Saturday 28 January 2017

Pre-Nid activities in Bhiwadi

The day before the NID is usually spent on awareness raising events and also visiting some of the host club’s service projects. We noticed this year that the number of "Polio Immunisation Tomorrow” signs out in the general countryside was very much less than in previous years and hence this year this type of awareness activity is even more important.

In Bhiwadi, we were initially divided into three groups and taken to three different schools in the area.

Bharati School

My group went to Bal Bharti Public School in Bhiwadi, which is a private fee paying school in one of the villages near Bhiwadi.

School assembled 001

Many of the school’s pupils were assembled to welcome us

Schoolassembled

and a welcome sign which had been produced overnight. 

School Welcome Sign

incorporating the usual messages.

Programme

When we sat down to one side as guests of honour and I opened the folder in fromt of me, I found I was giving a short speech on Polio followed by a Question and Answer Session.

School Dancing

As we have now come to expect, there was more dancing

Dancing

and also singing

Singing

School Speach

I gave an impromptu speech about Polio and the importance of everyone in the audience ensuring that tomorrow they were vaccinated if they were under 5 and if they were older, that they brought their younger brothers and sisters to be vaccinated. The questions from the school pupils were extremely searching and showed an interesting understanding of the issues associated with Polio vaccination and care for those who have had Polio in the past.

Ram and Geoff

and then the President of Bhiwadi Rotary Club “Ram Prakash” introduced Geoff to the school and explained why he was there.

RPS Public School Bhiwadi

Exactly the same activity took place at the schools visited by other members of the team. Above is the private fee paying RPS Public School which is a favourite amongst the middle classes in the area. When you get further down in this blog entry, compare this classroom

RPS Classroom

at RPS (a picture taken from their website) to that in the Balwadi school we visited in the afternoon. 

Service Projects in Bhiwadi

We spent most of the afternoon visiting various service projects sponsored by the Bhiwadi Clubs. Perhaps amongst the most unusual Service Projects I have ever visited was Moksha Dham - a rotary sponsored and supported Hindu Crematorium.

Crematorium

From the entrance, one can see a large

God

statue of a Hindu deity 

Rotary Sponsored Crem Sign

and immediately behind it the Rotary symbol atop a monument.

Freezer

Inside the gatehouse is a fridge / freezer used to store bodies until the family have assembled for the cremation. 

Firewood

Adjacent to the site is a large word store and sawmill

Pyres

whose product is used to fire the funeral pyres. There is space for six to take place at the same time. 

Pyre

but only the remains of one was alight when we were there.

Ambulance

The club also sponsor an Ambulance

Ambulance 001

which although somewhat basic when compared with those which I ride in, it does provide an essential service within the town. I suspect however that the conditions of the roads and the traffic jams would affect its response time.

Training Centre

Another of the projects was a school and training centre for the wives

Training Centre

and young children of the Gadia Lohar community. This is a nomadic community who are ironworkers by profession and move on from one place to another as jobs appear and disappear.

Balwadi school sign

Called Balwadi (Bal = small children, Wadi = a kind of home), if this school did not exist, it is unlikely that anyone in the community would gain an education.

Rotary training centre

The wives attending the beauty element in the skills training centre immediately started

Henna in progress

offering Henna decorations to anyone who was willing to sit down. 

Pat Henna

Pat Henna 001

Pat of course was a willing subject and came away with a nicely intricate but not over the top hand decoration.

In another room, there were a number of women learning sewing skills

Women in Sewing Class

using hand powered machines.

Women in sewing class 001

The idea was that they would gain a skill which they could take with them if they move on with their family and thus always be able to get some employment. The club had set up a scheme whereby they could buy their own sewing machine at a 50% subsidised price if they wanted to. The club also had a plan to set up a small business making clothes for children attending the local schools staffed by ex-students still living in the community.

I meet a class

  Concentrating

Geoff was very popular in the classroom and despite our interruption,

Balwadi Classroom

many of the children were more interested in completing their work than is us.

Classroom

Classroom 001

Although teaching resources appeared thin on the ground,

Class at work

overall there seemed to be a quite concentration on learning and good class discipline was obvious.

Drains and Toilets

It was obvious in the areas around the school why India has to keep vigilant about Polio. Adjacent to the school was a community run toilet, part of the campaign to reduce the estimated 65% of the population who do not have access to (or do not wish to use) a proper toilet.

Community Toilet

There were also bullocks being used for (amongst other things),

Fuel Production

cooking fuel production.

Dung pats

However a little further away, there were open sewers

Drains 1

carrying exactly what you might fear they carry

Drains 2

and acting as a potential means of spreading a disease such as Polio

City Street

whose primary means of transmission is through faecal contamination.

There were a number of other service projects we visited, overall an astonishing number showing the determination of club members to be true Rotarians.

Government Hospital

Bhiwadi Hospital

Our final official activity of the day was a visit to the Government Hospital to meet the Chief Medical Officer of Health - the man responsible for the organisation of tomorrow’s NID. Here we reviewed how tomorrow would work and discussing the slightly different (to that we have experienced elsewhere) method of approach they intended to adopt.

Corridor with Polio Boxes Polio Cool Box

Here the vaccine is stored until the day and then distributed in cool boxes, many of which were ready for packing the following day.

An important part of the briefing was to ensure we all understood the need to keep the polio vaccine cold when we were administering it. All polio vials had a themo-sensitive marker on their side which changes colour if the vaccine starts to get warm.

Immunisation program in india 22 638

Immunisation program in india 23 638

We were now ready for the NID tomorrow after we had been to dinner that evening with members of the clubs.

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