Phase II

This morning I left my home stay in New Delhi. Yesterday Ruby and I printed some photographs and gave the family a framed photo of the six of us, along with some other photographs of Ruby and me and the two of us with Nikita and Jessica. Nilam Ji, our host mother, got teary, and Nikita and Jessica loved the gift. It was not an easy goodbye. We had a great time together and I will miss them all dearly, especially Nikita. We'll see them again on May 15th when we have our final banquet, and then Nikita has promised to invite me to her wedding (in 10 or so years!).

Early this morning I got on a plane at the Indira Gandhi Domestic Airport and took a two hour flight to Pune. In Pune I got in a car and took a ride two hours to a rest stop restaurant. There I spilled paneer tikka masala on my linen pants. Then I got in a car again and drove another two hours to Jamkhed. And now I am here.

It is currently 98 degrees Fahrenheit and will probably be in the low hundreds by later this week. I'm living with three other students from my program; Laura, Caroline, and Anna. We're staying at the Comprehensive Rural Health Project campus. Take a look at the organization's website here. The other three girls spent a week here two weeks ago for their workshop. 

Take a look at this updated map. Most of the places I have been are identified here. I haven't been to Varanasi yet but I have a train ticket to go and spend 3 days there after my program ends, and I haven't been to Mumbai or explored Pune yet, but I put them there as reference points for the location of Jamkhed.

About the workshop...I was in Rishikesh up in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, on the bank of the Ganga (pronounced Gunga in Hindi, Ganges if you are American) river. I had the incredible opportunity to go rafting on the rapids of the river and then even jump in for a dip! The water was really cold because it's pretty close to the source, and the water comes from the glaciers. Throughout the week we (Ruby, Jordan, Michaela, Hannah, me) started our day with tea at 7am and yoga at 8am. From 11-12 we had class. 1:15-1:45 we had lunch, and then class again from 3:30-4:30. We had daily meditation and pranayam breathing techniques from 4:45-5:30, and then free time in the evenings until dinner at 7. One night we went to the Ganga Arati light ceremony where prayers are sung and candles are lit at the edge of the water. Other nights we went shopping!

I got the chance to learn about naturopathic medicine (including diet therapy, mud therapy, massage therapy, hydrotherapy, color therapy, and magnetotherapy), yoga theory and practice,  pranayama breathing, and a little bit on aruvedic medicine. It was a relaxing week, but we also learned a lot. My favorite part was probably walking along the Ganga. It's fairly clean up in Rishikesh, unlike in Varanasi where there are dead bodies floating in the water...(the group who had their workshop in Varanasi actually witnessed this).

Back to Jamkhed. I'll be studying the CRHP's Adolescent Girls Program. I strongly believe in the Girl Effect (watch this video, and then go on youtube and watch the most recent one! it's powerful). Educating and empowering girls in economically depressed areas (for lack of a better name - call it 'developing' or 'global south' if you want) can have effects that ripple out from the individual girl into the community and beyond. I also very strongly believe that adolescents need reproductive and sexual health education in order for them to fully understand their own bodies and how to protect themselves (and partners). 

Legal age of marriage in India is 18 for girls and 21 for boys, but frequently girls are married at age 12, 13, 14 - sometimes as young as 3 or 4. They don't necessarily move in with their husband right away. They may live with their parents and spend festivals or weekends with the parents-in-law and husband, and then when they get into their late teens and early 20s they may finally make the official move. Village health workers - when they're available - try to convince parents to hold off marriages and convince girls to hold off sex and having babies until their bodies are mature enough to safely reproduce. Many times girls don't know their exact ages. Menarche (first menstruation) commonly happens around age 13, so the village health workers calculate the girl's approximate age by asking her how long she has had her period for, and adding that amount of time to 13. I think usually they suggest she wait to have babies until she is around 18 years old, and longer if she can help it. Especially in rural communities, girls' rights are infringed upon because of longstanding gender discrimination in an extremely patriarchal society. So sometimes her parents-in-law or husband gets to decide when she has children and how many children she has.

If girls and young women are educated about their rights and given the tools to be able to stand up for themselves, this world could be a very different place. It could be healthier and less hungry, more educated, and safer from violence (As Greg Mortenson describes in his most recent book, Stones into Schools, “In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated into believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad – and educated women, as a rule, tend to withhold their blessing for such things…” Mortenson p. 13).

Here is the description of the program I will be studying (from the CRHP website):

The Adolescent Girls Program (AGP) is one of the latest of the community groups to have been organized. This program owes its existence to the presence and strength of the Mahila Mandals and VHWs. These women have been empowered to realize the need to educate, build up the self-esteem and confidence in their daughters. In effect the entire community benefits as health and development are promoted by a new generation of knowledgeable, competent, and socially-minded women. The AGP has helped organize adolescent girls groups in 54 villages with an average of 25 girls/village participating.

The need for an adolescent girls program is to address the extreme gender inequity and the low status of women in Indian society, particularly in the rural areas. Girl children are given far less opportunities than boys and are considered a burden on the family due to the eventual need for dowry and their marriage out of the family. They are consequently disadvantaged in such areas as education, nutrition, health care, employment and social mobility. The practice of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide is another manifestation of women’s poor social standing and has resulted in highly skewed gender ratios throughout India, particularly in the North. Early marriage, sometimes prior to puberty, often results in early sexual initiation and teenage pregnancy thereby compromising education and livelihood choices. Such are the factors that are being addressed and even reversed through the participation of girls in the AGP

In the project areas of CRHP female adolescence is culturally understood as the time between menarche and marriage (regardless of age) known as Kishorvain muli. This criterion is used by CRHP to identify participants for the AGP. Related activities take place in either of two locations – individual villages and the CRHP compound. 

 

In the villages VHWs and women’s group members organize groups of girls, which meet weekly or biweekly. During these meetings the girls participate in health education classes as well as being given the rare opportunity to socialize. Organized groups are given some books for a library and provided with high-protein and nutritious food for their meal as a nutrition demonstration. The health of these girls is consistently monitored by the respective VHWs and mobile health team, addressing problems as needed.

Groups from several villages occasionally come to the CRHP compound where they stay overnight. The groups are accompanied by the VHW from their villages.

The CRHP is also working on implementing an adolescent boys program, which I'm interested in learning more about. They have also worked with some matriarchal communities (more tribal) and I'm really curious about as well. 

It's definitely going to be an interesting month. It's going to be hot. The work is going to be hard. But the Comprehensive Rural Health Project is a renowned program and has served as the model for not only the Indian government's own National Rural Health Mission but also for health programs in other parts of the world. I'm lucky to be able to spend 4 weeks here - it's a chance of a lifetime, and as Caroline put it (when convincing me to come to Jamkhed despite the heat and middle-of-nowhere location), it's THE public health Mecca. 

Here is a photo of my room here:

 This is my dresser... haha

and this is Laura on the other side of the half wall.   

Also, if you haven't seen this yet...my photo is on the front page of the school website, on a rotating collection of photos. Lolz.

 I think I'll be able to blog more here, since I won't be going site seeing or going to cafes or shopping or hanging out with my host family :/ kind of bittersweet, I guess.