Sunday Sunday

We had breakfast with Sunil, Manuela, and Shazia, and Alex went out for a drive with them.

I stayed at the SEDS farm as I wanted some time to rest my brain a bit - I've been feeling very tired recently - but when an injured employee arrived for some help, I assisted. Venkatrammadu injured his foot some time ago, just receiving a small cut from a piece of metal in the ground. He didn't think much of it at the time, but this small wound went on to become infected and he eventually collapsed and ended up in hospital. He had some surgery on the wound, but it didn't get better and he was very sick. We had visited him at home previously, but now he was coming to SEDS so that Manil could clean and dress his wound.

I assisted by fanning the wound to keep the flies away, and helping to hand things to Manil. The wound was such that a good quantity of skin was missing from his foot and the flesh was raw and gunky underneath. Manil painstakingly cleaned away the gunk, and although the situation was by no means sterile, she did her best to keep things clean and used a lot of chemicals to try and sterilise things, before adding iodine ointment and a fresh dressing. 

As Manil was working on the wound, I reflected a bit on things I had learned in my medical anthropology elective. I thought of how Venkatrammadu tolerated the pain of this procedure, compared to how I thought I might tolerate it. I thought about his treatment expectations, and the fact that for him, this outdoor and not-entirely-clean treatment was far better than he had been receiving so far. I also thought about the environment as a factor in health outcomes, and the fact that his environment meant that healing was slower, keeping the wound clean was impossible, and flies and bugs were a constant problem. After the painful wound cleaning was over, I brought Venkatrammadu some water and made him some tea. I thought about how I was kind of using medical pluralism by combining the unscientific – tea fixes everything – with the scientific – making it sugary to give him a boost after dealing with all that pain. 

After his tea was finished, Venkatrammadu tried to walk to the bike that was his ride home. He insisted he felt fine, but he was very unsteady on his feet and he stumbled and almost fell, so I insisted that he hold on to me for support to get to the bike. Despite his painful ordeal, Venkatrammadu was ever so nice. Even though we could only share very few words in Telugu and slightly more in English, I again felt the power of non-verbal communication in conveying kindness, friendliness, and gratitude.

This medical assistance took quite a long time, and I was ready for a rest when we finished, but Manil suggested that I could learn some cooking now so I did that instead.

In the kitchen, Manni showed me how to make yellow rice first:

And then Manni and Gangamma showed me how to make onion pakora (apparently you have to mix the pakora with your hand, "you use spoon, no tasty!"). I made sure to write down the ingredients in my notebook, but the quantities are judged by experience so I'm not sure how well I'll be able to replicate these recipes in the future...

Sorry about the terrible phone photos Manni and Gangamma!

 After lunch we said goodbye to Sunil, Manuela, and Shazia, but we had plans to see them again.