Five Cups of Tea Per Day Should Give You a Caffeine Addiction

So tomorrow officially concludes my first week in Jamkhed, a rural town around 8.5 hours outside of Mumbai but still packed with people. It is actually much bigger than I expected, with a nicely-sized market/town area and men hanging around everywhere (employment is not too high).
The program I am working with is called the Community Rural Health Project (more info on Jamkhed and CRHP can be found on their website here) started by two Indian doctors in the late 1970’s to bring health to the poorest of the poor. What they have succeeded in doing over the last 30 years is to create a health system that capitalizes on the innate strengths of the village that, among other things, has reduced the infant mortality rate from 176 per 1000 to 19 per 1000 births.

Much of my last week has been dedicated to visiting project villages where the health model has been established outside of Jamkhed with the mobile health team. Traveling to these villages is an awesome experience, as I see that really it is not doctors who are needed to affect health but rather health activists. As Doctor Arole pointed out, the three biggest challenges that villages face for sufficient health are:
1) Nutrition. With the limited amount of money the villagers have, most of it is spent on carbohydrates, which gets a bigger bang for your buck. Protein is much harder to get, compounded by the fact that cows are rarely killed for their meat and most people are vegetarian anyway. Thereby, many of the villagers have Zinc, Iron and Vitamin A deficiencies.
2) Environment. In the villages, many of the trees are cut down, the water is dirty and standing, and the air is polluted. Houses are also not built for living in but rather for cooking, storage and animal shelter. There were also no toilets and people would defecate outside their homes and on the roads. Because of this, water spread so much disease and was a source for many mosquito-borne illnesses.
3) Traditions. Women and children were considered lower-class citizens and would not be given rights or freedom (even today, women cannot enter a liquor store), and the fate of one usually directly affects the fate of the other. Medicine was controlled by voodoo healers (charging outrageous prices) and disease was a curse of the Gods, who in turn demanded sacrifices, prayer but no treatment.
So what CRHP has done is demystify everything (esp. medicine) and educate everyone (esp. women). By first empowering village health workers (1-2 women per community, at times illiterate, who were nominated by the community) to take the lead in learning about health maintenance and then educate their community, they have successfully transformed the health of over 50 neighboring villages. Presently, there is relatively no malaria, no diarrheal diseases, zero malnutrition, little tuberculosis, and the caste system is non-existant. Women literally run the village and run it better than before; to hear them speak about their condition 25 years ago is really inspiring.

Travelling to the villages is also a fun experience because, by this point, I have begun to get accustomed to being blatantly stared at wherever I go. There is no modesty here, as people will look at me with a face of sheer confusion and wonder, even when I look at them and ask if everything is all right. It feels as though I’m on the endangered species list and everyone wants to catch a glimpse while they can. Word also travels really fast. Yesterday Wout (a Dutch doctor who’s also at CRHP for a year) and I went to a store to buy shampoo and as we left each store that we passed along the way called out “Shampoo, Shampoo” to us. How they knew we bought shampoo we have no idea but I guess it is now known that white people buy shampoo.

Finally, what’s also fun about going to the villages is the exorbitant amount of tea that we drink. At every house that we stop in, at every conversation, meeting and get-together, tea is given and it is rather rude to decline it. So we drink around 5 cups of tea every day. The tea, though, is made from powder and is drenched with sugar, a symbol of social-status in the village. Thank God the tea is so watered-down otherwise I’d be flying high wherever I go.

So far so good here in Jamkhed. Monday starts the three month training course. They also caught a snake in a female resident’s bathroom yesterday, which is nice. Apparently cobras are everywhere, making falling asleep the most difficult time of the day (the heat helps me, though).

Also, as a side note, National Geographic visited CRHP last month to take pictures of the project and write an article that will be featured in the December edition. Pretty cool and it should be a great fundraising tool. You should check it out.

Be well,

Jeff

A Cough Worse Than in Mexico City – My Experience in Delhi

Before my program in Jamkhed started, I had the opportunity to spend five days in Delhi, the capital of India and one of its largest cities both by population and size. A couple thoughts…

Traffic/Road Safety: Never have I seen such madness on roads as I saw in Delhi. A three lane street would be filled with at least six lanes of cars with every open nook in between filled by motorcyclists, cows, rickshaws or taxi drivers who have gotten out of their cars for a quick pee. With cars going in three different directions on the same side of the road the only thing you can hear are car horns beeping with different ‘horn tunes’, used since many drivers don’t have side-view mirrors and thereby don’t know you are next to them. I was shocked and thrilled every time I got into a car or rickshaw, literally like a rollercoaster ride.

As a tourist, I viewed the traffic and labeled it a part of Indian culture. This mess of the roads wasn’t a problem but it was rather their way of life. The problem, though, is that on average in Delhi, 3 people are killed per day and more injured on the roads. Without a police force monitoring the accidents or any sort of enforcement or accountability, the larger vehicle is placed at the blame, yet with 60% of the vehicles on the road being motorcycles it is often the opposite.

This is what brought IRTE (the Institute for Road Traffic Education) into the picture and on the third day in Delhi I had the opportunity to spend the day with Rohit Baluja, its founder and president. He started the Indian non-profit in 1991 (he is also in the shoe business) and in the past 17 years has seemingly done more for road safety in Delhi than the city government. The Ministry of Transportation, he says, views the auto industry as profit-making and thus spends no time or money investing in their roads and/or drivers, the lifeblood of Indian businesses. And no new law has been passed since the late 1980’s to involve bicyclists or pedestrians in the transportation act. Through training courses (for elementary students, government officials, policemen, and others), speed-monitoring vehicles (an incredible vehicle called the CrashLab was invented by IRTE that can record and analyze vehicle accidents), national and international conferences, meetings with government officials, and a future public health department, awareness that safety on the roads is important is becoming recognized. It is also highly needed.

The Sites: Two of my days in Delhi were spent visiting the incredible monuments and sites that have been preserved for hundreds and even thousands of years. The pride Indian’s have for their country is so transparent in every tour and conversation, and visiting the sites I have read about has shown me why.

While I was touring, I was able to meet many fellow travelers from other countries and we immediately formed a bond, regardless of where we were from. In such a drastically different country as is India, I have found that many travelers bond together for support, which was a really nice part of my stay and I met some great people.


At India Gate I made the mistake of giving a beggar 40 rupees (around $1), as I was then followed around by 4 other beggars for the rest of my 20 minutes there. I literally had a line of beggars following me and people would stop, look and laugh at my misfortune.

Spirituality: A different smell was certainly ever-present in Delhi but so was a feeling of deep spirituality, as so many different religions, temples and people are crowded into the same place. Even greater, these beliefs are literally worn on the faces of the people and illustrated through their clothing. I visited Mosques, Hindu temples, B’nai Temples (awesome faith, fyi), churches, and even ate breakfast with Hare Kirshna’s in their temple. Faith is so present in daily life as it’s needed just to get by in a very difficult city.

On Friday, I flew from Delhi to Pune where I took a 4 hour ride to Jamkhed, which is where I will be for the next 11 months. As a side note, I think I have a permanent cough now due to the dust, pollution and heat. I also love eating with my hands (or rather, right hand), God’s natural forks. And I have photos but the internet connection isn't fast enough here to allow me to post them so I'll have to wait until I get to Pune or Mumbai.

So far so good. Loving India and this incredible opportunity. Feel free to write back or ask questions.

Jeff

Description of Blog

Hi ya'll,

Thanks for coming to take a look at my blog. This will be the place where I post reflections on my time in India. I encourage and ask everyone to email me and ask whatever questions they have and I'll make sure to respond.

Have a great year,

Jeff