Wednesday
On Wednesday, we continued our exploration of ARTH's services in rural Rajasthan by going to a different village and meeting with a health worker there. In addition to a traditional birth attendant, each village had a women's health worker who provides contraception counseling and information about family planning and acts as a liaison between rural women and health services. We had a short walk from the road to the village temple, where we sat in a circle outside to hear about women's health. Children and adults alike surrounded us, curious about what we were doing. Three girls seated on the low wall around the temple especially caught my eye, and I later took their pictures and tried to have a conversation. Unfortunately they spoke a different dialect than standard Hindi, but Abid Ji helped translate and I found out my favorite little friend is almost five years old and is named Kami.
We then departed, walked back by fields of plants that are used to make opium (they weren't the same type of poppies as in the Wizard of Oz though), and drove to a different village to visit an asha, which is a government community health activist. Abid Ji gave her a hard time for not wearing her required uniform all the time, but it wasn't a particularly novel visit because we had spoken with ashas before and we were fairly rushed.
On our way to the first village, Sarah Kate had to use the bathroom so she asked one of our staff members where she could go. They pointed her through a rickety wood door of a building, so I followed because I had to use the restroom as well. Stepping through the door, however, I realized that we had been directed into the three-walled stable of a cow and her calf. Not having any other options, three of us popped a squat while the nervous-looking bovines watched us. Then the mother started peeing too! It was a legitimate peeing party.
After lunch (with fresh cucumber given to us by villagers in the first village!) at ARTH's main training facility, we headed back to Udaipur and I had another delicious dinner at a rooftop restaurant with a group of my classmates. Both Tuesday night and Wednesday night's dinners included copious amounts of garlic naan, of course!
Thursday
On Thursday, we started the day together and headed to the headquarters of an organization called Seva Mandir. Since our guide wasn't ready, we went to a park with seven fountains that had some kind of historical/royal family significance. We then headed out for about two hours of bumpy driving once again, and then split up upon reaching what appeared to just be another stretch of road. My group delved through corn fields to reach a small village on a hillside, and we passed chickens and goats roaming the paths as we headed to a small, one-room preschool run by Seva Mandir. The children weren't as shy as others we have encountered, and I was generally impressed by the preschool teacher and the aims of the program. They sang us a song about fat elephants in Hindi (that I largely understood!) and we learned about the status of the people in the area. Most are from Scheduled Tribes, which is a designation given by the government that basically indicates low caste status in very, very rural areas. We then moved on, via foot through the beautiful landscape, to another village, where we met with rural women's health workers from the NGO similar to ashas and a traditional birth attendant. Once again we were sitting outside a temple with people crowded around, and we saw what the women use to examine newborn babies. They cooked us the corn we'd stolen from nearby fields, and we drank mini cups of chai and learned traditional dances while we waited for the bus to pick us up.
Once again I left blogging for the last minute so it's super late here, but stay tuned for posts about our party (with beer provided by our teachers!), lots of different kinds of Ayurvedic enemas, and an epic (literally) Indian play! I know you're waiting with baited breath.
P.S. The name of this blog post comes from a store in Udaipur. Kind of like Ruby Tuesday but a few days off.
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