Rabin
Rabin is a really sweet little boy. He gets on well talking to all the older boys and men in the hospital. He also gets on really well with Sanjaya. Although they look quite similar in age, Sanjaya is about four years older. Rabin seems like a pretty good person to have around if you're in hospital!
He is from the Govakur. As well as experiencing some stigma from the community, other people in the village advised Rabin to be careful of being close to his mother after she was diagnosed. 'The community told me not to eat from the same plate as my mother and not to sleep with my mother.'
'Previously there was a little stigma but now it's ok,' he says. 'I'm 13 years old. My mother was also treated at The Leprosy Mission over three years ago. I have one small wound and nodules - my mother recognised it was leprosy and brought me for a check up. She was staying here for treatment for reaction. She looked at all things here and she learned a lot of things about leprosy and that's why she knows about it.'
'When we came to The Leprosy Mission they took a biopsy and smear and blood test and a physiotherapy test,' he says. At Anandaban, Rabin started a child dose of multidrug therapy. He had ENL reaction (inflamed lumps under the skin) and took steroids to treat this type two reaction.
'I don't know about the germs of leprosy. I know it's curable and if regular treatment is given the disease will be cured. I'm missing home but I need to get treatment first. The hospital is good. I believe I will be better after treatment here. My home is 5-6 hours from Kathmandu by bus, then half an hour by foot. The bandage I have is from my skin biopsy.'
Rabin explains, 'My mother also had leprosy but she is cured so if I also take my medication regularly I will get better,' he says. 'I'm OK [ie., no bad nerve damage] and my mother is also OK. I'm in seventh class in Gorka school. I like Nepali class. I'm Nepali so Nepali is OK. There's a lot of cultural things in that class - stories, poems etc.'
Rabin is very positive about his future: 'I have two choices for the future, one is to be a singer and one is to be an actor.'
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