Finally in Madurai

Hi Everyone! Its been awhile, 


Finally made it to Madurai, where I will be working most of the time and my home for the next three months. It's a pretty small town in the southern part of India. So far I have just been adjusting to life here and getting settled into work at the hospital.

The adjustment to life here has been a little overwhelming, when I first arrived at the guest house (where I will be living) it really hit me that I was no longer in America. My room consists of a simple cot, a desk, a cabinet, a tv that screens almost exclusively Bollywood music videos, and a bathroom; complete with toilet, sink, shower and a bucket for washing my clothes in. 

my room!

 Its been quite the culture shock! When Steve and I arrived here, I did not see another white person at the airport, or the entire first day here. I was afraid it would be awkward or that I would be treated like an outsider, but really the opposite has been true, people everywhere I go have gone out of their way to approach me and make me feel welcome. People are unbelievably kind and generous. 

Things are very different here, even from Delhi in North India. For example, there is a lot less bread and a lot more rice and potatoes. All of the rice dishes are amazing! Somethings, like the traffic are pretty much the same though, just a giant game of frogger really. And they REALLY like their sugar here in India, the jam is like pure corn syrup with a little strawberry flavored dye, and even the chocolate is almost too sickly sweet.  

There are other important cultural things to be aware of here as well, for example, food is never brought to the mouth using the left hand. It is considered unclean, for reasons relating directly to the fact that toilet paper is a relatively new thing here; I’ll let you do the math there. Even though hand washing is a habit practiced before and after every meal nowadays, the stigma remains.

my perfume for the next three months... the mosquitoes here are like insatiable little vampires... ones that transmit malaria, dengue and Japanese encephalitis.

Swastika means something different here... they are on a lot of buildings and there are several businesses with 'Swastika' in the name, its an ancient religious symbol 

Never thought this stick figure how-to use a toilet guide would be necessary, but apparently...

There are vendors selling coconuts and other produce like every 10 feet along the roadway, here this cart's patrons are waving to me as I take their picture.

some boys playing cricket in a vacant lot, cricket is the biggest sport here

This guy's a 'Playboy' apparently!

Tom Cruise likes the shop's sunglasses...

The city from above

another shot of the inner city from the plane

The scenery here is amazingly green, considering how hot and humid it is. Lots of coconut trees and palms, The entrances of buildings are cleaned and decorated with flowers or chalk designs early in the morning. Most of the buildings have shrines elaborately draped and decorated with fresh flowers and designs made from colored powders that are changed every few days.

all made from colored powder!

an example of a chalk design on the ground outside a building

the women wear flowers in their hair here

I love to see how this display changes every day!

A girl changing the design 

Its very hard to explain what makes India and its people so special, you just feel it! It seems counter intuitive for a culture where prejudice, extreme poverty and sexism are so prevalent. I am constantly shocked by things here that are so different from the way we do things in America, for instance, arranged marriages are still very common here, more common than not actually. And the majority of these marriages involve a dowry, a large gift paid to the groom’s family at great expense to the bride’s family. Dowries have been outlawed by the Indian government, but they are still incredibly common, and they are at least partially responsible for the strong bias against girl babies here, that along with the fact that girls join the family of their husbands after marriage, so parents must rely solely on their sons in old age. In fact I was informed just yesterday that India was recently rated as one of the worst places for women in the world, and they estimate that half of girl children are malnourished. The poverty here is also unavoidable, many people here live on the streets, or barely survive on a meager income of selling goods from the roadside. The illiteracy rate here is estimated to be around 70% by some sources. However there is some amazing progress being made, and some amazing people who have dedicated their lives to making people’s lives here better.

I guess now is as good a time as any to tell those of you who are interested, what exactly I am doing here in India! Through the organization SEVA, and through them TOMS (who many of you know for their shoes and eye ware), I will be working in a hospital called Aravind Hospital here in Madurai, that provides free and low cost care to people in need around the world. Its mainly an ophthalmology hospital, but they also do routine checks for things like diabetes here as well (which is crazy high here surprisingly, due to the sugar obsession I mentioned earlier).There are an estimated 45 million people suffering from blindness in the world, and 12 million of those people are in India. It is also estimated that 80% of these cases are curable or preventable.

The hospital sends doctors and technicians out to hold "camps" in villages where they do not have access to medical care otherwise. People gather in empty community centers like this one, or other rented spaces

Here a technician, they call them "sisters" is checking a woman for glaucoma 

An Aravind 'Vision Center" in a larger village, where people can meet with technicians

The entrance lobby inside the main hospital

people lining up to be seen in the paying section of the hospital

Their patient files and records

The patients are initially checked out in these small booths by technicians before being sent on to the doctors

The hospital makes custom prosthetic eyes

Doctors can skype with the technicians at the vision centers to confirm a diagnosis or follow up with patients who cannot make it back to the hospital. 

The main hospital entrance

The free clinic

My work will center around two main areas, the first, will be research surrounding improving patient compliance, or in other words, encouraging people to follow the advice or treatment plan given to them by the doctor. Its a problem even in America, but its even greater here, financial and travel restrictions being the two biggest barriers. The other area I will be focusing on, is in the trauma department; everything from your everyday running with scissors and firework related injuries, to pieces of grain lodged in the eye from a threshing machine. My mentor in the trauma department, Dr. Usha,  is renowned for her surgical skills; she once removed the blade from the head of a swordfish that became lodged through BOTH of a man's eyes as he wrestled with the fish, and she managed to salvage one of the eyes! She has a lot of research and case studies she wants written up, so I have that to work on, as well as observing her in the operating room! 

I have not explored much of the town yet, there are a few thousand year old temples and palaces here that I cant wait to check out! I did have a chance to go to an incredible outdoor clothing bazaar with a woman from my program, who introduced me to a tailor who has been making the clothing for her family for the past twenty years. I got to pick out my fabrics, the type of clothing patterns I wanted, and he measured me for 5 garments, all for 1,900 rupees (about $32 dollars). There were dozens of tailors, fabric merchants, silk merchants and other garment related craftsman, all crowded into this old temple. Im really glad I had someone who was familiar with the area because you can’t imagine how overwhelming it was to have so many people calling out for your business simultaneously “Miss, come see” “I give you best price” “200 rupees only!”, “Madame, only a moment”. Not to mention scores of children selling trinkets like postcards and souvenirs, they will try to give you “gifts” to lure you in as well. The nice thing about a set up like this though, where businesses selling the same wares/services are all situated near one another, is that you can do comparison shopping easily and get the best possible price.

The market was inside a 2,000 year old temple

Here a vendor is selling framed pictures of gods and goddesses 

Here is the tailor and his assistant, behind them you can see the stacks and stacks of fabrics we had to choose from!

At one of the camps I had the opportunity to be blessed by a local Hindu priest. He performed some sort of ritual inside, and then emerged ringing bells, inviting everyone to gather for worship.  

The priest working inside the temple, they believe the deity lives inside

After performing the ritual, he opened the door and invited us to gather to be blessed with holy smoke, holy water and some kind of holy rice mixture

some local children I met, they said I was the first foreigner they had met. crazy.

After I took my picture with the children, this woman came up and said she wanted her picture taken as well haha, and then this little child was thrown in as well by her mother to be in the picture!

A side view of the temple 

It can feel very isolated here, being so far from home, and without my phone. But this blog makes me feel connected with all you back home; all of your comments and likes are very much appreciated! 

I will post more later this week, keep in touch! :) 

- Katie