Due to the celebration, we were told that the clinic was supposed to be very slow today. On the contrary, we were very busy all morning in the hospital auto-refracting and checking visual acuity and patient histories. Brayd is getting better at speaking Hindi (at least phrases about medical history and visual acuity screening, haha!) There was a miscommunication about Brayden's rsearch project. His translator who is also the head optomestrist thought that data collection would only last one day. He was very busy today and was juggling pre-op screening and also cataract surgeries. rayden was unable to get any data collection done. This means that he will have to work extra hard to make up for lost time (after all, we are only in India until Monday.) After working at the clinic in the morning, we returned home for lunch. Today at lunch, we got to meet Senior Dr Sinha, who has been away on business. He is a very kind man and very interested in getting to know us. He made the comment, "When you are in our house, you are not our guests, rather, we treat you as our family." And is he right! We have been so impressed by the hospitality that has been shown to us here. We definitely would not have had the same experience if we had to stay in a hotel!
Today was probably the most eventful at the charity clinic. We went to a slum in Patna and foun dan empty room and men and women began to line up for quick screenigns and prescriptions. On a typical outreach, we are able to help about 40-60 patients in an hour. Today we helped 200+ patients. Reading glasses were distributed, cataract screenings, and prescriptions for eye infections, watering and malnourishment were all addressed. The lines became so crowded that Dr Sinha had to push back the masses several times and finally split the groups into two lines, women saw Brayden and Dr Sinha and men saw Laura and Abishick. It was 40.5 C today (a heat wave started inPatna the day after we arrived!) and with the masses surrounding us, we were sweating bullets! Our faces were shiny and wet! We were amazed, none of the clinic staff seemed to be sweating at all. I guess that menas that we definitely came from some cold weather. It was amazing to see how grateful the people there were. When they saw us sweating, they produced a fan from somewhere adn the after some skilled messing with some wires they were able to tap into some electricity to get the fan running. Then when it began to be dark, a single lightbulb and wires were produced to get light. It was amazing to see the ingenuity of these people, they live without electricity, but were able to get it going so the eye exams could continue.
After finishing at the charity Clinic we set off for the Bihar day festival. There were so many things to see. Arts and handicraft, food from each city, dancing, sculptures from Hindu mythology adn more. We've realized that Bihar must not get a lot of tourists because people are always startled to see us. That and we have not seen a single other white person here, the closest we have seen is an albino Indian, making this quite the experience. Ablishek would tell us that all the men were asking them where we were from. People were trying to take pictures and videos on their cell phones and Dr Sinha had to keep telling them to leave us alone. Surprisingly, everyone is very respectful and we have not been mobbed, rather people just stand a few feet back and try to take pictures and every once and a while a daring person will come forward and ask where we are from. Pretty funny! We were seriously the only two white persons at the festival. It was nearly 8 pm and we headed back to the hospital for the evening appointments. We screened until 10:30 and headed home for dinner and bed. All in a days work!
The first picture is of Indian folk dancers, but it was so dusty there is was difficult to get a clear picture. Some pictures from the Bihar day festival. The clinic staff enjoyed some of the food sold there, but it was so spicy that their eyes were watering!
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