So...

Being sick in India is not fun. I was pretty sure that I was going to die last week, all alone in a tiny, filthy, hotel room, with a fever and chills and severe abdominal pain and a splitting headache that truly appreciated the noisy construction work next door. The chills were actually a welcome relief from the heat, as the temperature went up over 100, and my air conditioner stopped working somewhere around noon on Wednesday. The construction workers didn't stop working though, and there was hammering from 6:30 a.m. every morning till 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

So, my last week in India could have been a bit more fun, I suppose. But I survived, and I'm now recovering in South Africa, where the air is cooler and Dr. Dad makes sure that I carefully take the appropriate doses at the appropriate times so that I can recover IMMEDIATELY and we can do EVERY SINGLE THING on his itinerary.

But before I write anything about South Africa, I wanted to reflect for a moment on my experiences in India. When my plane left the ground in Chennai, I felt a veritable lump in my throat, and it took some sorting through of my emotions to figure out why. Here's some of what I wrote:

The lump in my throat is for what I was and what I had when I came to India, for what I no longer am and no longer have, for what I've left in India, and for what India's left in me. It was also relief to be leaving, guilt at feeling relieved, and simultaneously, not wanting to leave just yet.

I had my heart broken in India, and as I tried to pick up the pieces, I fell in love with the country, with the people, with the expats, and India taught me to love myself again. I'm leaving with a heart not fully healed, but one that is bigger and stronger, and full of newness-- new people, new places, new ideas.

And I know I'll be back. India sinks into your bones; it becomes a part of you; it's an open challenge and rising to meet it makes you a fuller human being. There's so much more of the country I want to see; so much I want to return to. To make sense of India's contradictions is to make sense of your own hypocrisies and flaws.

I was reading Whitman the other day, when this stanza struck me:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then; I contradict myself.
I am large; I contain multitudes.

It so perfectly sums up... well, everything.

Holi, Holi, Holi

This week was Holi, a Hindu festival celebrating the beginning of spring and the radiance of the universe. There are various stories about the origins of the holiday, which you can check out if you want on Wikipedia; I won't write it all out here. Traditionally, though, Holi is the festival of colors, and so everyone dresses in white and throws brightly colored powders at each other. The whole of the Indian population is smudged bright blue, purple, or pink for a week.

I went to the beach on Wednesday with Helen and Jackie (the other two UFS volunteers) and watched brightly colored people playing in the waves. It was partly hilarious, and partly beautiful.



And, ok, these women haven't actually been doused in Holi powder, but they were colorful enough to begin with:



We walked along the beach to Ashtalakshmi Temple, which is dedicated to the eight secondary manifestations of the goddess Lakshmi. Hindus pray to Lakshmi for wealth, in the forms of prosperity, good health, knowledge, strength, progeny, and power. Here's Jackie and me in front of the temple:







Other than going to beaches and temples, my work with Unite For Sight has been going swimmingly. Today we got to practice cataract surgery on a goat's eyeball! We learned the cataract technique, and did the surgery under a microscope, and got a feel for the use of the phacoemulsification machine. It was pretty exciting, but I don't think I'm quite ready to perform cataract surgeries on any human eyes yet; the end result of my surgery was... well, a little messy.





Other than all of that... well, I guess I'm getting mentally prepared for the next leg of the journey-- I leave for South Africa next week! It's hard to believe I've been here for 5 weeks already; the time has flown by.

Just Your Average Monday

Yesterday, for the first time in almost two weeks, there was no eye camp-- which meant I spent the day at Hande Hospital in west Anna Nagar, observing surgeries.

In the morning, there were 4 cataract surgeries-- the technology still amazes me, and Dr. Varman's efficiency in the operating room is incredible. Each surgery only takes him about 15 minutes-- I've seen other doctors take up to 45 minutes to do one intraocular lens replacement.

I spent the afternoon with Dr. Rajiv, a general surgeon, who last had me observing a hemorrhoids surgery. This time, he was stitching up the fractured hand of a man who'd been in a motorbike accident. He'd fractured his fingertip and lost his fingernail, so Dr. Rajiv was essentially stitching the tip of his finger to the base of his nail. But first he had to pull the man's heavy rings off of his swollen, fracture finger... It looked so painful; I'm shuddering now even as I write this.

By evening, I was ready for something a little less bloody, so the two newly arrived volunteers and I took off for Kappaleeshwarar Temple, a beautiful Hindu temple in Mylapore, a district in southern Chennai. The temple is dedicated to the god Shiva, the destroyer, and had minor shrines to his sons, Ganesh and Murugan.






We also managed to catch the tail end of a classical dance performance, which was absolutely beautiful:



Outside the temple, we found a gypsy woman selling beautiful glass jewelry-- I really loved the look of the jewelry by lamplight, so I tried to capture the image, and ended up buying more earrings than I should have.

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.