the next morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn to get ready for our second day of clinic. We got ready, gathered our things, and went to breakfast at one of the fanciest hotels I’ve ever seen. It was like a continental breakfast on steroids. You had your typical Indian breakfast items like idlis, vada, dosa, pooris, etc, but they also had a waffle bar, donuts, eggs, omelette bar, fruit, a huge selection of fresh fruit juices; it was all really overwhelming. The breakfast was outstanding, and it was a great way to start another long day of clinic. On the bus ride, we showed our fellow team members some Bollywood songs and danced. It was one of my favorite moments of the trip thus far.

First we went to Oakridge, which is the high school some of our team members Rohan, Sai, Ridhi, and Chandu went to and graduated from to speak to their 12th graders about getting involved and pursuing different careers in healthcare. The students were extremely perceptive to what our members had to say, and you could tell all our members who spoke, were really passionate about what the did. Everyone did a great job. We stayed there for about an hour then made our way to the village for clinic.

We were greeted this time by a bunch of the school children in the village. As soon as we got off the bus, they handed us all roses. The girls were dressed in beautiful pattu langas, and the boys in jeans and nice button down shirts, and they prepared a traditional folk dance for us. They asked us all to join in too and since the music was so good, while everyone else just clapped in a circle, I took my socks and shoes off and started doing garba around them. Amy thought I was crazy but I had so much fun dancing with the village kids. Then they led us to the area our clinic would be taking place at and we started setting up. I was kind of floating around helping out wherever I could. I liked staying by the pharmacy because it gave me a chance to learn about all the different kinds of medicines we have and what they were used to treat. After floating around a bit watching the dentist extract some teeth and helping with triage, I was called to help translate for the ladies working at lab and would care. During a particular time when there weren’t many patients that needed assistance, there was one little boy who kept playing by our table. He couldn’t have been more than 2 years old and he had these adorable dopey ears, he looked like a little monkey. He kept playing with Tara and I, seriously he was the cutest thing ever. Lunch this day of clinic was served in the school house and was made by the locals. There is something about homemade South Indian food that is so delicious and I was in heaven eating all the variations of food. It always made me laugh to hear the older volunteers talk to each other about how I was speaking Telugu so well despite being born and raised in the states. Made me feel like I was making my parents proud.

One moment that really stood out to me on this day was a dad who brought his children to the clinic. It’s really heart wrenching that these people don’t get to see care providers often, because you can see the hope in their eyes when they hear that foreign doctors are conducting medical camps for free. This man had 3 kids, two daughters and a son. The daughters were healthy school kids but the son had what appeared to be cerebral palsy. The dad thought he couldn’t walk so he was carrying this at least 10 year old boy around. When I turned to look a few minutes later, a few nursing students had gotten him to walk around the tent by holding his hands. The smile on the boys face was priceless; even though he couldn’t talk that smile spoke volumes. You could tell he was so so proud of himself. Even his father had tears in his eyes. I don’t think he ever dreamed he would ever see his son walk. Tara and I were just observing this and I was so overcome with emotions, I just burst into tears. It wasn’t a lot that our team members did for that boy. They couldn’t cure hime of his illness or give him medications to take his suffering away. But they were able to give him and his family hope and happiness which is a gift not a lot people are able to give. It was truly so beautiful to witness.

This day of clinic was also pretty unique for me because I was really put in some interesting situations that were way out of my comfort zone. I talked to some of our team members and they said they preferred one of us the 5 of us to help translate for them because since we knew the language and the medical aspect of things, they had more faith that we would communicate what exactly they wanted to convey to the patients accurately. At one point, Ridhi was busy with triage so Kelly called me over to help translate. I went over to her, the patient, and her husband and Kelly says to me “Anna, we need a urine sample from her, so we need you to explain to her how to pee in the cup so we can get the sample to test.” I stared at her blankly. I was concerned for a few reasons. One, I knew some language that is used to describe bodily excretions in Telugu but I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to use in conversation, 2 her huge husband was standing right next to me, and 3, I wanted to explain the process to her properly so it wouldn’t mess up the results. Luckily with Kelly walking me through the process, I was able to explain to the woman what she needed to do and they were able to get her lab results with no issues. I also got to see Kara our doctor make a spacer for an inhaler for a 12 year old boy out of a water bottle because we only brought adult inhalers. It was really quite the thing to witness.

My favorite part of this clinic day had to be towards the end. We had a young mom come in with her 2 year old son, saying the boy was sick. Tagging along was the woman’s daughter, who was 8 years old. The care providers were going to do a malaria test on the boy and also wanted to do a urine test on the mom. Because I was right there, they asked me to translate which I was happy to do. Then someone asked me to keep the kids preoccupied while the mom went to the bathroom to collect a urine sample. I started off by asking the little girl her name, how old she was, and what grade she was in. She was so adorable. Then I asked her if she knew any songs and she immediately started singing a rhyme she learned in school (I was melting it was so cute). After she was done, she asked me if I knew any songs so I sang a little bit of one song. When I asked her if she knew any more, she got so excited, pulled out a book from her backpack, and asked me if she could read some to me. I said yes and she started reading all the rhymes to me in her book, her little brother watching intently. She practically read the entire book and sure enough her mom came back with the sample. The little girl warmed my heart so much and I desperately wanted a picture with the girl so I asked her mom if it was okay wit her and when i got the okay, we both went to find someone who could take our picture for us (I’m not sure who has that picture but I’m still waiting for it).

Within a minute or two of us taking that picture together, all the village kids came swarming around me. I was so overwhelmed with how many kids there were but they were so cute so I just started talking to them. They asked me about my name, where I came from, how I knew Telugu. They asked about my family and why I was serving the trip. They told me I danced really well and wanted to know if I could sing too, so I sang them a song. When I say the kids swarmed around me, I meant literally.

The kids and I talked for a while. The one little girl from before said that she liked me a lot and wanted to go wherever I went, so she held onto my hand the entire time I was there. They said I was as tall as the trees, then they wanted me to read them an English story. We played games and talked and had a great time. By that point all of the other team members had finished cleaning and packing up our supplies (I apologized for not helping but they said I helped more by keeping the kids occupied so they wouldn’t get in the way). Then all our team members wanted pictures with the kids so a huge photoshoot kind of even ensued. As we were getting ready to do the aarti, the little girl who I sat with first came up to me to say bye. She told me to bend down because she wanted to give me something. As I bent down, she came over and kissed me on the cheek and told me she loved me. I gave her a big hug and then said bye to the rest of the kids. We sang aarti at the school (one of the ladies who translated for us sang and her voice was so beautiful I was mesmerized). After aarti, as we were getting back on the bus, the kids threw rose petals on us and stood next to the bus, running with us as we drove away. We then proceeded to make the almost 3 hour drive to our next destination; the PV Reddy Old Age home. While everyone slept in the bus, I had a really incredible conversation with Sai. Even though we had only met the day before, we were having a deep conversation about our life experiences, our hopes and dreams for the future, everything. It was as if we were old friends catching up after years. Something funny was that towards the end of our drive, some of our team members had to desperately use the bathroom, only there were no bathrooms anywhere nearby. After talking to Sudha Aunty, they just opted to pee on the side of the road which was a true India experience. We finally reached the old age home super late, got our rooms, changed clothes, had a delicious dinner, then everyone went to their rooms and passed out. Ridhi, Rohan, Sai, and I stayed up talking for a bit and eventually we all passed out too. We were told we would be seeing close to 700 people the next morning so we all wanted to get as much sleep as we could before our excruciatingly long clinical day.