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