Field Trip To See Local Hospital

I'm astounded by the conditions of this hospital. It is the biggest and the best in the city (actually in the entire state) and the conditions are less than desirable. Heather's boss's wife was going there to assess their needs and see if she could find them some corporate sponsors and she asked if I'd like to go. It is a state-run facility and there just isn't much money to be had. But they definitely make do with what they have.
The doctors were amazing. Because it is a government hospital treatment is given free of charge to whoever shows up. The doctors are very proud that they provide such excellent care in spite of the staggering workload. They specialize in birthin' babies and all things considered, they do a damn good job. Safe sex is not really taught or practiced like in the U.S. so there are a LOT of babies and a LOT of STDs. One of the things the doctors are most proud of is that they give mandatory AIDS tests to all expectant mothers being admitted. This allows them to take steps immediately if the results are positive to help lessen the chances of transmission from mother to child.
The building itself reminded me of a rundown public school. Faded teal and grey interior and rain washed and chipping paint on the outside. It wasn't clean in the sense that we think of "clean" in the U.S. Most of the floors were just unpainted concrete and every door in the place seemed to be wide open which invited in a multitude of flying insects. Mostly flies. Each ward we saw was packed with old rusty cots barely supporting a saggy flattened old mattress which was covered in soiled linens.
We saw one set of twins, born the day before, that had presented the doctors with a bit of a challenge. They were "interlocking" twins which means the were hooked onto eachother by the chin. The first twin was born breached and the second was born head first, but they were in the womb facing eachother in a way so one chin was caught under the others chin. Not like conjoined twins, but rather just sort of fitted together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In a well equipped hospital this wouldn't be a problem because the doctors would have seen this on a sonogram. But here the doctors didn't know until the first twin was stuck on his way out. I didn't hear the details of how the birth was finished successfully, but both of the babies were sleeping peacefully when we saw them and the doctor said the one that had the harder time of it had started feeding that morning which is a very good sign.
Throughout the day I was struck by how the doctors never ever complained about their conditions. We practically had to drag it out of them that their autoclave was being held together with putty. All things considered it was a good day. I didn't have the heart to take a lot of photos in the wards. One thing I found interesting that I did snap a couple shots of was the patients sitting outside. The hospital has a beautiful garden in its center and the doctors said many of the patients were used to living outdoors so they hated being in the beds. So they would just sit or lie around in the garden under trees or out on the grass. The more I think about it the more it seems to me that the hospitals in America might want to think about something like that. I know I'd rather convalesce under a tree than in a white room that stinks of lysol.

This is what happens when you send a box to India. This is no accident... I think you'd have to try hard to get a full box this flat.
And this was sent FedEx 2 day. Can you imagine what they would have done to it if they'd had it for more than 48 hours?

This is an area of town called Secret Lake. It's beautiful, but the water seems to be mostly sewage and when it's hot (which is every day) the water buffalo spend all day wallowing in the shallows. So it don't smell too great. There is a lot of construction around the lake because it is in High Tech City which is sort of a suburb of Hyderabad. Google and Microsoft and all the other IT companies have their offices in High Tech City. It's actually not as much a suburb anymore as it is a neighborhood in Hyderabad. I've been told that over the past five years the city has grown so much that it has swallowed up all the surrounding areas that used to be separate communities. I read that by 2012 Hyderabad is expected to have a population of 7 million. I think it is at 1 or 2 million right now. And as you can see from the one picture, a good number of these million or so people live in shanty towns made up of tarps and whatever scraps of cardboard and tin can be scrounged together. Most construction workers live in these shanty towns. It's strange to see these high rises being built by people who can't afford a house of their own. A small army of workers along with their wives and kids will construct a shanty town just a few hundred yards from whatever project they're working on. When the building is done and the upper class is ready to move in, the shanty town is quickly broken down and the workers are off to the next jobsite. It's a tent-city one day, and a parking lot the next.

Montana aint got shit on the Indian sky.

This is Ismail. He's the head driver here for Cozy Cabs, the company Google pays to shuttle us around. He's great. He coordinates all the ten or so drivers and helps organize all the little field trips we want to go on.

This is how you build a building, large or small in India. You build all the floors suspended on layers of thousands of sticks and the fill in the walls later. Thank god there are no earthquakes in this area or we'd be in deep shit. Although a few people died two days ago in another part of town when a wall of their house collapsed because it got too wet in the rain. I guess any way you look at it, the construction methods leave something to be desired. Oh well.