Making a Difference

Yo Peeps,

Hope all is well back home. From Gopal being a great big brother to Dumford being a fun roommate and providing me with DEET to keep all the mosquitoes away to Jones being cool and having one of the best IPod selections ever to Sujan's fantastic jokes and stories to Bindu's easygoing sense of humor to Indo-Chinese food, the trip is off to a terrific start.

The past couple of days will stick with me for a long time to come. On Monday, we began our involvement with the Sivanand Rehabilitation Home. This place was started in 1958 and simply performs outstanding work. They work with patients who have leprosy, TB, and HIV, and they do so much more than just provide treatment for them. They really invest their time and energy to making sure their patients have as good a life as possible. This place gets the patients and sometimes even the patients' family members help with education, jobs, rehabilitation, psychiatric matters, and even transition back into the community. There is an orphanage for HIV infected children who receive education and health care on site. There is even a home for the elderly. There is also an alcohol detox program. The best part about this home is that it provides everything to its patients for free! And yes, this includes medications and surgical procedures for the leprosy patients as well!

As many of you know, I started a national service organization in 1999 called New Life Volunteering Society (www.NLVS.org). Though NLVS has accomplished great things including starting tutoring programs, health education programs, and a free health clinic amongst many other strong efforts across the United States, our long-term goal is to work towards setting up schools, free clinics, and orphanages in Third World Countries. No easy task. However, I can tell you that I personally have been very inspired with the work this rehabiliatation home has accomplished, and I now feel that it is very realistic to make a huge difference in the lives of so many people on a global scale. It's great to see the proof in front of your own two eyes after hearing about so many stories of failure due to obstacles of funding, government support, time, resources, etc.

The rehabilitation home's wall had a quote I'd like to share with you:

"Those who carry on great public schemes must be proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults, and what is worst of all the presumptuous judgment of the ignorant."

Means a lot to me, and I hope to you as well. We all carry the potential to make a difference in this world. It's just a matter of finding your niche and giving 100 percent. I've already spoken with the rehab home's chief administrator today, and it looks like we will likely have collaboration between our organizations in the near future. Come join the fun if you'd like!

Vijay

ps. Miss everybody at home! Keep in touch :)

Somewhere over the Atlantic . . .(late entry from flight)

(This is from about 20 hours ago, but I couldn't post while I was in the air)
Currently between Detroit and Amsterdam on leg 2 of our outbound journey. As you all know, our final destination is the city of Hyderabad, capital of Andrha Pradesh, which along with Secunderabad is referred to as the twin cities of India. From what I hear, its an area steeped in history nd is now a booming city, partly due to its tech industry (there's actually a part of the city referred to as High Tech City). So I just woke up from a nap. Fairly smooth flight to this point, with just a couple of minutes of turbulence. I think at this point we have about 10 hours of travel left, which is okay because I've only covered 45 of my 913 songs in my iPod.
So how did I end up at this point, travelling to the Indian subcontinent? Well, your protagaonist's journey began, I guess, about 5 months ago when Jess Jones said that Gopal was setting up a trip. Knowing that it would have an infectious disease slant, I jumped at the opportunity. So we booked our flight, set up our itninerary. Over the past few months, those of us on the trip and some of our colleagues at home have been meeting and discussing different medical issues and conditions we will encounter to prepare for the trip. About six weeks ago, I med with KBA in the travel clinic and got my hepatitis A shot, my oral typhoid vaccine and my malaria prophylaxis, mefloquine (of which a side effect can be psychosis, not that you'll be able to tell the difference). In the past few weeks, I've been stocking up for the trip- I've got my 98% DEET insect repellant (my skin may fry with the 98% but at least I won't get Chikungunya fever), replaced my lost iPod, read up on my Indian history and culture. And in the few days before the flight I was just enjoying some things at home, I may not have at India like Chai tea (totally kidding, I heard you trip over two chai stands everywhere you go here) and steak (since half the population views the cow as sacred I figure I can go without for 3 weeks).
We'll be sure to keep you posted on the journey as we encounter the interesting medical conditions we encounter, the culture and cuisine of Hyderabad (looking forward to the local specialty Hyderabadi biryani), and whoever comes down with the Mughal curse (my proposed Indian name for Montezuma's revenge, cast your guess for the first afflicted traveler).
Well, its breakfast time and I want to read something nerdy like an article on arthopod-borne infections, so I'll bid adieu for now. I'd like to thank the Invanz drug rep for the excellent pen I used to jot down my blog entry since I wrote this on a pad of paper at 30,000 feet.