Village Dais

Hello all! I hope all is well and that you had a good Thanksgiving, that you are enjoying Christmas shopping and all the joys of the Holiday season. Life is just the same here, so it seems like no time is passing at all (although I am sure everything is crazy and in full swing there). I can hardly believe its December. Time is flying by, but it still sometimes seems very slow.

I love the family I live with in Chittor. They are so sweet and kind. It is a joint family, with a father and mother, their son (Piyush)and his wife (Kavita), and their two kids, Shubhi (6 years) and Kush (1 year). There are also tenants who live upstairs, a young couple (I have gotten to know the wife Sapna really well) with their 3 year old daughter Moorvi. It is a striking contrast between my family in Jaipur, which was basically just Mrs. Singh. It was quiet, calm, and there was always a schedule. Here, it is always insane. There are visitors who come and go, the three kids run around screaming and playing, the T.V. is always on whether anyone is watching it or not. It's also very different to see the way Indians raise their kids differently than those in the U.S. Kavita is always saying that Kush is very naughty, but it seems like they don't discipline him EVER or say no to him EVER. It may also be because he is a boy, boy children in India are often coddled and can do whatever they want. I may also be biased, having seen two of the most adorable girls in the world grow up and the way their amazing parents are guiding them. It astonishes me everytime I visit those two in the U.S., so I may just be spoiled while I watch it here.

Prayas is going well. I have had some amazing experiences, so many I don't think I can name them all right now for lack of time, but hopefully I will post again soon. I have spent most of this week in the office, but last week was spent almost entirely in a Jeep going from village to village doing visits and checkups with our contacts there.

Prayas has alot of rural projects at once, and it seems like Pallavi is in charge of all of them. We have been doing more child sex ratio work, and they are starting a new HIV/AIDS project so in the future maybe I will do some work with that. The most interesting days have been going out with her to meet with Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA's) or dais, who are the midwives in the villages. They have a very important role in rural life, since all women here are expected to have children, and have many children. These dais are responsible for delivering nearly all of the babies, sometimes over generations. Dais are village women, so often they are illiterate and uneducated. They don't have any medical training and can often engage in practices that are dangerous to the mother. Some of those are pushing on the woman's stomach as she goes into labor to aid the baby into the birth canal. This often lead to distress, makes more complications, and can cause a prolapsed uterus in a woman. Dais are also very unhygenic when it comes to births. Cow dung is considered to be a sterilizing agent here, so sometimes a dai will sterilize a razor with cow dung before she cuts the umbilical cord. Dais may also perpetuate superstitions and traditional beliefs in the village about nutrition and health that can be harmful to the mother and baby (like you shouldn't have milk because, you should not eat this because, etc).

Prayas tries to educate and equip these women so that deliveries will be safer and more sterile. They give dais "kits" which include one-time use products like rubber gloves, soap and a sterile blade (to be used once). They may also have contraceptives, iron pills, and other products. Pallavi and I went to a village to check on the dais and see how they use their training. We also examined their kits. One of the kits was in excellent condition. She was clearly using the products Prayas had given her, she barely had any left. Everything was in its original packaging, ready to be used anytime a mother went into labor. The other kit we examined was very bad. All the packages had been opened, so their was no sterile environment. The rubber mat they have for the woman to lay on while delivering was dirty. Her kit was also full to the brim, so who knows if she had been using it or not.

Its hard to teach the "one-time use only" method to people here because it seems like such a waste. Everyone in India uses everything until it cannot possibly be spared anymore. Especially in villages, where things can be so scarce, this a very hard habit to break.

I think that is all for now. My hands are tired from the typing! I will try to write again soon...