My "Indian Mom"

Honestly, I cannot believe day I have had. Sometimes, (mostly while I’m sitting in an auto rickshaw driving through the slums) I just take a look around and still can’t believe I’m here in India. I’ve been so blessed and am so grateful that I have the privilege to be doing this fellowship.

Today I went to the Delhi Cantonment General Hospital to do some work with a woman named Rajrani. She really is a beautiful woman- her entire life has been such a struggle, yet she still has the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. I sat with her in her office from 11am until 4pm just chatting with her about work, shopping, family, politics- everything (in Hindi!). It felt a little bit like I had finally found an “Indian Mom” thousands of miles from home. She told me in advance, Tuesdays aren’t busy- but I came anyways because, well, I didn’t think I could handle a “busy day.” But towards the end of the day, things started getting a bit rowdy. A woman who had been receiving medical care at the hospital for the past few weeks was coming in for her HIV test. Basically all the doctors had seen it coming- but the test was being done as a formality to prove her HIV+ status. I watched the woman cry as she walked into the clinic, I saw the pain in her face when the doctors told her she had HIV, and I felt the sharpest heartache as I saw her nodding her head as the doctors told her the course of action they would take. She was thin, weak, and barely alive it looked like. Her face had so many terrible marks, and while she said her age was 30- she looked almost twenty years older than that.

Never in my life would I have though that I would be able to experience what I’ve seen here in Delhi. I’ve worked with young girls in the slums- teaching them how to stitch, I’ve taught kids with tattered clothes about geography and dinosaurs, I’ve sat in beautiful houses talking to Indian Doctors about HIV health policy, and I’ve gotten to see the actual impact that policy has on women in India.

With the two remaining weeks I have left here, I plan to use as much time as I can to build my research and find out more about health policy changes by the Indian Government. Maybe health policy is exactly where all the answers to my questions are. We’ll find out soon enough!

P.S. Here is a photo from the BEAUTIFUL Taj Mahal. I got lucky because it was completely empty- which only happened because it was pouring so hard!