Observations and Field Placement

Homemade Kite Flying Fun (above) with Viswas Trust (below)

Carambole Game playing...(below)

Today is Friday and I am back from my field placement and getting ready for the journey to Kerala. I went to Viswas Trust and started my morning playing ‘Carooms’ with some of the staff and elderly men. Then I got to do a few home visits with one of the MSW girls. She took me to one man’s house who is doing well. He and his wife do not have any children and live in a little one floor apartment type house. It was small but you could tell what they had, they cherished, and their picture frames of their families were prized. They fed me fresh bananas, fresh juice and star fruit dipped in salt. At the next house I was fed fresh mango juice. No matter how poor they were, they still offered juice and usually some sort of food and they basically forced you eat it. The home visits were very good. It was all in Kannada but the girl translated some of it for me. The one lady, the 2nd lady we visited, had lost her daughter in 2000 to bone cancer and then her husband died in 2002 because he couldn’t handle his daughter’s death. So now she lives with her 2 sons who are both mentally disabled. They are both in their thirties and she looks after both of them. Then the last house we went to, the man was blind. He has been blind for ten years because he ate too much sugar and became diabetic and then became blind because of it. He seemed to be doing pretty good besides not being able to see. He said he does yoga for an hour each morning to start the day.
Observations…so a few things I’ve noticed is that no one really seems to chew gum here. There is a decent amount of trash on the ground among other things but no gum. It’s different than at home where there is not much trash but a solid amount of gum on the streets of the cities. Also, I have yet to see any change on the ground. In America I often see change on the street, generally pennies but also nickels, dimes and the occasional quarter. Here in Mangalore, there is no money on the streets. If someone were to accidently drop something and not notice it then it would be picked up immediately. If you dropped a 1 Rupee or even a paise, which is part of a Rupee, you would pick it up. Indians also hate giving you change. They always seem to use change but they hate giving it. I don’t know how many times I have been given a piece of chocolate instead of a 1 or 2 Rupee piece or how many times the price has been dropped by 1 or 2 Rupees if it’s at the market so they don’t have to give change. Just funny because in America they exact change always seems to be given. Here I get some change and a chocolate bar…although I’m not complaining, it works for me : )
Happy Early Birthday Beka!!! And I’m off to Kerala tonight.