The Real Reason We Are Here

January 3 - First day of work!

Normally we take the student bus across town to the hospital campus, but Mr. Babu from the Physiotherapy Department picked us up today outside of our hostel at 8:00.  He took us to the campus, where we met in his office to confirm our schedules.  He was very accommodating to our interests, and I have been given the following schedule for the next 6 weeks:

• Weeks 1-2: Gymnasium (Pediatrics)
• Week 3: Pediatric Cardiopulm and Hemophilia
• Week 4: Pediatric Neurology and General Wards
• Weeks 5-6: Rehab Institute

I'll try to give a more detailed explanation of each area as I find out.  I am currently in the Gymnasium, which is the outpatient clinic at the hospital.  I am working under a therapist named Raji.  Mr. Babu introduced me to her after a brief tour of the facilities and then left.  Within a minute of meeting Raji, she took me to a family and told me that they "understand English" and walked away.  I had not received any information on the patient - no name, diagnosis, age, etc.  The family stared at me, and I looked back at them.  I quickly excused myself, and I went to ask Raji for further direction.  I have since found out that in this clinic the family learns a child's exercises on the first day and then is largely responsible for performing them each day with their child.  I did not realize that this family already knew what they were doing, so all I had to do was follow them.   The family-oriented therapy approach has been a double-edged sword for me so far.  On the one hand, I really respect that this facility is really training these families to work with their children who usually have life-long conditions.  On the other hand, it means that I spend a lot of time as an observer more than a therapist.  (I also end up feeling like a bit of an attraction, as people stare all day, and a few of the families have taken pictures of me working with their children.)

The language barrier has also been a big issue so far.  The staff all speak English, but very few of the patients and their families do.  This further adds to my feeling of simply being an observer.  I knew that language would be an issue, but I had the impression that we would have more assistance communicating with our patients.  Instead the therapists are typically working with at least 3-4 patients and their families at one time and don't have a lot of spare time to be spent acting as a translator.

On the first Monday of every month there is a welcome dinner for international students at the Alumni Center, so we wandered over there after dinner.  They had coffee/tea and dessert along with several of the long-term international faculty present.  At each of these gatherings they try to present some aspect of Indian culture.  Tonight they had a man play a drum called the tabla while his father sang.

Tablas

I forgot to bring my camera along, so I'm including a photo that I found online.  The drumming was very intricate, and we were informed that the tablas actually have to be tuned for each performance.  They are played on a 12 note scales, instead of the 8 note (octave) scale that we are used to.

Here's a random tabla video that I found on YouTube to give you an idea: