Goodbye contact lenses :)

LASIK = awesome. June 26 - probably more life-changing than my semester in India (okay not quite true but close). There's not much else to say. Dr. Boothe knows what he's doing. Less than 24 hours after surgery I was seeing like 99% as well as with contacts. And it keeps getting better. Especially after having to wear glasses for 2 weeks prior to LASIK, it feels all the more freeing.

In other news, started work at the Nordstrom Cafe in the Galleria. I had no idea there was even a restaurant there until a week and a half ago, but they have surprisingly good salads and AMAZING lemon cookies. They're like cake cookies (instead of cookie cakes) - suuuper soft with yummy lemony icing. It's a pretty fun place to work, although the cash register still confounds me at times. And having a job makes me appreciate weekends that much more :) I <3 sleeping.

New addiction to reading news from The Daily Beast. Not always the greatest, but it summarizes top news articles from different sources and puts them into a Daily Cheat Sheet that takes 10 minutes to read. So convenient.

Home at last, at least for awhile.

Five days after I got back from India, I left for Boston for a week, then NYC for 2 days, but I'm finally back for a good amount of time!

Cousins photo, taken at one of our traditional family barbecues the day after I got home. Like Karen said, I don't think I've had better chicken wings anywhere else. And the steak isn't bad either :)

Island Hopper in Boston! It was great to see the seniors again before graduation, and making $400 from Tech Reunions wasn't a bad deal either. Seeing alumni who are coming back for their 70th reunion and still talking about how much MIT has done for them is amazing on so many different levels. I'm totaly running for Gift Chair on the Alumni committee so I can choose reunion gifts :) Something to look forward to - for the 25th reunion, each class member gets a paperweight version of the brass rat. It's GINORMOUS. I can't wait (although I totally can't imagine what lives we'll all be living 25 years from now...). I spoke to alumni who majored in computer science in like the 1950's. I didn't even know computers existed back then. And one guy had been with IBM from graduation to retirement. Imagine the evolution of the computer he must have experienced/be experiencing.

Thailand Cafe in NYC! And froyo (did you know that Red Mango had tart froyo before Pinkberry did? Berryline is better though)! And shopping! And pedicures! NYC was definitely the largest shock to my system since coming back from India. Home is calm and clean and kind of boring in a relaxing way, Boston is amazing, but NYC was just like HELLO.

Except there were these super cute sculptures all over this one subway station.


Awww...

But...now I'm home! Things are still moving pretty quickly though. I met with some people from the Earth Institute about doing a summer internship from home while I was in NY. I need to finish my personal statement and get AMCAS submitted ASAP. I need a new laptop because my screen is shot. I'm considering getting LASIK? I might might MIGHT have an internship with the WHO in July if the lady would ever get back to me... If not, we might go to China to visit my grandma and make a stopover in Thailand for a week or so. Yay summer.

Aaand I still need to finish up stuff from India. Updates/pictures on our final few weeks there soon, I hope.

Going home!

:)

It's been an amazing experience, but I can't wait to get on that plane and be back in the good ol' US of A.

Bicilavadora...Indian style

After feeling kind of down about all the intangibilities (if that's a word) and disappointments we're encountering in our health projects, Pulkit and I decided to focus on something more concrete for awhile. We turned our attention to a project that we've been talking about since the first time we had to do laundry by hand - making a pedal-powered washing machine. 

Much easier said than done, but 3.5 days and 3300 Rs (not including things like buying soft drinks for the workers or excess/wasted materials) after we decided to do it, we were doing our laundry by foot rather than by hand. The design may not be the sturdiest but hey, it's working and it made it through a nerve-wracking, pothole-filled drive from Bageshwar to Devaldhar while roped to the top of a car.

Irfan welding. notice lack of gloves, real shoes, and face mask. On the plus side, the sunglasses make him look pretty cool.

Irfan making holes in the inner drum, by hand. He was a little strange but a true artisan and very skilled at what he does.

Almost done! 

Test run :)

Having a project that is a product is so nice sometimes. It's such a great feeling to be able to see, touch and use something you have made. Personal satisfaction factor is very high, unlike it is for public health projects...

The future of this bicilavadora? Chirag plans on showcasing it in the villages and promoting it as a labor-saving product. People (mainly women) spend at least 2 hours/day doing laundry, and this should cut the time down to 1 hour (for 2 loads) and they won't have to get their hands wet or wring dry, two other complaints about handwashing. We'll definitely leave behind recommendations for modifications, and hopefully there will be demand from the women since we can probably reduce the cost to 2500 Rs or less (50 USD), and that's a pretty reasonable price around here. The workers at Khetwal Industries where this was made may (hopefully) be able to start a business of their own with this but we'll see... Ideally, someone in Chirag or an intern with an interest in appropriate technology/mechE/business would take up this project and 1) modify the design 2) promote/trial it in villages and get feedback from women 3) work with local welders/artisans to manufacture and sell more of these. Any takers?

"At least we're not quadriplegics"

After a string of rather frustrating days trying to make year-long plans for 6 village health committees,  that is the silver lining we found in our cloud, no offense to quadriplegics intended.

Preventive health work kind of sucks. No one here cares about health, not the villagers, not the health committee members, not really the Chirag staff, and not even the ANMs and ASHAs. Villagers for some reason don’t make enough of a connection between health and livelihood; health committee members aren’t paid so what’s their incentive (their village’s development/improved health is usually not the answer); Chirag staff are just doing their job and doing the minimum to meet their deadlines; ANMs and ASHAs…there’s just no accountability anywhere. And no one has the right information, so even if people are trying to ‘give information’ about preventive health issues, who exactly is going to give it?

Things aren’t always like this, but it’s tough because successes are so small and you have to work so hard for each one. Health is a ‘soft’ development area, meaning its results are hard to measure and it’s not a very tangible issue. Infrastructure, agriculture, forestry – these things can be measured, there are plainly visible outputs for a each input. With health, you talk to 30 families about boiling water and jaundice prevention and are pleasantly surprised when 2 Chirag staff finally decide to start drinking boiled water. Maybe, a year down the line, once Chirag has finally gotten around to translating and printing my jaundice information sheets, a few more families will decide to boil their water. But who can tell what exactly influenced them? Was it my brochure? Did they get jaundice and decide it was something worth preventing? Did their neighbors convince them? Did the husband land a government job that allowed them to get a gas stove? Some combination of these scenarios? I can’t wait until I’m a doctor and have the knowledge to help villagers directly, measurably. Do women here really all suffer from leucorrhea, or is it just the name they give for yeast infections, reproductive tract infections, and other womanly problems? If so, hygiene needs to be the #1 focus. If not, each condition has its own cause and treatment and should be addressed separately. “If you want to change the world, become a doctor or an economist.” I can’t remember who said this to me, but sitting confused and powerless at health committee meetings, knowing Chirag staff are probably giving the wrong information but not knowing exactly what the right information is, it hits me every day how right that person was.

 

No doubt, I have learned SO much here about how things work on the ground, about NGO culture and politics, and about the failures of government health schemes and certain approaches to preventive health. I also didn’t expect to change the world in my 5 months here – I know these things take years. But for some reason, I didn’t expect to feel so frustrated and unaccomplished so often. The entire system is frustrating sometimes – the villagers, Chirag, government bureaucracy – but there’s usually no way to get around it, at least not at this stage. We’re just interns. Who are we to think that Chirag, let alone the state government, will take our projects and ideas seriously? I wish that wasn’t true, but I don’t see how we could make that happen.

To end on a bright note, as unpromising as our health committee meetings were, the first event in the year-long plan for Aagar gram panchayat’s health committee was scheduled for today, and it actually happened. About 10 people showed up in Banyatal at 8 in the morning to clear the main path of trash, pine needles, dirt, and overgrown shrubbery. It was a small group, but hey, it happened. 

Lazy...

Some photos I took of my field journal because I was too lazy to update, and then I was too lazy to post them until now... hope they are legible.

Hello from an internet cafe.

So we are going to be in Bageshwar for the next month and a half or so, for our new project. Got here on Monday and am finding a routine. Came into Bageshwar today to meet with the Chief Medical Officer to ask him some questions about some of the things outlined in the NRHM. Of course no one told us yesterday that today is a holiday, so the hospital was open for like 2 hours (I have no idea what people do when the hospital is closed...I didn't even know that was allowed) in the morning, and the CMO wasn't even there. We did manage to catch the deputy CMO but he wasn't very helpful and told us to come back another day for the information we wanted. Great start, huh. Since we're in the city, though, I think I'm going to take advantage of the tailors here and get some clothes made. I think we're going to be coming here every Sunday because it's the only place we can get an internet connection...I really don't understand how people in Chirag can get all their work done without the internet. It is completely beyond me. I guess given that they don't know English, the internet wouldn't be too useful to them, but there are a good number that know how to read English, and it's just so useful (and a little overwhelming) when you don't have a public health expert to turn to.

In other news, I need major help with my personal statement, and I have no idea what I'm doing this summer, nor do I have the means to look for a job at the moment...

More next week...