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New hands offer hope for extraordinary group of men
October 28, 2009
Clagett helps one of the special needs
children at a camp on the Thai border.
If public health service has jobs on its “front line,” Rachel Clagett found an extraordinary one last summer – fitting prosthetic hands and providing rehabilitation to landmine survivors on the war-torn Thailand/Burma frontier.
Clagett, an Arnold School physical therapy student, spent July as a volunteer at three different sites - the Mae Tao Clinic, the Care Villa in the Mae La Refugee Camp and at a school for special needs migrant children, all on the Thailand border.
The region has seen two million refugees flee from their homes since 1996, displaced by fighting between ethnic and government troops inside Burma.
The patients at all of the camps “shared a common story - fleeing their home country to seek medical attention, and sometimes just to survive,” said Clagett. But Care Villa’s inhabitants were unique: each of the 18 male residents was a landmine survivor,
Many of them were blind and most missing one or more limbs. Almost all suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome and depression. They have been marginalized by their community and considered a burden to their families who already live in poverty.
For most of July, Clagett and Missy Malkush, a close friend from their college days at Wake Forest, spent long hours with the amputees, teaching them “how to use the prosthetic hands to feed themselves, help with chores and work with their new hands to complete their activities of daily living with more independence.”
Writing about her experiences afterward, Clagett remembers, “It wasn’t until I was home, sorting through pictures and talking about my experience that I realized how amazing it was that blind men who were missing one or both limbs for years were now bringing hot tea, cookies, and rice to their mouths … “
Clagett said one man named Tupo, was legless, blind in one eye and had the use of only one hand. For years, his contribution to communal life was adding his voice to music therapy designed to maintain morale.
Tupo, one of the residents of Care Villa, uses his new prosthetic hand to write in a notebook.
“We were there about two weeks when we fitted him with a hand,” Clagett said, not realizing what the prosthesis had jumpstarted. She said Tupo asked for a pen and immediately set to writing in looping Burmese script, first all over his left hand, then a letter to his wife and finally bible verses in a notebook. He was just one of the nine lives profoundly affected and improved by the new hands.
Clagett said the Thai refugee camps are quite close to the border, where heavily armed Burmese militia maintains a lookout from nearby hilltops. Thai soldiers patrolling in the camps were a welcome sight providing some security, yet the chance for attack by the militia was always a real and common threat.
“Going in July meant it was rainy season which brought decreased violence secondary to the increased difficulties of trekking through the jungle, but it also meant we were soaked every day” said Clagett. “We might have had two dry days during all of July.” Creature comforts are few in the tropical climate. “We bathed from a wash basin, slept under mosquito nets, ate some questionables, and got around on bicycles or by foot,” she said.
Clagett says she hopes the time will come when she can return to Thailand but for now she’s been able to keep up with life in the camps via email. She has been encouraged to learn her former patients are continuing to heal, find new uses for their hands and that other volunteers like her are finding their way to the border region.
Right now Clagett is focused on finishing her doctorate in December and finding a job helping rehabilitate traumatic amputees and brain-injured patients. But she’s also still amazed at the serendipity that reunited two friends in the Thai rainforest.
It’s a “small word” story that began last fall. Clagett says she was in a “blah” point of her life – going through the motions of school and work but finding little encouragement in the process. On a whim, she took in a movie, Beyond the Call, a documentary based on the lives of three middle-aged men who take on a mission of delivering humanitarian aid to doctors and others in war zones around the world.
The movie’s message of selflessness moved Clagett who set out on an Internet search for similar opportunities. Before long, she discovered Clear Path International, an organization that works in various parts around the world providing assistance to landmine and bomb victims, their families and their communities.
Clagett messaged Clear Path and within an hour received a reply asking if she’d like to volunteer her services.
The news was so exciting that Clagett’s next message was to her longtime friend Malkush. Though they had gone separate ways since Wake Forest, the two women had remained close friends and confidantes. Clagett was astonished to learn that Malkush too had been in touch with Clear Path and also had been asked to volunteer her services in Thailand.
The issue was soon settled and the two began making plans for a July visit to Thailand. Malkush, who had attended Georgia Tech for her master’s in prosthetics and orthotics, was completing a residency at Shriner’s Hospital in Los Angeles.
Malkush contacted a colleague at LN-4 Hand, a California non-profit in California that makes available free prosthetic hands to needy amputees. The colleagues helped arrange for the donation of ten hands which Clagett and Malkush carried with them. (Unfortunately one of the hands proved defective)
In the months leading up to the Thailand trip, Clagett was able to raise awareness of the plight of the refugees with whom she would be working as well as financial support for the trip by training and completing the 26.2-mile San Diego Rock-n-Roll Marathon.
She decided one way to ask for support in a time of economic hardship was ask for public donations in support of her participation in the run. Never claiming to be more than a recreational runner, Clagett nonetheless finished the June 6 marathon with enough donations to cover the cost of her airfare to Thailand.
Clagett said her adventure continues even though she’s settling back into a routine at home. In Thai camp she learned that a former director and his family had been granted asylum in the United States and had been placed in Columbia, S.C.
The father, Mordecai Htoo, is a landmine victim too, who has been unable to find work in the Midlands area. His wife, Maylarry, works at Chick-fil-A while helping mother five children.
Clagett said area churches are helping support the family along with student volunteers in the Arnold School who are tutoring the youngsters after school and helping them adjust to life in the United States.
Clagett says her memories of her time in Thailand are indelible.
One of them, which painted a great image of Care Villa, is a song written by one of the men, recognizing the group’s spirit to heal and find fulfillment in their lives.
I lost my eyes, so I can’t look at you.
I lost my arms, so I can’t hold you.
I lost my legs, so I can’t come with you.
My heart is broken, but I’ve still got my voice.
So I’ll sing.
To read more, link to the blogs that Rachel Clagett and Missy Malkush posted about their experiences in Thailand:
