I woke up at 4:30 but managed to stay in bed until about 5:30 or so. We had to be downstairs and ready by 7am so we got up and threw stuff together. Breakfast wasn't open yet so Lina and I went out to the street and bought a couple of bananas.
The drive to the rural village took about a half an hour. We met with three local handicapped villagers to discuss their experiences with prosthetics. Some of us then went to a local house to speak with a woman with a 2-month old baby about her experiences with childbirth and caring for her baby. Then we moved to a house down the road to speak with a woman, and her family, who was close to delivery about her experiences. What I found fascinating was that both of them had delivered at private hospitals, even though they would get reimbursed at government hospitals. They both seemed to be relatively well off, educated, and supported by their family.
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| Villager handicapped by polio and his father |
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| Family with two month old girl |
We then assembled at the local town hall and met with a local ANM (axillary nurse midwife) and two ASHA workers. The trio showed us materials they gave pregnant and new mothers. We only had a few minutes with them because they were late for a meeting with other ASHA workers. Each worker supports a population of around 1000 villagers, which, relative the the ratio of doctors to villagers, is pretty good.
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| Listening to ANM & ASHA workers |
We then met with three other mothers, speaking with them about their delivery experiences and getting feedback on the hat (big surprise, they all had different opinions). We spoke until their babies got too fussy and then switched to speaking with some polio victims. It was so hard seeing these men with their bodies so twisted by polio. They would ask what we could do for them and the truth was nothing. In fact, during this stay in India the presence of handicapped people has been much more prevalent than during my previous stay. I've been shocked by how many kids I've seen who have to drag themselves around because their legs have been destroyed by polio.
After we left the village we went to a local Buddhist temple and walked around. We then went to two local museums. At the first one there were bats hanging from the trees! The old stone archeological artifact was cool.... but gosh bats! They were so cool! We weren't allowed to photograph anything in the second museum but we might have been a bit naughty and snuck in a few photos.
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| Giant Buddha |
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| Group outside the first museum |
We then went to a Hindu temple. When we arrived we had to leave our shoes in the car and wash out feet outside the temple (we were pretty convinced this just made them dirtier, but eh not our temple not our rules). They were in the process of filming either a movie or a TV show and we kept kind of getting in the set (which apparently they are okay with because they love recruiting foreigners into their shows). We weren't able to go into the main part of the temple for about 45 minutes or so, but it was worth the wait. We followed the line and got blessed by a couple of priests (?). I was one of the first people to go and simply tried to mimic the Indian people ahead of me.
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| Film crew |
On our way back to Guntur we stopped by a famous spice shop and bought some local spices. Guntur is known as the spiciest part of India and they grow some very famous chilies. Back at the hotel we had some team meetings and enjoyed some room service. Nothing like lassis and a chick flick at the end of a long hot day.
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