JORDAN:
Just a couple quick observations as we wrap up Sick Week (we officially went out for the nice dinner we wanted to celebrate its end last night):
Many folks gave us interesting health advice: eat fruit, but not mangoes. Apparently, mangoes are a "hot" fruit. They generate heat in your digestive system, which is bad for tender 'testines. The practice here is to submerge the mango is water for half an hour to take away the "heat." When we tried to ask about how this works scientifically, we couldn't quite get an answer, because nobody seems to know how to describe it that way. Anyways, apples are supposed to be "cold" fruit, and when we ate them, we noticed they sat much better with us, so I think this might have truth to it.
Also, we've been missing the monsoon for most of the last week - only scattered little showers every couple days. Folks tell us that the heat and the air quality in monsoon season when the rains don't come tend to make a ton of folks sick. Finally, the rains came about the same time our symptoms began to alleviate. Everything is much more comfortable here when the rains are coming. They clear the air and drop the temperature drastically.
Finally, a somewhat sad note about our prison questionnaire work: the students from the State Human Rights Commission (again, a government office, not the one we work for directly) refused to go out and administer it at the lockups (in case you haven't read, we prepared a survey for Maharashtra's lockups to find out what the conditions are there, since they are under no legal authority, and routine human rights violations are suspected). Apparently, this has nothing to do with us, being Shira and I, or the work we did, but has to do with an argument that broke out between our supervisors and their students during training last weekend. The argument centered around whether our supervisors could criticize the judiciary en masse for failing to enforce certain human rights laws. The students felt that this put our organization in "contempt of court" - which in the States only applies if you're literally violating a judge's order. The cultural need to be good soldiers here is apparently much higher. Criticizing the judiciary, especially when you're in any sort of official position, is too far out of line for some folks to stomach. So the students literally refused to work with our organization. I, personally, blame the students, who didn't seem to be gems themselves on a number of other issues (see "Women and Romance Ain't the Same" below) for being oversensitive and quick to persecute what would be routine free speech in the US. Nevertheless, the study has now been pushed back until after we leave and the SHRC gets a new batch of interns who can administer it. Hopefully, we'll keep in touch after we leave and find out what happens, because we put a lot of work into preparing that questionnaire against the relevant law.
Just a couple quick observations as we wrap up Sick Week (we officially went out for the nice dinner we wanted to celebrate its end last night):
Many folks gave us interesting health advice: eat fruit, but not mangoes. Apparently, mangoes are a "hot" fruit. They generate heat in your digestive system, which is bad for tender 'testines. The practice here is to submerge the mango is water for half an hour to take away the "heat." When we tried to ask about how this works scientifically, we couldn't quite get an answer, because nobody seems to know how to describe it that way. Anyways, apples are supposed to be "cold" fruit, and when we ate them, we noticed they sat much better with us, so I think this might have truth to it.
Also, we've been missing the monsoon for most of the last week - only scattered little showers every couple days. Folks tell us that the heat and the air quality in monsoon season when the rains don't come tend to make a ton of folks sick. Finally, the rains came about the same time our symptoms began to alleviate. Everything is much more comfortable here when the rains are coming. They clear the air and drop the temperature drastically.
Finally, a somewhat sad note about our prison questionnaire work: the students from the State Human Rights Commission (again, a government office, not the one we work for directly) refused to go out and administer it at the lockups (in case you haven't read, we prepared a survey for Maharashtra's lockups to find out what the conditions are there, since they are under no legal authority, and routine human rights violations are suspected). Apparently, this has nothing to do with us, being Shira and I, or the work we did, but has to do with an argument that broke out between our supervisors and their students during training last weekend. The argument centered around whether our supervisors could criticize the judiciary en masse for failing to enforce certain human rights laws. The students felt that this put our organization in "contempt of court" - which in the States only applies if you're literally violating a judge's order. The cultural need to be good soldiers here is apparently much higher. Criticizing the judiciary, especially when you're in any sort of official position, is too far out of line for some folks to stomach. So the students literally refused to work with our organization. I, personally, blame the students, who didn't seem to be gems themselves on a number of other issues (see "Women and Romance Ain't the Same" below) for being oversensitive and quick to persecute what would be routine free speech in the US. Nevertheless, the study has now been pushed back until after we leave and the SHRC gets a new batch of interns who can administer it. Hopefully, we'll keep in touch after we leave and find out what happens, because we put a lot of work into preparing that questionnaire against the relevant law.
No comments:
Post a Comment