i woke up on that last day of clinic feeling a million times better than I did when i went to bed the night before. Even though I still had quite the cough, my headache and body pains were gone so I was excited about that. We all got ready then went down for breakfast, where we had a small awards and recognition ceremony for some of the local volunteers who made the whole mission possible. Because it was the last day, I really wanted to take some polaroids so I got one great shot of 5 of us who doubled as medical staff and translators.

From left to right: Annapurna, Chandu, Rohan, Sai, and Ridhi

When we got to the village, an incredible view awaited us. There was this huge muggu (floor design) right in front of the school which is where we were conducting the camp that day. We unloaded the bus, but it was pretty rushed as some of our volunteers and the villagers were desperate to parade us through the village. We all gathered our cameras and made our way out to the front, where women with kalasams (brass pots with coconuts in them) were waiting to greet us. One elderly woman garlanded Amy and then the parade began. I loved that soulful music so much but also the intricacies of the folk dance and the spirit that all the people dancing had. Sai and I immediately jumped in and joined the dancing, the others a little hesitant at first but later they joined in too. After a while of dancing, talking to the villagers, and parading, we went to the local temple which happened to be a Hanuman temple (which my family members are huge believers of. I took it as a good sign). When I found out it was a Hanuman temple, I quietly said Hanuman ki Jai! (Praise Lord Hanuman!) and somebody heard me, immediately realizing I was a Telugu girl. And then that’s it, once one person found out, everyone did and they all kept looking at me and smiling (these villagers also called me mana pilla [our girl] which I loved). After a small ceremony in the temple involving those kalasams, the dancing began again in a circle outside the temple and I couldn’t help but jump in. Within a few seconds, we all were dancing and screaming along and having the most wonderful time (and thankfully Sudha Aunty got the whole thing on video!) After what seemed like a few minutes (we had actually been dancing for almost 1.5 hours), we made it back to the school to set up clinic.

On this day, I was inside helping translate. The hard part about the two days we were in Puttaparthi was that we didn’t have any translators that spoke both English and Telugu besides the members of our team, so particularly us 5 were being pulled in all directions. Therefore I was a translator for wound care, labs, and pharmacy, and for any things that our sick providers needed. When we started clinic, again these people were quite sick. We did a few glucose and urine tests (which I got to help with which was cool), but the real sick story of the day came by about an hour into clinic. Manish, one of our dentists, brought this man in and said he needed to be observed immediately. What had happened was he came in to the clinic complaining of a tooth ache. When Manish checked him, he had an infection in his tooth that had spread to all his teeth on the right side of his mouth, gums, jaw, and even went down his neck. He was in dire need of antibiotics and would have to be taken to the hospital for further evaluation. When Kara gave him a shot of antibiotics in his hip, he did not handle it so well and ended up semi fainting on the ground. While everyone around us was a bit concerned, our nursing students were excited because this meant they would finally get a chance to put an IV in someone. They hung up the IV from the ceiling using neon orange tape and gave him fluids until he was coherent enough to go to the hospital. It was a unique experience for me because not only did I get to learn how to put in an IV, I also really had to understand the process because I was the one explaining it to the patient and his family. When he was well enough to sit on his own and eventually get into the auto to be taken to the hospital, he blessed me and Leela for helping him so much. Hopefully he was able to seek the right kind of care to help him.

My interesting test of character for the trip had to be with some of the school children. A boy came in with a cut toe (he was playing outside and stubbed it on a rock) and as we observed him, we realized he had scabies. So with Diane’s help, I explained to him what was going on and how he needed to give the medication to all the people living in his house so they could get rid of the scabies. I don’t know how it happened but there was a miscommunication and somehow some way I had about 20 kids coming up to me asking for medicine. None of them had problems so I had to very firmly explain to them that we didn’t come to their village to treat headaches in kids who are healthy, or to treat every small ailment. I had Amy and Kelly standing next to me and even though they didn’t understand exactly what I was saying, it was nice to have their support while I told these people they needed to calm down and let us help the people who actually needed it. Afterwards, Amy patted me on the back and said “You tell them Anna!” which made me smile. Other than that, my other favorite part of this mission day was eating lunch. They had a full traditional South Indian spread. Now while I’m at home, rice gets boring. But when we were working such long hours in the sun, I desperately needed to eat rice to get the proper nutrition. When I saw the food, my face lit up and they asked me if I wanted to eat. I responded in Telugu saying how happy i was to eat aura (vegetable), pappu (lentils), chart (soup) and the sweetest perugu (yogurt) that I’d ever had. They asked me about my upbringing and how I knew Telugu so well and then proceeded to talk about me while I was eating to each other (I don’t think they realized I could hear them). But they were proud of me so I was happy about that.

As we were wrapping clinic up, Alyssa, James, and Rohan decided to play Simon Says with the school kids. Somehow that ended up turning into playing kabadi, and all the young girls came up to me screaming “Akka akka akka akka come play with us” I don’t know the first thing about kabadi so I thought I’d stand there and watch. But then somehow I got roped into playing. I took off my socks and shoes because I knew I’d be more clumsy with them off than on and everyone in our team thought I was crazy for doing that. But I hate wearing shoes anyway and i could handle the rocks and stuff so it was no problem.  I watched a bit and then was forced to play but since I didn’t really understand how to play,  I failed miserably at it. A bunch of the school kids tried explaining it to me but i still don’t get it. Oh well.

As we were heading back to do the final aarti, the girls I was playing with wanted to show me their classroom. I had maybe 6 or 7 girls holding my hands and they led me to a classroom on the side. Something I loved was that on the far wall, there was a huge world map so I thought it would be cool to show them where I came from in relation to where they are. One little boy asked me if I took the train from America to get there. When I showed them that I flew from Detroit to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Delhi, then Delhi to Hyderabad, then took the train from Hyderabad to Puttaparthi, and finally drove the 1.5 hours from Puttaparthi to their village, they were in awe. It was quite the experience. We finished the evening with the aarti and took a zillion pictures with all the kids. Everyone kept asking me my name and me theirs, but there were so many people it would’ve been impossible for me to remember all of their names. These two girls however, Anitha and Gayatri made it their life mission to make me remember their names. So literally every five seconds they would come up to me and say “Akka, whats my name?” We also got a few group pictures with everyone which I really wanted.

After our huge photoshoot, we got back in the bus and sang Christmas carols until we were taken to this beautiful peak where we watched the sun set and took more pictures. We finished off the evening with dinner and then drove the almost 4 hours to Bangalore. We didn’t reach Banglore until 3:30 in the morning but we were excited that we got to sleep in the next morning and sight see before everyone went their separate ways.