Rickshaw Adventures

Monday 5/28/07
With Transgender Commercial Sex Workers at Sahara Transgender Center

Today, our first day at work with CFHI we had rotations with Dr. Jain of St. Stephen's Hospital in old Delhi seeing patients with chronic and infectious disease, including HIV,Typhoid, and TB. The hospital, first was founded by Priscilla Winter in 1864 and is a private missionary run center is the oldest hospital in India.

After a delicious lunch in the hospital's cafeteria we went to visit Sahara
Transgender Project, where we met with and had a conversation with
transgender and homosexual commercial sex workers. Their story is at
once sad and fascinating at the same time. They are highlymarginalized
as a community and often face beatings from both the police and their
clients. We were told that their clients include priests, mullahs,
foreigners, and members from every other sector of society. I
thoroughly enjoyed our visit and came away educated and more sensitive
to their plight.

The founder of the project whose name now escapes me was truly inspiring in his devotion to provide a safe environment for this marginalized community. STP provides primary care, treatment of STDs and peer educator training in HIV/AIDS awareness and activities to provide these men with access to health care and social services.

While talking with the group I was stung by either a bee or a wasp and one of
the men immediately came to my aid by rubbing a key on the injured
sight to counteract the toxin, took me to see the physician on site,
and gave me cortisone creme to relieve the pain, which I thought was
incredibly thoughtful. I hardly feel the sting now.

On our way out, we were caught in a thunderstorm and while it is yet early for the Mansoon rains, it was quite an adventure trying to hail a rickshaw in that downpour. Fortunately, our local coordinator Shalini Vias spent the entire day with us and was able to quickly find transport. So five of us (Farah, Sejal, Shalini, Paul the pre-med student in our group and myself-rickshaws usually accomodate
three people but you will often see people hanging out of them and
sitting on top of each other)climbed on top of one another and took
about a 45 minute ride from old Delhi to East Delhi. Paul's behind was
hanging out of the side of the rickshaw and in the insanity that is
Delhi traffic, where you canliterraly reach out and touch the person in
the next car, bumped into a man on a motorcycle, who almost fell of it
and proceeded to follow us for the next 10 minutes fighting with our
driver, but finally gave up after our driver apologized several times.

So ends another adventure filled day in India. We've been here for three
days and in that time I've slept a total 2 hours, apparently one of the
lovely side effects of culture clash is insomnia, lucky me. But I am
having a ball despite the sleep deprivation. Tomorrow we're visiting an
outreach program in the slums of Delhi, which should be quite
interesting.