Conversation with Gerel Ganbat

In Episode 13 of The Fading Causes Podcast I talk with a young Mongolian mother, Gerel Ganbat.

Unlike most of my previous conversations in this series, this is not about grand global affairs but about something very small. A very long time ago, when my children were little, they were enamoured of the poster of a tiny kitten and stuck it on my study door. They were still too young to understand the biblical quotation emblazoned across it: “to be faithful in little things is a big thing.”  In the fullness of time, the children left home but the poster stayed, yellowing with age.

I remembered that when I came across Gerelchimeg Ganbat from Mongolia. Her story started with  personal tragedy when she gave birth to a son with a very seriously disabling but entirely preventable condition that has disappeared from the developed world but is still prevalent elsewhere.  What follows is a harrowing global quest: clashing diagnoses in Mongolia, a month in Beijing’s elite hospitals, therapies chased from Sweden and Czech Republic to Thailand amid visa woes and bank-draining costs.

We talk on many questions. Why could she not stay a dignified victim, blaming her karma? Why did her unimaginable loss ignite not bitterness but a burning mission? Not for herself but to help others in the same difficult position? What turns personal hell into a societal lifeline, victim to victor? Is suffering necessary for good to come from it? Can a person’s empathy bloom without experiencing personal tragedy?

With my head full of its usual inhabitants of gloom and doom, horror and cruelty from around the world with ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and repeat genocide in Darfur, Sudan, to girls abducted in Nigeria, execution sprees in Iran, and devastated communities from climate-extreme floods in South East Asia, I ask Gerel: what is the point of her drop-in-the-ocean work – helping a few children with special needs most of whom will not get better?

She replies simply, “My son taught me life…”. This is a small personal story but perhaps a parable for the big dramas of humanity and inhumanity of our times.

Although our conversation brought us both to tears, this is, by no means, a sorrowful tale. So please don’t be put off listening or watching:

with thanks to Impact Newswire Faustine Ngila, 4IR