tora bunda and birthday shinadigans

Trucks full of people zooming down the motorway, and the vendors that pounce on you when you stop at the lights. This coconut would set you back $0.20cents.

Hmmm birthday lunch. SALAD! You crave fresh veges and fruit!

Having curry for my birthday on top of the roof with some other volunteers.

This is Amiri...nicknamed "tora bunda". which translates to little monkey.

Gorgeous Najoo. Found at railway station. Advanced breast cancer.

Just the usual you see on the roads! Lady pulling rickshaw with her two children, carrying her tiny baby!!

Waiting to give blood......

Things are starting to get busy again here at the ashram with a few sick patients arriving. We got a call from someone that knew of the ashram telling us there was a lady living at a railway station in south delhi who was sick. We went down to pick her up and was abit surprised as she looked ok'ish and could even walk to the car.

After arriving back at the ashram we took her dressing down to her right breast. She had a massive fungating tumor. Her breast literally crumbled apart when the dressing was removed. The stench was very strong.

She is HIV+ so is unwell anyway. We have taken her for lots of tests seeing what we can do for her. The hard thing is we don't know if there is much we can do. The cancer is too advanced. We now need to find out whether we make her comfortable here to die, or take her to a Mother Theresa ashram for the dying.

You see crazy stuff every day but this particular lady really moved me.

We got some volunteers together to donate blood as both she and another patient desperately needed it.

We came back from that and I got to give her her fist shower in a long time. This was a privilege. To be with someone so so vunerable and try and show them a small bit of love and care. I managed to find her some brand new clothes to wear. She looked so gorgeous and happy after!

I will keep you posted on her progress.

We have another patient called Amiri...nicknamed "tora bunda", which translates to 'little monkey'. He is one of the smallest men I have met. Hahaha he is about 32 kgs. He says that he is either 54 or 80 years old....haha. Even though he is small he has alot of strength in his voice! He yells and screams at me if I approach him with an IV antibiotic to put in his IV line. Sometimes I am very thankful my Hindi is so crap so I dont understand what he is calling me! Haha straight after I have given it he loves me again.

So many characters here!

Had my birthday a week ago. Jake took me into Delhi to stay in a hotel for the night, went to go shopping the next day but everything was closed due to yet another protest. They love their protests here!

Anyway we went out for lunch instead. Was SUCH a treat having a salad with blue cheese, pear and walnuts. Hmmmm...fresh food is so good! Theres only so many curries you can have for breakie lunch and dinner.

Ok, today is my day off again so I am off to the markets with another volunteer friend here Louise....Yay! Nice to get out for a lil outing.....Think Jake will give this one a miss though. Hes not the most committed shopper youv met =)

New life young death

Abida's baby girl born last night. 2kgs.

Has been an interesting last few days.......We had a young 15 year old girl arrive with her mother from the local slum up the road. The ashram has been helping this family for many years. they have one small room in the slum which 10 people live.

This girl was quite sick but was difficult to establish what exactly was wrong with her. We had taken her to the hospital twice, and the local Dr twice too but she kept getting discharged-each time we wernt much closer to finding out what was wrong.

After a few days of this, her health deteriorated even more, she then went into septic shock. We rushed her to the hospital again, yet 3 hours later she died in the emergency department. 15 years old.

Her mother had to be carried out as she was too stricken with grief to walk.

You see crazy things every day here but there is some things that effect you more than other. This was definatly one of those times for me.

Along with the sadness there is always beauty though.

Last night I was in the delivery room when a lady that stays in the womans part of the ashram gave birth to a baby girl. SHESH! It wasnt something i will forget fast! I think I will be waiting a little while till i experince that first hand!! The mother Abida and her baby are doing well and will come back home tonight. I am looking forward to lots of cuddles with her.

Ruth =)

One month in...jakes first blog

Some of the boys at work in the vegetables

The traffic starting to block up waiting at the train crossing

Driving Praseeda and 14 of the kids to the ashram

Ramu, stoked to be up out of bed

Our first month in India has now gone by. It's being an interesting month for me, especially returning to the ashram after being here for a few months four years ago. There's been so many changes in those years. Mostly, the people. It's encouraging when you see some of the young boys that have now grown up. Also some of the longterm patients I treated last time i was here still remain but are much better. Many of the faces I always associated with the ashram in my memories have now moved on. Some to better things, but sadly I also hear many stories of others, including some of the boys in leadership here previously, returning to the streets and the drug and alcohol problems that often brought them here in thefirst place. It's sad but at the end of the day, its their choice.
So far my days have been taken up with a mixture of physio work, driving patients and families around, taking driving lessons for some of the other indian workers and also playing cricket and a few other games with some of the locals.

One of my favourite patients is a guy called Ramu. 6 months ago he had an accident in a truck and ended up in hospital with a fractured odontoid (bone in neck). Initially he was paralysed from the neck down, unable to move any of his limbs, but even to survive an injury causing spinal damage at this level is something to be thankful for. When I arrived a month ago he was still on bedrest but had recovered all sensation in his body, plus the strength on his right side. He had some return of movements on the left side but this was still very weak. Over the last month he's made so much progress and as you can see in the photo taken today, he is now walking with one crutch which he mostly just carries around. The left arm is still very weak but time will tell if this can recover further too.

Vinod, from ruths previous blog, is doing good too and is starting to get himself around in a wheelchair that we were able to get for him.

Ruth has settled in really quickly and is already doing so much in the clinic. Her experience on the plastics ward at Waikato has been so useful with all the bed sores and crazy wounds to dress each day. I think so many people, including myself, had been preparing her for the worst that when she got here it was a little bit tamer than she imagined. She's already braving the Dehli roads driving, which I hardly did in my first 3 months here last time. Her driving style fits right in here.

The chaos on the roads is the one thing here that can really get me frustrated. It feels like i've wasted so much time sitting in traffic with horns blearing in your ears and dust and fumes in your face, dodging cars and bikes and cows and whatever else you can imagine. The most frustrating thing is that so much of the traffic jams would be solved with obedience to basic road rules. One example...every sunday evening I drive a short distance to pick up a family from their nearby house and on the way there's a train track we have to cross. Without fail, every sunday i end up sitting in a traffic jam at this crossing because when the barriers come down the traffic starts blocking up on both sides of the road instead of sticking in their own lane. On the other side they're of course doing the same so when the barriers open there's a braveheart style clash in the middle, with the result been a lot of horns and no one going anywhere too soon.

This family I pick up is amazing though. The mum and dad, Praseeda and Prakash came to the ashram individually 10 years ago and have been working here ever since. They got married about 5 years ago and since then have had one child of their own but have also adopted 16 other children that have come through the ashram gates without any parents. The kids range in age from 4 to 17. Crazy when when you think Praseeda is the same age as me! They are such an amazing couple and the kids are all such cool, well behaved, intelligent kids that are doing really well at school. To hear where they came from only a few years back is unbelievable.

To sum it up, everything is going really well here so far. We're enjoying it, we're healthy, we're challenged daily and are having some crazy experiences. The food can get a bit monotonous but the weather is perfect. Starting to cool off, especially at nights, although its still a nice 30 degrees during the day. It rained a wee bit last night which is the first rain we've felt in over 2 months. We're so stoked to have missed the 40-50 degree days of june and july (cheers scott and shar for braving those months).

Had so many more thoughts but this is getting too long so will save them for another blog maybe.

Hope you're all well.
Much love,
Jake