Working 8½ hours

Finally I'm writing something about work. This week has been quite busy. FPAI organizes Health Camps in their field working slum areas when there are health problems among community. Health Camp means that there are normally two doctors: gynecologist and general doctor with whom people can have an appointment and Family Planning Association provides medicines for free. Now there will be ten camps in total. Five we had already and other half is still ahead. In these camps I finally feel that I'm helping and really doing something. So far every camp have been around 200 patients.

FPAI Jaipur Branch office in Jawahar Nagar
We (means other intern Paulina and I) have been preparing and packing medications for the camps and counting balance after wards. In the office they hadn't really have any kind of inventory system. So Paulina started make one now on computer. Before they have been handwritten names of all medicines for doctors. Medications are not really my field. Women's Studies doesn't include any medical studies like these people seems understand my educational background here. I've been trying to explain that I'm interested in womens' culture. But well I'm learning something new every day. At the first camp I wasn't that good with prescriptions but now it goes quite smoothly.

Koh Nagorian semi-rural slum
Other FPAI activities are different kind of meetings in communities where field workers go. Women meetings,adolescent meetings, couple meetings etc. There are four field workers. Two men and two women who all has three different areas where they go almost daily. Some of the areas the same worker has worked over 18 years so they know people there and have their respect and trust. So far I've been attending some of those meetings but of course these meetings are always in Hindi so I can't participate. I've been doing some observing and made notes how people react and behave. Mainly the topics has been family planning and contraceptives, safe motherhood, nutrition, abortion and women empowerment. So far I have no clue what workers really talk when they conduct meetings about empowerment. But hopefully during my last two months here I'll get the idea.

Health Camp in Khadda Basti, Adarsh Nagar

First week was mainly sitting in the office doing nothing, like these Indians really like to do. But now I've been happy working in the Health Camps and days goes really fast. I prepared some interview questions about satisfaction of life among women and girls. When these camps are over I'll start doing those interviews for my small case study. Other thing I've been working on is introduction material about FPAI Jaipur Branch for the interns in the future where I'm trying to explain how to prepare yourself to the field work, what to expect and how handle with difficult situations. In this material I'm putting also maps and descriptions of all working areas so it will be easier for next interns/volunteers to adjust. With this I will work whole three months little by little because it's not that easy to get all that information from Indians, especially in our office.

So to sum up. Work is very challenging sometimes because of language (only three out of eight workers speaks enough good English and people in the field speak usually only Hindi). Because of different working culture (most of you my readers know that I'm hard worker and it's just difficult for me sit all day doing nothing). Because of it's mainly about health care which is not my thing (although with my basic common sense like hygiene or how to cure infections I'm doing just fine). And the biggest minus is lack of communication and information. Sometimes we just dont't know what's going on and what we should be doing. There was a huge (at least for me it sounded like huge but Indians shout loud in every situations so I can't really say was it really big thing) conflict last week when field workers didn't want to take us with because we are causing more disruption than helping - which is many times true.

But also the work is sometimes great and gives pleasure. When I'm giving the right medication to people and they might feel better soon. When I notice how tight are relationships among those women in their communities and how they take care of each others. When women for example today in semi-rural slum area, Koh Nagorian remembered my name after two weeks and smiled and greeted happily. And of course good moments in the office when I can share thoughts with office worker Saraswati (in picture), learn Hindi with all workers and just drink chai tea again and again (means five times in day if you're whole day in the office).