Gateway To India

(June 5) Because our program doesn’t start until tomorrow, we had a chance to explore Mumbai yesterday afternoon before two more of the other participants arrived.  Claver (the local coordinator) took us to the train station where we bought tickets for 17 rupees (50 cents) and caught a train down town.  Claver didn’t come along, he just showed us how to get on the train.  Ashley rode in the girls only car because if she would have ridden in the general car where I rode, bystanders would have grabbed at her during the trip.  The train only slows for 10 seconds at each stop with no doors, so I jumped into the mosh pit of people running on board and was sucked into the train by all the pushing and shoving.  It felt like a goal line stand in football with the offense trying to get onto the train, and the defense trying to get off.  Once on the train, noone was afraid to stare directly at me, even if they were inches from my face because it was so crowded.  After about 40 min train ride, we were in inner city Mumbai.  Ashley wanted to go to the Gateway of India so we went exploring.  We ended up getting lost in what felt like the slums, but a bunch of people were more than happy to give us directions (probably because we were the only Westerners in site).  I thought we were going to get mugged, but we didn’t and called a cab once we were out of the slums to take us to the Gateway of India.  Afterwards we ate at a very fancy restaurant ordering a 3 or 4 course meal and only being charged 1000 rupees (about $10 each).

(June 6) Today we started our actual clinical experiences.  There were 4 patients in the small private clinic we were at.  There was a malaria case, typhoid/malaria, viral infection?, and gastrointestinal case.  The doctor saw 15 patients in less than 30 min and wrote 15 different prescriptions.  I thought it was funny how the doctor assumed so much and wrote prescriptions without doing any testing.  He told us testing was to expensive and that it took too long.  He seemed very competent.  More to come!  I need to go to the grocery store to get shampoo, breakfast bars, and then out to eat...