Welcome Back Friend

Some astute readers may have noticed that we haven’t really mentioned Taborok (our friend and rickshaw driver) for some time. The reason is that we weren’t sure what to say. A few weeks before we had to make the emergency trip back to the US for Julie’s funeral, Taborok started getting really sick. He had been slowly losing weight for a few months and we had talked about how he was getting sick. We paid for him to go to the doctor here and they kept running tests and saying he had a “blood problem.”

Sam went with Taborok to the doctor because she was frustrated with the fact that he didn’t seem to be getting much information from his provider about his condition, and the encounter was infuriating. Taborok had brought over his medical papers for Sam to look at to try and make some sense of and we tried looking things up online to figure it all out. The clinic, tucked into a back alley, had a doctor ostensibly trained in Calcutta, although honestly, her credentials are fairly suspect and we’re sure she could have bought them as easily as earned them.

The entire doctor’s appointment consisted of him sitting in front of the physician’s desk (with an audience of the entire waiting room) for five minutes while she glanced at the papers from his last visit that he brought her and she wrote a new prescription on it. She asked if he had been taking his medicine and he said all but one, because one of them made him vomit violently. She then (instead of asking if he needed a different treatment or considering her prescription’s tolerability or appropriateness) commenced with scolding him and saying “well, if you don’t want to get better I can’t make you take the medicine.” She was equally unimpressive in response to Sam’s questions regarding whether Hepatitis should be tested for(it is super common here), why his anemia was so severe, etc… it isn’t like Sam is a freaking doctor; these weren’t highly complicated questions- why did you run this test? Why didn’t you test for this? Why did you prescribe this? What is the diagnosis? Well folks, do you want to know what her diagnosis was? He’s poor. He’s poor, she said, and eats poor nutrition so he is sick. So… Ok, why did he suddenly get sick when he is in fact making more money than ever in his life and eating better than ever? Her reply, He’s a rickshaw puller, he’s poor and unhealthy.

So, we had decided to take Taborok to see the doctor that we know and have as our doctor here (although we’ve never needed to actually go). He treats a lot of foreigners and speaks English so Sam could go along and hopefully get some actual medical explanation. Unfortunately, right as all this got planned out, we had to leave. By that point, Taborok hadn’t been able to work for about a month, and we were all stressed out about what was going to happen.

Sam and Atticus got back to Bangladesh a week earlier than Jon. Sam called to see about Taborok and he said he was feeling a little better. He wanted to work, and was more concerned about making sure we were all ok after the family trauma. When Taborok showed up to take them to the market one day , it was pretty clear that he wasn’t able to work. He looked like a skeleton. His face was completely emaciated and he was just weak and frail. It was awful, actually, to see him so broken down. Sam described him to Jon as “barely alive.” He insisted he could do it, but could only make it a few blocks before Sam made him stop. In that moment, it became very clear that he wasn’t going to be driving a rickshaw again for a long time, if ever.


Within the week Taborok decided to leave Dhaka and go to his parents back in the village. There was an NGO doctor in the village that he could see and he was just unable to survive here. He knew he couldn’t continue to take a salary from us and not work, nor did he want to, and he knew there was no way he could pull a rickshaw in his condition. It was terrible. It was also terrible to deal with as we were so heavily grieving the loss of Julie at the same time. In some ways, we couldn’t really face the reality of what was happening.

So time passed. We tried to call his phone, but the number said it was turned off. Sam wondered if it had run out money (it is pre-pay) so she put some money on it, but still nothing. She tried to call many times and each time the phone remained closed, which honestly, was a like horrible kick in the stomach. We started to allow ourselves to admit that he might not have made it, and that we might not ever know. We kept wanting to write a blog about it, but weren’t ready to deal with the emotions it involved.

Then, one day last week, as Sam was sitting by herself in the immigration office waiting for the appropriate window to open, she got a call. The phone said Taborok! He’s alive! He’s ok – mostly! It was all Sam could do to keep from bawling like a baby in the waiting room of immigration.

So, Taborok is back. We now know, thanks to the real docor he saw in the village, that he has Tuberculosis, which is in fact quite prevalent here. So common, actually, that any doctor worth a crap would have tested him within the first few visits. He came very close to death, and got down to about 60 pounds in weight. He spent 15 days in the hospital. He is getting better though, and he is on antibiotic treatment, so he should recover . He had to sell everything he owned for his medical costs, his parents went into terrible debt, and he is now living back in the same slum that he started in when we first met him.

On one hand, we find it hard to not feel like total failures. We tried to just help one man, but in the face of the insurmountable poverty and totally, completely, unfair balance of wealth and access, all it took was an illness for him to lose every single advantage he had worked to get. He feels like a failure too – he feels bad for selling the rickshaw, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t drive it and he was dying. He has 4 children and a wife to consider – it would have been stupid not to sell it.

On further thought though, maybe this isn’t the tragedy we initially felt it was. He is alive- without the wealth that owning that rickshaw had created, he would not have been able to afford to go into the hospital, or get his family to the village with his parents to be cared for. Maybe, instead of feeling sad that he had to sell his rickshaw that we all worked together to buy, we ought to feel elated that the act of kindness we took part in almost a year ago, did so much more than we could have imagined. It might have saved a man’s life. Not just any man either – Taborok. A man we care about, and who is part of our life and family. So maybe this all worked out the best it could.

Now he is back, and has been driving a rickshaw for a few days. We told him to take it easy, but we put him back on full salary and he comes in the morning and afternoon for Atticus’ school pick up and drop off. We don’t use him for extra stuff- ideally he can take it lightly and get his strength back over the next few months before we leave.

He also still comes over for tea and adda (chit chat) and it is so incredibly nice to have him back. He is literally our favorite person in this whole country, and we’re so very happy he’s ok. Although, Sam’s former nickname for him “TB” now seems somewhat off-color, so she doesn’t use that any more.