Clinic in Jaipur

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it
    -- Andy Warhol

Jaipur.  Capital of the state of Rajasthan.  Not the finest city in Rajasthan, but definitely a hub.  The best way to describe Jaipur (and India in general) is as the most beautiful and most filthy place I've ever seen.  We spent Wednesday exploring then started at the clinic the following day.

The clinic was on the outskirts of town, where all the trucks stopped to load or to rest. Every morning I watched the cook sweep piles of rat droppings of the floor.  There was no lab, but there was a kitchen so chai was served as often as possible to keep us warm.  Awareness workers on the street conducted educational seminars and games then informed truck drivers of the clinic.  Daily, there were also "extension clinics", which ended up being the doctor, the counselor, and us sitting in one of the winding alley ways or in an empty shop with a make-shift room concealed by curtains where the doctor could examine the patient.


Although patients were understandably not receptive to having a 23 year old white girl accompany the doctor to examine them, the doctor discussed with us the patient case in English after the patient had left.  Most times it was ghonorrhea.  I'm actually struggling to think of a patient that came that did not have ghonorrhea.  I can think of one.   I got to see a hernia.  Unfortunately, we could not treat so we referred out for surgery.

The American boy and I were under the care of Doctor Rahul.  Doctor Rahul wore glasses and sweaters knit by his wife (everyone at the clinic proudly wore sweaters that their wives had made for them) and frequently would softly start to sing love songs.  A father or grandfather character, so warm and welcoming.  My favorite memory of him is the first Friday at the clinic, we discussed our plans for the weekend.  He insisted that we must see the zoo and offered to drive us back to the guesthouse after work, but needed to make a stop along the way near to the zoo.


ok fine, sounds good.

We pull over to a spot near the Albert Hall and get out of the car.  Like many other parts of Jaipur, there is trash everywhere.  Most of it is foodstuff.  And so many crows sitting on a fence crowing and pecking through the trash.  Our good Doctor Rahul takes out little bowls and proceeds to fill the bowls with rice and curd.


So... we are having lunch here? or a snack?


No.  The doctor places the bowls on the ground and chuckles to himself as the crows peck through the rice.  So we went out of our way to make a stop on the way home for him to feed the crows.  I asked about it.  He said in Hindu belief, crows are the ancestors so everyone takes time every week to come feed the crows.


That makes more sense.


I spent about 2 weeks at the clinic.  We were really limited in what we were able to do (my Hindi is not so good, in fact not good at all) but I asked a lot of questions and learned a lot from the doctor and other clinic members.  I also made a medication guide of the antibiotics used, which Hitesh (the other founder of Vatsalya) has promised to translate to Hindi so that this can be handed out with the medications (I still have to look it over and send back the final edition).  I also had the opportunity to see a lot of Jaipur.

Rajasthan is a typical Indian destination for tourists because the maharajas squandered the money of their state to live in luxury and build beautiful monuments, while allowing their state and citizens to collapse into poverty.  It was the last state to agree to separate from British rule for Indian independence, I presume because the maharajas didn't want to lose their power to a national Indian government.  The Singh's were the last ruling power in Rajasthan.  Jaipur is known as the pink city, because old town is all painted this really terrible salmon color.

The first week, I saw the City Palace (beautiful, but not as good as the one in Udaipur) also Jantar Mantar.  On display at the city palace are 2 massive jugs made of silver, the largest items ever made of silver.  The maharaja had them made for a visit to England.  He didn't trust the water quality of the United Kingdom so brought along polluted holy water from the Ganges in these jugs for drinking.  I can't resist a good self portrait in a reflective surface.

Jantar Mantar was built by Jai Singh in the 1700s designed for astronomy observation.  As this is not my area of expertise, I appreciated all the interesting shapes and structures without real understanding of their meaning.  The massive sundial, samrat yantra, tells the time in Jaipur to an accuracy of 2 seconds.  There were also special structures, resembling sun dials, for each of the astrological signs.  It was surreal just being there.

Vatsalya

And your own life while its happening to you never has any atmosphere until it becomes a memory.
       -- Andy Warhol

I was paired with Vatsalya, www.vatsalya.org.  The organization was initially created to help street children but has since expanded to other projects as well.  The organization runs a clinic around the truck rest stop in Jaipur, where doctors test long distance truck drivers for STIs (sexually transmitted infections).  Although HIV awareness activities are conducted around the area outside the clinic, the clinic does not have a lab so patients are referred to government facilities for testing.  Vatsalya also runs a "sex workers project" in Ajmer, 3 hours west of Jaipur.  This project is more awareness oriented, as educators go out to sex worker hot spots and teach prostitutes to protect themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.


The other volunteer and I were first taken to the orphanage in Acherol, called "Udayan".  Both middle men had failed to inform the parent organization that we would be coming, so we kind of just showed up.


It was cold.  The orphanage was placed far back from the main road.  It was peaceful and quiet.  We arrived right before prayer time and met another volunteer who was on her way out, also American.  We watched the children say prayer.  Beautiful.  Singing and lots of repetition of the word "shanti", peace in Hindi.

After dinner we went into the kitchen to get chai.  The kitchen staff mostly just spoke Hindi, but we stayed and socialized.  The big aunty in the kitchen said something in Hindi about me being a boy, or boy hair (my Hindi isn't good enough to really know) and I replied indignantly, "Meh lerki hu!"... "I'm a girl!" and pretended to look upset, which they all thought was hilarious.  I started talking with one boy putting ghee on chapati.  He told me he was from South Africa.  Apparently, there are no elephants there, but dinosaurs are a common sight.


Both nights I stayed there there was a traveling group of musicians.  Good evening entertainment, but I was so jet-lagged I fell asleep and the singer was making fun of me in Hindi and Urdu.  oops.  


From the other volunteer, we learned more about the organization and got some useful tips.  She had a lot of pent up frustrations and most of what she said was pretty negative.  I told her that night


You are going to get home and find out that you experienced a lot more than you think


After that she had a much better attitude and realized, despite how awful and frustrating some things were, she really had experienced India.  Some things, the only thing you can do is laugh.

I only stayed at Udayan for 2 nights.  Most of what I saw was all smiles.  Playing with the kids and trying to learn Hindi from them at meal times.  I picked up a book in the dorm I was staying in, written by Jaimala, one of the founders of Vatsalya, "Eighteen million question marks: The street children of India".  She had written about the children of Vatsalya, changing their names.  It was hard to believe what these children had been through before coming. 


In particular, I learned of one little girl who was less than 12 years old but had learned how to take care of herself on the streets by giving sexual favors.  Mistaking this for love, she continued to "sex play" and to try to get the other children to engage.  As a result, she lived separate from the other children and had special counseling.

Despite their pasts, children are children.  They have the same needs for attention and my interactions had been the same as those with American children and the children of Tanzania.  My favorite memory is ballroom dancing to Hindi music with some of the little girls on my last morning before they went off to school.


We met the founders of Vatsalya on the second night who had come to see the music group and discussed our goals for volunteering.  Despite not knowing about us until we had showed up, they were very accommodating and we arranged to go to Jaipur the next day.

Love Affair

I wonder if its possible to have a love affair that lasts forever
    -- Andy Warhol


I returned from spending 4 1/2 weeks in India last night and have been reviewing my journal, trying to make sense of the things that I experienced.  Despite how quickly that time went by, I think of my first few days and the things that I felt and experienced and it just seems lightyears away.


I arrived in Delhi on December 6, at 2 am Indian time, which was 1 pm Boston time.  Flight was without incidence and, despite my insecurities, someone from my volunteer organization had sent a driver to get me.


I struggled to make conversation (I'm sure the driver just wanted to sleep) and gazed out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the city which was covered in thick white fog or smoke.


"Has there been a fire recently?" I naively asked.


Actually Delhi, as well as many other Indian cities, is just so polluted that it is always densely covered in smog.  Lucky for me, when photographed it kind of just looks like a mystical mist.  Unlucky, it was a struggle to breathe and I developed an upper respiratory infection during my second week (which I treated with azithromycin, Indian regimen 500 mg for 3 days).


Back at volunteer headquarters, I immediately fell asleep.  I struggled to wake up the next morning and met the other volunteers.  After socializing, we were given a 30 minute introduction to India, Hinduism, and Hindi.  I had unknowingly went through 2 middle men for the volunteer placement, so all of us were to be split up into separate projects.  Only one other volunteer, a 20 year old American male, and I were doing the HIV program, which was based out of Jaipur.  We went with the coordinator afterwards to get a bus.


After 10 minutes of waiting for a bus, the coordinator decided his time was not to be wasted and started to arrange for us to go by cab.  I saw a man approaching.  He was covered in white and red face paint, adorned with jewelry, and while his chest was bare, he had cloth hanging about his neck.  I looked down and noticed he had a decorative dagger on a belt about his waist... and nothing else on.


I averted my gaze so as not to see his unholy genitals.  He came right to my face and was muttering something in, most likely, Hindi.  He showed me a sixth finger growing out of the side of each pinkie and wiggled them for me.  This must be where he got his holy powers.  He then moved on to the other American and proceeded to bless him.  


We were thankfully saved by the coordinator who had finished arranging the cab and jumped into the car.  The holy man kept his head pressed close to the car window, still chanting, but thankfully the car door blocked view of his genitals.


"I just saw that man's penis."  the American said.


Welcome to India.  This is going to be an adventure.