February 11th

I cannot believe I’ve been here for three weeks already! Time is going fast here, but I guess that’s a good thing. And if this past week is any indication of what to expect down the line, I doubt it’ll ever get boring here. I started out the week in a very Zen mood after having our first yoga class and Ayurvedic practical class all before 10 am. Yoga is about a 20 minute walk away at 6:30 in the morning. It’s held in the living room of our professors house which is so cool and very academic with books everywhere and a whiteboard with philosophical fleeting thoughts scribbled all over it. The class itself is a lot of philosophy and explanation of the reasoning behind the movements which I prefer that early as opposed to power yoga. In Ayurveda we were taught about a certain type of massage that is very therapeutic and since we are serious students in that class and need to fully understand the material, I was forced into receiving a full body hot oil massage free of charge.

Tuesday and Wednesday consisted of classes and trying to figure out exactly what’s expected of us. A lot of information is getting lost in translation but that’s just something we’ll have to figure out as we go.

Thursday was another visit to the Maternal and Child health care center where we observed some more and learned from the workers who were on staff. Some of the kids remembered us from the adjoining daycare and this time they found my camera and I discovered that they love to have their picture taken. Later that day we had our first Hindi lesson but the only thing I remember is ‘Meranam Emily Hai’ which means my name is Emily. There is nothing familiar about Hindi at all and I can tell I will struggle with it already.

Friday’s field visit was really awesome.  Instead of going back to the health care center, Dr. Shastry took us to meet Lakshmi, a mulit-purpose health worker that went door to door to her patients’ houses (sound familiar mom?), and let us listen and learn from the services she was providing. We went to several different houses all of which were of different economic standing. There was one house which compared with others looked like a mansion and belonged to a family of engineers. The women who we visited here was 9 months pregnant and had returned home to her mother’s house to have her baby. This is common practice in India and very rarely is the father there for the birth or the first month  following. We also saw rural families living in very poorly built huts that would surely wash away during the monsoon season or at least flood the place with mud which was of course upsetting but reality. There were also homes that were not BPL (below the poverty line; 17000 rupees/year) but still had 8-9 people living under one roof who all had an issue of their own. I found I learned a lot more from this trip from any other so far and every house we visited was so kind to us even though we felt as if we were invading. I have an idea that if Lakshmi will allow me to accompany her weekly on these visits that this may be the source of my research project I need to complete by the end of the program here. I could take down the basic data in each home (name, age, condition, complications…) and create a report based on what I find. I haven’t gotten this approved yet but I will work on making this possible tomorrow since we don’t have class.

On a less nerdy and academic note, today we went to a rainforest reservation and another temple way up in the beautiful western ghatts. We saw elephants and giant fish and monkeys and flying lizards and flying squirls. The rainforest is one of the wetests spots in India and is one of the top Biodiversity hotspots in the world. We got blessed fruit from a guru whose name is too long for me to even try to remember and ate a soupy meal of rice, dal, and sweet with just our bare hands while sitting cross-legged on the floor.