A Little About Where We Are

We are at an organization called Institute for the Indian Mother and Child. It was started by Dr. Sujit, a former medical director of Mother Theresa's clinic. He loved working with her, but wanted to do more to empower communities rather than charity. 

He and his wife Bernali started with 5 volunteers and now have 750. They also have medical students from Europe and Australia here every month to help run primary care clinics. In addition to healthcare, they have a microcredit loan bank, schools, daycare, a center for disabled children, a place where they employ women to make uniforms for the students and a public health outreach network. 

They charge a small number of rupees for all of these services, so that people see them as having value. 

We have a weekly schedule to work at these clinics, and then meetings to learn about the microcredit and public health services so that in our third week, we can do projects with them. While things usually happen 30 minutes to 2 hours after they are scheduled, the experience is still nonetheless somehow exhausting.

I feel far away from home, but there are good people here with us. One Austrian medical student, one German doctor going into psychiatry, one Swiss medical student, one Swiss nurse, one French-Canadian nurse, one Spanish psychologist from Sevilla, one Australian anthropology and philosophy major, and five Italians: a sociologist, engineer, doctor, and two medical students. 

We have two student leaders who arrange the schedules. Apart from the daily clinics and meetings, we have one weekend off, one two-night night stay at a rural clinic, and some trips to the public health networking sites for education on nutrition and hygiene. 

Our days have consisted of a one hour metro ride then tuk-tuk (rickshaw) to the indoor clinic where we split up for our tasks. We meet back around 4pm for a Bengali lesson and meetings. We leave around 6:30pm and grab street egg rolls on the way home. We convene about schedules at our guest house, try to remember to all speak the same language when we talk, debrief in our room, and go to bed around midnight. We've been waking up and running a few laps around the 375m tiny pond near our home. It's a godsend, a tiny plot of nature amidst honking, yelling, dogs howling, and smog.