Despite the chaos, life here is simpler in many ways. People take time to greet each other, they relish having a meal together, food is prepared with pride and skill, and smiles are always abundant. (poeticizing aside, I just found a mouse literally inside the printer. I wonder why it hasn't been working???).
Yesterday, Matt and I joined a team of health workers on their weekly trip to one of the outlying villages in our district. The group is headed by this woman named Fulo. She has been at this for eight years and under her supervision, her team now personally cares for 27,000 patients in 20 villages. She is one of the sweetest, most kind and caring people I have ever met. She also visits the school twice a day to doll out medicines and fix minor cuts and bruises. The village we went to yesterday was only about 7km away, but because the roads suck, it took about 45mins to arrive. Word had spread throughout the 'village' that we were coming, so after about an hour, a fair-sized crowd had accumulated for us. The village seemed only to consist of 5 or 6 mud houses with makeshift roofs. Entire families live together inside each house, with each son's wife also moving into the house until all of the family's children are married. Because of the severe drought, most of the men had left to find work in more fertile states, such as Gujrath. Clinic started at 11am, and within 2 hours, Matt and I had seen a total of 40 patients together (all children under the age of 5). It was exhausting! That averages out to 3 minutes per patient, to do a full body check up. This is extra challenging in screaming children. Back in the US, we are taught a very specific way to examine kids. First you charm them, then you harm them (I made that up right now, but it sounds really good). But at yesterday's clinic, all rules went out the window as we struggled to listen to heart and lung sounds between high-pitched screaming and kicking. We did our best and we hope we didn't miss anything major because we are probably the only soon-to-be doctors these kids will see for another year. No pressure...When clinic was over we headed back to the 'city' where we ate lunch with Fulo and the rest of the team. FUlo had prepared a small meal for everyone the night before: tons of chapati (traditional, flat, round indian bread en lieu of a fork and knife. kind of like an amazing-tasting pita) and small amounts of potato and tomato dishes. We were about 8 people eating. Of course they insisted that Matt and I serve ourselves first, so I dished out very tiny portions to us. They all then started laughing and proceeded to fill our plates with food. You really cant beat Indian generosity.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A few more pics posted...
These kids!!! Yesterday was the last sunday of the month, which is essentially visiting day here at the school. Families come and meet with their kids, wash their clothes and bring them whatever treats they can afford. These include carrots, sugar cane and small fruits (literally the only treat they get all month). I cannot get over the generosity of these children, because wherever I go, kids of all ages are breaking off hunks of carrots and sugar cane and relentlessly shoving the biggest pieces at me! Can you imagine this in america?
One of the youngest kids, Aryan, really melted my heart. Because of a recent scabies outbreak, we have had to start applying lotion to the kids that are affected. Aryan was one of the worst, with big scabs all over his body, including his 'you know what.' When we applied the lotion, he was very brave and did his best to hold back tears (the stuff really stings), but a few big drops managed to squeeze out and land on his chest and the floor. But later that evening, as I passed him in the hall, without even a glimmer of hesitation against the person who inflicted all that pain, he broke off half of the small fruit he was eating and thrust it at me. He is 5 or 6 years old!!! It's all too much sometimes...
In other health-related news, apart from the scabies situation here, we are also dealing with a small outbreak of 'loose motions' (Indian for diarrhea). Treatment is basically hydration, but this can be tricky when we dont even have enough water bottles for each kid. Matt and I are trying to manage this, but it's difficult. Ultimately though, the kids here are so used to all of these afflictions, that they can pretty much take care of themselves. This week is also going to be 'deworming week,' which will involve giving a single dose of Albendazole (anti-parasitic) to each child and waiting for the magic to happen!
Dr. Toegel is keeping us busy, as you can tell. We are teaching at the school, providing extra tutoring when necessary, trying to figure out/cure 20 of the kids who are anemic, organizing the deworming, monitoring the health of all the kids as much as possible, overseeing the construction of the new school (laughable), working with the HIV outreach program to design specific interventions for sex workers, working on the preliminaries for a possible mobile health clinic to serve the villages, hounding the Indian National AIDS Control Organization so that they set up a HIV testing and care center here in our city, helping to organize a potential teachers' training for English skills. That's all for now! Ultimately we just want to have some sort of positive effect here and that's what's most important.
Hope everyone is well. Missing you all!
XO, Ty
One of the youngest kids, Aryan, really melted my heart. Because of a recent scabies outbreak, we have had to start applying lotion to the kids that are affected. Aryan was one of the worst, with big scabs all over his body, including his 'you know what.' When we applied the lotion, he was very brave and did his best to hold back tears (the stuff really stings), but a few big drops managed to squeeze out and land on his chest and the floor. But later that evening, as I passed him in the hall, without even a glimmer of hesitation against the person who inflicted all that pain, he broke off half of the small fruit he was eating and thrust it at me. He is 5 or 6 years old!!! It's all too much sometimes...
In other health-related news, apart from the scabies situation here, we are also dealing with a small outbreak of 'loose motions' (Indian for diarrhea). Treatment is basically hydration, but this can be tricky when we dont even have enough water bottles for each kid. Matt and I are trying to manage this, but it's difficult. Ultimately though, the kids here are so used to all of these afflictions, that they can pretty much take care of themselves. This week is also going to be 'deworming week,' which will involve giving a single dose of Albendazole (anti-parasitic) to each child and waiting for the magic to happen!
Dr. Toegel is keeping us busy, as you can tell. We are teaching at the school, providing extra tutoring when necessary, trying to figure out/cure 20 of the kids who are anemic, organizing the deworming, monitoring the health of all the kids as much as possible, overseeing the construction of the new school (laughable), working with the HIV outreach program to design specific interventions for sex workers, working on the preliminaries for a possible mobile health clinic to serve the villages, hounding the Indian National AIDS Control Organization so that they set up a HIV testing and care center here in our city, helping to organize a potential teachers' training for English skills. That's all for now! Ultimately we just want to have some sort of positive effect here and that's what's most important.
Hope everyone is well. Missing you all!
XO, Ty
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A Few Pics Until I Get Broadband Access
http://picasaweb.google.com/tyler.chernin
click on India 2009 album to see the train, and pics of the students
click on India 2009 album to see the train, and pics of the students
Back to the Squatters...And It's Great!!!!
Our wireless is up and running and we couldn't be happier! Right now I am sitting in the Madhya Pradesh District Government Hotel watching satellite TV of the inauguration and very excited (the news programs are calling this the 'coronation of hope'! Gobama!
So, we left Delhi on Friday night, heading to the ridiculous Delhi train station to catch our overnight train to Jhabua. Dr. Fabian Toegel accompanied us, thankfully, because I would not want to navigate that place on my own. Think crowds, piles of bags, cat-sized rats and filth (I guess the MTA isnt that far off). We boarded our first class 'sleeper train' with overly high expectations. Erase any images of the orient express you might have right now. There is one long narrow hallway with stacks of 'beds' on each side. On the left, there are two stacked on top of each other and on the right there are little cubicles, each side with three beds one on top of the other (thats where our seats were). I must have had some crazy dejected look on my face cause Matt kept looking at me and asking 'are you okay? really?' Despite the filth, the noise, the snoring, the smells, the bumps, the cramped quarters and the unspeakable toilets, I slept for 8 hours straight of the 11 hour journey! Insane.
Essentially, we realized pretty soon after arriving in Jhabua that Dr. Toegel is a total Paul Farmer type: brilliant, motivated, able to navigate bureaucracy and get anything done. He has started a boarding school for the poor children of the district (more later), organized an HIV testing, treatment and prevention center that serves the city and at least 22 surrounding villages, helps run a living facility for sick HIV patients and much much more. He is thirty, has an MD, speaks English, German, Hindi and Urdu and probably something else. Our first day involved visiting the local hospital, meeting the head of the HIV program, visiting the school and dormitories, negotiating the tuition with the principal for a local child who attends another school in the village, visiting the construction site for the new school site and meeting our host, Patrick. We are staying in the downstairs 'apartment' Patrick's house in the countryside outside of the village (He is from Jhabua but was one of the lucky ones to get educated and start a prosperous business and now gives back). Sharing a wall and an open air window with our bedroom is a smaller house containing a massive water buffalo and its calf, two huge cows and five geese. Our place smells alternatively of farm and cooking fire. There is no hot water. Trust me, the accomodations are BARE, but its warm and its a roof over our head and although we complain to ourselves, we are grateful for it. And we get woken up by the pack of geese at 6am (geese make noises that sound like scrap metal in a blender on the 'liquify' setting).
I could go on and on about the town, the beautiful surroundings, the amazing night sky with more stars than I have ever seen, the roaming cows that rule the roads, the stray puppies that are everywhere, the INCREDIBLE food that is cooked for us at every meal by a plethora of cooks, the abundant fresh roti and nan breads, how dirty and exhausted I am, how friendly and giving the people here are, but all I really want to talk about are the students.
The school, known as the Bhil Academy, was started by Dr. Toegel and some other locals (including Patrick) about ten years ago, when Fabian was here for his Peace Corps year. The school is only for kids of Bhil background, which is a very poor, marginalized tribal race (for lack of a better word) that is predominant in Madhya Pradesh especially. It is a boarding school for kids as young as 5 years old, up until 7th grade (hopefully up to 12 next year when the new school is built). These kids are beyond amazing. They are the sweetest, most loving, kind and caring kids I have ever met. There are way fewer teachers and guardians for these 230 odd kids than are needed, so these kids have learned to take care of each other and there is next to no fighting (i havent seen any). Everytime we step into a classroom, they all jump up and say 'goodmorning sir!' (apparently you also have to then tell them to sit down after that...oops). They take very special pride in making sure you have a chair, a pen for the white board and by no means ever let you erase the board. And although they have nothing, their clothes are filthy, they sleep without beds on the floor of the classroom every night, they play with pebbles and a deflated soccer ball at recess, and live without their families, you never see anything but a smile on their faces. Matt and I are going to be involved in a lot of projects here, especially with the HIV outreach program, but what excites us the most are our mornings spent at the school. Because of a teacher shortage, a lot of the classes are left to fend for themselves, and most of the time they work quietly on their own (though how much gets learned I seriously doubt). Can you imagine that in N. America? So Matt and I basically pick the empty classes and teach them either English, Math or Science (from 5 year olds to 14 year olds). It is a real challenge and the kids are easily (over)excited, but it's well worth it. The first day I got stuck teaching Agricultural sciences to 7th graders. Here I was unprepared and trying to teach them the basics of growing crops, crop rotation and whatever else their outdated, very poorly/hilariously written textbooks contained. Pretty ironic topic to teach migrant farmer children for someone who just flew thousands and thousands of kilometers from New York City...but I tried (Plants need minerals! Madhya Pradesh is the soybean state!). Im getting a copy of the book so I can read ahead and hopefully make things easier. If anyone has any ideas on how to teach English to really young kids while keeping them engaged, Matt and I would greatly appreciate it!
On top of teaching at the school, Matt and I are kind of the resident doctors. There is also a very dedicated team of health workers that visit twice a day to check up on the sick kids and dispense tylenol, antibiotics etc. and we pretty much do what they say. Today I sent a kid home who had a cough, conjunctivits, runny nose and a rash that looked a lot like measles (probably chickenpox but who knows. However, he seemed to have the cardinal 3 C's of measles: cough, choryza and conjunctivitis...). This role is really testing our knowledge and skill!
All for now. Love and peace to you all. And let's all hope this next administration can turn the tide!
T
So, we left Delhi on Friday night, heading to the ridiculous Delhi train station to catch our overnight train to Jhabua. Dr. Fabian Toegel accompanied us, thankfully, because I would not want to navigate that place on my own. Think crowds, piles of bags, cat-sized rats and filth (I guess the MTA isnt that far off). We boarded our first class 'sleeper train' with overly high expectations. Erase any images of the orient express you might have right now. There is one long narrow hallway with stacks of 'beds' on each side. On the left, there are two stacked on top of each other and on the right there are little cubicles, each side with three beds one on top of the other (thats where our seats were). I must have had some crazy dejected look on my face cause Matt kept looking at me and asking 'are you okay? really?' Despite the filth, the noise, the snoring, the smells, the bumps, the cramped quarters and the unspeakable toilets, I slept for 8 hours straight of the 11 hour journey! Insane.
Essentially, we realized pretty soon after arriving in Jhabua that Dr. Toegel is a total Paul Farmer type: brilliant, motivated, able to navigate bureaucracy and get anything done. He has started a boarding school for the poor children of the district (more later), organized an HIV testing, treatment and prevention center that serves the city and at least 22 surrounding villages, helps run a living facility for sick HIV patients and much much more. He is thirty, has an MD, speaks English, German, Hindi and Urdu and probably something else. Our first day involved visiting the local hospital, meeting the head of the HIV program, visiting the school and dormitories, negotiating the tuition with the principal for a local child who attends another school in the village, visiting the construction site for the new school site and meeting our host, Patrick. We are staying in the downstairs 'apartment' Patrick's house in the countryside outside of the village (He is from Jhabua but was one of the lucky ones to get educated and start a prosperous business and now gives back). Sharing a wall and an open air window with our bedroom is a smaller house containing a massive water buffalo and its calf, two huge cows and five geese. Our place smells alternatively of farm and cooking fire. There is no hot water. Trust me, the accomodations are BARE, but its warm and its a roof over our head and although we complain to ourselves, we are grateful for it. And we get woken up by the pack of geese at 6am (geese make noises that sound like scrap metal in a blender on the 'liquify' setting).
I could go on and on about the town, the beautiful surroundings, the amazing night sky with more stars than I have ever seen, the roaming cows that rule the roads, the stray puppies that are everywhere, the INCREDIBLE food that is cooked for us at every meal by a plethora of cooks, the abundant fresh roti and nan breads, how dirty and exhausted I am, how friendly and giving the people here are, but all I really want to talk about are the students.
The school, known as the Bhil Academy, was started by Dr. Toegel and some other locals (including Patrick) about ten years ago, when Fabian was here for his Peace Corps year. The school is only for kids of Bhil background, which is a very poor, marginalized tribal race (for lack of a better word) that is predominant in Madhya Pradesh especially. It is a boarding school for kids as young as 5 years old, up until 7th grade (hopefully up to 12 next year when the new school is built). These kids are beyond amazing. They are the sweetest, most loving, kind and caring kids I have ever met. There are way fewer teachers and guardians for these 230 odd kids than are needed, so these kids have learned to take care of each other and there is next to no fighting (i havent seen any). Everytime we step into a classroom, they all jump up and say 'goodmorning sir!' (apparently you also have to then tell them to sit down after that...oops). They take very special pride in making sure you have a chair, a pen for the white board and by no means ever let you erase the board. And although they have nothing, their clothes are filthy, they sleep without beds on the floor of the classroom every night, they play with pebbles and a deflated soccer ball at recess, and live without their families, you never see anything but a smile on their faces. Matt and I are going to be involved in a lot of projects here, especially with the HIV outreach program, but what excites us the most are our mornings spent at the school. Because of a teacher shortage, a lot of the classes are left to fend for themselves, and most of the time they work quietly on their own (though how much gets learned I seriously doubt). Can you imagine that in N. America? So Matt and I basically pick the empty classes and teach them either English, Math or Science (from 5 year olds to 14 year olds). It is a real challenge and the kids are easily (over)excited, but it's well worth it. The first day I got stuck teaching Agricultural sciences to 7th graders. Here I was unprepared and trying to teach them the basics of growing crops, crop rotation and whatever else their outdated, very poorly/hilariously written textbooks contained. Pretty ironic topic to teach migrant farmer children for someone who just flew thousands and thousands of kilometers from New York City...but I tried (Plants need minerals! Madhya Pradesh is the soybean state!). Im getting a copy of the book so I can read ahead and hopefully make things easier. If anyone has any ideas on how to teach English to really young kids while keeping them engaged, Matt and I would greatly appreciate it!
On top of teaching at the school, Matt and I are kind of the resident doctors. There is also a very dedicated team of health workers that visit twice a day to check up on the sick kids and dispense tylenol, antibiotics etc. and we pretty much do what they say. Today I sent a kid home who had a cough, conjunctivits, runny nose and a rash that looked a lot like measles (probably chickenpox but who knows. However, he seemed to have the cardinal 3 C's of measles: cough, choryza and conjunctivitis...). This role is really testing our knowledge and skill!
All for now. Love and peace to you all. And let's all hope this next administration can turn the tide!
T
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Dear Jen
Hello Everyone!
I hope you are all well and not too cold. Greetings from Delhi!
Matt and I arrived here around 1130pm on the 14th afetr a 24h stint in Amsterdam. We had a whirlwind tour of the city, taking in such sites as the red light district, Jeremy and Jen's apartment, the red light district and Jeremy and Jen's apartment (we were way too jet-lagged to actually do the museum thing.) The Delhi airport was a zoo, with tons of people trying to rip off bambie-eyed foreigners such as Matt and I. We eventually made it to our guest house around 2am and woke up at 5:45am with the energy of a 3 year-old on Ritalin.
We finally met our preceptor yesterday, Dr. Fabian Toegel. He's 30 eyars-old and from Germany and works for the Clinton Foundation in India, represents the Real Medicine Foundation for all of India and runs his own German NGO. Interestingly, his father is a famous German TV director who is responsible for the now HUGELY popular German remake of Loveboat (?). Anyways, he showed us around, introduced us to some public health folks and treated us to a south Indian lunch (so good). Matt and I then visited Gandhi Smriti, the place where the 'Father of India' was assassinated. It's a beautiful tribute and contains a really cool multimedia exhibit. They even bronzed all the actual steps he took on the grounds up to the place he died, where there is a larger memorial. We then visited the beautiful Humayun's Tomb, a sprawling 16th century Tomb for a Mughal emperor. In one of the smaller buildings, I spotted a stone staircase that was tucked away and seemed to lead upwards into total darkness. Of course we had to explore it, so we rock-paper-scissored to see who had to walk ahead (I won thankfully so Matt had to go first). It was PITCH BLACK and Matt was totally freaking out. I had a camera so after only like three steps we took a photo with flash which revealed a turn in the staircase. At this point I kinda freaked and let Matt walk ahead and all of a sudden heard a high-pitched scream (sorry Matt) and Matt yelling and rushing down the steps (all in all, we had only climbed like seven). Matt was like 'there is something in there! Ahhh.' Before he ran down though he took a picture and when we looked at it,there, in the center of the steps, was a very calm and relaxed stray dog. Apparently Matt's hand grazed it's snout and teeth! Totally hilarious and kind of scary at the same time. Of course, when we looked at the first pic, you could totally see the dog's head which we had just neglected to notice...
Then at night we met up with Fabian for dinner in a Muslim quarter with tiny tiny narrow, winding alleys. We visited a holy temple where there was some interesting religious devotional singing and lots of children beggers. It's a very conflicting situation when these kids come up to you. On the one hand, you want to give them something, but if you do, it attracts more and more until you are completely overwhelmed. Plus, many of them are expert pickpocketers who use the distraction to rip you off. As we were leaving the quarter and heading into our rickshaw, about five kids came up to me and started yelling 'chocolate? chocolate!' I was laughing nd saying no, and then more keptcoming, tugging on my sleeve. They were so cute so I started to lift them up in the air as they hung onto my arms, which was obviously super exciting for them, but which made us even more of a target. They ranged in age from about 4-15 and were absolutely filthy (sweatshirt is currently in the wash). When we finally got into the rickshaw we were cornered, as they climbed on top of the roof of the vehicle and hung onto the sides...Eventually they kinda let go as we sped off whereby Matt and I shared a glance filled with relief, horror and sadness.
Tonight we are heading to Jhabua, the small village where we will be spending the next six weeks. It is an 11hr overnight train ride that we are of course very much looking forward to (not). The plan is still being formulated, but it looks like we will be teaching 7th graders at one of the NGO's boarding schools as well as assisiting in the enwly formed HIV clinic in town. That's about as much as we know at this point but I look forward to keeping you all informed.
My love to you all and look forward to being in contact.
Namaste!
Tyler
I hope you are all well and not too cold. Greetings from Delhi!
Matt and I arrived here around 1130pm on the 14th afetr a 24h stint in Amsterdam. We had a whirlwind tour of the city, taking in such sites as the red light district, Jeremy and Jen's apartment, the red light district and Jeremy and Jen's apartment (we were way too jet-lagged to actually do the museum thing.) The Delhi airport was a zoo, with tons of people trying to rip off bambie-eyed foreigners such as Matt and I. We eventually made it to our guest house around 2am and woke up at 5:45am with the energy of a 3 year-old on Ritalin.
We finally met our preceptor yesterday, Dr. Fabian Toegel. He's 30 eyars-old and from Germany and works for the Clinton Foundation in India, represents the Real Medicine Foundation for all of India and runs his own German NGO. Interestingly, his father is a famous German TV director who is responsible for the now HUGELY popular German remake of Loveboat (?). Anyways, he showed us around, introduced us to some public health folks and treated us to a south Indian lunch (so good). Matt and I then visited Gandhi Smriti, the place where the 'Father of India' was assassinated. It's a beautiful tribute and contains a really cool multimedia exhibit. They even bronzed all the actual steps he took on the grounds up to the place he died, where there is a larger memorial. We then visited the beautiful Humayun's Tomb, a sprawling 16th century Tomb for a Mughal emperor. In one of the smaller buildings, I spotted a stone staircase that was tucked away and seemed to lead upwards into total darkness. Of course we had to explore it, so we rock-paper-scissored to see who had to walk ahead (I won thankfully so Matt had to go first). It was PITCH BLACK and Matt was totally freaking out. I had a camera so after only like three steps we took a photo with flash which revealed a turn in the staircase. At this point I kinda freaked and let Matt walk ahead and all of a sudden heard a high-pitched scream (sorry Matt) and Matt yelling and rushing down the steps (all in all, we had only climbed like seven). Matt was like 'there is something in there! Ahhh.' Before he ran down though he took a picture and when we looked at it,there, in the center of the steps, was a very calm and relaxed stray dog. Apparently Matt's hand grazed it's snout and teeth! Totally hilarious and kind of scary at the same time. Of course, when we looked at the first pic, you could totally see the dog's head which we had just neglected to notice...
Then at night we met up with Fabian for dinner in a Muslim quarter with tiny tiny narrow, winding alleys. We visited a holy temple where there was some interesting religious devotional singing and lots of children beggers. It's a very conflicting situation when these kids come up to you. On the one hand, you want to give them something, but if you do, it attracts more and more until you are completely overwhelmed. Plus, many of them are expert pickpocketers who use the distraction to rip you off. As we were leaving the quarter and heading into our rickshaw, about five kids came up to me and started yelling 'chocolate? chocolate!' I was laughing nd saying no, and then more keptcoming, tugging on my sleeve. They were so cute so I started to lift them up in the air as they hung onto my arms, which was obviously super exciting for them, but which made us even more of a target. They ranged in age from about 4-15 and were absolutely filthy (sweatshirt is currently in the wash). When we finally got into the rickshaw we were cornered, as they climbed on top of the roof of the vehicle and hung onto the sides...Eventually they kinda let go as we sped off whereby Matt and I shared a glance filled with relief, horror and sadness.
Tonight we are heading to Jhabua, the small village where we will be spending the next six weeks. It is an 11hr overnight train ride that we are of course very much looking forward to (not). The plan is still being formulated, but it looks like we will be teaching 7th graders at one of the NGO's boarding schools as well as assisiting in the enwly formed HIV clinic in town. That's about as much as we know at this point but I look forward to keeping you all informed.
My love to you all and look forward to being in contact.
Namaste!
Tyler
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)