Jamkhed Workshop... or public health Mecca

The first night that I got to Jamkhed, I was already pretty sure I would return. I didn't want to jump to any conclusions... but I was pretty sure I had taken a plane from Delhi to Pune, and had been driven out four hours to public health Mecca. By the third night, I asked the leaders of the NGO if I could come back to do my Independent Study Project, and they said yes! It was one of those feelings where you know for certain that something has clicked and is just.. right. To make a long story short, after my week in Jamkhed, which I'm about to tell you about in as much detail as I can remember (the serious downside of getting behind on blogging), I got back to Delhi and booked my return trip back for the following week.

The purpose of sending us on a workshop two weeks ago was to give us some exposure in the field, and look at different NGO operations over a longer period of time than we've had during out other excursions. We had four choices of NGOs/locations, and Jamkhed's Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP - jamkhed.org) was the one I chose. Going into it, I knew very little about the organization except for a few things I read online and that they centered on an empowerment-based approach to health. I also expected that I'd be sleeping in a hut or equivalent and that I wouldn't see a western-style toilet or WiFi for a while. Funny how expectations get you nowhere in India.

Two Sundays ago, Molly-ji and I got up bright and early for our flights to Varanasi and Pune, respectively. It was my first time flying domestically in India, and I have to say it was so much better than expected! The airports here are so wildly unlike the rest of India - pretty efficient, all latest technology, very clean crisp lines without the frills with which India usually likes to deck things out. We got into Pune, in the state of Maharashtra, in South India, in the morning, and immediately got in a van from the NGO bound for Jamkhed, four hours away. We didn't spend any time in Pune, but I got a few glimpses of the city as we flew through. It was so much hotter than Delhi -  it was impossible to talk in the van over the noise of the open windows, and we were still so hot! At some point I woke up from my heat/sleepiness-induced slumber... and saw ostriches. Lots of Ostriches:

We had stopped at the "Smile Stone," which was basically an Indian Cracker Barrel (except surrounded by ostriches and they don't serve American comfort food). After a quick buffet lunch and some Diet Coke (what I drink when I'm missing America.. even though I don't really drink it in America..) we were back on the road. But not before I could fill out an eval of the place. This is how I signed it:

We got into Jamkhed in the early afternoon. We pulled up in front of the building where we would be staying and unloaded, and met Ravi Arole for the first time. Ravi is the son of the couple who started CRHP, and he now is the Director of Operations for the NGO. And to our surprise, as I looked around for some mud-thatched huts, he pointed to a nice apartment-style building and told us there would be chilled water bottles waiting for us in the fridge (what?!).

That afternoon we had an Indian lunch and got acquainted with our surroundings on the Jamkhed campus. Apartments with common areas?! Toilets?! WiFi?!?!? What WAS this place? Wasn't this supposed to be remote, rural India? Ravi explained that they cater to a lot of students and visiting researchers from the west, and have tried to make the accomodations a lot like what people are used to. This means that we got to eat spaghetti and enjoy wireless internet in the middle of nowhere for a week... score.

Unfortunately my account of the week is a little blurry, and the field journal that I was required by the program to keep is currently being graded. So here is the run down of the coolest moments of the week:

We settled in, and Sunday night we were given a run-down of the program, and watched a video on Jamkhed (search Jamkhed on youtube) about its mission and history. Jamkhed was started in the 70's by Raj and Mabelle Arole, and it's entire philosophy is that people can learn, and are empowered by knowledge, and use that empowerment to make changes in their community, and that this kind of model is a true way of developing sustainable change. When people are directly involved in creating their own change in their communities, they will take ownership over it, and see it through to success. Thousands of people apply to visit and study there every year, so we were incredibly lucky to visit and have so much time with the founders' children, Dr.Shobha and Ravi, who currently run the program. Jamkhed consists of three main parts: the village health worker who is trained by CRHP but serves her own village, the hospital that sees patients from the villages, and the mobile health team that works between the two. The model that they have built works so well that they don't even have cases of TB or polio or other communicable diseases come in anymore - they mostly see accidents and lifestyle disorders such as high blood pressure or diabetes or cancer, since the rest of the stuff is taken care of by the village health worker at her village level. It is truly amazing.

There is so much to talk about just concerning the organization itself but I think in the interest of not boring to reader to death I'll just get to the details as they come, considering I'll be here for the next month. ;)

Monday morning, after prayer (they hold a secular service every morning with people of all faiths, though it has a Christian focus) we drove out to a non-project village - CRHP only works where villages want them. In some cases, villages don't want CRHP to interfere because they have heard about what has happened in other villages - that the caste system that has been benefiting the upper caste villagers has been upset and restarted.. the idea of equality and loss of power is scary enough that they turn down the health and infrastructure benefits that being a project village would mean. CRHP is always there for emergencies and is hands off until it is called upon, though.

The non-project village was interesting.. they made a point of not pointing out the problems of the village to us so that we could see them ourselves when we compared it to a project village. We visited a school that had 30 boys in the 3-6 age range, but only one girl. This is due to sex-selective abortions, an illegal but unfortunately still common practice in India, as baby girls are viewed as a liability from the moment they are born to the moment they are married and leave their homes... sometimes at extremely early ages.

We walked through the village and met women who asked if we were married, and when they were told no (they speak Marathi here, so our Hindi is of no use) they looked at us like "oh... there must be something wrong with them..." Pretty humorous.

We headed to another house where a woman showed off her water system, proudly so. It was an electrical pump that pumped up water into a pit made with a tarp so that there was water at the ready even at the times of the day when the electricity was cut off. The problem is that animals can drink from the water, little kids can fall in, and it's a breeding ground for mosquitoes.. I took pictures of the water source, which was right next to a bunch of thirsty farm animals:

We stopped at another woman's house and she made us freshly roasted peanuts right from her field. We tried to have a conversation, and it's funny how far you can get with just pointing and awkward smiles. This week I read The Alchemist which talks about the Language of the World... I think this was a small moment of it. She let me take a picture of her and her grandbaby:

The baby on the left, right before bursting into tears because he was so afraid of us:

What was also funny about her house was the use dish on the roof and the giant TV on the inside. She may not wear shoes, but she has tri-color access to the rest of the world.

A cow getting a bath - the people saw me taking this photo and burst out laughing:

We came back to the CRHP campus and did some exercises on public health model brainstorming. The campus is beautiful, and has all of these trees that are covered in little white star flowers that close in on themselves at night:

Tuesday, we got to visit a project village. The differences were immediately striking: drainage systems, safe water tanks, schools filled with children of all ages and genders, and just general organization. They took us into a house belonging to a man with leprosy and his wife, and got to ask them questions through a translator about CRHP. It felt intimidating to be crammed into such an intimate setting - the one room that functioned as bedroom, living room, and kitchen, but they didn't seem to mind, and were very welcoming people. From him we learned how CRHP has worked to change the social stigma of leprosy, which obviously makes care and recovery less complicated.

We took a tour through the village, and got to sit in on meetings with the adolescent girls' program, among others:

We then got on a bus and headed to another village for post-natal and pre-natal visits with the village health worker for the area. This mother is 18, and now has two children.

I got to use this device to listen to a yet-to-be-born baby's heartbeat, through its mother's stomach! It was without a doubt one of the coolest moments of my life. This is Abid-ji, my favorite teacher who took us on this trip, modeling it:

That afternoon, Abid-ji took us into the town of Jamkhed where he bought about 5 sarees for his wife and mother. Caroline and Nisha also were looking for sarees:

This little girl's mother wanted me to take her picture. I took this picture and showed it to her and she giggled for five minutes straight:

That night, CRHP held a welcome dinner for us on the roof of Dr.Shoba's house. After weeks of dal and rice, it was a huge shock when they served burgers and Doritos and ...a full bar. All of the sudden, the lights went out at dinner, showing off the incredible stars... the power goes out pretty frequently in Jamkhed, so we assumed it was just the power... until the sky lit up with fireworks :) there is a local guy in town who makes fireworks for weddings, and they set off a bunch for our "welcome dinner." Needless to say we were all definitely taken by surprise.

On Wednesday, we got up extremely early to visit the Ellora Caves, adding to my list of World Heritage Sites that I've seen since coming to India. The Ellora Caves are Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu temples carved and constructed hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The amazing thing is how close together they are, and how each generation and religion left the others' temples alone, showing how religious tolerance used to be a commonality for India back in the day. It took us about five and a half hours to get there, which meant we were there during the hottest part of the day. Despite the heat and the crowds, we had a great time:

After we left the caves, Abid-ji took us to a silk factory, where we got an unofficial tour and got to see how silk shawls, sarees, and scarves are made.

A lot of girls sifted through a pile of silk scarves for things to take home. And then I saw a corner of a silk/cotton blended saree... the store salesman was quick to follow my gaze and pulled it out, unfurling the five yards of purple and green and red and gold fabric. I was in love. I bought it! The guy said they take 28-32 days to make ONE on the handlooms that we had just toured. Pictures in the next post.

Our next stop was the Old Fort. By this point we were all completely exhausted and just wanted to start the five hour trip back in the cramped van with sideways seats (ugh) but we started the climb anyway... and were very glad we did. It was BEAUTIFUL from the top. I would say it was the best part of the day, but I might just be biased because of how hot it was at those damn caves:

On our way home, pretty much everyone had dozed off... but then we drove through a town and all of the sudden, people burst out of their homes with flags, cakes, and drums because INDIA WON THE CRICKET WORLD CUP! It was an intense few minutes, as we had to drive our way out of the crowd, and it was definitely a moment where I could hear my Dad saying "stay away from crowds, Laura." but people were just so happy, and were caught up celebrating the athletic victory of their generation.

Thursday, we spent the day on campus, and had meetings with different people in the organization so that we could ask them questions. We got to watch village officials do social mapping... it's one thing to read and study about social mapping... it's another to see it in action! Too cool.

I should also mention... there is a serious issue with th birds here. Apparently in the 70's, when CRHP was started, they got a few street lamps installed, and within a few nights, this place had become a roost for about 10,000 crows and other small chirping birds. They get here in early evening, go to sleep, and wake up (and wake EVERYONE ELSE UP) at 4AM when they take flight. CRHP has done everything to try to get rid of them, and there is a $7000 USD pot for whoever can make them go away. Automatic weaponry allowed. Basically anything that doesn't involve human sacrifice is fair game.

Thursday night was Drew's birthday, and Ravi had a cake made... in Indian tradition, everyone serves the lucky birthday guy/gal a piece of cake. This is Abid-ji, doing the honors:

(it was actually the worst cake on the planet, but we were so happy to have cake that we didn't really care...)

Friday, our last day in Jamkhed, we got a fast tour of a lot of the programs in operation on campus. One of these is the Jaipur Foot program, which offers extremely cheap prosthetic limbs at a ridiculously low production cost (USD $25 per leg). Wild. I also took pictures of the cast-off expensive plastic government-provided legs:

In the afternoon, we went to the CRHP farm. We rode in carts driven by bulls, milked some cows, picked fresh limes off of a tree, tried tamarind straight out of their shells, and toured around the fields.

vermiculture, aka WORRRRMMMMS!:

mangoes!: 

The woman who runs the farm is named Rutna, and in addition to being incredibly beautiful and another speaker of the Language of the World, is HIV+. She told us her story in Marathi, with Ravi as a translator. At 17 she was married with a baby, and her husband died only a year into their marriage of AIDS. she quickly found out that she had it too, and within the next year, had been kicked out of her own parents' home, ostracized by the surrounding communities, and finally lost her son to AIDS as well. She tried to commit suicide, and was taken to CRHP, where she was healed and given a job on the farm. At first, even the other workers at CRHP didnt want to work with her, because they were afraid of catching AIDS, but then Dr. Arole, one of the founders of CRHP, came to the farm and had lunch with her in the garden on the same plate. when others saw this, it was enough for them to come to terms with their own previous prejudices. She is now 27 and healthy, though living with HIV, and is respected at her job, and welcomed back into her home community. Rutna was choked up through most of the story, and though we had all initially been taking notes, began to put our notebooks down one by one. Because I was seated opposite her on the circle, we locked eyes for almost the entire story. Even though I didn't understand the Marathi, we would uphold eye contact throughout the translation. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life. Though we thanked her at the end, it felt like it wasn't enough... this was a moment that I hated the language barrier the most. She is an incredible woman, and i wish we could have conveyed that without a translator.

That night, Anna, Caroline and I made our final arrangements for returning to Jamkhed the following week. It felt right - I felt as if there was so much left to explore and experience at Jamkhed, and unlike the other excursions, where I am ready to leave by the end of the week, I couldn't wait to get back here. When we left at 5am the next morning to make the four hour drive to the Pune airport, and the two hour flight back to Delhi, all I could feel was excitement for the week to come, and the certainty that I had found the place for my Independent Study Project.

...And this post is coming to you from Jamkhed! I'm back here now, writing to you from the apartment that four of us are living in for the month. We've been here for four days now, and other than the already oppressive heat, I am sure I made the right decision to come back.

My next post will be about the last week that i just had in Delhi with my homestay family! I already miss them so much.

Love,
Laura