Friends and Festivals

The last couple of days have been kind of slow at both Pasam and the FIMRC clinic. Mainly due to the fact that there has been a Hindu festival going on which lasts until this Wednesday. As I mentioned before, it is superstition that you shouldn't go to the doctor on festival days. According to a nurse who works in the FIMRC clinic, Seline, each day the festival goers carry something different in a vessel on their head to the temple. She said they had already carried coals/fire and would be carrying milk another day.

Festival goers eating a traditional South Indian lunch at one of the local temples.

The good thing about the clinic being very slow was we had plenty of time for Seline to make coffee! This time I got to watch Seline make the coffee so I could attempt to recreate it on my own. Here's the secret recipe: take some whole milk and dilute it to about a third water, bring the milk to a gentle boil, turn the heat up high so the milk really boils and makes a bunch of frothy bubbles, quickly cut the heat and repeat two times. Then add the milk to a mixture of about two and half tablespoons sugar and two or so tablespoons instant coffee depending how strong you want it to be. Stir together and pour into cups. Then enjoy!

Seline's famous coffee! The secret is really about getting it nice and frothy.

On Friday morning, we had some excitement on the way to Pasam. As we were driving down the street from the volunteer house, I noticed a tiny puppy in the middle of the street in front of us. We pulled over and Arun quickly jumped out to try and get the puppy out of harm's way. He eventually was able to grab the puppy and place on the side of the street, but we were definitely worried it was going to wander out into the street again after we left.

Arun in action.

When we got to Pasam, a few of the nurses were out front working on administrative tasks since there weren't many patients. They were reorganizing all of the patient records. At Pasam, all of the patient records are written on yellow cards. There are no electronic medical records here, that is for sure! The records looked like a mess and I couldn't figure out the method to their madness but by the time we left that afternoon everything had been organized.

The nurses reorganizing the patient records.

As I said in an earlier post, Shaelagh, the other 2 month intern, got here on Monday. It has been great to have some company! Last night we did a mini circuit and some ab work in our bedroom which was actually a lot of fun. I've been kind of sick the last couple of days with a cold/respiratory infection but I'm hoping once it clears up I can start going on runs near the volunteer house. Two more volunteers are coming today and staying for two weeks. So many friends! Unfortunately, this also means wifi will probably be very unreliable again (not that is great now either) as it was when we had five students here. We are finally going to the crèches on Monday so hopefully I will have wifi and can put up a post with pictures of the kids!

 Liz