ROADTRIP!!

So my first week at RSO is coming to an end. I am currently laying in bed in my hostel with feet that are swollen beyond recognition (water retention) and relishing my sopping wet hair from my shower (it's amazing how good a bucket shower feels after a long weekend like this one). The past two days we took a roadtrip to two colonies that RSO is just starting to work with that are five hours away. We left Rising Star's compound at 5am and headed southwest. RSO employs drivers to help get us from place to place and they are so nice and so awesome! TJ was the driver for our car on this trip and Vale drove the medical van. On our way out of town TJ stopped at a local temple to bless our van so it would run well and nothing would happen to it (it was a brand new van that had never been driven before). He put lemons on each of the tires, burned something, and hung a string of flowers across the grill--it was really cool to see this ritual blessing and see that TJ cares enough about all of us to bless the van before our trip. On the way to our first colony we got stuck in a traffic jam in one of the cities because there was a huge religious festival going on and literally the whole city was crammed onto the main road that we were trying to drive on. We were stuck for so long that we all ended up getting out of the van to look around and enjoy the festival. To further show how nice our driver TJ is, when we all got out of the van he got out with us to walk around with us to make sure we stayed safe. Rising Star employs such great people and truly attracts the best of the best. Once we were able to get through the festival we continued on our way to the first colony. This overnight trip also marked the first time I got to eat in a legit Indian restaurant! All the indian restaurants have handwashing stations and advertise whether they have a/c or not because that is the best sales pitch they have. All the food on this trip has been SO GOOD and all the restaurants we ate at on this overnight adventure were no different.

The first colony we went to was a small colony on a hill. Dr. Kumar had been there a few times before but this is the first time they had brought volunteers. Our goal for the day was to see all the people in the colony and we definitely met that goal--we saw all 42 leprosy-affected people in the colony as well as 3 more that we don't even know where they came from. My job for the day was to check the patients for diabetes by doing blood sugar tests on them. After 45 tests I am now officially a pro at testing a person's blood sugar. One thing that was very hard about this job, though, was most of the time the leprosy-affected don't have fingers and sometimes they don't even have hands and even those that do have a few fingers had hands that were so tough and callused that it was like trying to prick thick cowhide with a sewing needle. A lot of patients we had to try three and four times to find a spot that would give us enough blood. I also felt really bad doing this because a lot of the women were really scared to get their fingers pricked and I couldn't talk to them and tell them that it wasn't painful. I tried to smile and be as reassuring as possible and I think this helped a little. After we finished doing diabetes checks on all the patients I went outside to see the children in the colony. Indian children are probably the CUTEST kids ever and are so loving and kind! As I went outside I went over to where Kristin was painting the girls' nails (young and old). There was an old grandma waiting to get her nails done so after some prompting from Kristin I started doing her nails with the bright pink polish she had picked out. Let me explain that the reason I needed prompting from Kristin was because I am HORRIBLE at painting nails--I get paint all over the cuticle and always miss spots. I am so glad, though, that I was able to help this leprosy-affected grandmother feel beautiful by helping to paint her nails (it was still a horrible paint job but she really loved it). After I painted her nails I started playing with all the kids in the colony. There was a boy who lived in that colony named Krishna Morti who is an RSO student and SO CUTE! I started showing him and all his friends my flip video and they thought it was the coolest thing ever. I let Krishna Morti start taking a video and he ran off with it and started filming the whole colony--it was so cute and they all thought it was hilarious. All the volunteers played with the kids by teaching them games, playing tag, and just generally having fun with them. Eliza (another of the volunteers who is a dancer) and I danced with the kids and showed them the hokey pokey and the macarena and other random dance moves. Indian children LOVE to dance and they are all really good at it for the most part. One of the girls in the colony, though, I especially loved. Her name is Mary and she is 14 and is probably the cutest most lovable girl on the PLANET!! She loved to walk and hold hands and would just hug me and grab my arm and was so adorable I could hardly stand it!! She showed us her house and hung out with us for the whole day! The hardest part of that day was saying good-bye to her and the other children. They all have so much love to give that they just fill me up with love--that's sounds ridiculously corny but it true. All the people in this colony were unbelievably nice and welcoming and it was a joy to work with them.

After our work in the colony we drove to our hotel and settled in for the night. We ate at a restaurant underneath the hotel and we were all so tired that we went straight to bed after dinner. Because we only had so many rooms at the hotel all the girls had to sleep three to a bed, so Anne Marie, Heather and I all passed out on our king sized bed at the end of the day.

We had to leave the hotel the next morning at 7:30am to head to the next colony. The colony we went to today had 100 people as opposed to the 45 we helped the day before. We had tons of work to do in this colony so we got an early start. Dr. Kumar had warned us that because volunteers had never come to this colony before the people may be very stand-offish and not as willing to talk and interact with us....he could not have been more wrong. We pulled into the colony to find a huge group of people lining the street waiting and waving at us. We set-up quickly and got to work. It was very apparent from the get-go that the people here had never really received medical care. People were pushing themselves on homemade boards because they couldn't walk and just about everyone had the biggest infected sores on their feet that I had ever seen. Today I was working on taking people's blood pressure and helping to organize the folders. I was supposed to be calling out the names of the people before taking their blood pressure (which would have been really hard because I can't pronounce any of them let alone read them) when one of the men from the colony sat down in a car next to me and just started reading off the names of all the people and sending them where they needed to go. This man, named Ramamorti, was a huge example of service to me because he sat down on his own accord and just started helping without anyone having to ask. When it finally came time for him to be treated he stood up and I looked down to see that he only had one deformed foot. The other was only a small stump that he had stuck inside his shoe. It was truly amazing and humbling to see this man who we had come to serve sitting down and taking time to serve and help us. If there was ever an example of Christ-like service it would be Ramamorti.

My experience with Ramamorti was one of many that happened in this very large leprosy colony today. About 30 minutes into our work in this colony (we had seriously only gotten through maybe 20 patients out of 100) Dr. Kumar got a call and learned that his wife's father had suddenly passed away. His wife (a doctor herself who had come on the trip with us) was distraught at this news and Dr. Kumar and her left with TJ immediately. Dr. Kumar's exit left 13 American volunteers in a leprosy colony with no translator...this could get a little tricky. Amy (RSO's executive director) made the executive decision after Dr. Kumar's exit that we would finish taking the blood pressures, doing the diabetes testing, and washing and bandaging people's feet even though Dr. Kumar had to leave. So we continued on trying to get people through the line as quickly as possible. As mentioned before we saw 100 people in this colony. When we reached the end of our stack of folders (blood pressure taking was the first stop in the circuit) there were 3 folders with names that were still remaining. We asked another man that was helping us and he said that those three people were unable to walk to where we had set-up all the medical stations. Because Soren (one of the other volunteers) and I were already done doing blood pressures, we decided to go to these people's houses and do their blood pressure there and see if they had any wounds that needed to be re-dressed. The first house we went to was a woman named Cinnamal. She was a large old woman who was unable to walk because of the sores on her feet. We checked her blood pressure then checked the sores on her feet. One of her feet had a sore all down one side of it that was severely infected and definitely needed to be washed and re-dressed. Soren and I sat there for a few minutes trying to think of ways to help her. She tried to walk using a steel pole as a walking stick but she was not strong enough to do this. In the end, Soren and I decided that the only way to get her to the all the medical supplies was to carry her there. So Soren and I hoisted Cinnamal between the two of us and we carried her all the way back to the medical station. This was one of the hardest things I have done yet because 1. Cinnamal was no small woman by any means. 2. It was over a hundred degrees outside. 3. Cinnamal's house was on the other side of the village from the medical van. and 4....did I mention it was over 100 degrees outside? Even with all this Soren and I were able to get Cinnamal to the medical station and get her checked for diabetes and get her sores washed and re-dressed. Amy told us later that she sat and talked with Cinnamal and learned that she had tried to go to the hospital 3 times but they would not admit her because she had leprosy. If Soren and I had not taken the effort to go find her at her house and carry her to the medical van she would have missed another opportunity to receive treatment. After dropping off Cinnamal, Soren and I went to the other two people's houses to see if they had wounds that needed to be re-dressed and check their blood sugar. The other two patients were not in good enough condition to carry so after everyone at the medical station had finished they took supplies to these people's houses to make sure they got treatment. After making the initial trip to these people's houses, I washed and bandaged a few of the leprosy-affected people's feet. This is, by far, the grossest thing I have ever done and I didn't even get any really gross sores. Kristin had a man with a sore that had literally eaten away his entire foot and only left a huge concave hole on what was left of the bottom of his foot. When the people come to you with these sores they are completely infected and have flies covering them and feeding off the infected flesh. It is our job to clean the people's feet and clean out their wounds. Then we put ointment on the sore (or oftentimes we fill the sore with ointment because the sores are literal holes in their feet) and finally bandage it up with fresh gauze. We would also clip their toe and finger nails if that needed to be done. Between he smell of the infected feet, the flies swarming around the sores, and the horrible sight of the sores themselves...this is not a pretty job. I am so grateful, though, that through this process we are really increasing their quality of life and making them feel SO much better. After we finished washing people's feet I was able to play ring around the rosy with the colony children before we had to leave. Again, the whole village lined the street to say good-bye to us. They were so insanely grateful for all that we had done and it was a great feeling to know that we had really made a difference.

After leaving this colony we headed back to the hotel for lunch and then started out on the long bus ride home. I will be honest and say this was not the best five hours of my life what with no air conditioning, bumpy roads, and general crazy Indian driving. I actually surprised myself and did better than I would normally do under these circumstances (normally I would get REALLY sick but I only got kindof sick). We finally made it back to RSO, though, and I am blogging happily from the comfort of the hostel. I am continuing to love my time here and honestly don't want it to end. Tomorrow is a free day and we are going shopping in a tourist town right on the Bay of Bengal! Yay for shopping!! More to come soon!

Namaste!