June 8th: Working in the Hospital and Back Into Town

 I spent the majority of the day putting together a rough draft of the video. It’s actually to really cool to be putting together these videos. I have to make myself think about the Adivasi community and what they would be interested in and how to make the material understandable for them. I finished working on the Sickle Cell Pamphlet and spent the morning making a rough draft of the video. We are making three separate sickle cell videos, one to introduce the topic, the second to explain the mode of inheritance and the third to explain the various treatment/management plans. Putting together the first video made me think of the potential of these videos and I’m really looking forward to coming home and working on them more in depth. I really hope that these videos turn out well because I think they have the potential to help a lot of people if done properly.

                After finishing the sickle cell pamphlet I worked on a diabetes booklet. There is actually a pretty high population with diabetes so teaching them about proper diet and how to prevent or manage diabetes is very important. I’ll be visiting tribal villages on Monday so I am looking forward to speaking with various individuals to learn about their knowledge of various subjects. I will also be following the health animator/counselor that works with sickle cell families to see how counseling is done.

       
It was raining for the better part of the day so after we finished up at the hospital we spent part of the evening sitting outside the hostel watching the rain and the construction workers. They provide us with pretty good entertainment. We wanted to enjoy the nice weather before heading back into town to grab another milkshake. :-D We also decided that since it was the weekend we would head to Ooty tomorrow to explore a bit. It’s a pretty big tourist attraction and since Hayley and Anna had never been there and my sister and I hadn’t been since 2006 we thought it would be a fun adventure trying to explore on our own.

                After our amazing milkshakes we came back to the hostel for dinner and ended up just hanging around with the others in the hostel before heading to bed to prepare for tomorrow.