An Overdue Post

Thanks to many of you for your encouraging emails and comments about my blog. They motivate me to keep pounding away at these keys. Here are some new friends I met on the way to dinner the other day.




Officially, it's been a few days since my last post, so I have a lot of things I should write about. If you can bear it, read the whole post, because the end is my favorite part. It's the most meaningful part at least. Also, as a preface, you should know that I just suffered a devastating loss(21-16, 18-21, 17-21) to my Korean friend In Soek at ping pong. It's his last night here, and it seems there was no way he was going out of here on a loss. I will, despite all of this, try togive an optimistic update on my life.



This week we've been learning a lot about women and their place in Indian society. Over the last several decades progress toward their equal rights and treatment has been steady, but incredibly slow. Women were for decades thought of as second-class citizens who belong doing menial chores and hard labor. In some communities this is still very much the case. In working to improve health in villages near Jamkhed, CRHP has spent the majority of its time and resources breaking down this and other types of discrimination, essentially, to give marginalized groups a sense of self-worth and efficacy. On Tuesday three women who work at CRHP came to our class to talk about their lives before they came here. We heard from them individually, with Dr. Raj asking them questions and translating their answers for us. The first woman, in her forties, told us about how her husband reacted to finding out that the child she would be delivering was a girl, not a boy. He drove her to a small shack miles out of town and left her there to deliver the baby on her own. After the immense stress of delivery, she had to clean the baby, cut the umbilical cord with a nearby stone, and take care of the baby before making the journey back into town. Fortunately, someone found her and took her and the baby back to her husband, but, as was the custom, her husband forced her to pay him 2000 rupees and give him several gifts before he would allow her back in the house. This, she says, was a fairly common practice at the time. It was the husband's way of reminding his wife that she should be grateful that he is merciful enough to let her live in his house.

Another girl talked about the way her father treated her when she was growing up. She began by telling us about how as a child she knew that her parents (both father and mother) favored her brothers over her. Her brothers were fed first at mealtime, they were not asked to work around the house, and they were sent off to school to get an education. She, on the other hand, was often left no dinner after her brothers had eaten, she and her mother stayed at home and worked all day, and she was told that she was not worth the money it would cost to educate her. If she went anywhere alone, her father would whip her till she bled, and if she ever spoke in the presense of a man, he would "come at her with a knife."

The third girl that spoke to us had been married off by her parents at the age of twelve to a man with AIDS. Her parents agreed to give her to this man even though they knew had AIDS because he did not require a dowry for her. A dowry is one of the many cultural practices in India that parades women as objects and men as their owners. Paying a dowry means that the parents of a girl pay the man they marry her off to because he is relieving their burden of having a daughter. Anyway, this girl quickly contracted AIDS after marrying the man, and eventually became pregnant. Her husband died leaving her and the unborn baby without a livelihood. Because they had the disease, the homeless mother was banished from the community. She begged her parents to take her back. They reluctantly agreed but began refusing to feed her, hoping, she thinks, that she would starve and die and no longer be their burden.

These practices are still representative of some Indian men and their disposition toward women. India has been and, by and large, continues to be a patriarchal society that ignores women and their needs. As of 2001, some populations had between 700 and 800 women for every 1000 men. That means for every thousand girls conceived, roughly 200 were aborted or abandoned at birth.

On a lighter note, each of these at some point women found their way to CRHP. At CRHP they found people that would listen to them and show love to them. They found people that would sit and eat with them (a major faux pas if the woman is low-caste or AIDS-infected). They were even given jobs. They learned what love is, and in time, had children they could share it with. One woman said, "Because of this love, I am always happy and always have a smile on my face." This same woman had in her adolescent years attempted suicide because she could not bear the thought of her father beating her again. Now she is a village health worker who talks openly about her past to students from all over the world. What a change that can come over people, and what healing occurs, when they are shown unconditional love.

New subject: Mason, Sui Kwon and I went to the market at Jamkhed yesterday, mainly just to walk around and enjoy the buzz of the city. Oh, and buy cool things if we saw them. We didn't see much out of the ordinary, but I think we made a fruit salesman's day when we bought about 8 kg of mangoes and a few pomegranates. The mangoes were/are delicious but I'm still deciding on how to go at the pomegranate. It looks sort of tricky. We also discovered a new fruit we'd never seen. I've posted a picture of it. It tastes like mushy brown sugar and cinnamon, which I promise is a good flavor.



During the trip In Soek wondered if Jamkhed has ice cream, so he started asking storeowners in broken english if they knew where we could find some. It's funny, In Soek is relatively new at speaking English, but we have noticed that the villagers respond better to his English than ours. Anyway, a couple of merchants pointed us in the right direction and within a few minutes we were chowing down on mango and butterscotch ice cream under the hot Indian sun. Heavenly.

After that we had dinner, hamburgers and french fries (our chefs are so thoughtful). At the end of dinner, the course coordinator, Alex, put on a movie produced by the one and only Riki Lake about the benefits of home birthing. According to this movie, hospital ob/gyns and insurance companies are evil and do not care about women or babies, and, for this reason, they are running a smear campaign against midwifery and natural birthing in general. Eh... it wasn't that bad actually. It really makes some good points about the benefits of women giving birth without drugs at home and not on their backs. A lot of research indicates that the on-your-back method we're used to seeing, and the trends of inducing labor and giving c-sections, are not healthy for the mother or the baby. It's mostly just convenient for doctors and nurses.

The highlight of the day was going on a village visit. CRHP has its program operating in about 40 nearby villages, so we went to see one, with the local village health worker as our tour guide. For starters, this village was unbelievably clean. After getting used to the putrid smell of Jamkhed, I guess I made the assumption that all of India is that way. Not so. This village had no sewage in the streets, no trash on the sidewalks and clean water sources were all over. We saw people washing their dishes and clothes and even trying to keep the steps of the well clean.

The village health worker herself was also very impressive. CRHP chooses low-caste illiterate woman to be responsible for the health of each community. This woman fit these qualifications but was surprisingly knowledgeable about health interventions and epidemiology. She was also very outspoken about how much she enjoys taking care of her community. As we walked from house to house it became clear that the people love and respect her for what she has taught them and how she has helped them. It was wonderful to see the fruits of CRHP in action--a clean village with healthy citizens and plenty of clean water for people to use.



I'm starting to see CRHP's work in a new way. Although it means addressing complex social issues with a wide range of disciplines and philosophies, improving health is really based on a few simple principles: showing love to people, respectfully teaching them(about anything, from basic hygiene to their self-worth), and then encouraging them to live what they have learned and share it with others. Sort of has a familiar ring, doesn't it? That's because they are principles of Christlike service. In my opinion, although they have slightly different purposes in mind, Jesus and CRHP are both genuinely concerned with improving people's lives and are determined to, by whatever means, make a difference for them, and that's why their foundations are essentially the same. I'm also learning that CRHP and Christianity are basically motivated by the same thing--that is, the fact that people are inherently valuable, no matter their--spiritual or temporal--poverty. Anyway, thanks for reading. Love you all, Bryce