IcE CrEaM

This was written more than a year ago.  Read on.

Ice cream, we know how sweet and cool it is.  It has different flavors, but here in Lae, what we usually get are chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and toffee, some with chocolate chips thrown in it.  Ice cream is really very delicious. Kids love it.

Every week, I got ice cream.  But I don’t eat it.  I just bring them to the less fortunate.  My boss is the president of Rotary club, and one company donates four 16-liter cartoons of ice cream every week to the Rotary to be given to the cancer patients here in the city.  And I was asked by my boss to pick them up and do the delivery.

There are several cancer patients here, young and old, men and women.  Bone cancer, anal cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, mouth cancer (probably due to the rampant chewing of betel nut), cancer of the blood, and so on, the hospital wards are loaded of them.  And the scene is very horrible.

Touring the hospital wards for cancer patients, you could see sufferings, pain, agony, helplessness, hopelessness and even death.   One officer of a Filipino association who visited the patients had nightmares.  He was tormented by what he saw.  A volunteer who is tasked to distribute the ice cream to the patients can’t help it but cry sometimes at the end of her rounds. She is overcome by pity.

Treatment of cancer in Papua New Guinea is inadequate.  Once you got afflicted, it’s just like having a death warrant. 

And for those patients suffering in the hospital wards, eating ice cream could somewhat ease their sufferings.  Ice cream is a luxury here in Papua New Guinea.  And the cancer patients get it for free. 

But we can’t call them lucky.