Good Memories

As I near the end of my stay at SEARCH (only 48 hours left!) I am reflecting on all the good memories I have made. Although I have put in a fair amount of research time and working hours, the moments that will stay with me are those moments spent with all the other interns I have become friends with here and all the opportunities I took to explore the world around me, whether that be a newborn infant in the village, or haggling in town to buy some fruit, or the insects crawling in the grass after a rainstorm.

It is interesting to me that I came to SEARCH to do public health research, to learn more about India, and experience a taste of my future in global health, but in all honesty the parts that will stay with me the most are the ones spent in the evenings watching movies and doing crafts with the other interns. Is that a bad thing? Perhaps it was the nature of this particular internship or epidemiology in general, that it's not very hands-on in the field. Perhaps if I volunteered with Doctors with Borders or the Peace Corps I would have more memories of meeting the people in the villages, playing with children, and comforting those that are ill. Most of my memories from SEARCH though will be similar to those from college and grad school (except with a bit of constant amazement and the shared experience to lament about bugs, snakes, the food, and the monsoon.)

From mid to late July we had my favorite girls nights, the ones that I will remember the most, and perhaps what I will remember the most from my whole internship. Aditi is a huge fan of movies, especially romance movies, and we watched several back to back. We also watched many episodes of Friends (yay, tv!) because Aditi has every episode from every season on her computer. On some nights we would even attempt spa parties with nail polish and mud masks and even massages. It felt sooo girly! During movie watching we would knit and make bracelets and one night we even shared a bag of sour gummy worms that Rushina had brought with her. (I of course was given permission to take the largest share after I confessed my deep addiction to all things candy and gummy!) In some small way, I feel guilty that I came all the way to India to do public health, yet the most satisfying part of my trip was sitting around with a bunch of other girls (women?) my age and having girl parties before bed time.

Sometimes I think we were all just experiencing a bit of cabin fever (or rather SEARCH campus fever) and the smallest things would give us the sillies. On the Sunday evening after the field trip with Ama, huge lightening and thunderstorms occurred. Now, it's been raining pretty much every day since my second week here, and heavy rains at that. We are used to everything being wet. But on this particular night the thunder was incredible! I swear it was hitting trees within a kilometer of the SEARCH campus, at least it sounded like it. We all started screaming like little girls and huddling together outside our bedroom doors watching the rain pour down, trying to estimate how far away the lightening was, and guess at what it could be hitting. We all decided to run into Sona and Bhagyashree's room for safety. We were bored and had nothing to do so we started playing with the webcam on Sona's new laptop taking silly group photos of us making funny faces and using the backgrounds and special effect features that came with the webcam software. You would think that a bunch of mid-late 20-year-olds were above gathering around a single laptop taking dozens and dozens of silly photos, but we weren't.

The rain that started that night actually lasted for four days straight. It never let up. It rained constantly. Most afternoons and nights it rains very heavy here. But usually by the next morning, the ground will quickly absorb the rainfall because it went for months and months without seeing much water. During the four-day heavy monsoon rains though, the ground had no time to absorb the water between storms, it just kept coming. Eventually on Thursday, August 5th there were huge amounts of flooding around campus. Fortunately, the guest rooms that I stay in are elevated and protected, but it was very had to walk around campus, and unfortunately some girls that live in more permanent housing experienced flooding (several inches). Their bathrooms overflowed too. I felt so bad for them, they had to babysit their rooms all day making sure their belongings weren't damaged. It was even worse because Sona, Bhagyashree, and Jessica had just moved from the bedrooms in our guest house building to their new homes. It figures that the day after they move all their stuff into their more permanent houses, it ends up flooding. Finally, these past few days we have seen a bit of sun again (along with warmer weather).

Anyway, new friends and rain rain rain. Together, these sum up most of the memories I will take with me from SEARCH.