You may have figured this out already, but I am indeed back in the U.S., the land of plentiful chocolate and cheeses and olives and several other things and people that I have been missing. It is a nice change so far, though I am still waiting for culture shock to hit.
I had a nice rest of my stay in Pune. I spent one last day at the Deep Griha office and ended up getting to sit in on an introduction to Deep Griha's HIV programs with a group of Swedish Masters of Social Work students. I thought I was pretty well-versed on the basics of HIV, but I now know about three times as much as I did before. The man in charge of the program was incredibly well-informed and thorough with his presentation and in his work at large. And as a result of their efforts, the Deep Griha team now thinks that most slum-dwellers know a whole lot more about HIV than the average educated, middle class member of Pune society. How fantastic!
Deep Griha, being the thorough and effective organization that they are, did not stop at the slums, and are now working to bring HIV education to the whole city. They have started a semester-long Wake Up Pune! campaign. On my last afternoon in India I got to attend the Condom Cricket match that they are sponsoring. Yep, you heard right, Condom Cricket. Deep Griha has gotten the medical colleges/departments from all around the city to form teams and is having a big 2-week tournament on a public cricket field.
It's ingenious, really. The batsmen wear jerseys that say 'YOU' and 'Me', the bowler (pitcher) is HIV, the wickets are 'Your Health', the bat is a condom, the umpire is a doctor, and the players in the outfield are all sorts of symptoms/infections associated with HIV. The point of the game is to block HIV with a condom and prevent your health from being compromised. India is thoroughly cricket-obsessed, so this is a great way to get people thinking and talking about HIV prevention.
One of the volunteers said she saw two outfielders putting on their jerseys before the match. One guy had a jersey which said, 'Oral Thrush', and his friend's jersey said 'Diarrhea'. The players both shrugged their shoulders and gave each other exuberant high-fives. Only in Condom Cricket would such a scene take place.
Well, I have managed to say farewell to having amazing Indian food three times a day, to women wearing saris, to pink elephant statues, to fresh bananas, to monsoons, to beautiful Indian children, to temples, to copious amounts of sunshine and the like. India has been a crazy and fascinating place to be for the last six months, but it is also good to be home again.
*I don't actually know anything about cricket, so I apologize for my lack of a cricket vocabulary and a probably inaccurate description of the game.
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