Ev Star

Our last week at Shanti Bhavan has come to an end and we now find ourselves at a lovely homestay in Cochin , Kerala.  Our first real “travel” segment has begun!  Hopefully we will master the art of backpacking soon.  We have so much stuff that it’s like backpacking plus several bags.  Oh well, i guess it is early on yet and after a few days of lugging our stuff around we will start to weed out things we really don’t need.The last week of school went on as usual.  On my last day of class with my grade 3 kids, the students got to ask me anything they wanted about me and Canada and so on.  There were some nice questions like: ”Miss Evy, are there any shops where you live?”  ”Yes” ”do you sometimes buy bubblegums at the shops?” ”Yes, sometimes”Other questions included wanting to know what my parents names are (a lot of kids wanted to know!  mom and dad, you are kind of famous at Shanti Bhavan now!), they wanted to know about my ‘baby’ brother (i tried to explain you weren’t quite a baby Al…)And they wanted to know about silly things I used to do when I was a kid (they greatly enjoyed hearing about how Al and I used to have flying practice where we would tape highly aerodynamic wings to our arms, jump off our beds and flap wildly…practice makes perfect, right?!) On Sunday night, our last night at the school, I went to the school kitchen and helped make dinner.  It was fun!  I rolled out millions of naans with the other kitchen staff members.  If I get a chance to go back to Shanti Bhavan, I would try to help out in the kitchen more often.On Monday morning, after the school assembly, Mad and I got to go to see Baldev Medical clinic.  I’m so glad we got to go see it!  It is another one of the George foundation projects.  Pretty much it is a clinic for all the rural village people in the area.  There are government health centers in India, but they are not run very well and people do not get the medical care they need especially as it is rare that a doctor is even there!  At Baldev, they are using a computer program that was invented by Dr George.  It is called EDPS.  The program is kind of like a big flow chart.  The technician using the computer asks the patient basic questions about their symptoms, once those have been put into the program, the computer comes up with more pertinent questions.  The computer keeps coming up with more questions to ask until a general diagnosis can be made.  It will then give suggestons on how to treat the ailment with over-the-counter drugs which can be given to the patient without a doctor’s prescription.  If the patient needs to see a doctor, the computer will say that and so an appointment can be set up when the doctor will actually be there.  It seems to have been quite successful so far.  Furthermore, the clinic has field workers that specifically work with pregnant women and children under the age of 3.  The field workers go from village to village to collect information on these people.  Then the field worker brings the information back and puts it into the computer.  The computer then notifies when children need to get their immunizations, it shows if a pregnant woman has not gained as much weight as she should have, etc. Then the next time the worker goes out, she can focus on the patients who need the most care (ie by bringing high protein supplements to underweight pregnant women, etc).  It was very interesting!  Again, if I go back to Shanti Bhavan, I’d be very interested in helping out there as well.As I was saying earlier, Mad and I are currently in Cochin.  We are staying at a homestay and the family has been very nice and helpful!  We arrived by train at 4 30 in the morning yesterday and one of the owners came to pick us up (so nice we didnt have to try to figure out how to get to their place at that time!).  After resting for a few hours, we went downstairs and were served idlies with chutney, bananas and chai.  Then the grandparents (there are 3 generations living here) drove us out to their beach home (we had a choice of staying there as well but it would have been more expensive).  The view from their beach home was fantastic!  The only other people on the beach were fishermen.  It’s neat because there were two larger fishing boats (by larger i mean like oversize wooden canoes) that stayed out at sea.  When they caught enough fish to warrant a trip back to shore, 2 or 3 men got into a small wooden boat with the catch and paddled back to shore.  We could watch the action from the balcony.  We were also able to go for a swim!  It was great!  We had a giant beach pretty much to ourselves!  After our swim, the grandparents cut up a watermelon for us which we ate and then they put us on a bus to get to Fort Cochin.  Actually that required a bus trip and then a ferry ride (a ferry ride on which i lost my hat to the wind).  We spent the rest of the day walking around Fort Cochin (I especially enjoyed seeing the chinese fishing nets!) and then in the evening we watched an unfortunately fairly poor dance show.  After the show we took a ferry back to the mainland and then took a rickshaw back to our homestay. Today we are off to Alleppey by bus.  It should take about an hour and a half to get there and then we will have to take a boat to get to our accomodation. Ev