At Journey's End

We have now finished the NUR 480 experience!!!!!! Our next stop is Goa, but that's just to unwind. Since it has nothing to do with nursing in India I won't be blogging anymore after this..but I'll probably still be facebooking ;0)

Once we got back to CHAI we gave a presentation to some of the CHAI people about our overall experience. This trip on the whole, was quite good but I would be lying if I said I loved every minute of every day. I'm used to the comforts of home so this was a major major major step out of my comfort circle. I remember when I moved TO and I thought that was such a big change...but everyone there spoke English; communication mix ups were few and far between; people shared same general idea about what is considered appropriate and what isn't; there were very few times I felt completely mentally exhausted by the end of the day; and, for the most part, I always had at least general understanding and good idea of what was going around me.

India, has been basically the opposite, I felt confused pretty much all the time, the language barriers could become so frustrating, and by the end of the day, it was quite usual for me to have a headache because of the non-stop mental processing I was doing in a effort to try to understand my surroundings. The bugs and the reptiles drove me mad and freaked me out...(I don't think I've screamed out of terror as frequently as I have since being here). But it was more than that...it was emotionally exhuasting, especially at the care and support center in Warangal, where people would die on a regular basis (though not as frequently as a few months ago, according to the director), and you couldn't help but worry and wonder about what would happen to the kids when they got older, or get that sick feeling in your stomach when you thought about the centers' future and the day when the director of the center would no longer be able to run it. But it isn't a hopeless situation. The work at CHAI and the partner organizations, the effort, the commitment, and the dedication, by the NP's, the nurse supervisors, the coordinators, the directors, the programming, the planning, all of it...its inspiring and it's having a significant effect...it's working. The exposure to grassroots work has been eye-opening to say the least and I think A LOT of organizations working in developing countries could learn A LOT from work that has been done in Andhra Pradesh.

I know being here will influence my nursing practice, though I'm not entirely sure how. As for working in Global Health in the future...perhaps...I'm glad that now I at have some sort idea of what it means to work in such a complex and difficult field.

These past two months have been very very challenging and despite the number of times I whined and complained about wanting to go back home, I'm still glad I came. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, I enjoyed writing it (it was therapeutic in a way). It's been an experience and I wouldn't have changed a thing :)