Weeks and Whirlwinds

So the past week here has been a whirlwind for a number of reasons. I'll start with the easy ones:

We had a total of 9 outreach eye camps this week, which means that there have been two-a-day for the past four days. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm working longer hours; it just means that camps tend to be understaffed and undersupplied, and I end up telling patients "Ende power illai-- we don't have that lens power" more often than I'd like to. At the end of the afternoon, I'm completely exhausted.

We also started up an eye health education program for slum children, which happened for the first time last week. Another volunteer and I put together some posters and came up with a few fun eye-related activities (i.e. drawing a partner's eye and labeling the parts, shining flashlights in our eyes to demonstrate how the pupil constricts in response to bright light, etc.) With the help of a translator, (our volunteer coordinator, Thanraj) the program went really well.



At the end, we handed out sunglasses, which the kids really got a kick out of.



The whirlwind isn't only Unite For Sight-related, though. Some of you know that I've been dealing with some personal issues, and it's been really difficult being so far away from friends and family. I was feeling terribly alone, when India, in her usual contradictory manner, swept me off my feet.

Last Thursday, I went to Fisherman's Cove, a spectacular beach just outside of Chennai. I needed an escape from the noise and chaos of the city, and this was perfect:



On Saturday, I met up with Ragul, a friend of Marcie Griffith's from Madurai. Marcie is a dear friend of mine from Amherst; she was a senior on the cross country team when I was a freshman, and took me under her wing that year. She studied abroad in Madurai, and so was really excited about my trip to India. We talked the day before I left for Chennai, and she gave me a few contacts in the city.

Ragul was delightful, and we got along so naturally, so he invited me to a wedding reception that night-- two of his former colleagues were getting married. Even though I didn't have a the appropriate sari wedding attire, I was warmly welcomed by his friends, heard a fantastic traditional Hindi wedding band, and ate more Indian food than ever before-- the feast was immense, and my banana leaf kept mysteriously refilling with heaps of rice, idly, parotas, and various curries and stews. Ragul and I have plans to meet up again tomorrow afternoon.




Then on Sunday, I went to Mamallapuram with another one of Marcie's friends, Kirsten. Mamallapuram is a town about an hour and a half outside of Chennai famous for its ancient rock carvings. We spent the morning admiring the stone sculptures, the temples cut into hillsides, and the spectacular views:






We also sat under Krishna's Butter Ball, a giant boulder that's randomly located and precariously balanced on a steep slope:



In the afternoon, we went to a beach resort just outside town to swim, relax, and bake in the hot Indian sun.



I've also seen a lot of Srikumar in the past week, and I'm pretty sure he'll be a life-long friend. I have been overwhelmed and amazed by the kindness and generosity of the people in this country, and I can only hope that I'm giving back to them half as much as they've given to me.

Avoid Girls, Save Petrol

(Seen on a t-shirt as I walked across the street to the internet cafe.)

English translations sometimes crack me up. My favorite series are shown below. These signs are all over my neighborhood as kindly public service announcements from our friendly Chennai city police.







Note that I've never actually seen a Chennai city police officer...

Oh, wait. That's not true. Once when I was out late (late being 11:30 p.m.) our rickshaw was stopped by a police officer to "check on us." Basically, we had to pay a 30 rupee bribe, and then he let us go.

Oh, India. You are so beautiful, and so full of crazy contradictions.

The Eye Camp Experience

About four mornings each week, we load up the Unite For Sight van with eyeglasses of assorted strengths, two optometrists, a few volunteers, and one ophthalmologist with hand-held ophthalmoscope, and head out into the slums of Chennai. Once there, we take about 15 minutes to set up camp-- a table for registration, a visual acuity station with eye charts, two optometrist stations, an ophthalmologist station and an eyeglass distribution station. As a volunteer, I can do one of three things: help with registration, test visual acuity, or hand out eyeglasses. If there are enough volunteers (though there usually aren't), I can sit with the ophthalmologist and learn to identify some of the more common eye diseases-- I've seen cataracts, pterygium, and a few corneal opacities.



Yesterday I was handing out eyeglasses, which is probably the most immediately gratifying job. Patients who can barely see queue up at the station with their prescription cards from the optometrist; when I hand them their new eyeglasses and ask "Thereeyutha? Can you see?" slow smiles spread across their faces, and they respond, "Theree! I see!" Sharing those smiles is priceless. My friend Ali managed to capture a few on camera:

Hanging out with Chennaikers in Chennai

On Thursday night, my friend from the airplane (Srikumar) took me and the two other Unite For Sight volunteers out on the town. We met up with some of his childhood friends (Mitesh and Swati, who had also been on the plane with us, and Bhala, who still lives in Chennai) and had dinner at this fantastic vegetarian restaurant, which is part of a big chain in Chennai, called Saravana Bhavan. I don't even know what we ate; we let the Chennaikers do the ordering, but it was all amazing, and all incredibly spicy. I ended up with a plate of masal dosa, which is sort of a potato-vegetable filled pancake that gets dipped in all kinds of chutneys and sauces-- I'm finally getting used to eating with my hands after a few days here.

After dinner, we went to Eliot's Beach to watch the moon rise over the Indian Ocean. The moon was low in the sky and an incredible shade of red, so we strolled along the sand for a while watching its reflection in the waves and talking about Chennai, India, and the differences between India and the U.S.-- there are lots.

Srikumar has promised to call again next week and take us all out to a Bollywood movie-- I'm so excited.

I'm here!

After a 20 + hour plane ride, I got into Chennai yesterday around 1 AM. The flight was made bearable by the man sitting next to me, a 31-year-old Chennaiker who was delighted to give me lists of things to do and see around Chennai, the names of a few good vegetarian restaurants, and teach me a few words of Tamil. He was on a 3 week vacation to visit family, and possibly get married. He gave me his phone number and said that if he does, indeed, pick a wife in the next few weeks, I should come to the wedding celebration.

The past two days since my arrival have been an absolute blur-- I spent yesterday morning in an eye camp in the slums of Chennai, distributing some of those 300 pairs of eyeglasses I brought. The ophthalmologist and optometrists saw over 150 patients in 4 hours. In the afternoon, I learned how to eat thali with my hands, toured the Uma Eye Clinic (where I'll be shadowing doctors at evening office hours) and tried to adjust to the time difference with a 2 1/2 hour nap...

This morning I spent at Hande Hospital, where I saw four cataract surgeries and a hemorrhoid surgery. The cataract surgeries were amazing-- just an amazingly delicate technique, and really cool technology. The hemorrhoid surgery was... stomach turning. But interesting, nonetheless.

Chennai itself is an amazing city... hot as Hades, and really dirty, but beautiful at the same time, with the barefoot women in colorful saris, and toothless old men selling papayas and coconuts along the street. The road is shared by autorickshaws, cars, buses, bicycles, steer-drawn wagons, and stray dogs. There are some traffic lights which are pretty consistently ignored. I would die if I tried to drive here. I'll stick to autorickshaw rides, and the occasional bumpy ride on the back of a motorbike belonging to a new friend's uncle.

My time on the computer is up (I'm at an internet cafe) so that's all for now. Stay tuned.

My bags are packed; I'm ready to go...

I suppose there's not too much to tell pre-departure, but I wanted to get this blog up and running. My packing list includes all of kinds of fun things; among them are 300 pairs of prescription eyeglasses, malaria prophylaxis, and my thread-bare good-luck t-shirt that reads "Today's My Day!" in bold green letters.

I'm scheduled to depart from JFK on February 8th at 6 PM; I'll be arriving in Chennai on February 10th at 12:10 AM, local time. The time difference from New York to Chennai is 10 and 1/2 hours; jet lag is going to be interesting. And don't ask me what's up with the 1/2 hour time difference-- apparently all of India is in the same time zone, even though the western edge is a full 20 degrees west of the eastern edge (that would be like trying to put D.C. and Dallas in the same time zone.) I don't really understand. It's all going to be very interesting, very exciting, and very fun-filled.

... My next post will be from Chennai!