I forgot to mention yesterday that I have finally caught up with David Lee, another applicant that I met at the Via Christi call back weekend... actually I didn't meet him, but had several people tell me that we were both going to be in Vellore, India at the same time. At which point I got his email address from them and introduced myself via e-mail. We finally caught up the first week for a day and then it turns out that he and another student, Song, are both at LCECU for two days this week. Today we got to tag along on a trip into the surrounding towns and villages with a WHO representative making a report on the rehabilitative programs that CMC has pioneered. The day was filled with 2 examples of local needs for rehabilitation that were not being met by formal organizations and therefor a few locals had begun rehabilitation programs on their own. At that point CMC found out about it and decided to pilot a program that assisted in training the locals and then turning the programs over to them to run.
The first example was the nicknamed the "professor of rehabilitation" because he ended up teaching the CMC staff so much about what's possible with a motivated patient in rehabilitation. The man once had climbed coconut trees to harvest cocunuts for a living, that is before he fell and suffered a complete transection of his spinal cord at T12... leaving him a paraplegic from the waist down. As the professor had grown up in rural farming area he didn't adjust well to city life as a cripple and the countryside didn't accomodate to a wheel chair. For a year or two he tried several odd jobs to support his wife but just wasn't able to do them and wasn't content with them. He finally decided to get the help of CMC and pioneer new rehabilitation techniques that would allow him to functionally farm in the country side again. The answer they came up with is reminescent of gear used by victims of polio patients - forearm supported crutches with leg braces attached to shoes. They had to adapt a special pair of crutches without the rubber end for walking in the fields because the rubber would get stuck in the mud when he pulled the crutch up. Together with the un-ending support of his wife and the CMC rehabilitation support the professor has been able to return to his original farm and prosper. I don't recall what land is measured in, but I do remember him saying he started out with one unit and today along with his son he has 50 units of land. Quite an impressive story.
The second example came from parents of MR children in a neighboring town of Alcot that had nowhere to send their children to school . One such mom decided to start a school specially for MR children due to the fact that the only schools that existed at the time for MR children were in Vellore and Chennai, both of which were exhausting day trips for anyone from the region. Additional parents joined the effort and CMC came in to assist in training the parents. Now six parents are full time teachers at the school, each specializing in a specific area of rehabilitation with MR children. The rest of the parents of the 45 children support those six who work at the school full time. The youngest child there is 3, the oldest student is 32. Again quite an amazing story of what regular people can organize and sustain with a little help and training.
For the afternoon we departed from our WHO delegate and went to a "mother's meeting" in a low income area on the outskirts of Vellore. It was better living conditions than the slums, but still quite poor. Basically this meeting was a time of discussion where females could talk about and even encouraged to discuss gender and it's discrimination in Indian society. It was quite interesting to see women in this setting as they are usually quite and reserved in public, inside this meeting they were loud, boisterous, and joking. It was a joy to see this side of the equation. It was also interesting to see that for as much gender discrimination as they endure they are still skeptical of all the freedom women have in the US. They turned the discussion on us and asked about divorce rates and the importance of family, acceptable dating practices, etc. At the end of the meeting there was a positive attitude as women are gaining more rights and are being empowered with education. I was surprised to learn that they already new that the male is responsible for the sex of their offspring, just one weapon in their arsenal for combating men in this area. I was glad I got to see this meeting and felt priveledged to be accepted into the discussion.
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