Udaipur: now I'm definitely coming back to India

The Udaipur mirage-like Lake Palace (now a hotel!)

Hi! I'm back in Delhi, writing you after what feels like an incredibly long time, but was actually just a week in the field. Last Sunday we left for three days in Udaipur followed by three in Chittorgarh. Two weeks ago in Aligarh we got to see the government's perspective on its own interventions and its own rate of success and effectiveness, and so the goal of this trip was to get a first hand account of the other side - the NGO response: raising flags when the government fails to do/be effective at its own job, and picking up where government services leave off. This post covers the first three days of my trip: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in Udaipur, before we left for Chittorgarh.

We left last Sunday on the Mewar Express, an overnight train that travels through Rajasthan, one of the largest states in Delhi that is mostly a desert. We stayed in the sleeper class, wherein they cram six people into a tiny compartment that has couches that fold up into beds. This is totally fine and not awkward if you know all of the people in your cabin. Unfortunately the percent chance of this happening is quite small, and you just kind of get over sharing a cozy space with other Indian stranger sojourners.

The overnight train experience was surprisingly comfortable minus the plethora of "wildlife" - my friend Caroline decided to name one Geoffrey in order to make the cockroaches less scary. Geoffrey and his cousins were aboard in droves. I woke up once or twice in the middle of the night to watch a Geoffrey scurry across the floor or a wall of the cabin, and at that point you just have to close your eyes again and pretend you didn't seen them. I'm sorry I'm putting you through reading this, Mom.

But really, it was a comfortable trip. There was one point in the night where I woke up and watched a freight train pass our stopped cabin; the dark MAERSK holds passing slowly and ominously in the darkness on their journey from the sea, looking a bit like an elephant walk, with catches and connectors where trunks and tails would be. At other times, our whole car would rattle as our train would whip past another speeding passenger train at what felt like an impossible speed.

We woke up around 7am to our first glimpses of Rajasthan on the outskirts of Udaipur - and it looked like Arizona. Rolling hills and small mountains, dry plains and low shrubs, pale green trees and enormous boulders. We left the train, boarded a ridiculously decorated coach bus (not surprising - all of the buses in India are like this), and headed for the hotel.

Hotel Sarovar is located on Lake Pichola - one of two lakes in Udaipur which give the city its reputation as the Venice of India. It is absolutely breathtaking here - and what's even cooler is that the city is the location of a book I'm reading right now called Dreaming in Hindi.

The hotel lobby:

The view from our room:

We went exploring and took some pictures that afternoon around the hotel:

While our unfinished apartment in Aligarh two weeks ago was just fine, this was so much more comfortable! It was nice to stay in a place with clean beds and running hot water after weeks of many a bucket shower.

After breakfast at the hotel, we left for our first NGO visit of the week: a trip to Seva Mandir - a huge organization that incorporates a lot of different factors that affect health - everything from education to maternal care to livelihood development to sanitation. They're trying to pick up where the government services leave off by keeping their own service centers open when other government centers fail to operate. They have a staff of 302 full time employees, and are funded through several international funders/organizations. One of the biggest distinctions we found with this organization was that it places a huge emphasis on cooperation with and projects that work with the government. It also (claims) that it places a large emphasis on organization evaluation by the people it serves to make sure it doesn't lose focus of the needs of individual communities. Seva Mandir is meant to act as a catalyst between communities and the government, in order to get people to advocate for themselves to demand health, and on the other side, to get the government to hold itself accountable.

Seva Mandir sounded like it was painting a pretty perfect picture, though it was honest about some of its pitfalls: mostly frustration with the government, and accountability within itself; they also presented ways they are combating these problems. For example, when we visited a Seva Mandir-provided village school, they told us how it was necessary for the teacher to take a picture with the children three times a day to prove that he was there, and his salary was dependent directly upon the three photos' existence to make sure he's not closing down early or opening late or not at all like many of the government schools are known for doing.

We then visited a state-funded Malnutrition center that serves the entire state of Rajasthan. The malnutrition center serves to teach families how to feed their children, as well as bring starving children back to stable levels. The biggest problem is that there is so little available when you have a limited or non-existent budget (a similar problem worldwide). At that point, it doesn't matter if you have the education that says you need to provide protein for your family.. if you can't afford anything but rice, you have no choice. I saw a two-year-old who was only 7kgs (should be about double). The toddler looked like an infant, had a fever, was emaciated, and looked out with HUGE eyes from a hospital bed. The mother was my age, and stood by with her 4 year old girl, Lakshmi (ironically named after the Goddess of Wealth), as we discussed malnutrition in Rajasthan by her toddler's bedside. My niece Annabelle is only a year old, and was easily 3.5 times the size of this child. And what's so different about them? It's not like this family works any less or cares any less than my brother and sister in law do to provide for their family... this is the exact reason why I am so interested in the social determinants of health... the only thing different here is zip code.

Lakshmi asked me to take her picture:

Shifting gears, we were taken to a government nursing school, where students our age and younger were in a large auditorium. Because we enjoyed the last interaction with students our age in Aligarh, they gave us about 45 minutes to just talk to the other kids. Unfortunately there was a pretty big language barrier, but we still had a great time. i talked to a group of male nursing students all between 18-20 for a while.

"How are you liking India? What's the biggest difference between your country and India? Where have you traveled? Are you liking Indian clothes? Are you married? Why not? (I turned it around and asked the boys "NO! Are YOU married?" "NOOO!") How many in your family? What are your parents' names? Do you have any brothers? Do you believe in God? Are you a Christian? Because we're Christians... What's your yearly income?" "uhhh..."

Me and my new BFFs:

(these guys were best friends - men are so much more affectionate towards one another here - it's totally normal to see guys holding hands/putting arms around one another's shoudler and walking down the street, and is perceived as just being good friends, though westerners are much more quick to assume something more intimate. men being able to freely express emotion/affection towards one another is something the west does not understand!)

We had a quick lunch, and a guy from the nursing school gave us a briefing on things to do in Udaipur. After a quick nap back at the hotel, we all went off to explore, and went to a temple, the top of which we could see from the hotel across the river:

(something so beautiful right next to a garbage pit)

The we explored... this is a shot of the City Palace, in preparation for a wedding:

For dinner, my friend Hannah found a place called Dream Heaven in her guidebook. It was absolutely beautiful! It was one of my favorite moments in India so far - one of those, "oh, THIS is why I came here" moments - so I could sit on a roof in perfect 70 degree weather looking out at a palace and eating chapati. (And dinner was less than $2!)

Tuesday morning we were up early for a Hindi lesson over breakfast. They took us on an extremely long drive out of the city on our way to a rural village that the government says is served by public services, but in reality, the government schools and health clinics are too far for families to send their small children/ to walk to in an emergency/as a pregnant woman. The bus ride was insane, and I quickly learned that sitting in the back of the huge coach bus made me feel like a rag doll, as we'd cross over "bridges" that were actually a pile of rocks at impossible speed and we'd all get tossed into the air a few feet. It was a beautiful drive though, and more than once my seat mate and I exhaled loudly or let out a "whoahhhhh" as we turned a corner and would see a waterfall (this is a desert, mind you) or a huge herd of cattle or a shrub covered mountainside.

The first stop was a village school provided by Seva Mandir. This little boy wanted to show off a song that is apparently about the vitality of tomatoes. I took this video. His voice is beautiful:

The teacher explained with the help of a translator that since it is wedding season, attendance is very low among the kids. If they should choose to head for the government high school, they will need to somehow travel 18kms to get there everyday (unclear how they would do that but walk).

We saw the teacher take one of his daily photos with the children for his salary register for Seva Mandir. cool to see the rule actually functioning.

then we walked a few hundred feet up the hill to speak with a village health worker. However, I spent a lot of the time taling to the academic director, Azim-ji, about privilege and how it functions in India when it comes to fighting for social issues. He is a really knowledgeable guy, and I'm trying to soak up as much as I can from him. He asked for some raw chick peas from some village children, who picked them from the fields and bright them to the two of us. Delicious!

A little girl with a kazoo Molly gave her:

This discussion degenerated though when he dared me to go pick up a village goat. I was braced for him to resist, but he was SO CUTE and leaned into my shoulder when I started petting him.

We got back on the bus and headed into the village health clinic, where a Seva Mandir worker was giving immunizations to brand new babies :)

This is a happy baby right before it got a shot and became a very unhappy baby:

The Seva Mandir clinician uses a special needle and blood test that she has to suck on and blow into to move the blood from vile to vile. There's a special filter inside that keeps it sanitary and the needle sterile and reusable. They test glucose levels of pregnant women, and keep immunization records and cards at the center and in the village. Seva Mandir is able to get the vaccines for FREE from the government - this is one way in which they can work together - in exchange for free vaccines, Seva Mandir does the government's job for it. In some ways, I disagree with the model of picking up where the government leaves off instead of being a flag raiser... but there is a much better chance of Seva Mandir doing things correctly and safely for these people instead of the government workers who have no incentive to do their jobs correctly and safely.

I was trying to take some pictures of... well... cow patties, because they're patted into these neat cakes and used for fuel, and arranged in these intricate pyres... but a bunch of kids kept jumping in the shot yelling TAKE MY PICTURE DIDDI!!!! :)

"no wait I want to be in front!"

kids and cow patties:

We had lunch near the immunization clinic on the porch of another building, surrounded by mountains (this is an Indian boxes lunch! Think lunchables but AMAZING and fresh!:

Back at the Seva Mandir center, we had a debreifing and presentation on the organization. We got to hear from a woman who has worked both on the side of Seva Mandir and on the side of the government, doing a lot of the same public health related things, and stressed that the most important distinction was the freedom that NGOs have to do things without so much red tape that stands in the way of progress. She eventually came back to Seva Mandir because she wanted to come back to the reason why she started out: to help people - not to plan funding events where government officials could pat themselves on the back and fail to invite anyone from the marginalized population they claim to have served so well and raised out of poverty.

One of the biggest frustrations Seva Mandir has with the government is the failure to keep services open. For example, when government employees (who are guaranteed jobs once hired/appointed and guaranteed a fixed salary - no incentive to work) don't keep centers open, and family planning problems go unmet, it doesn't bother the government workers... but it does affect families who need counseling, abortions, and family planning methods... AND it becomes a larger, more expensive problem for the government later, when, for example, children are abandoned because they were not wanted and loved from the start. It becomes a bigger problem and runs counter to the idea that prevention is the answer.

I realized during the debriefing by Seva Mandir just how much we have learned in the past few weeks - she was throwing around Indian health lingo that we understood and had studied. It was a neat feeling

My Hindi teacher, Bhavna-ji, who matched the tree that I see everywhere:

.

We were free for the afternoon and evening and given a stipend for dinner, so we went to a Lonely Planet recommended Rajasthani culture/dancing show!

This was two Gods fighting:

We were told this dance represented being a proud Rajasthani woman. Later, a shopkeeper told me it actually represented having nothing to do in the Rajasthani desert. Haha :)

1 pot...

2 pots...

3 pots...

6 POTS??!?!

Now that's just ridiculous...

The only drawback of Udaipur is how touristy it is - it was crawling with Euro travelers (and I met an expatriate from the MD/VA border... weird), which makes it harder for us to be taken seriously/avoid being ripped off. Being a student is highly respected in India and it definitely opens doors for you, but in towns where people are so used to dumb, culturally inappropriate tourists, we lose this privilege.

After the show, we went to dinner at an unfortunately sketchy restaurant. I had a DELICIOUS banana lassi (yogurt drink), and went for dessert at a tourist place near the Udaipur City Palace. I paid for it dearly about six hours later, when I work up at 3am with a nightmare about yogurt and with the worst nausea of my life... and revisited my dinner.. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually, but it really sucked to lose a night of sleep and get turned off of such delicious food for a few days.

I spent the next day resting when I could, and sipping an electrolyte powder-drink. I should have not tried to be "tough," and I should have stayed back at the hotel... it made it really hard to enjoy myself and take in all of the sites. Hence why my pictures are kind of lame from this next day..

Despite how green I was, I got on a bus to a rural village with half of the group (other half to another). On the bright side, I got to see more of beautiful, beautiful Rajasthan. The women here are known for their NEON colored sarees, and you can see them from a mile off, dotting the muted colors of the desert. You'll be looking out at villages and small mountains and hills in muted greens and browns, and then all of the sudden one of the ubiquitous NEON PINK trees that looks absolutely on fire, and then a turquoise saree pops out of a field. It's breathtaking.

We went to the Kadia village on a little yellow bus, ambling through some modest mountains. The first stop was a health outpost run by another NGO called "ARTH" - a much smaller NGO (60 staff members) that focuses on training effective nurse-midwives and on pre-natal and post-natal care of women in rural villages. In the outpost, we saw a BRAND NEW baby, still in the labor room, mother exhausted and still on the table (it was a little too bloody a scene for my stomach to handle at the moment, so I excused myself for some air...). When else would I see something like that?!?! (well, other than in Aligarh....) Incredible. They deliver hundreds of babies in this five room clinic every year with only improving success. What a model.

We also saw a womens' self help-group, mostly filled with girls around our age. They get together to pool money, discuss womens' issues, and ARTH uses the opportunity to use the forum to educate them about the importance of breastfeeding and answer questions:

Abid-ji has this amazing ability to start talking to anyone and immediately make them comfortable. Here, he grabbed a schoolbook of a local girl and  teased her/asked her all about our studies. She blushed SO much and hid behind her hands when he started reading her assignments aloud to us :)

We got back in the bus to drive to a woman's house where she and her week old baby were scheduled for a check-up from ARTH. When the bus stopped, we noticed we were right in from of a health clinic. Turns out it was a government provided clinic that was manned only by a caretaker: "oh, the doctor retired two years ago. You're welcome to look around." I know we had heard about government corruption, but to see it in action and talk to people that it directly affected was another... and this wasn't even a scheduled stop! We just happened upon it. ugh.

The visit to this woman's house was amazing. I got to sit in the bedroom of a woman getting a post-natal check-up, and ask questions about her care, her baby, her life, how her life has been impacted by Sewa Mandir... incredible. She was absolutely beautiful (All of the Rajasthani women I've met have high cheek bones and classically beautiful features) and let us take pictures of her appointment with the nurse. This is the kind of exposure to groundwork public health that is just... I sound so redundant... incredible.

After a drive back, we had a presentation about the inner workings of ARTH at their nurse-midwife training center. It was great to have an interaction where they were very straightforward about setbacks. One of the coolest things I pulled from the lecture was the analogy that the government is like an elephant - big, and when it changes, it makes big changes, and it has the potential and hugeness for big shifts and lots of resources, but when it steps it cannot tread lightly, and it is so far off of the ground that it cannot work with the people... whereas the NGO is like the hare... it can move quickly, though it has a small impact, and can get things done fast and work with people on the ground. Interesting idea.

We were all so exhausted (and in my case, nauseated), that it wasn't a very interactive lecture, but I did gather that ARTH is serving as a nurse-midwife commissioned training center for the govn't, and we got to tour/use the facility!

The drive back:

When we got back to the hotel, I led a "synthesis" session with two other girls: basically a group discussion about what we had been exposed to so far. Every week we take turns leading/participating. It was really successful and it was nice to be one of the ones guiding discussion and mediating when debates got heated. I'm learning a lot from my peers.

Still a little sick, I was worried to put another delicious Indian meal in my stomach so I grabbed some salted chips for dinner and went art shopping instead :) It broke my heart to miss another time out in Udaipur but better safe than sorry. We kept seeing such neat small paintings on the sides of roads, and I really wanted to get a few before I left (most were under $3!). I ended up getting a few for people at home (I'll post some shots soon), a horse for my host sister, and a nicer one for.. well, myself. This was my new BFF Viday (who later completely ripped me off after we argued the price for about a half-hour) painting one of the pictures I chose:

I went back to Skype with my Mom and Dad and have an early night with the rest of the girls! We watched Top Gun and headed to bed, only to wake up at 4am for our train to Chittorgarh. I'll post about it soon!

I miss everyone at home -I'm hoping I'm going to be skyping with Kathleen, Kirsten, and Allison this weekend because Kirsten is visiting Kathleen and they're all on Spring Break!

This week of class is going well. I just learned the past tense for Hindi, so my ability to form new sentences has grown by a heck of a lot. Bhavna-ji told us that "Indians don't care about the future anyway... they just want to tell you about their/hear all about your life story. You need the past tense."

This was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to in my life, and it had made me sure that one trip to India just isn't enough for one life. I now am sure that I'll be back someday :)

Love,

Laura