The Last Mega-Modules

We did it! We talked about Humanure composting without getting laughed out of Pathapatnam.
This week Asha and I did another couple of trainings. One on infectious diseases, and the last one was about musculoskeletal conditions. We started by talking about different kinds of germs: viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic. Then we profiled some of the common culprits around here: Malaria, Filaria, Cholera, Typhoid, TB, Dengue and Chikkin-gunniya (the virus with the best name, but not very fun to get). We talked about how they get at us, what they do to us, what we can do to fight back.

But the part that's most compelling to me, is disease prevention. We talked a lot about personal hygiene and community hygiene, especially fecal contamination in the environment. Some have explained to me that Indians are historically used to organic trash, and that's why they don't think twice about tossing foil paan wrappers or ANYTHING in the street. But even organic waste serves as breeding ground for flies. Especially human waste. Driving the road at night is like a scene from a Monty Python movie. Every few minutes, your headlights land on someone's knobby knees as they squat roadside, relieving themselves right there.

There is a very serious lack of infrastructure for handling trash and waste here. Trash is generally burned, which is horrible because burning plastic releases all kinds of carcinogens into the air. The sewers (when they exist) are just open canals in the villages and towns, but these STINK and are very gross. Flies breed there and carry foulness on their feet then they land on food and children, spreading disease. Some villages make efforts to clean them regularly, but they're using bleaches that just filter down into the water table.

But here's the exciting thing: in India, 85% of trash is still organic, which means, it's compostable. So not only can we clean up the environment from ugly, stinky pollution and disease-breeding feces, we can actually use the trash and waste to enrich our primary agricultural resource, the soil. Testing shows that thermophilic composting followed by about a period of ageing (just leaving it be) eliminates all the dangerous germs from the compost. And if there's any concern at all, the compost can be used on horticultural (tree) crops instead of field crops.

Staffers definately were challenged by some of my suggestions about composting and Humanure composting in particular, but they were receptive and curious. The questions were very realistic and showed people were interested. They asked about how we can talk to villagers about this, and specific questions about construction of compost piles. I think in this area, where everyone goes outside, it would be fairly straightforward to construct compost heap cum latrines. We're all hoping the next AJWS volunteers will pursue this further, at least starting with composting of organic trash. If anyone is interested, Joe Jenkin's very funny and informative book The Humanure Handbook is available online at weblife.org.

My proudest accomplishment, is that I learned the names of every attendent at the trainings.
My favorite question, came at the end of the day of course: "Madame, can you please explain what is nanotechnology?"

The last module was about musculoskeletal issues with emphasis on prevention with daily practice of Surya Namaskar. The Surya Namaskar, or Sun Salutation, is a pretty accesible series of yoga postures that stretches all the major muscles, gets the blood and breath flowing, and can be practiced on deeper levels to cultivate inner calm and mindfulness. We also did some pranayama (breathing exercises). The field staffers totally got into it. For some of the women, it was their first time wearing salwar khameez suits since their wedding (usually married women only wear saris, and it's hard to do yoga in a sari). Everyone really appreciated that this incredible Yoga practice is their own native wisdom tradition, their inheritance.

Lastly, Asha taught a short course on Su Jok (more on Su Jok in my next post about Jaipur). The initial levels are very accessible, and a really great modality for people to use for themselves, especially when doctors are rare and expensive. She was her usual dynamic, charismatic self and did a great job.

It was all pretty intense, and I loved it! After it was all over, we had a meeting with all the staffers and they presented me with some gifts and told me how much they appreciated the trainings. I was really holding back the tears. I left very soon after the last training -- I had to get to Jaipur for an advanced Su Jok course and it's 1800 kms away!

And another thing...

Well, a few more things about nutrition, since food IS one of my very favorite subjects.

Can we please cross potatoes off the list of food items that qualify as vegetables? Here, a meal usually consists of rice, dhal, a vegetable side dish, and maybe roti, too. All too often, the vegetable side is potato (or bitter gourd... yuk!) There's never enough GLVs for me (green leafy vegetables).

Also, we have to examine the methods of cooking being used. Often the vegetables here are heavily fried, or cooked so much the vitamins are all gone. On the other hand, there are some traditions that enhance the bioavailability of nutrients, like soaking and sprouting the legumes and grains. Phytic acid in the seed coat can block mineral absorption. Sprouting eliminates phytic acid, and also begins breaking down some of the harder to digest sugars and proteins, so sprouting makes the food more digestible and more nutritious. It also means less fuel will be used because they'll need less cooking time.

Other traditions, like vegetarianism, are a mixed bag. I saw so much anemia in the south, particularly among women. And the average diet was so deficient in protein. Some meat would have been really helpful for many people, but that's not an option for so many because of caste or cost restrictions.
Please bring back the ragi!

One last point about nutrition... It doesn't really matter how much 'nutrition food' you swallow, if you're suffering from chronic diarrhea because your water is contaminated. Nothing will be absorbed. The issue of public hygiene will factor largely in the next module about infectious diseases. The astute reader says "Wait! I thought you said the next module is all about composting?" Aha! Soon you will see how it all ties together...!

SPROUTING AND COOKING DHAL
Here's how I was taught to sprout dhal (for example moong dhal):
Soak them overnight. The next day, place them in a colander with a plate underneath to catch the water. Cover the colander with a damp cloth and wait 8 hours or so for small legumes like moong, maybe 12 hours for black eyed peas, even longer for channa (garbanzo beans) etc.

Once they're sprouted, you can cook them like this:
If you've got a grind stone or molcajete, grind garlic and ginger to a paste (or just mince them) and fry in ghee or other good cooking oil.
Add chopped onion and tomato, and whatever spices you like from your daba -- turmeric (haldi), cumin (jeera), mustard seeds (sarsun), bishop's weed (ajwain), asafoetida (hing), curry leaves, etc. Oh, and of course, chili.
Once that's fried and soft and your kitchen smells fantastic, add the sprouts, and a little stock or just plain water, and some small-chopped, peeled potatoes. In 15 or 20 minutes the beans and potatoes should be cooked all through.
It's delicious and nutritious!
;]

The First Mega-Modules

Where do you begin, when your goal is to teach about "Infectious Diseases", or "Women's Issues", "Nutrition", or "Musculoskeletal Issues"?
That's why I called them "MEGA-modules"!

Ladies first. We got about 30 female staffers together and reviewed anatomy, the menstrual cycle. We discussed some of the common conditions that village women have to deal with, and also about family planning. Magically, my whiteboard drawings turned out really well. The field staffers asked questions that led to great discussion about things like Kegel's excercises (moola banda!) and we of course laughed a LOT. It was really fun. I think the whole trip to India was validated when someone said, "Madame, I've had 3 babies, and never knew what was happening in my body until you just explained it."

The nutrition module was also great. The posters I found in Hyderabad were really useful, as was information I got from the Weston A. Price Foundation website http://westonaprice.org (sorry I tried doing links for all the sites in this post but none of them worked!). We started off talking about macronutrients and micronutrients. What they are, what they're good for, and what the good sources of them are. I really emphasized food sources over supplements, which inevitably leads to political issues. Especially issues of food safety and food security, which happens to be the name of the class I'll be taking in October at Navdanya. More blogging about that in the future, I'm sure, but for now, I'll give the example of vitamin A.

Here in India, Vitamin A deficiency has been a huge problem in certain regions, and it's notorious for causing vision problems, even permanent blindness from scarring of the cornea. This is almost incomprehensible given that India is the land of the mango, and there's tons of papayas, too. Some of the most vitamin A rich foods around! Interventions have consistently been to give vitamin A supplements, but this can backfire, as it did with the UNICEF campaign in the state of Assam in 2001. Dozens of children actually died, probably because of accidental overdose.

Vitamin A toxicity is nearly impossible to reach if you're getting it from FOOD sources (unless you're really overdoing it on the polar bear pate). So, it seems to me, if international and governmental organizations really wanted to do the right thing, they'd make sure everybody has access to mangoes or papayas or eggs... basically, the variety of foods that people need to stay healthy.

Instead, they seem to be doing just the opposite. The diet in India, and elsewhere in the world, is becoming increasingly impoverished, with people abandoning traditional foods that are highly adapted to growth conditions in this area. In India there are dozens of varieties of millets and sorghums like ragi, jowar, bajra. These traditional foods almost invariably are SO much higher in nutritional content (protein, iron, calcium, etc). They're also delicious, but they don't play so well in the international market.

It's hard to find these grains in India now, because farmers face all kinds of pressures (mostly from the government responding to international trade bodies) to grow "Green Revolution" cash crops of... white rice and wheat. ONLY, white rice and wheat. Now that's where people here get most of their calories, but those foods don't supply nearly enough protein, healthy fats, or micronutrients!

For folks who get really excited learning about this stuff like I do... I found some provocative articles about this in the Hunger issue of The Little Magazine http://www.littlemag.com/hunger/index.htmland at the India Together website http://www.indiatogether.org/. Also, the Nutrition Foundation of India http://nutritionfoundationofindia.res.in/nutrition.asp
has listings of nutritional content of the common foods in India, as well as some other interesting publications.

These "Green Revolution" crops are also wreaking havoc with the indigenous social systems and the indigenous ecology. Every week there's another article in the newspaper about a farmer suicide. There have been thousands of farmer suicides across India in the past few years, but especially in Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. Pointedly, the most common method is by drinking the pesticides that the "Green Revolution" crops are so dependent on. The price of the hybrid seeds, the pesticides and the fertilizers is what has put these farmers into hopeless debt in the first place. Vandana Shiva writes passionately about this at http://navdanya.org/news/04july15.htm.

Getting back to health issues, the use of synthetic fertilizers and heavy irrigation on these crops also messes with the mineral content of the soil, so in some areas in India the soil is deficient in necessary minerals, and in other areas, toxic levels of accumulate. The petrochemical fertilizers add only NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium), but organic fertilizers and COMPOST replete the whole spectrum of necessary micronutrients, along with providing lots of other benefits to the soil. Organic fertilizers have been used on these fields for THOUSANDS of years, keeping the soils rich and productive, and keeping the foods grown on them full of the nutrients necessary for humans. It's the industrial chemical fertilizers along with the Green Revolution crops that have recently come in and messed with the minerals. I'm going on about all this COMPOST stuff because it plays a big role in the next module... (and cause I love compost!)

BREDS has been involved in some projects promoting kitchen gardens (or nutrition gardens, as I like to call them) with some successes and some challenges. We explored this idea again, in the context of nutrition, and Gandhian ideals of garam swaraj and swadeshi (self sufficiency and sovereignty). The field staffers were energized to do more work in this area in the future, and I hope the next AJWS volunteers are also interested in pursuing it.

Staffers also brought up a lot of questions that the villagers commonly ask them. There are lots of misconceptions about what foods are healthy for pregnant and nursing women, or for babies when they reach 6 months and are ready to add solid foods to their breastmilk diet. There are lots of beliefs about how food variety needs to be restricted for these groups. It was great to build their confidence in answering these questions with common sense responses. Some of the ideas passed down from Grandma are really wise, but some are like the pot roast story.... we can use our own judgement to decide what's best for our families.

So this leads to what was probably the most important point of the nutrition module. Repeatedly studies show that the most consistent correlation with good family nutrition is NOT (as you would think)
* How much food is produced in a country. Nor is it
* How rich the country is (REALLY, this does not correlate as consistently as...)
The best way to ensure that families are well fed, is to make sure Mom is well educated. There are lots of reasons for this, and the field staffers had lots of insights. Basically, an educated, empowered woman has the tools to feed her family better. It was a really lively discussion among all the staffers, male and female.

Well, that was a long entry, and I've got two more modules to go. Now I get a weekend off to rest my voice. The newspaper had an article about 4 village women getting beheaded -- a young boy got sick and died and his father decided these ladies are witches, and caused the death of his son, so he got together a group of men and cut their heads off. Another article about Naxalites setting off bombs on the road outside of Vizag. I feel so mournful for those people, and so grateful for the peace in my life.

Where is your chunni?

Usually women wear a sari with a petticoat (plain cotton skirt down to the ankles) underneath. There is also a blouse (tightly tailored short cotton top). But many of the tribal ladies in this area wear no petticoat and no blouse, wrapping their saris simply, sometimes hiked up to the knees so that they can work in the fields. There can be quite a bit of skin showing!

That's why I was surprised the other day, while walking down the road in a long skirt and a modest top, a woman asked me where is my chunni? The chunni, or dupatta, is the scarf that Indian women wear backwards across their chest with the two ends flowing down the back. Indian women are masters of the draped fabrics -- it all looks so beautiful, but it's quite restrictive to movement. I guess it doesn't matter whether the chunni really covers anything, it's more the idea of it -- that you're trying to cover yourself. Of course the pallu on the sari leaves a whole lot of midriff exposed, but that's OK. It's a real challenge, trying not to offend any cultural sensibilities, when the rules are so different from home! And this applies to lots of other things too. So many things that are requisite good manners in the States, are foolish here. And many things that Indians take as normal, would be considered extremely rude in the states. Overall, I would have to agree that Indians express gratitude and consideration more with actions and sincerity than with just words or polite phrases.

I was walking down the road to the turnoff about 1 km from the BREDS office. There's a Durga temple there. I watch the people going by, and almost every single man, woman and child does the kiss your finger touch your forehead thing, even if they're navigating a motorbike around potholes and chickens darting into the road. People offer prayers all the time. I saw one guy smearing his car tires with turmeric paste to bless his journey!

I think Indians are very wise in the way they pace themselves at work. As I give these trainings, we frequently pause for a break. There's tea midmorning, and then again midafternoon. RamaKrishna comes with his beautiful smile, carrying a tray of tiny cups of milk tea, heavily spiced and sugared. When people start getting sleepy in the heat (the overhead fans cut off every time the power fails, which is frequent), the staffers ask me to stop and lead them in some yoga stretches or some improvisational movement games. The men always participate vigorously, and the women fuss with their saris and dresses (salwar khameez) alot.

Sometimes we sing songs. Yesterday, Bhanu sang a beautiful song she learned from the tribal ladies. It's all about their culture and describes how they live and celebrate, dress and cook, etc. Everyone joins in at the chorus. I loved it. Today, they requested a song from me, and they all survived my Gillian Welch rendition.

When the modules are done, I'll leave Andhra and head north. My time here has certainly had its ups and downs, but I will definately be leaving on a high note. These trainings are so much fun. I am trying to teach Asha bai how to email, but I don't think there's enough time. How can I possibly leave her and her family with no plan to see them again?

Sorry, I still haven't figured out the photos, but I'll add them as soon as I do. Happy Rosh Hashana!

Commuting to Work

Paddy was planted about 1 month ago, as soon as the seed plots were mature enough and the soil was moist enough from the rains to pull the seed plants out easily. Those sprouts are absolutely florescent green and sometimes the farmers will leave a little bundle of them in the middle of the road, encouraging passersby to give them a rupee or two to ensure a successful harvest.

Lots of things are reversed like that here -- if you have a joy, you're obliged to share the good fortune. The head of the NGO got a new car, then had to drive it 3 hours to the nearest city to purchase sweets because all of his students demanded "You can bring one chocolate, sir"!

Now that I'm starting to give the presentations to the BREDS staff, I have to travel from the college in Orissa across the stateline to the BREDS office in Andhra Pradesh. The commute is one of the loveliest ever. The rice is growing in, much like the scalp of a recent hair transplant patient, and the color is SO green. In the soft light at the beginning or end of the workday, the horizon fades into foggy blue hills, and the farmers make their way to or from their fields. I love seeing their huge, hand hewn farm implements -- wood ploughs that they shoulder to the field, for the oxen to till the soil.

Usually I can catch an autorickshaw, a 3 wheeler that comfortably fits 2 passengers in back and a driver up front. I squeeze in with the other 9 adults, some children, sacks of rice, and live chickens as we bounce along the road. The other day the training went late, and Sharifji explained to me that he would have to take me home on his motorcycle. I could not take a rickshaw home because "this is the hour when the drivers are all in a drinking position. They may use any kind of language". I assured him that it was alright, since I don't understand Telegu after all, I could not be offended! But he insisted, so I got on sidesaddle, as they do here.

Safety issues aside, it was pure joy to glide through the warm air, drinking in the views of the landscape and of village life -- children being washed by their mothers at the water pump, brown skin all shiny, men chatting and chewing their paan, women rolling out chapatis for dinner, then cooking them over an open flame.

I'll try to attach some photos later, I can't figure it out right now. I'll also try to catch up on the backlog of posts, so check for a few new ones this week!