village trip and last day at the DIC

Sunday was the 'group trip' to the village to learn about India's rural governing system, only instead of the group it was 6 Canadians and the project supervisor. We met the man from the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (who I met on the metro) and loaded into cars. After a crazy drive there (on a two lane highway passing around corners between trucks, and being passed by two cars at once) we went to a few different houses in the village, and weren't too sure what we would be getting out of the day. After being offered chai a dozen times, we met a man who owned a camel which he rented for weddings and other events. He offered to let us ride around on it, which was really fun. I got to hold the reigns and lead the camel around, which was awesome. After that, we were served lunch, which was a huge feast of really good food. Then the ladies of the village sang for us and made us dance with them. After leaving the village, we took the scenic route back and got to see India's natural beauty instead of the incredibly overpopulated Delhi. I can't say I learned much about Panchayati Raj that day, but it was really amazing.
On Monday, Annu and I met with one of the two directors of SPYM to request funding for different supplies for dressing changes. At first, it was very discouraging and sounded as though they were going to tell the DIC not to do dressing changes anymore, and instead to send clients to a hospital. By the end of the meeting, she handed us 1500 rupees to go and buy whatever medical supplies we thought the DIC would need in the next week until they were able to directly supply the DIC with the recommended supplies.
Yesterday we held the session on dressing changes at the DIC. Because of how the last sessions Christina and I did, I thought a fairly informal approach that left lots of room for questions would be best, so I roughly planned what I wanted to talk about. I thought the session would be for the four outreach workers only. However, when we got there, there were about a dozen clients waiting for the session as well. About ten minutes before beginning, Shalini told Annu and I that there were films being made nearby for SPYM. These films were being made by two other participants in the group (Katrina and Medha) and a contracted producing company on topics such as safe injection and abcess prevention. Shalini then told us they wanted to film our session as well. So not only did our audience increase to five times the size, but the session would be filmed as used for SPYM's training throughout northern India. The session lasted about an hour. For each sentence I spoke in English, Annu translated into Hindi beside me. One of the clients volunteered to let us do his dressing change in front of everyone while explaining everything. I think it went really well. Even though I know there is a very small chance sterile dressing changes will be adapted into their routine practice, hopefully it at least makes the process a little less dirty. Overall, I think it was a really good way to end our placement.