Chapter 62 Chapter VI Spirit of Service

My business has made great progress, but it is far from satisfactory.The question of further simplification of my life and of doing more concrete service for my fellow man has always agitated me whenever a leper came to my door.I couldn't bear to give him a meal and sent him away.So I took him in, put some medicine on his pain, and started caring for him.I can't go on like this endlessly, I can't afford it, I lack the will to keep him forever.So I sent him to a government hospital as an indentured worker. Yet I always feel uneasy.I look forward to doing some permanent charity work.Dr. Booth is the president of St. Aidan Church. He is a kind-hearted person who treats people for free.Thanks to the donation of Bash Rostonji, we have established a small charity hospital under the care of Dr. Booth.I very much hope to be a nurse in this hospital.The work of dispensing medicines takes an hour or two a day, and I am determined to spare so much time each day from my office to work as a pharmacist in a hospital pharmacy.Most of my business is the work of the firm, issuing certificates and arbitrating.Of course, I used to have some cases in the county court, but most of them were not contentious. Mr. Khan, who came to South Africa with me, lived with me at the time, and he handled the work in my absence.So I have time to serve this little hospital:

Two hours every morning, including walking time.This job somewhat reassures me.It includes asking the patient's opinion, explaining the facts to the doctor, and dispensing the prescription.This brought me into close contact with Indian patients, mostly indentured workers, but also Tamil, Drugu, North Indian. This experience was of great use to me, in enabling me to nurse the sick and wounded during the Boer War. The issue of raising children has always been a concern of mine.I have two sons who were born in South Africa and my service work in the hospital has been very useful in solving the problems of raising them.My independent spirit is a well-tested and inexhaustible wellspring.My wife and I agree that when she goes into labour, she should be given the best medical help, but what if the doctors and nurses put us in danger in a pinch?So the nurse must be an Indian, but finding a trained Indian nurse in South Africa is no less difficult than in India.So I researched what I needed to know about safe childbirth.I read "What Mothers Need to Know" by Dr. Tripp Wandas, and I took care of my two children according to the instructions in it, using all the experience I got elsewhere.I got a nurse—for no more than two months at a time—who was chiefly helping my wife, not the baby; I did that myself.

The birth of my last child presented me with one of my most serious trials.The labor pain came suddenly, and it took a while to find a doctor and find a midwife. Even if she was present, she could not help deliver the baby.I had to take care of the baby's safe birth from start to finish.My careful study of the writings of Trippandas has been of inestimable help to me.I'm not nervous. I am convinced that in order to properly raise children, parents should have a general knowledge of the care and care of babies.I have benefited at every step from the detailed studies I have undertaken on this subject.If I hadn't studied the problem, hadn't used this knowledge, my children wouldn't have all the general health they have today.We have a superstition that children have nothing to learn before the age of five.On the contrary, in fact, what a child learns from life before the age of five is something he cannot learn after the age of five.Childhood education begins at conception.When parents conceive a child, their physical and mental state is reflected on the child.During pregnancy, therefore, the fetus is constantly under the influence of the mother's moods, desires and tempers, and naturally also by her way of life.From birth, the child imitates his parents, and for many years is completely dependent on his parents for his development.Couples who realize these things will never engage in sexual intercourse for sexual gratification, but only when they want to have children.The belief that sexuality is an independent function, as essential as sleep and eating, is, I think, the culmination of ignorance.The human world exists by the actions of generations, and since the world is God's playground and the reflection of his glory, the actions of generations must be restrained for the orderly growth of the world.He who realizes this will do whatever it takes to control his sexuality, to arm himself with the knowledge necessary for the physical and spiritual well-being of his offspring, and to benefit his posterity with this knowledge.