Trafika Europe 3 - Latvian Sojourn

Clara Swain

(born in Elmira, New York, 1834 - 1910)

Clara, she is clear and she is Swain, that swan, with wings curled in bloody gauze, reeking of iodine and chloroform. Clara, the first doctor and Indian missionary, wanted to love all, and forever – yet who dares to love and dress wounds for eternity? This world serves only a handful of human pieces on the plate of Love. Clara enters India on an elephant called The Methodist Woman's Foreign Missionary Society giving young Indian women medicine and the curing arts. Narrow walls of opulent female chambers overflow with whispers, tremors, mold and germs, dark diseases

widening and healing under her thundering

prayers, needles, and procedures. For all the sick ladies of Zenan there is little time left, under the red wind

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