(no title)

Hello from Siliguri!  Apologies for the delay in getting our first blog posted; life has been pretty hectic since we’ve arrived and we’ve been busy getting accustomed to the Indian way of life.

On Sunday morning, After enjoying a very brief stint in Delhi (some more brief than others) we flew North-east to Bagdogra, neighboring Siliguri.  We were met by our wonderful host Father James and his attentive staff who whisked us off to our home for the next 2 weeks –Seva Kendra.

Seva Kendra is a catholic Mission responsible for a large number of humanitarian projects currently operating in and around Siliguri.  In fact, their Stonebreaker’s project innitially caught the eye of Murduch students 4 years ago and ultimately led to the partnership we have today.

Just off the main street of siliguri, Seva Kendra is a peaceful sancturary away from the hustle and bustle of town.  Beautiful gardens surround the main building and the whole compound is kept meticulously clean by the many staff and volunteers.

Upon arrival we were immediately served the most delicious Indian banquet and had a chance to finally relax after 2 days of travel.  Following, we were honoured with a fantastic welcome ceremony including beautiful handmade gifts, traditional songs and introductions to all the staff (pic).  There was a tremendous amount of mutual respect and admiration and the whole thing was very humbling for both the students and clinicians.

The rest of the day was filled with eager preparations for the first day of clinic on monday.  Thankfully last year’s group left a lot of equipment and supplies  for us to use which will help to keep our costs down.  Thanks guys!!

This year we are running 4 clinics including a ‘home-base’ clinic at Seva Kendra.  The other 3 are located at 3 different schools within 40km of siliguri centre.  Next week we are introducing a 5^th clinic to be placed directly at the school for stonebreaker’s children, part of Seva Kendra’s Stonebreakers project.

There’s no denying it:  the learning curve is rediculously steep!  All external clinics had patients waiting on Monday morning and lineups of up to 25-30 people waited patiently as we grew accustomed to the setting and pace of the clinics.  Thanks to our awesome team of Clinicians, this process has been relatively easy, but nonetheless draining!  Probably the hardest job of all is that of the interpreters who we expect to understand our sometimes wordy questions and then rely on to interpret the responses. A hard task but they are very patient and we are quickly learning how to simplify our questioning and directions to undr 10 word sentences.

In all, we attended to over 100 new patients on the first day, of which many were conditions that we would never get exposed to in Australia.  In the coming days we will have students write their own experiences so that you can get an idea of the overal state of health in this area of India.

And if we thought Monday was a bit crazy, Tuesday was off the charts!  Every clinic more than tripled their new patient visits along with an almost 100% return visit rate from Monday’s patients.  The locals are so appreciative of this service as many of them don’t have access to any form of healthcare at all.  They are very kind, patient and have a beautiful easy smile that they are quick to share.  Although communication is sometimes limited – 3 intepreters per clinic means a lots of sign language – and its amazing how much information we can get from body language, posture and touch.

As I write, its bright and early Wednesday morning and we’re all getting ready for an even bigger day today. As word filters out into the communities we expect there to be many more referrals.  Students will be shifted to a new clinic today so that we can all experience the different aspects of each region.

We’ll try to get some pictures up in the next few days to give you a better idea of the environment we’re in.

Advertisement

~ by handsonindia09 on December 10, 2009.