Visiting Villages

Finally, after four months of doing computer analysis, I am out in the “field” as we in the development field call it. For 10 days I have been visiting villages in Madhya Pradesh, the state where we are conducting our surveys, to test out our next round of survey instruments. We are staying in a hotel in the district capital, and then each day we drive out to the villages and talk to doctors there and conduct pilot studies of our survey forms. I totally feel Julia Roberts’ pain. Every time I step out of the jeep a huge crowd gathers around and follows me everywhere I go. In some villages the kids tried to be sly about it and would walk back and forth by me as if they were doing some task that required them to continually walk 10 feet, turn around, and walk back. But in others they just went right ahead and sat down next to me and never took their eyes away, even when I was just sitting around for an hour, they just sat tight and kept staring at me. I feel like I should come up with a dance or magic show or something to keep them entertained as they stare.

We’ve gone to both private doctors and public health clinics, and it’s a tough call as to which provides better care. You would think the private doctors would be better, because they charge money whereas the public clinic is free. Because they are private, though, they don’t need to have any qualifications so many of them have never done any medical school or formal training. In the public clinic, the doctors have all been to med school, which is always a good thing, but as we have learned even though they are open from 9 am to 5 pm the doctor only comes from 10am to noon. So people arrive at 10 and get in line, and each one gets 20 seconds from the doctor, in which he asks them what is wrong and writes a prescription, usually for an antibiotic. He never does a physical exam, as that would waste too much time and rarely asks a follow up question. After two hectic hours he closes up shop and heads home.

In some ways, India has a strange way of preserving the status quo. The good news is they avoid things that could be detrimental, the bad news is they don’t improve things. For example, the doctors prescribe antibiotics for everything, which you would thing would be a bad thing. But, since 95% of the medications here are fake anyway, it ends up being ok that they are handing drugs out like candy. We noticed that none of the doctors had sinks which means they aren’t washing their hands between patients. Seems like a bad idea. But, then you realize that none of the doctors ever touch any patients, so once again it manages to work out.

On a totally unrelated note, we are staying in a hotel with a tv, and yesterday I was flipping through channels and came across a local gymnastics meet that was on. I have to say the skills they were doing were not exactly impressive…but I don’t think gymnastics is very big here. Then they randomly started showing the floor final from the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. This Indian guy was narrating the meet as if it was on live, but all the signs in the background clearly said 2000. They showed it for about 10 minutes and then moved on to another show. It was so random! And now every time we watch sports here we aren’t sure if what we’re watching is from this year or some championship from 1999.