Vellore

Yesterday was the most eventful day yet. We travelled to Vellore by car and I experienced true locomotion here. Driving in India is completely different than anywhere else I have been. I thought it would change once we got out of the city, but it didn't... it only got worse. Remember the racing video game when cows, deer and people would run out in front of you without any notice? Well I think that was originally a training video for Indian drivers that made it's way to the Western world as a challenging racing game. I am not exaggerating! While we were driving along the main thouroughfare (a toll road, btw) between Bangalore and Chennai, we had to avoid: goats, cows, rickshaws, motorcycles (that sometime carry up to 4 people) wagons carrying fruit, oxen and at one time an old man walking against the traffic in the middle of the road. The only way you could survive the roads is to understand the heirarchy. It's bus/semi, truck, car, rickshaw, two wheeler, bycycle then lastly people. The opposite of the law in the states. As crazy as the driving is, I never saw an accident.

We finally reached Vellore around 6:00 p.m. on Sunday and were greeted by a huge fort, evidence that at one time it was a garrison town. The fort seemed very interesting, and I would have liked to have visited it, but due to all of the events of yesterday, there just wasn't any time.

Vellore is known throughout India (and the world) for it's medical school, Christian Medical College. The college has a great history and the employees are very proud of it's heritage. Everyone that we met is committed to maintaining the universities mission. (I'll give a brief synopsis of it's history in another post.)

The purpose of the visit to CMC is to meet with the head of the RUHSA program, Dr Mony John. REACH is hoping that the RUHSA program can help them with research that will help them present significant evidence that REACH is a self sustaining program. First, we met with Dr. John in an impromptu meeting in the hallway in front of a lecture hall at the university around 9 am. During this meeting, he did not seem convinced that REACH was a feasible program. He stated that it has happened before and failed in other programs. Remember CMC is a charitable hospital committed to the poor and they do not force people to pay the 10 rupees required to sustain a good program in a community. This is primarily how their programs have failed at showing sustainability, but worked in other areas. After this initial meeting, Dr John arranged for us to tour CMC, a 2,000 bed hospital. This tour took about 2 hours, then we met him back for lunch. He invited us to join him with RUHSA in a 2:00 meeting. After about 3 hours of discussions in English and Tanglor (? the native language for that region), and Tanglish. Dr John finally stated that he liked the REACH model and would like to help, just the kinks need to be resolved and another area for a second pilot needed to be assessed for the program. This work is going to take some time. One of the things I have learned in India is that nothing is as easy as 1,2,3. It's more like 1,1,1,1,1,1.5,1, 2,1,1,1, 2.5,2.75,1,1.....3. That has been my experience on a small scale, I'm sure it isn't much different on larger scales.

After this meeting, Dr. John invited us to visit one of the RUHSA meetings. On the way to the village tons of litter could be seen throughout the streets. There were goats and cows living where people performed daily life activities. At one point I saw a person sitting on a porch eating a meal while the cow directly next to him urinated all over the place. So you can see the conditions are not the most sanitary. I was expecting similar situations in the village. However, the effects of RUHSA were effident. There was not a speck of litter through out the village (at least not where we were). It was unbelieveable the difference the cleanliness made. I was such a pretty area. We were invited by one of the women to join them in a self help group meeting in another women's homes. As we walked to her home, we saw an area in which the livestock were contained in separate areas. Compared to the other people I have seen in the area, the people in this village were healthier and happier. RUHSA has really made a huge difference, this is promising for REACH.

That is all I can write for now. I need to make my way to the rickshaw and negotiate a ride so I can be at the hotel by noon to check out. Tho I am only a few blocks away, nothing in India is one, two, three and this may take an hour. I would walk, but I'm afraid of getting run over.
~Lisa