doesn't eat and probably his family doesn't eat.  Finally, at the corner near our flat he had to stop - he simply couldn't go any further.

We hopped off and I asked what was wrong and examined him, streetside.  Several people, including several other rickshaw wallahs stopped to watch, listen and offer opinions.  Patient confidentiality is little different here ;-)

He had belly pain, subjective fever, and very little else in the way of other symptoms. Picking the two most likely diagnoses (worms or typhoid) I ran upstairs grabbed our last two tablets of albendazole (for worms) and a bottle of clean water and brought them down.  I wrote out instructions for him that if he was no better tomorrow, to purchase ciprofloxacin and take it for a week.  He probably can't read, but the pharmacist can.

Margin

I often think about 'margin' in our life - the amount of space in which to rest, reflect, recharge or relate with others.  I can think of margin as a sort of emotional or mental bank account from which I draw to live, raise children or help people.  It's a good thing to not get so busy that there's no margin; I have not always managed it.

By comparison to our rickshaw-driver this morning, though, I have infinite margin.  He can't even afford to be sick for a day much less spend time simply thinking.  That does not mean that I should feel guilty about having margin, but rather that I should encourage and act, in the small ways that I can, to help others have margin.