()
Indian Summer
Tales of our adventures volunteering, living, and traveling in India
Hello All! Thanks everyone for following us. We hope you are getting a flavor for what we have been doing. Today we had our final work day at DISHA. We passed out Strawberry Mentos for the kids as a goodbye (they celebrate everything with sweets here), and took as many photos with the kids as we could. We’ve all been working on art projects for the classrooms so we made deliveries and took some last requests.
Harjas is leaving us tomorrow to head back home…and Claire and I head of on our next adventure… 1 week more in Rajasthan (Udaipur + Jodhpur) then Delhi and Home!
Unfortunately we will not have access to the internet to do more posts, so please look for our final update posts after we return August 8th.
Earlier this week we had the chance to tour Jaipur College of Occupational Therapy. We met two professors from the school who showed us around campus and told us all about their program, as well as occupational therapy in India. It was a very informative visit and gave us good insight into the differences and similarities between OT in India and the US. We even had the chance to ask some students questions too.
Here are some pictures of their equipment, hand therapy room, and the view from the roof (they are about 30km outside the city so it was very green and beautiful!).
Last weekend, we were told about a restaurant that serves meat. This was a great discovery because most shops/restaurants here are purely vegetarian, so we have mostly been eating rice, bread, and veggies for the last month. It was quite an event at Barbecue Nation- they bring around unlimited appetizers and then also have a buffet. We all enjoyed it very much and got to try many different types of Indian foods that we had not yet discovered
.
Jumbo ants that have “meetings” (they congregate in groups a lot) and friendly lizards that scurry about everywhere.
A few weeks ago, we were invited to an installation ceremony for the Jaipur South Rotary Club (Rotary is a service organization with groups worldwide). The first picture is of us on the way back. They had given us a ceremonial dot on the forehead as part of the event.
Last week, Rashni and I gave a presentation on Occupational Therapy to some Rotarians, Rotaracters, and design students. We gave them an overview of occupational therapy and some information on ergonomics so that they could increase their comfort in school and work.
Rotary gave out baby trees as gifts because the initiative for this year is “Go Green.” We planted ours in the Disha garden.
We managed to capture a few photos of us “in action” at Disha. We had to blur out the faces of the children for privacy reasons, but we thought they still give a good idea about what we’ve been doing here.
It does seem to us that many of the tasks that we have been assigned to do with the kids are more what a physical therapist would do. However, we are still learning a lot, and the Sensory Integration room (room depicted below) is more familiar to us.
Last weekend we spent some of the afternoon going around Jaipur. We first went to Johari Bazar where we found a fun shop filled with bangles. We then saw some other places such as the City Palace, the Monkey Temple, and Jal Mahal.
City Palace:
The Monkey Temple:
The driver of the auto raved about this place. It turned out to be a temple at the top of a very steep hill. There were a lot of monkeys living up there too. Aside from that there were also cows, goats, pigs, and tons of centipedes! It also is apparently a local hotspot, because there were lots of people just relaxing up there. The view of Jaipur from the top was great.
one tiny part of the view from the top:
Jal Mahal: This place will be opening as a restaurant, but the lakeside area itself was a pretty popular place for a Sunday afternoon. The crowds were huge!
We can’t believe we’re already halfway through our time here at Disha! We thought we should fill you in more about what we’ve been doing during our workdays.
We’ve started doing actual occupational therapy related things and the therapist here was kind enough to teach us techniques that we haven’t learned in school yet but will definitely be a part of our curriculum next year. First, he taught us about the assessment form they use here, and each day we read about how to perform different aspects of the assessment before. He then demonstrated some for us. We learned tests to see how a child’s coordination is and various types of muscle testing depending on whether a child has high or low muscle tone. We work under the OT’s supervision but we have our own cases, and we carry out the intervention plans on these students. So far, this has involved doing stretching exercises for some children with CP as well as sensory integration activities for a boy with autism.
We also spend time in the various classrooms helping with feeding for those children that are not fully able to feed themselves, and generally just trying to be helpful where we can. We help unload and load kids from the autos when they arrive and depart, we monitor and assist kids during morning prayer and afternoon anthem, and we’ve even helped give a training session to the teachers on proper wheelchair, transfer, and walking techniques.
Claire also got to observe an Early Intervention Screening at a local hospital, where several Disha staff members go to ask parents with infants about whether children have reached certain developmental milestones. If there are any issues, the Disha staff offer free advice to these parents who would otherwise not have access to (or may not know about) these services. The program only began in January, but they have already screened over 1100 babies! Rashni will get the opportunity to visit next week, and Harjas will be going to a Community Based Rehabilitation Program the following week.
We will try to show a few photos soon. We are not allowed to show the children’s faces, but we will try to get some shots that capture the idea of what we do.
Today I actually slipped on a banana skin when we were walking up to the Monkey Temple.
Not joking! I thought this only happened in cartoons!
The heat of the first two weeks was pretty unbearable. In the last week we have noticed that torrential downpours have become more frequent….and so have concluded that monsoon season has begun! The rains are really heavy and make it so much cooler. We love it! The drainage on some of the streets is not too great, so take a look at some of the rainy scenes we’ve captured on camera:
