First Aid and Monthly Reporting

While I was waiting at Manav Sadhna this morning, a mother brought in her teenaged handicapped daughter. She had stepped on a nail a few days ago while going to the bathroom in the slums, which penetrated into her foot. She came by because she needed to have the dressing changed. Her mental state made it challenging since she was very fidgety and hard to calm. The supplies that were available at the ashram were one alcohol swab and lots of opened cotton balls and gauze, some of which had become discolored. There were a few wrapped up rolls of gauze that I used, along with the one alcohol swab to clean the wound and re-dress it. The wound was surprisingly clean, but the nail had gone in very deep.

I told the health coordinator that I was going to make a list of sterile supplies to be purchased for the first aid kid to help in similar situations. Something this minor makes me realize the hardships that families living in poverty must face over what you or I would consider to be a trivial matter. Without proper wound care this small injury could easily become infected; moreover, without sterile supplies, the dressing change would be futile.

I spent the afternoon at the Ram Rahim Tekro computer classroom. Each staff member has to complete a monthly report regarding their activities in the community. For the Ram Rahim Tekro community, there are reports from the teachers, the computer instructor, the sewing class instructors, and an overview of the progress in the community as a whole. The reports are usually written in Gujarati by the staff members, but then must be translated into English and complied into the final report. The report is kept to mark progress for Manav Sadhna and additionally to distribute to donors so they can stay up to date with what is going on at the organization. The computer teacher would dictate the reports to me in Gujarati and I had to type them into English. I definitely learned a few Gujarati words I never knew in the process! Moreover it was a great way for me to become familiar with the various activities that Manav Sadhna has going on in the community. For example, in the classes, they teach Gujarati, English and math, but in addition also teach the students about current festivals and their significance, values and lessons, and play games and tell stories with the kids to build a close knit community. The Ram Rahim Tekro opened the computer center last month in order to introduce the kids to computers and especially how to use paint to make various pictures. While I was working on the report, I was watching the kids work. Even though they were redrawing pictures from books in hand, their drawings were simply stunning. For the first few minutes I believed that the kids were copying and pasting pictures from the internet! It was truly touching to see these kids who were didn’t touch a computer until less than a month ago, and to watch their ability to draw so eloquently.

We also took pictures of all of the kids at the classes there today to make identification cards for each student. The tekro is working on uniformity and creating a system. Many of the kids had never had their pictures taken, so most of them are standing in a military style attention pose, arms to their sides, stern look, and looking above the camera to the cameraman rather than at the lens. It was sad to see kids that are 8, 9, 10 years old and realize they may have never had their picture taken before, but at the same time endearing to see their excitement at getting to see the picture of themselves. I made a collage of the close-up shots of the kids to print and put up in the classroom to show the Ram Rahim Tekro kid’s community. It’s efforts such as these that you realize are so simple yet have such a lasting impact on the kids.