January 20th : Overview of experience to date

It's been 2 and a half weeks in country now and I think I speak for the Team when I say it is not what we expected. In many ways, it is so much more and in many ways we are surprised at how far the emerging India still has to come to be where the US was even 10 years ago technologically. Everyone has several cell phones in their homes and autos and on their persons and most have digital cameras in them so we are constantly stopped in crowds to pose with people who we have no connection to other than a few feet of road or walkway. Children unabashedly run up to us to feel our skin or hair as it is so different from what they usually see. Megan, being blonde gets that more than the rest of us and children seem to flock to her.

When this trip was initially described to all of us and we were chosen to go, it was on an exchange with the Silicon Valley of India...the information superhighway between Bangalore and Hyderabad. We will not even be near Bangalore which is where some of the team had researched sites they wished to see for vocational enhancement. Until this stop, we have not consistently even had access to the Internet. Occasionally a host will have a computer in their home but wireless, which we expected everywhere, has been no where so far, Cell phones which we were assurred would work here do not so I have a phone for the month as a gift from the District so they can reach me to check on the progress of the team each day. However, it was purchased and loaded with time in a State other than where we are now residing or will be at any point for the rest of this trip so there is a charge on those calls that is using some minutes.

Yesterday, we went out to the farm of one of the Rotarians who was my counterpart as a GSE team leader a few years ago. He has a dairy of she buffalo and had a two day old calf that freely mingled with visitors and two three month old brown and white spotted puppies that loved all over us. His farm was an organic work of art, That work starts with compost troughs near the stable, Organic material,such as leaves and sticks and fruit peels are laid in the base of the trough and cow manure piled atop it and it is thoroughly watered. After 3-4 days the whole mixture is turned over and stirred. The process is repeated every three days until the mixture is full of earthworms. At that point the dry top layers are skimmed off and piled to be used as organic fertilizer around the plants, He has rice paddies, hay fields and fruit trees galore. In the 5 acres we walked were a mango grove, coconuts, bananas, custard apples (they look like small artichokes but are juicy and sweet) , grapefruit, and many other furits I have never seen or heard of before. Sandalwood and teak are also being cultivated there. Oh and curry! You crush the leaves and can actually taste the curry with the scent!

Today we spent 6 hours in the car driving out to a very rual area a hundred Km from here to see the world's largest Banyan tree. It is over 600 years old and covers more than 6 acres with another survey scheduled this year expected to show it closer to 7 acres. Now, a novice looking at this would never suspect it is one tree as Banyan send out limbs and drop taproots which travel under the ground and come up as a new generation, It would appear that there are hundreds of them there but we are assurred it is in actuality, only one. Geographically we could be traveling through central Arizona with the red soil and rock formations.

Wherever we go, we are asked for monies for projects much needed in the towns from desks and chairs for the schools to wells and water purifiers to a CT scanner for a hospital to computers for schools (at three times each what we can get them for in the States). I have asked all of those requesting monies to forward proposals so they can be considered by our District's Foundation for potential inclusion in programs but somehow I wonder if I will see many materialize. They find it almost impossible to conceptualize that we have poverty and homelessness in the US and Rotary must meet needs locally there as well as helping on a global basis. Tomorrow we go to a town 40 Km from here called Dharmavaram. The Rotary Club of north Providence RI has donated monies to send several girl children to school providing uniforms, books and supplies. The Team will be presenting them at a ceremony tomorrow afternoon. Here girl children are sent out to work and earn monies to pay tuition for brothers and male cousins before they are allowed an education. This program is designed to improve the economy over time by educating more females than would otherwise have access to education.

We are getting more south east coastal in the Indian Peninsula and losing altitude and it is getting hotter and there are more mosquitoes. The heat is very dry and cooling collars soaked are almost dry in an an hour or two where at home they might take a couple of days to dry. My current "home" is a rooftop terraced apartment with open air gardens (now set for dinner for about 30 people by the looks of it) over an orthopedic hospital. About 70 patients are seen daily except Sunday by my host, a former GSE team member to the USA. He has a staff of 20 paraprofessionals assisting him to treat, operate and care for patients downstairs. 20 inpatient beds and an average of 4-6 surgeries done at the end of each day(most of these are pateients seen earlier in the day). He tells me a hip replacement total cost here is equivalent to $500 US and he does at least 5 a week as the only physician on site.

The computer connection is so slow here I am hoping this makes it to all of you. Namaste and blessings to all. I will see some of you in a couple of weeks!
we were talking today about how the newness of this trip has worn off and we are all beginning to really miss home.
Cherie

Mother Theresa's Orphanage

I have just had an amazing and humbling glimpse into the life of 6 very loving and dedicated nuns who are caring for 150 severely mentally and physically handicapped persons ranging in age from about three or four years of age to adults. There is not a detectable odor or spot of dirt to be found in any of the living , eating or common areas despite the fact that many of the residents are lying on blankets in breezeways and diapered. When they get an unwanted but otherwise healthy child there, they rais it withihin the community, teach vocational skills and arrange a suitable marriage within the community for that person when they reach adulthood.

All 6 of these nuns actually did part of their training under the actual direction of Mother Theresa herself. All knew her personally and I must confess, there is a radiance about these 6 women that one rarely encounters in even the most faithful persons we meet.

Photographs were not allowed and would not have been appropriate in that hallowed setting. These women really were ministering to our Lord and there is no other way to describe what I saw than a miracle in the making.

JVSL and Hampi

JVSL is an amazing town and has been like Spring break for the Team. A planned community with sports facilities, a meditation center, shopping center, conference facilities, it attracts workers from all over the World and hosts conferences on mineral management, mining and resource management. It also houses India's second largest steel manufacturing plant and employs several thousand persons. We watched them unload a cargo train car full of coal in less than a minute by pulling the car onto a revolving platrorm, picking it up and tipping it into grates that run on a conveyor beneath the ground. The facility has its own electricity plant and makes enough from the natural gas available to provide the energy needs for the plant and surrounding community with plenty of extra to spare. Theyalso have their own water purification center, sewage treatment center and recycling center,

In nearby Hampi, the team spent the day yesterday viewing temples and ruins of a civilization that vanished from the region fully 500 years ago. Temperatures by late morning were already well over 100 degrees but the team kept cool by exploring underground passageways and dwellings. We keep hearing about natural air conditioning and camera lenses made by angles of holes cut in domes and ceilings and there is evidence of amazing architectural and engineering feats present at every turn in these ancient structures.

This early afternoon the team visited the government hospital In Ballary. I just got a chance to speak with Megan about the visit and she said the bulk of the time was spent in the office of the Administrator with an overview of the type of patient they care for and the scope of practice then a tour of the hospital that only lasted about 10 minutes. The team is home for lunch and a brief rest and then in another half hour are off to visit the jail. This is the first time we have been scheduled to visit a jail. Tomorrow is the Mother Theresa Church and school and the school for disabled children. There is a great deal of polio here still as well as birth injuries and disability to parasitic infection or illness, Then in the evening tomorrow is a wedding. The reception takes place with the community present the evening before the actual ceremony which will happen the morning of the 19th.

All is well with us and we seem to have gotten into a nice rhythm of activity.

Last full day in Gulbarga

Gulbarga…last full day
After spending a day quite ill yesterday with GI upset, I was able to make the rounds with the team today. My host’s wife woke me from a healing night’s rest at 6:50 am and my host then took me to mass in the only Catholic Church in the area. It was a delightful folk mass in KANADA, the local language with the first lesson and the homily done in English. Although the mass was said in KANADA, the mass music was in English.. Following this, we joined the team and local Rotarians for breakfast above a large Sari shop (4 flights above). As we were headed out to our appearance at a local school, we were stopped by the women of the host family on the third floor and one by one decked out in jewelry made of sugars and saris draped in every imaginable manner.

On Sundays here, the schools only have a half day so we arrived at the local Montessori school which has over 4000 students from age 2 though about the 6th grade and visited several classrooms then went on back to the government secondary school behind it.
Here we were treated to a variety of classical Indian dances performed by the students followed by a famous dance routine from a Ballywood movie. Photo ops with each dance troupe followed by photos with the parents of the children who had performed followed. These students grilled us in Q&A period about how we perceived differences and similarities in Indian versus US culture and American politics. They are following Obama and Hilary with great interest and wanted to know who we thought would be the next President. We dodged that question with a number of diversion tactics.
This afternoon we got to go to the Rotary hospital near here. Rotary, through matching grants, has put in a neonatal ICU. Up to 12 babies can be accommodated at any given time and the nursery had 10 at the time of our visit. Ant that is with only 6 warmers. There are no isolettes. Babies share space with one nurse to manage all of the babies at one time. Moms were seated on beds in an adjacent room. Next we toured the pediatric surgical ward and the eye clinic where Rotary has provided for free eye clinics and does almost 100,000 eye surgeries annually.
From there, it was on to a visit at the Sai Baba temple. Sai Baba is a “saint” who accepted all religions and castes so his temple is open to all to worship. Following a brief stop to clean and refresh, we were put into saris by host families and taken to a joint meeting of the three Rotary Clubs in town and did our presentation there. Very well received and it is clear the Team is becoming quite comfortable with their telling of their story. Chris found an inflatable “world” ball and has circled our area of New England on it as well as the area of India we are visiting and then it gets tossed to the crowd and batted around. They love that visual aid.
We are all close to being well again thanks to the incredible hospitality and ministrations of our host families. It has been a soothing stop after the busy schedule of the past week an a half.
Tomorrow at 6:30 PM we leave by train for JVSL (the second largest steel production area in the country) and also will have a chance to visit Hampi, the site of many historical temples. We are told it will be very hot there and much walking but our hosts have been instructed to schedule our visits so we are not out in the hot mid day sun,
I do not know what Internet connections will be like but will try and update again as soon as we get to a place where I can post.

Bidar to Gulbarga

January11,2008 We travel to Gulbarga.

A little after 10:40 this morning we left Bidar by road for Gulbarga. We are told from this point on, the temps will be 40-45 degrees Celsius or over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It would appear that there is more infrastructure where we are headed as roads are paved and often have paved shoulders for cattle and pedestrians to use. At one point we came upon a truck on its side, contorted with cargo strewn in the road. We were told that the accident had happened 2 days prior and two persons were dead. The vehicle will remain at the scene until all of the investigation is complete and the cause of the accident is determined then it will be removed .
We were actually almost on schedule arriving in Gulbarga and had a very warm welcome by the Rotarians from the three Clubs here, many of whom we had me at District Conference in Raichur our first weekend here. They are, in every way I can see, a fun loving group of people who truly care for and about each other. Many are US educated or have family living in the US.

First stop was the University of Gulbarga with a student body of about 3000.…all post graduate master’s or Doctoral students. The director of the library was a funny and excited little man who was so pleased with what he had been able to accomplish in his time there as far as setting up a network based library system that will allow for e-conferencing and long distance learning. He had just received an award from the Indian government proclaiming his facility the best of its kind in the entire country and you can certainly see how much he loves his work and how proud he was of it.


The team is scheduled to visit a couple of ancient temples and a fort today as well as one of the rarer pre 1000AD Buddhist temples then at 6PM they are being taken to a theater to see a recent Ballywood film. At 8:30 we are being hosted for dinner again by one of the clubs. Tomorrow is Sunday and our hosts have made arrangements for me to go to mass. I feel so blest to have such sensitive and accommodating people seeing to our needs.
If I am up to it tomorrow or Monday before we leave, I have been asked to meet with the Medical staff (Cardiology, Urology, OB/GYN, neurology, dermatology, ophthalmology) and speak to them on how MS needs to be handled differently than other illnesses that have similar symptoms. In particular, I’ve been asked to talk with them on the use of steroids and benefits or drawbacks. We went to visit my host’s brother in the hospital last evening as he was three days post MI. He was experiencing confusion and his oxygen sats were low so I got him to do some deep breathing with me. “Ah, like yoga”, he said. I nodded and asked him if he could do that several times an hour. He said yes and his wife agreed to prompt him. It helped bring sats up. Them my host told me he was a smoker. I looked at him, scowled, tsked at him and he laughed. The family and the cardiologist who were in the room at the time said it was the first time since the event that they’d even gotten a smile out of him.
My hostess speaks very little English but last evening insisted I wear one of her Saris to dinner with the Rotary. I wore my blouse and her sari was more of a complementary color on me than mine. The team said they had not seen me look so nice in anything since we’d been together, I do not have the right camera cable to download photos from my camera and will try and get my computer to Rebecca to load them on with her camera.

There is no Internet access here but I am assured that a tenant of the family has it and I should be able to be online within a few hours to post this. Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers for safe travel. Blessings to you all.

Bidar and Basavakalyan
On Tuesday, January 8th, after an 8 hour train trip, we arrived in Bidar where we were taken to our host homes to rest. I think all of the team did just that but myself as I had been invited by my host to the once day a year annual harvest festival to mark the start of the sugar cane harvest. It was really just a large group of friends sitting around (men on mats under a tent with lots of food and women under a tree on a blanket also with great quantities of food. I had the opportunity to meet a fair number of the doctors and dentists and politicians in town…most of whom are Rotarians.
On the 9th we were fitted for sari blouses but the tailor arrived nearly two hours after the assigned time so our day got started around noon rather than at 9 as planned. We were off to Fort Bidar, used as a mountainous fortification under several generations of kings between 800 and 1300AD. One feels so finite when there is such age and majesty and size surrounding you and this was no exception. By 1:30 when we were due to be back at the Club for lunch the temps were pushing mid 90s. Following lunch the team all went off to the engineering college with Basavaraj (one of our incoming team members who will be visiting us for the months of April/May). He also took them to a Bidri craft center…traditional stone crafts made of iron and zinc so that they remain very hard and shiny. That evening we met with three clubs jointly to do our presentation, charter and pin members of a new Rotary and a new Rotaract (for 18 to 25 year olds) and I got to as the only District Dignitary present award 8 Paul Harris Fellow Awards. I understand that 3 of the 5 newspapers are funning feature articles with photos tomorrow.
This morning after breakfast, we were off by Road to Basavakalayan by road. 80Km and not fast moving, Our first stop was at the dental College of Bidar where they wanted to show us the mobile Dental Clinic they had gotten from a matching grant from Missouri USA District 6060. With the equipment they carry aboard, they can treat or assess 8 chairs full of patients outside the van under an awning and do surgeries on two in the chairs inside. Serious procedures such as complicated extractions, crowns, root canals must be referred back to the dental college but with this vehicle they can assess and treat 100,000 patients that would have no way to get to the dental clinic.
Following that stop a visit was made to a government primary school with children 6-12 years of age. The sit on slate floors and study all day with no desks or chairs. The local clubs have been buying desk chair combos for them, are putting in a well and a water filter.
On to the School for the blind where not only are the students blind but the principal, vice principal and several of the teachers are as well. We had the joy of presenting to them braille writers from the Rotary Clubs. Next the adult vocational center for the blind where groups of men and women sat around the property playing music, weaving, preparing food. They have just gotten a grant to start construction of a 20x30 foot hall for the school so students have shelter in inclement weather, We also dispensed braille writers, and white canes to those at the center.
On to Basavakalyan Clubs (2) for our presentation and lunch. We got there at 2:30 and they’d been planning on us for both breakfast and lunch! Time is very otherworldly there. After the presentation, they showed us the schedule which had us visiting 5 Hindu temples, an ancient fort, first parliament, a hospital. We told them we could not see any of them as we needed to be back in Bidar at 6 and it was already after 4 and it was a 2 hour drive. They offered to lead us out of town. In doing so we ended up at two temples and a hospital where several of the Rotarians were in a “forward thinking physician’s conglomeration". They have 8 different specialists, a lab, X-ray, infusion room to treat typhoid fever and it reminded me for all the world of the hospitals here of 40 years ago. Wonderful and congenial hosts who insisted on taking us to their homes in the hospital complex and serving us coconut milk and fresh squeezed juices.
I thought we were done till we ended up at another temple at 6:30PM. The team went off to explore and I had a private session with some children coming home from school. After the car overheating and needing to stop to rest on the way back, we arrived back here at 8:30 with dinner scheduled for 8. We have not been so dirty to this point so came home and tried to wash the grime off as best we could. One of the women bowed out to rest while the rest of us went into town for dinner at 9:15 and home by 10:30PM. Tomorrow we are out of here at 9am for Gulbarga by car ( a three hour drive) and the whole process starts in a different area. Most of us plan to ship home some of the many gifts we’ve received from clubs while here (glasses, vases, statues, books…things that will be difficult to find room in luggage for anymore.)
It’s now well after midnight so I am going to try and get this posted along with some photos. I don’t know what kind of communication facilities we weill find on this next leg of the journey, Oh…It’s been a week and Chris still doesn’t have his luggage. The last we heard it would be midnight tonight which is already past.
I’ll be in touch soon.~~~~~~~~Cherie

India 1

Raichur India 6 January, 2008
What wonderful hospitality and an attempt to make us comfortable and feel welcome! Most people here speak 4 languages. One or two of the county dialects (change every 100Km thought ought this vast region), Hindi….the native and much respected thousands of years old language, and English used during the time of the colonization of India by the Commonwealth of India. Most conversations in our presence are in something other than English although in direct conversation all is English (or a form of it. Their accents (King’s English according to them) do not approach what we have heard spoken on visits to England or by our English friends. They tell us our accents are hard to understand because they are so “soft”. We apparently do not lend the importance to word ending sounds that they are used to.
Regina and I are staying with the family of the gentleman who will be my counterpart as Team Leader of the GSE team coming to Southeastern MA and RI from April 12-May10. They have two daughters who are 15 and in the 10th level of school in a Catholic girls school and the other is in her second year of college a few blocks from here for business administration. The other three members of the team are staying with Rotarians with families as well and all are within 5 minutes by motor rickshaw from here.
Streets are dirt for the most part with some deteriorating paving taxis, trucks (mostly carrying bales of cotton…principle crop of this area), auto and manual Rickshaws, pedestrians, dogs, boars, and cows. And they drive on the opposite side of the road from what we do. No speed limits even in town, you pass on the right and gun it if you need to get around a cow cart loaded with branches and pull back in in time to avoid hitting a car coming at you in a similar pattern with you each sharing a lane of travel.
Yesterday they got us all up early and over to the Conference Center to do our presentation to the 800 Rotarians gathered for their annual District conference. We were told we were to be presenting at 11:30 sharp which was a bit daunting since the Team had not yet put together their long presentation from home. Finally at 3PM we took the stage. I thought they did a great job but there were frank conversations going on throughout the auditorium as they spoke, cell phones ringing and conversations loudly ongoing on cells.
Our cells do not work here despite the fact that our phone companies in the USA assured us they would. The homes and hotels and conference centers do not have internet access and no one in the Internet cafes will let us use our laptops on their equipment so it feels remote and a bit out of touch,
Today we meet the INTERNATIONAL Polio Plus team here and do polio immunizations for half a million children in just today then we are free to relax and do sight seeing with our host families. We must do some shopping for clothing that is more appropriate to the climate and people with whom we are working. Our Team Wool blazers are just not going to work in these 80-90 degree temps and women are strictly forbidden to wear sleeveless tops or lower necklines. We are thinking we girls need to get longsleeved lightweight cotton blouses.
I’ll try to send more when I can get to another internet café. Monday we travel to Bidar by train and spend three days there before heading for Gulbarga.