Blog from Laura Spece in India!

Namaste!

It's been an interesting week, for sure. We've started to get a few pre-monsoon rains here... which is really nice. It's a short, but very spirited, shower everyday around 5 or 6 pm. It's cooled things off tremendously, but has added a bit of humidity. But overall, we are extremely thankful for their arrival. As are the farmers, of course. Having these little shower bursts help to soak the ground (perhaps maybe a better term would be ground-level dust piles) and prevent severe run off. One of the main goals of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) here in Jamkhed, has been attempting to teach responsible, and appropriate agriculture to that end. (They really cover so much more than medicine, here!!) And a main tenet for such a drought prone region is proper crop selection and trench placement. While we were visiting one of the model farms the other day, the evening rain began, and we piled back into the bus to head back to the compound. On the way, the roads turned in to rivers and many of the stalls/shops had a solid foot of water collected within. And that shower only lasted about 30 minutes! The official, big monsoon rains will begin the end of July/beginning of August and the rains will be constant throughout the day, lasting for weeks at a stretch. I'll be out of here by then. :)

I went on my first village visit three days ago. Six of us go in a little group with a translator. The people here speak Marathi, since they the Jamkhed project is in the state of Maharashtra. So all of the Hindi I tried to learn via YouTube isn't too helpful. :( We do have a Marathi class, and so far I've learned how to say "hello," "what is your name," please may I have some water," and "where is the toilet." That brings my language count regarding the toilet to 6 different languages. And asking where a toilet is in these villages is pretty pointless. The village I visited was Padali, with a population of around 1,700. That equates to about 200 families, with only 17 of these families having a toilet. YIKES. The rest of the village's population openly defecates in the fields or on the outskirts of town. This frustrates them greatly. When I asked the Village Health Worker (her name is Pushpa), how we can best help her village now that better healthcare has been brought by the CRHP, her response was pretty profound. The first thing she says her village needs is proper plumbing to ensure sanitation. CRHP has worked very hard to try and set up a plumbing system. But many of these people live on around 50 cents per day. To operate a toilet alone costs around 20 cents per day. There's no way a family of 6 can spend half of their income on a toilet. :/ Instead, the CRHP did help them to dig small trenches along the sides of the roads. Human waste doesn't flow through these sewage drains, just wastewater from cleaning and cooking. It does help some, especially with the rains. Pushpa blames the corrupt Indian government for the lack of public plumbing, which she is probably quite correct in doing so. They joke here that if you want $5 to actually reach the poor through the government, you'd have to give the officials $25. Ouch.

The second thing Pushpa asked for, was more universities. Currently, the closest University to the Jamkhed area is in Pune. Which is 4.5 hours away, on a good day. Plus the cost is immense for a small farmer. And it's such a shame, so many of the adolescent girls have been able to now access primary and secondary school, and they yearn for more education. When we've asked them what they want to be when they grow up, so many say teachers, doctors, pilots, and one even said prime minister. I hope one of them makes it. But the harsh reality is, most don't. Another objective of the CRHP has been to increase the age of the girl's at marriage. Currently, 36% of girls in India, aged 13-16, are married and already have one child. As you can imagine, this social practice has resulted in numerous complications. Medically, the most important is that these tiny young girls just don't have a pelvis to deliver a healthy baby, nor carry it even to full term. The nutrition of women in India is a whole other issue, which results in so many of them being very short and extremely tiny... and anemic. These women just don't get a break, but woman's rights is a whole other e-mail. So the CRHP has weekend, overnight programs for the girls to come and learn about proper nutrition, childcare, education, marriage and dowry. They sing songs, learn martial arts and just generally socialize and boost their self-esteem. Things that are not permitted back home in the villages. It's also a chance for the CRHP to feed the girls. The estimated cost for this project is 3 million rupees, around US$67,000. Expensive, but totally worth it. The age at marriage is increasing, albeit slowly. But what has been increasing rapidly, is the number of years of school the girls are attending. Most have finished the 11th standard, same as our 11th grade! As I'm sure many of you know, it's the education level of the MOTHER that is most crucial to producing well-fed, well-educated and adjusted children...

I've attached 1 photo with 3 women is of 3 Village Health Workers. The woman in the center (white and orange sari) is Sakubai Gite. Her hands are gnarled from leprosy, as you can see with the flowers. She was the woman photographed in National Geographic holding the baby. It's hard to get the women to not pose for me, and just relax. With their new self-awareness and pride from their training as a VHW, they've become more self-conscious of how they look. They love to do all sorts of posed photos, and really almost harass me to snap a quick shot And they know the cameras are all digital, so they want to see what they look like after. :) Many of them stay closed lipped because they've lost so many of their teeth. It's a shame, I wish I could tell them that they are just too beautiful. Even if they only have 2 teeth left :)

I have tons more to share, but this e-mail's already gotten pretty long, and bandwidth is at a premium. I'm trying to get a blog going, but with the new rain, has come many new internet complications. One last little funny story... In Hindi/Marati, "tomorrow" doesn't literally mean the day after today. Rather, "tomorrow" just means sometime following this moment. So when we hear, "the internet will be ready tomorrow..." we now know to expect a few days delay. :)

Things to think about:

1. Reading: the book "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson. Greg was an American alpinist who got lost on K2 and wandered into a very small and remote Pakistani village, pretty much starved to death in 1993. The villagers, all Muslim practicing, nursed him back to health over the next year. In return, he promised to build them a school. He has since built several hundred schools across Pakistan and Afghanistan, even through 9/11. He wholeheartedly believes America can "wage the war against terror" by building such schools, to provide a balanced education to the beautiful children (both boys AND girls) in the Middle East. I tend to agree. I loved this book, and finished it in about 2 days... it's a great story and easy to read. This man will win the Nobel Prize someday

2. "Thank you" in Marathi/Hindi is "Dhanyavad." Quite a mouthful.

3. Pohoe. The name of an Indian dish made of rice flakes, tumeric, coconut, mint, and peanuts. Delicious. Apparently, it's one of their more simple dishes. But I love it.

4. Congrats to Nikki and Lucas for finishing Step 1 of the USMLE (a doctor's licensing exam)!!! Best of luck, I'm sure you rocked it!


Wish you were here,

Laura