India

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India

At the moment, I am working as a volunteer at a leprosy hospital in the city of Chennai, India. I will be here for a total of six weeks. I return Feb. 17. I return to Middlebury the next day, and start taking classes (one week late) the day after that.

I work at the hospital splitting my time between the Health Educator and the hospital's Director. Almost everyday has been somewhat different so far, but essentially when I am with the Health Educator, I tag along (usually hauling all the equipment) and act as his assistant while he gives presentations in Tamil. Sometimes, when the presentations are in English, I participate and say some things. When I am working for the hospital Director I do odd jobs around the hospital, the more interesting tasks include serving food/tea to the Leprosy patients and playing games with them.

Why am I here? Though I do very much want to help the people here in Chennai, my main reason for being here is to learn - so please do not mistake my intentions. I am no saint, nor would I ever want to be (so, at risk of sounding pessimistic, I politely ask you to save your admiration for someone else). I am here to gain some insight into public health, in a setting completely different from what I would find in America. I wish to take my experience back with me to America; I hope to return a more wordly individual.

At the time of writing this, I can safely say with due certainty that there are indeed many, many poor people here in Chennai (and, no doubt, India as a whole). It is moving. I don't make promises (so I won't concerning a return to India), but I will say that, after this experience, if I actually did pull off earning an MD, I would want to return to India or some 3rd world country to volunteer. I realize these are just words, but at the moment my word is all I got.

But don't get me wrong - though Chennai is overly crowded, incredibly dirty, and generally plagued with many problems associated with the third world, there are many things beautiful about it (and I am sure the same could be said of the rest of the state - hell, the rest of the country).

Anyway, enough of this business on clarifications, intentions and hypotheticals. Onto the actual experience:

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