On Sunday, a group of kids, Docy and I left the school in a very “sketchy” covered pickup-truck to go to a village right down the street from the school. I had only seen the villages once before as my dad and I drove from city to city, but had never actually walked into one and looked around.
Our purpose in going to the village was to preform and record procedures in order to help the people living around our community. I, with little to no medical background, was nervous but excited to be doing something new. Tanvi, a very close friend, and I were assigned the eye-checking section where we tested and recorded each of the villagers’ eyesight. (Tanvi did the instructions in Hindi while I covered one of the patient’s eyes closed.) The other stations included: height, weight and age recording; blood-pressure and sugar-level testing; a cancer and teeth-brushing talk; and, of course, Docy’s check-up station, which distributed worm pills. I had never done something so immediately helpful before. We were actually finding the problems and helping these people right in the community! It felt great.
The village was spread on about two hillsides. The main building where we were based was the pre-school and gathering center. The school room was no bigger than 10 x 12 feet. Doing the medical recordings, I realized that there were easily 20 pre-school-aged kids at school. I was later told that the government supplied meals for the school so many kids came to eat–a good motivation for these kids to go to school and learn.
A few days later, we did another trip to the middle/high school in the village. To get there we took the school’s ambulance. (I’m glad to finally check that off my bucket list!) Once there, we taught all the kids first aid such as CPR, bandaging, splinting and we explained what to do in the case of a stroke, electric shock, head injury, etc. Most of the kids saw the importance in all of this and were very eager to learn. It was rewarding to know that we might have helped save someone’s life down the road.
Health club is definitely becoming one of my favorites now! I can’t wait until the next trip!
The Athenian School Exchange Blog 