24 hours

I got some good advice from a friend on gchat today. She reminded me that the longer you wait to write down an experience, the more your memory of the details fades. This is already happening with how my day went down yesterday, and since it was one of the craziest days of my life, I figure I should crank out as many details as I can remember right now. I'll give them to you in the order they happened. Also, I'll give you the full twenty-four hours, none of which I spent sleeping.

We'll begin as I got off the plane in Mumbai. For the most part, the inside of the airport looks just like most airports in the US. Except for all of the people being brown and not speaking English, I guess. Even then, these Indians were wealthy enough to buy plane tickets to the United States, so there was a lot of Western dress and language. So, overall, very similar. Oh, and except for the smell. It was funny, as I was walking out of the plane the little boy I sat next to during the flight inhaled deeply through his nose, turned to me, and said "Ah, the smell of Bombay!" He and his family lived in Boston, but they had visited Mumbai enough that he had memorized the smell. And let me tell you, it was a memorable smell. It smelled like a mix between body odor, trash, raw sewage, and a hint of sulfur, if you can bring yourself to imagine that. Anyway, enough about the airport, I'm not even close to the good stuff.

Outside the airport there are literally hundreds of young Indian men clamoring around the exit soliciting passengers for their cabs or shuttles. Luckily the CRHP arranged for a travel company to pick me up and a man amid the squalor was holding a sign with my name on it (Spelled "Bryc Jonon"). You'd be surprised how hard it is to help someone who is looking for you understand that you are who he's looking for when he doesn't speak your language. From there, he led me to a van in a parking garage where several men with grim faces were standing around (at this point, I wondered if there is a graceful way to get mugged). But I was with another American who was on his way to Pune too, so I figured we'd be ok.

In the car, we got to see a bit of Mumbai. Granted, it was midnight so it was pretty dark out. The amazing thing though was that tons of people were still out and about. Stores and shops line all of the streets and many of them were still open with people crowding in and out of them. The "smell of Mumbai" only got stronger as our driver weaved through traffic toward downtown. Since no one in the car spoke English except for the other American--a student at U of Chicago-- and I, we struck up a conversation and eventually talked about our respective faiths. We had a really great talk, and he ended up asking quite a few questions about the Church, which quickly took me back to my mission. In fact, one of his questions led perfectly into the first lesson missionaries teach people. It felt good having a spiritual discussion with someone who believes something different than I do. Doesn't happen often in Provo. I happened to have a book of mormon in my backpack, so I handed it to him, and he eagerly said he'd read it. Over the course of the conversation he told me how he'd found truth in all of the religions he'd studied but didn't think religion could have it all. He was interested in the Church because it was one of the few he hadn't yet studied. Anyway,despite our conversation being hyphenated by our driver's abrupt lane changes and slamming on the brakes, it was awesome. Now for the scariest moment of the whole trip: Out of nowhere the driver pulls over at a busy intersection, looks at me and says "you". He gets out and opens my door and starts to take my bags out of the car. I see two men pull up in a car beside us. I do not know them and no one speaks English. They get out and begin walking toward me and my driver motions to them and points at me. Then, just as I was about to curl up into the fetal position and start whispering/singing lullabies to myself, I remembered that someone from CRHP was supposed to meet us in Pune to take me to the CRHP. Somehow I brought myself to trust that that's who these men were, but it wasn't easy to do. Everything seemed really shady. It was in front of "National Motel" which wreaked and had garbage everywhere, and we were sort of in a dark alley-ish sort of place where the crowds couldn't really see us. Although it ended up being the right people, I think CRHP should work on their customer service.

In the car with the CRHP people, the seats were a little more comfortable and I could lay down across the whole back bench. Unfortunately, this driver was even more maniacal than the first one and I didn't get any sleep. I'll spare you most of the details about his driving habits, but I'll tell you one. The man honks like it's going out of style. It's like honking will literally not be cool tomorrow and he wants to squeeze every last bit of coolness he can out of honking. It's funny though, honking in India is not the same as it is in the states. Whereas in Provo, when somebody honks you assume they must be non-members, this driver honked for other drivers' benefit, to show them he'd be driving near them. I'm serious. I also noticed that semi-trucks have bumper stickers that say "honk please" or "please use horn". In other words, what is perceived as rude and impatient in the states is an act of kindness and love in India. Anyway, three hours later we rolled up to the CRHP. Jamkhed, the town CRHP is in, is really dirty and loud. I half-expected it to be the poster-child town of the CRHP--clean and vibrant--but I was wrong. People are poor and starving here just like most of rural India. When the driver turned to me and said "This is Jamkhed," my heart sunk a little because it looked so disheveled. But the CRHP is at the end of the town, nestled away within it's own walls and has its own accommodations. It's a really nice comparatively.

When we pulled into the CRHP a bus full of students was driving away. These students, I later learned, were my classmates who were heading out to go work in a nearby village. Cool thing though: the director, Dr. Shobha walked up at that moment, gave me a warm welcome, and invited me to do rounds with her in the hospital. This means her taking me around to all of the patients and explaining their conditions to me. It was fascinating. A fourth-year medical student, Joey, was doing rounds with her and she asked him to explain one of the patient's medical histories to me. The guy was brilliant. He spent fifteen minutes relating every symptom this man had had, and every reason the man could have had each one. He did an incredible job dumbing it down for me too. Very inspiring. After the rounds, we talked about his plans for the future which are incredibly focused. We also talked about community based healthcare. We sort of came to the conclusion (he came to it and I agreed) that to improve health in any community you have to change the way people in that community talk to one another. And the way you go about organizing it needs to be something community members believe in and will make a part of their relationships with their friends and neighbors. Joey suggested that health planners get involved in the social organizations that are popular in the community. That way they can understand social dynamics and how to influence them. He told about his ideas for an hour or so and seriously, the guy is brilliant. Anyway, my talking to Joey is not important to you, except for what became of it.

At the end of our conversation, Joey walked to the hospital. Unbeknownst (is that a word?) to me, he asked the director if I could come with him to participate in a surgery. He came back, asked me if I wanted to come along, I agreed, and minutes later, I was watching two young girls get tubal ligations, basically getting their tubes tied. Family planning is a big deal here because so many girls often have several children while they're still teenagers. They can't even take care of themselves let alone the children the often conceive against their will. The clinic offers the surgery to girls that want it. Anyway, the surgeries were pretty intense because the girls weren't under anesthesia and the doctor was literally digging through their abdomens pulling out tubes and other things I won't describe. Super cool though. SUPER cool.

From there, I went to lunch, met my classmates, and realized most of them are a lot like me. They're all way more accomplished than I am, but they're just about my age and they all are pretty normal people. There are also way more students than I expected. About 25 I think. After our class about the social determinants of health, I went up to my room and decided to lay down until dinner. However, I woke up at about midnight. Crazy day. Anyway, I better sign off for now. We've got a local mobile health team coming to speak to us in a minute or two. Love, Bryce