Snow!

I thought Texas weather could change quickly, but the weather here is a new extreme. We went from like 75+ degree and sunny weather to rain, to hail, and then to snow in about 36 hours. It probably snowed a foot in the course of an afternoon. The world was totally transformed. Power was out for about 48 hours, the roads were blocked, and the terraced farmland was absolutely gorgeous as we walked back from the Sargakhet hospital where there was supposed to have been an anemia study that day (no one showed up due to the weather so we sat around singing and playing card games). This morning the sun rose in an almost cloudless sky and the temperatures were again about 60 Fahrenheit. It’s now evening and 90% of the snow is gone; only isolated patches and muddy puddles remain. We finally have power, but the internet connection is down so I’m writing this in MS Word. Who knows how long it’ll be before I can check email and post this.

Time has been passing so quickly – it’s been almost a month since I left the US. Hopefully I’ll be able to wrap up the jaundice information stuff in the next couple of weeks, although the bigger picture of education about water treatment/purification will take much longer. In a meeting with another organization in the area, Aarohi (whom I had also contacted about working with during my time in India), we were finally able to get a sense of the bigger picture problems and what approaches have been taken/attempted thus far. Unfortunately, Pulkit and I seem to be much more on the same wavelength as the Aarohi people than with the majority of Chirag. This may very well be due to the fact that, at least within this meeting, we were able to communicate our ideas and ask questions in English, but regardless we were able to answer several questions that had been bugging us (for example, have solar cookers been tried? [yes, but people in the area have a resistance to new technology due to previous bad experiences]; what about various water filtration? [proper maintenance has been difficult to achieve]; what other approaches have been tried with respect to water purification? What is probably the most promising/fruitful approach to take at this point?)

 

Aarohi’s approach is also quite different from Chirag’s. In Chirag, each staff member will have a relative focus, but will basically be responsible for all aspects of Chirag’s work within 2-3 villages. This is an advantage in that people in a given village will become very familiar and comfortable with their Chirag worker, but this also prevents Chirag workers from delving deeply into a specific problem. Even if his relative focus is health, there’s no time to seek out solutions to a specific health problem like jaundice or to have uniform records of health across all locations. Basically, creativity feels very limited. In Aarohi, I believe it is the exact opposite: health workers will focus only on health in all of the villages Aarohi works in. Less personal relationships (theoretically), but more room for depth, problem-solving, and creativity. Which is better? My scientifically-inclined reasoning says Aarohi’s may be more effective, but maybe I don’t really know just how great the value of tighter personal relationships is in these situations.

Anddd power is back! Pictures of snow shortly :)