New Bike and Puppets

I fixed up a green, rusty bike with the words "Lady Bird" written on the front basket that radiates Arkansas 60's suburbia ((okay, what I IMAGINE to be Arkansas 60's suburbia- my brother tells me that Arkansas 60's suburbia doesn't exist)) , but my dad insists that without the fat tires it can't be from the 60'. Before I arrived in Namakkal, my impression of the city was straw huts, red dirt roads, and practiced beggars crawling to you in a mist like awoken mummies in an old horror film. Insert banana for straw, orange for red in red dirt roads, and those images are here minus the toilet paper for the crawling mummies, but this exists all outside of the city center. Right outside of my balcony, the silence when truck horns aren't beeping is precious, almost one million people are roaming to somewhere, and I, on my Lady Bird, get to ride amidst this craziness, and it is thrilling.

One statement/image, ironic, humorous, depressing, I don't know what to call it- maybe someone can help me find the word- I thought to share before but didn't. The day I walked out of the special ward which held the girl who had terrible things done to her and the man with everything soft inside of him locked in by his bone cage, I was taking around 5 retired women from Colorado who had come to see the clinic having raised some funds. Among their luggage, they had one suitcase stuffed with colorful, graciously ridiculous finger puppets which persons from their community had knitted to distribute as gifts for the children. When we walked out of the ward, there was some silence like when someone tells you that their mother died and you don't know what to say because your mother is still alive until one lady determined and confident spoke, "I'll have to go get some more puppets."

Do you laugh? Or nod and say "Yes!" this is a difference that we can make. Or know "No." this is the difference that I don't make. Or stay silent and search through the black suitcase and find a puppet with bright colors.

A Different Ward

This weekend I decided to take a quick break from War and Peace, so someone lent me the NY Times Bestseller, Everything is Illuminated. Before I started reading, I had visited the "Special Ward" at the government hospital in Namakkal. This is the corner where the sick HIV patients are shooed off too. Well, adjacent to the man who appears caged by his own bones, there was one girl in bed with a crowd of doctors around her. The tiny girl (8 yrs) is HIV positive, and her mother is negative. This is the peculiarity. She has never had a blood transfusion nor has been exposed to blood in a way that would transmit the infection. How has she become positive? The adopted naivete concerning the only other option disappeared when her father, who also happens to be her care giver, was tested and found positive.

Right, so I was reading this book. One passage seemed pertinent:

"And we must all be familiar with that most portentous of Biblical parables, the perfection of Heaven and Hell. And as we all do or should know, it was on the second day that the Lord our God created the opposing regions of Heaven and Hell, to which we and the slouchers, may they pack only their sweaters, will be sent, respectively. And but we must not forget that third and next day, when God saw that Heaven was not as much like Heaven as he would have prayed, and Hell not as much like Hell. And so, the lesser and harder-to-find texts tell us, he, father of father of fathers, raised the shade between the opposing regions, allowing the blessed and the condemned to see one another. And as was his hope, the blessed rejoiced in the pain of the condemned, and their joy became that much greater in the face of sorrow. And the condemned saw the blessed, saw their lobster tails and prosciutto . . . and felt that much worse for themselves. And God saw that it was gooder. And but the appeal of the window became too strong. And rather than enjoy the kingdom of Heaven, the blessed were fascinated by the cruelties of Hell. And rather than suffer those cruelties, the condemned enjoyed the vicarious pleasures of Heaven. And over time, the two reached an equilibrium, staring at the other, staring at themselves. And the window became a mirror from which neither the blessed nor the condemned could, or would, leave. And so God dropped the shade, forever closing off the portal between kingdoms ..."

As I enter the glass door of the special ward, I know that the shade has been lifted.

Healthy Results

Today I received the Hemoglobin results from the 100 students at Trinity Academy, the private school that we surveyed. The average hemoglobin level was 12.7 (g/dl) which is quite good considering the high prevalence of anemia in India. The Hemoglobin levels of adolescents should fall somewhere between 11 and 14 (g/dl). Below 11 is considered anemic. I still have yet to analyze the Hb levels in correlation with the survey questions. On Monday I begin the survey of the public school children. Results will be different.