Boobs and babies

World Breastfeeding Week has finally come to a close! It was a lot of hard work and a lot of hours in the hot Indian sun, but it was also a lot of fun, and it seems like we accomplished Veerni's goals for the week (as sketchily laid-out as those may have been). The events happened six times and each time there was gathering of over 100 people (in one over 150 people showed up), which is a success in itself.

As I've mentioned before, Veerni essentially adopts six villages at a time. For breastfeeding week, in each of these six villages, we held a workshop on breastfeeding (to help end a series of misconceptions that were likely harming the health of these babies), a rally (to raise awareness of the breastfeeding mothers' need for support from their husbands), and conducted a mini-study, through a pre- and post-workshop survey that we conducted.

All of the villages were extremely different, but generally, we were first led to a shaded area by the promoter. From there, she would send word of our arrival and within minutes, women, men, and children would be flocking our way. In one village, we were there after a heavy rain, so the women were in the fields when we arrived and it was a site to behold a line of one hundred women dressed in bright reds and oranges walking back from work, toting babies and carrying huge buckets of soil and produce on their heads. In another village, again after rainfall, everyone in the village was in the fields, so we just went to the fields and conducted the events in the shade of a nearby tree.

Once gathered, we distributed the pre-test to roughly 20 women and adolescent girls in each of the villages. As many of the women are illiterate, the Veerni staff busily talked them through the questions, fifteen in all, which aimed to test breastfeeding knowledge among villagers and the prevalence of misconceptions about feeding the baby honey while breastfeeding, waiting a few days after delivery to feed, etc.

After we collected the pretest, we began the workshop. As you may remember, last week, I had been told to design this workshop, so I did. I was also told, as I designed posters, that Veerni has a projector and has used that for the workshops and would use that for this one. I questioned it. "Where does the power come from?" "Will they be able to see it from outside?" But Rashmi insisted, so I worked on the powerpoint, with the notion that, if all else failed, we could print out each slide and use those as visuals. Of course, when the day of the first workshop arrived, Rashmi tells me that we won't bring the projector, because it will be sunny and no one will see it (ummm yes, I had mentioned that). And so she brought her laptop to show it on (a shiny, shiny screened laptop). Well, that fails, so here I am extremely frustrated, because my one major contribution (aside from the pre- and post-test design) to this week was for nought. Sure, they used it as an outline as they talked, but in some villages, they didn't. Rashmi assured me we would get it printed out at a printer near the office, but when this fails using Rashmi's laptop (and I didn't have mine at the moment, this got delayed until there was only one workhop left. Luckily, they will use it to do more indiviualized workshops when women are pregnant).

Aside from this annoyance, the workshops seemed to be well-received. I am still not used to the teaching style here (it is much more confrontational than I would think is affective), but when I inquired a tiny bit about it, I was told that this is just how they teach. People also tend to talk over eachother constantly, whether in the setting of a workshop or in the office, which gets really, really frustrating if I'm not in the right mood. Again, I feel things could be more effective if the leaders collaborated better (rather than have two people speaking about the same thing at once), but this isn't really my place and culturally, this style is certainly accepted.

We then gave out the post-tests and soon after, started the "rally." Rally is definitely a loose term for what we were doing. After asking the Veerni staff about what this "rally" is actually about, the only answer I got is awareness. Sure, people should be aware of breastfeeding, but aren't they already? Then I got, "well their husbands don't support them: they will make them go to the fields even when a baby is a newborn, demand that their wife cook/clean taking time away from feeding, etc." While this answer, that we were rallying for husband's support, was still unsatisfying, it would have to do. In actuality, the rally was probably just a great morale booster; it was a bit of excitement for the villagers and a good opportunity for men and women in the community to do something together (some women even came out of purdah for it). The Veerni staff made signs for the rally (signs that were quite verbose for rally signs) and "slogans" that they chanted, one of which, "One, two, three, four, mother's milk more and more!" rhymes in both English and Hindi and seemed to be a favorite.

This really was also a huge milestone because it marked the first time I rallied about something while simultaneously having to worry about stepping in cow dung...

Also, generally, the villagers were, as always, a bit fascinated by me and my presence. Every word of Hindi I spoke brought laughter or big smiles, and it wasn't uncommon for me to be swarmed by children. Again, "what is your name?" and "what is your father's name?" seemed to be the main questions, but also "What is your village?" Um, "My village is New York"?
Amusingly, an older woman who took a liking to me was having a conversation in Hindi with one of the Veerni staff members, seemingly about her difficulty nursing given her small breast size. Suddenly she turns to me and starts pointing at my chest. She was commenting on the fact that "I will have a lot of milk for my babies," with the other elders nodding in approval.

And now, for the photo finish. As usual, everyone wanted their photo taken, so some of these are the result of that:

The site where many of the women were working

As one can see in this picture, many of the women cover their faces in sheer material when out of the house. This is one form of purdah (others are completed restrained to their home and never show themselves to people beyond their family)

As you can see, the signs were verbose, to say the least

About fifty children were crowded on this one slide at some point during the day. It's the school's "playground."

I love this woman.

We had biscuits to give to all the kids at the end, so here are the girls lining up

The jeep that the Veerni team travels in (it's often a bit of a clown car as we've piled over 8 people into its seats)