Friday, April 11, 2008

Teaser










Update: I now have posted CHAD day 2 andf more, so go back and check. We're going to a World Heritage Site town called Mamulampuran this weekend, so I think I will be spending a lot of time when I get back uploading pics (see CHAD day 1 for samples).
In the meantime, here's a tidbit from this afternoon:


























Poor quality video, but finally up!





Here is a street corner in Vellore on a rather slow day. Watch the far corner at 37sec in for a common sight on the sidewalk. I like how it acts like this is "its" block. (audio works too). And a pic of possibly the same pedestrian.


I met a living god, was kissed by an elephant, donned native attire, saw monkeys at the hospital and more!

Friday was a really big day for me. We went to the Golden Temple, just outside of Vellore. I don't have any pics of my own, since no cameras are permitted and they search you, but I've included some from when it was being built to give you an idea. So, we pay our Rs100 and start in. The temple itself is in the middle of the most beautiful and cleanest grounds I have seen in this country so far. There is a covered walkway in the shape of a 6-pointed star that you wander along around the perimeter, with the temple itself in the middle. During the walk you pass many signs with deep quotes from someone named "Amma", basically a lot of nice common sense stuff, while relaxing chanting is played on the speakers overhead. After this 1.5Km walk, you reach the end, and walk straight up to the temple. The pricey tickets get to go up to it, the cheap ones (me) get to get real close and walk around it. It is ridiculous. Probably the shiniest thing ever. Very nice.

This site: http://www.sripuram.org/ has pics rotating through on the front page and some stuff about Amma.






So, we walk around, I ring the bells a few times, and start heading out. Stop off at the "gift shop" and a nice guy there starts explaining the layout of the temple to us. Tells us all about Amma, how when he was 16 years old, he got a calling, and it was revealed that he was the personification of the god mother of all. So he goes by "she" now, and started an ashram. 16yrs ago. The golden temple just opened less than a year ago. Anyways, he asks if we would like to meet Amma. He has to call ahead to see if its ok, and then we walk across the street to their old temple complex and we are about to go in but I am stopped. I have shorts on, not permitted. So he takes Anne and Cristina in, and I stand there thinking I may have missed out on a chance to meet a deity. After about 10min, I'm resigned to this fact, and an elephant walks out and passes not 2 feet from me. Well. This made my day. It was all decorated and pretty and nice. And then a random guy comes out and gives me a dhoti (like a sarong, the skirt that Indian men wear). So I wrap it on and go in. There are a bunch of temples, and people are all over the place praying, but they lift up the ropes for me and let me past them back into the VIP section, where all the actual faithful are not allowed (not my fault, hindus, sorry). The girls already met Amma, and he's busy now, but my new Indian friend tells me I can join and watch Amma perform a puja, which is a special ceremony. So I follow him into a big room where about 10 people are sitting, a band is playing, 3 women are chanting constantly, this guy keeps ringing a bell, and on the other side of the room is a very decorated cow just lying there. Amma comes in, and starts adorning the cow further with flowers and incense and gold dust and sacred oils. The cow has all kids of decorations, and he drapes her with a bejweled blanket. Spends a lot of time with incense at the rear end, which is probably a good idea. As it progresses, the music goes faster an faster and the bell rings more and more, and they chant louder and louder. The cow, the whole time, looks very unimpressed. For being the mother of all India, she's pretty chilled out. The high point for her is when he (sorry, Amma is a "she") feeds her some fruit. She likes that a lot. They even hold a golden tray under her mouth to catch any drippings. Seriously. Then its over. That is the biggest deal I have ever seen made about a cow. Everybody apparently is thrilled to have gotten to see this, especially my new friend, who says its only because he brought me that he was permitted in here, so I have a great honor. Amma comes over and asks my name and where I'm from, and tells my new friend to take me to the guesthouse and feed me. He/she speaks perfect English, and is about the same age as me, looks like you average hairy bearded sweaty dude. We go and scratch the cow some and she likes it. Nice cow. I mean, all-mother. Whatever. Anyways, so we wander around the temple complex some more, and I keep getting to cut in front of real worshippers to enter temples and stuff. And there's another elephant! This one gives me a kiss in the face and taps the top of my head with its trunk as a blessing. My new friend says it likes me. Then I go and buy one of the nice gold dhoti's everyone one is wearing ($5, a decent deal). My new friend helps me put it on right. OK, what happened was that a man I'd just met helped me put on a skirt and then he told me he loved me. Anyways, after he says "Chris, I love you", I say "Thanks, you are a nice friend". He gives me a red dot on my forehead. The the two ladies, my friend, and an Australian lady name Zoe who now lives there go over to the guesthouse for food. We chat for a bout an hour. They used to work in engineering and pharma, but are much happier spending time with Amma at the Golden Temple now, and want to do this forever. Then we said goodbye. Wow. No $ requests, no recruitment. Just the original price of admission and my $5 skirt, and we got the deluxe 5-star tour and a free meal. Pretty cool.

Later that day we went to the old fort here in Vellore, which is where these pics were taken. There is an old temple there we went in. You have to take off your shoes, and the stones were really really hot. And there were monkeys (see pic below, it'll enlarge if you click on it)

All - in -all a pretty busy and fun day. Just the kind of stuff I was looking for. Saw a golden temple, a living he/she god, blessed by an elephant, donned a dhoti and a red dot, saw monkeys. I could go home now and be content.

More to come though.....





































Random Vellore/CMC Observations and Pics

Just a few random things that don't fit into other posts but that I still want to show you.

Yellow flowers blanketing a building on the college campus.

A leprosy rehab clinic at CMC hospital (don't see those in the US)




A flower vendor on the street. The women apparently buy their fresh flowers the night before. These were just picked.









Turtle mountain. Can't deny the resemblance.






A temple I found down a side alley in Vellore. These this are incredibly intricately deocrated. And there are many many many of them all over.






Ahh, tea. Done the Indian way. Sweet, hot, and delcious. Probably averaging 4 cups a day.








Anne and Cristina's "deluxe" hotel room has a great view! But at least they have a/c.







CHAD Day 2 - Doctors Rounds

CHAD Doctors Rounds differ from nurse's rounds in that we take an entire "mobile clinic" in the form of a schoolbus to various villages, and the patients come to us. Usually they have been seen by a nurse in the last week or so. The patient population is pretty evenly divided between prenatal visits and chronic illnesses. Both sets of patients have cards they bring which contains all the info about prior visits, vitals, and current medications regimens.

On the bus we had two nurses, two student nurses, several health aides, an intern, and an upper-level resident. On getting to a village they would assign numbers to the patients who were waiting. It was impressive to see how many could show up within 5min of us pulling up. The resident took care of prenatal visits on the bus (measuring fundal height by hand, and checking fetal heart sounds with just a stethoscope, no doppler!), and the intern handled most of the chronic cases, referring patients into the bus if needed. I was very impressed with the MDs' skill set. They had little kids, elderly, pregnant, whatever, just walking up to be treated. If I had participated in something like this during my 3rd year, I would have given Family Practice a much closer look, but it is too late now, so there it is.

I just want to point out how impressed I was with this intern. She was post-call, and we worked a long day. Started out at 8:30AM, did not get to our 4th and final village until about 4:45PM, averaging >2hrs./village. She worked her way through 47 patients in just under 1 1/2hrs. Amazing. We all gave her a round of applause after that.

This was a great experience for all of us. In my pictures here, we see me, Anne, and Cristina with one of the student nurses, Susan. There's a shot of me surrounded by village kids, women recieving their medicines from the bus, and the number-passer-outer guy getting mobbed by villagers who have been waiting all day for us.

I also have several pics of the flowers in the women's hair. Young, and especially pregnant women wear fresh flowers in their hair and bangles on their wrists to give off soothing smells and sounds, supposedly good for the pregnancy. I just think it loks great. And again, the saris are pretty striking at times.

There's also a shot of Susan teaching new mothers about anemia. I also show a tree nearby to where we were working. Villagers tie up and hang cow placentas in this tree to ensure their cows keep giving good milk.

Finally, a pic of an old woman sleeping nearby. I jus thought it looked nice.






































































CHAD Day 1 - Nursing Rounds

























































This was out day to go out on nurses rounds to the villages. Basically, each village or two has a part-time health aideknoknows everyone. She goes around and finds out who's sick, who'shaving trouble with their meds, etc, and makes a list. Onceevery 1-2 weeks, a public health nurse from CHAD comes around the village, meets up with the health aide, and goes to see the patients. She'll make it to about 4 vilages in a day, going to into individual homes. Sometimes the patients only need counseling on how to take their meds. Sometimes they need replacement meds, and aregiven a week's supply with directions to report to clinic within that time. Sometimes nothing can be done and she tells them to go to clinic ASAP, or even the CMC hospital. The nurse has limited meds to offer, mostly Tylenol, some anti-hypertensives, some diabetic. She does not dispense antibiotics.

So, we met up in the morning at the CHAD clinic and I was assigned to a Jeep with Renee (public health nurse, in solid blue sari), Sangita (nursing student in blue/white polkadot sari. a driver, and various health aides, wearing pink saris. It was hot, so we brought lots of water and bag lunches. The countryside around Vellore is beautiful. For all the noise and trash and chaos of the town, the surrounding villages were indeed serene. Some villages had paved streets, and looked like a real town with a center. Others were just random farm houses that happened to be near each other. This was an amazig day. We walked on dikes between rice paddies to get to huts with one room and a thatched roof. We saw 11-day old patients and people so old they didn't remember their birthdays. 100% of the conversations were in Tamil, but the nurses were kind enough to interpret. These patients, who obviously have next to nothing, would invite us in and offer us food and drink. Itwas amazing and heartbreaking at times.

I saw a mother with a growth-retarded newborn and nobody to help her. The husband's family only helps out for the second child, so he and his family abandonded her. She sold all her livestock, has no way to earn money or any help, and broke down into tears while we were there. We couldn't offeranything other than a shoulder.

I met an old man, no major problems, just old and tired. He and his two wives live with their granddaughter. He has seven children but none of them help.

I saw many people, went into many houses, hit my head many times on "doorframes" into thatched roofs. All the villages have electrical and telephone wires strung, most homes have access to power. They plow their fields with oxen, get water from a pump, survive as subsitance farmers. They were all very gentle and gracious, and the kids were ridiculously cute.

It was a long day, and I have the most amazing farmer's tan to show for it, but it really showed me howIndian life is. Beautiful scenery, hand-to-mouth existence.

So, after much work, I have discovered that neither the CMC college nor hospital libraries allow any USB or CR-ROM usage due to virus fears. Thus, I'll have to upload pics at an internet cafe with super-slow dialup and only1 USB port for 6 computers. Thus, the promised pics and video, of which I have enormous amounts, will trickle in slowly. I'll add pics to old blog pages and let you know when they've been updated.


The pictures on this page show the public health nurses going into villages and houses, as well as some of the sights along the way. The woman with the baby was the one who began to cry later in the visit (note the baby mosquito net behind her). We also see a tailor at work, a man drying rice, the low entrances that I banged my head on several times, roadside temple, a doorway where we had lunch (everybody shares what they have) . We see buffalo power juxtaposed with electric power. I have a pic of the old man, his two wives, and granddaughter. The last pic was from the very last house we went to. We had been there talking you a young mother about her baby, in the house for about 5min, when I heard a noise behind me. Turns out she had another daughter too shy to come out to see us, so all we could see were her feet.

Next up: CHAD Day 2 - Doctor's Rounds
(even more pics)