Hammerin' in the Delta: It's Not just About the House

Although building a house is where we devote most of our time this week, we are also here to build community, both among ourselves and with the families of Tutwiler. One connection that is dear to all of us is the Tutwiler Clinic and Sister Dr. Brooks DO. Over the eleven years we've been coming to Tutwiler we have found many ways to support the clinic and Dr. Brooks. One of our group members, Natalie, compiled donations from doctors in the Northshore area who are supportive of our work. This year they donated: medication samples, an x-ray view box, lab supplies, and splint and cast materials. We went over to the clinic today to deliver the supplies and to talk with Dr. Brooks. She has such a gentle spirit I feel inspired and renewed every time I hear her speak. I encourage you to visit the clinic's website: tutwilerclinic.org In addition to the mission and history of the clinic there is a link to an interview with her that was done by 60 Minutes. The following reflection is once again from Jan. He speaks more eloquently of Dr. Brooks than I ever could.

Casey

Reflection by Jan

May 21, 2014

We met with Dr. Brooks this afternoon after delivering some medical supplies to the clinic. She told us of an elderly couple who lived down the street in a house that is typical of much of the housing in Tutwiler. It looks like it started life as a pair of mobile homes (very old mobile homes) set at right angles to each other, with a makeshift addition and screened in porch where they join, all covered with clapboard siding painted a shade of yellow that reminds me of Hollandaise sauce. I’ve seen this house many time over the years and wondered if this was our purpose here, to replace this kind of housing. Dr. Brooks explained that this devoted couple had 15 children, now scattered around the country. The elderly father had always wanted to live in a brick house, so in the past year the children got together and had their parent’s house faced with brick, at least the two mobile home wings. A very wabi-sabi look, but it is brick. The children all gathered together at the house the day before Mothers’ day to say good-bye to their father who died on Mothers’ day from lung cancer.

More than 50% of the housing stock in Tutwiler (and rural Mississippi) is below standard. Dr. Brooks told me that the number of cases of impetigo that she treats dropped dramatically when the state mandated in-door plumbing for all dwellings. What strikes me as even more remarkable is that Dr. Brooks has only been here about 30 years, so this is a pretty recent change. She told me once that when the law passed, some plantation owners (they’re farms, but they’re still called plantations here) preferred to tear down the worker shacks on their property rather than make the investment in in-door plumbing. Those shacks were what some folks called home.

Several years ago Dr. Brooks gave me a tour of the area, driving through the towns of Tutwiler, Glendora, Webb, and others, relating story after story about the twins she delivered on this back porch, the single mother with the cancer stricken son in that house, the farmer, pinned under his overturned tractor, that she was called to see on that farm, etc. Every house had a story, a very human story. Many of the homes were not much look at, some in serious disrepair, others hobbled together with makeshift materials. It would be easy to feel sorry for these people. What I noticed, though, was that many of these homes had a tended vegetable garden, and some flower gardens as well. Laundry hung on a clothesline was a common sight. Impoverished as the homes might seem, the people who live in them do take pride in their lives and in themselves. They do have dignity and self-respect. They have a culture that is no less valid than our own on the Northshore. Lord knows we enjoy their cuisine and we seek out their music in the blues bars of Clarksdale. I’m left wondering what it is I really have to share with the people of the Delta. Maybe it is I who is being enriched by them.

The philosophy of Sr. Anne Brooks, D.O. and the other sisters who came to Tutwiler 30 some years ago is that it is not sufficient to simply treat a patient’s physical ailments. To overlook the social conditions and the cultural background a patient lives in simply not good medicine. That is why the practice of medicine dispensed at the Tutwiler Clinic isn’t simply about physical exams, and diagnoses, and treatment regimens, but includes talking with patients, knowing where they live, asking about who is at home and how they’re getting on, and figuring a way to be sure they will take the medicines they need to be taking. Often it means going to the patients, wherever they live, if only to sit with them a spell. So part of what happens here is making sure patients have a decent place to live, and that is why Habitat for Humanity was invited to start building houses here some 25 years ago. We’re working on houses 39 and 40 this year, all in a housing tract surrounding the Clinic and down the road from the Community Center. We are building not only houses, but a community. The folks in this neighborhood all know who we are, and are happy to see us. There’s always a chance that one of us has worked on the house they now live in, so we have a connection with them. At the end of every week that a volunteer crew visits Tutwiler, the neighborhood residents host a pot luck dinner for them at the Community Center. We’ll have our chance to see some old friends tomorrow. That’s how it works here in Tutwiler.

If anyone thinks this trip is only about helping to build a few houses, they are sorely mistaken. For me, as a physician who knows how to pound a nail, this is every bit part of my medical practice as anything I do in Evanston.

Natalie and Dr. Brooks with some of our donations (this is the supply room for the clinic)

Unloading the supplies

Jan cutting closet trim work

Bernadette is working on baseboards

Russ enjoying the Mississippi sun

Nicole and Mike up to their usual antics

Thank you Harriet for offering grace

Andy, the head cook extraordinaire along with his sous chefs. This was one of the best meals I've ever had in my life! A barbecue blowout, with pork ribs, chicken thighs, pulled pork and beef brisket from his smoker; baked cheese stuffed potatoes; roasted corn on the cob; beans, greens and cole slaw.

Andy's talents know no bounds! He carved this square to be a part of the Sheil plaque we create and leave here every year

Most of us plan on attending Sheil Fest on Saturday. Some are leaving Friday and some of us are leaving VERY early to make the 640 mile trek back to Evanston. We'll be the ones looking a little disheveled!