Answers on a postcard

This week I have been out and about on the mobile clinic again. This is always something which I find enjoyable and probably second only to spending time in the labour ward in terms of my favourite shifts.

On Monday I was out in one area surrounded by tea plantations and the health animator had brought his 11 year old daughter along. In our charity community program a health animator (for those who are unfamiliar with this slightly holiday camp sounding job title) is a health worker who is from the tribal community and instrumental looking after patients in the field at a grass roots level. While the schools are on holiday a number of them bring their kids along on field visits.

To divert off topic for a minute, this is something that I have noticed a lot during the long school break that we have been having. In our area of India it is not considered strange to bring your young children to work with you. It seems to be a great idea because it allows them to see where their parents go all day and removes the concern about paying for childcare. Although I can’t see it catching on in the UK, from my experience our young are just a little too badly behaved for this.

Anyway the point of this short anecdote, for those of you who are wondering, is that during the day there were many times when this little girl and I were left to our own devices together, one example being when her father and the driver went off into the village to recruit patients for the clinic. At these times this very sweet and self-assured young girl took the opportunity to practice her English on me, and correct my Tamil. I thought you might be interested to hear some of the questions a bright and inquisitive tribal pre-teen girl had for me.

First came all of the routine questions, what country I was from, my full family tree with names and occupations supplied for each member etc. But then came some slightly different questions.

Girl: “In your village do you see elephants?”

Me: (trying to picture large pachyderms cruising the Lustleigh cleave) “erm no we don’t have wild elephants in England”

Girl: “Oh, what animals do you have?”

Me: (trying desperately to think of some interesting animals and failing) “foxes we have… “

Girl: (trying to help me out) “and dogs?”

Me: “Yes, dogs and cats and sheep and cows”

There then followed a little discussion about whether we had puppies in England because she likes puppies, I told her about our new puppy and she seemed pleased with this information. She also wanted to know what variety of cows we had, a question I did my best to answer. The general topic then moved to clothing.

Girl: “In England do you always where a Salwar Kameez?”

Me: “no, mostly I wear skirts and tops or dresses or shirts and trousers”

Girl: (incredulous) “The girls wear trousers?”

Me: “yes quite often”

Girl: “Do you wear Saris?”

Me: “no, not really”

Girl: (looking a little shocked) “but what do you wear when you get married?”

There then followed me trying to explain U.K. wedding dresses, an endeavour which ended up including a rather poorly drawn illustration. “Ah” she said knowingly at the end of this “you wear a frock!” and I guess we do usually. After this she told me a little about her grandfather’s house which was surrounded on all sides by tea and asked me what food grew near where I was from.

Me: (thinking of the two lovely fruit trees in our garden) “We have apples”

Girl: “and bananas?”

Me: “no, we can’t grow bananas in England it’s too cold”

This won me a seriously sympathetic look from her. At the time I thought to myself that it was sweet and naive of her to imagine bananas sprouting in the green and often rather cold climate of the U.K. Although later on I told this anecdote to one of the Indian doctors here and he said “oh you can’t grow bananas at home?” and it made me realise that things that I take for granted are not necessarily particularly common knowledge. Yes we have no bananas!

The conversation then turned to our houses, where they big? (Yes sometimes), did they have grass roofs? (also a yes sometimes, thinking of the thatched cottages in our village at home). Did we have rivers in England? (Oh yes certainly) did we bathe in them? For this I was stumped for an answer. If she meant swimming then the answer was yes, in the summer we would often go to a river for a dip, however many people here in India bathe more literally in the rivers, with soap and shampoo and a towelling down at the end of it. I tried to ask her what she meant but she hadn’t heard the English word “Swimming” before so we got a bit stuck.

The last thing she asked before the clinic started really made me chuckle.

Girl: (pointing at my freckles) “what happened to your arms?”

Well I tried my best but how do you explain freckles to someone who has never come across them before?

Until next time then, lots of love from one very freckled lady far away from home.

A x