Greetings from Bodhgaya

It's been a while, and you may be wondering what happened to me, or maybe just relieved to finally get some quiet from my e-mails. But here I am again, still moving around in India.

I last wrote from Mussoorie, and I know you will all be pleased and proud to know that - given enough time and a patient audience - I can now read and write Hindi, and even express a few simple thoughts (such as "I am learning Hindi and I need much practice", and "Hindi is a very difficult language").

I finally gave up Mussoorie, despite it's extreme beauty and cool climate, because of it's (equally) extreme cost, and because I felt it was time to start being productive, one way or another. So here I am, back in Bodhgaya, back at Root Institute. And the internet is so much better here, too.

The population of Root Institute now consists of about seven dogs, two chickens, eight goats, and a (very) few assorted people. Somebody told me there is a rabbit somewhere, but I haven't seen it. Oh, yes, and a tribe of (huge) ants, who have set up housekeeping in the drainpipe of my shower. Imagine my delight to find my new friends crawling up my legs every time I take a shower.

Life at Root Institute hasn't changed much since I left last March, except that there aren't many (Stewart left just today, so you can change that to ANY) guests, only staff workers and hospital patients. It seems that this year, I'll be working less in the guest's reception office, and more in the local clinic, which suits me fine. I spent last Tuesday counting medicines in the filing cabinet that is used as a medicine store-room, and yesterday I went out with the Mobile Clinic, which was an experience to remember.

We started out at around 9 AM, loading up the jeep with a few aluminum suitcases, containing the medicines (most of them homeopathic) and medical equipment. Then we sat down to wait for the doctor, who, it turned out, had decided not to come that day and didn't really see any reason for advance notice of the fact. We finally arranged for a different doctor to meet us at the intersection, and piled into the jeep - the nurse, compounder (pharmacist in our language), driver and me, the token White Person. The nurse held the first-aid kit in her lap, and I got to hold on to the box of speculums(?). We spent an hour or so bouncing around on the dirt road between the fields, stopping only to have a word with some guys that were evidently fishing in the ditch alongside the road (with my advanced Hindi skills, I gathered that the doctor wanted to see about getting some fish for his dinner).

We finally wound up beside a one-room, one-windowed building in a small village, and unloaded. The "Women's Clinic" suitcases went inside the room (together with the assorted farming equipment that was already there, and a couple of drums that were evidently left there from the last time they had a puja); the doctor set up his office at a dilapidated plastic table on the veranda outside the building. We spread a straw mat on the wooden bed-frame next to the doctor's table, and Sushil (the compounder) arranged his four suitcases around him, sitting cross-legged on the mat. Manju, the nurse, pulled out her files of the women, and started to interview them at the other side of Sushil's pharmacy.

The people are all from the village (or whatever houses in the fields that surround the village) - all coming barefoot with naked and half-naked children, with little slips of paper containing diagnoses and prescriptions from the last visit. They squat by the table, after giving the doctor their little slips of paper, and wait for him to give them his WORD. Once the doctor has checked them and written a new prescription, Sushil pulls out a little plastic bottle with sugar pills, shakes a few drops of homeopathic solution from one of the tens of bottles he has (they all have labels with numbers, but I still don't know how he keeps track of them, there are so many), or a few pills from one of the bags, and hands it to the patient, with an explanation of how and when to take it.

Meanwhile, Manju and I are checking the women. The room inside has a couple of wooden tables, and Manju spreads a cover over one of them, which transforms it into a gynecologist’s chair. I get to hold the flashlight while she does the internal checks (electricity? don't be ridiculous). She takes a long time talking with each woman, and occasionally gives them iron tablets or vitamin B complex. One of them women asked me how many children I have, and I actually understood her, and answered in Hindi (I'm so proud). I understand that the women's clinic has been cut down lately, because it's harvest season so the women stopped coming.

We broke off for lunch, sitting on the floor of the ashram next-door and eating with our hands the potato curry and roti-bread that Root Institute's cooks provided for us, and watching the drizzling rain that started cooling the afternoon air. Then it was back to the patiently waiting patients for another hour or two, and then back into the jeep for another bounce around the field roads. We stopped along the way a couple of times, because yesterday was a sister-brother festival (someone told me that every Indian week - 7 days - has 8 festivals) - and Manju wanted to pick some rushes from the ponds along the road for the rituals coming that evening (she has two brothers). For a full day of doing nothing but watching other people, I was pretty tired.

Tomorrow I'm doing stock-taking again, and I get to see Rajesh, the little boy (about two or three years old, I think) who has a completely deformed body from the bone-TB that attacked him. He has a brace on his back, and he can now walk (last year he couldn't even stand up). He doesn't talk yet, but he does quite a good "uuuhhhh, uuuhhhh" whenever he sees me, and his mother has taught him to put his hands up in "Namaste" for greeting people.

So much for this time. It's nice to be doing something that might possibly help someone else, after a month of luxuriating at a hotel and getting Hindi pounded into my head four or five hours a day.