Finally we were set to go to the "podus" (which are tribal settlements) in the mobile health unit, a jeep that I've mentioned in my previous post. This travels 3 days a week to 3 podus. The idea is, there are totally 9 podus around the region among which 6 of them are pretty close to the VGKK hospital and hence tribal people from these settlements access the hospital themselves. But the remaining 3 are quite interior in the forest and hence the mobile unit travels to these places to treat the simple ailments of the people there. No other public vehicles are allowed to travel into these settlements and hence we felt lucky to see the interior of the forest, hoping we'd come across some elephants too.
We'd stop the jeep in an area where the people would come with their problems. We checked the BP of all the adults who came and found some of the readings high. They weren't known cases of hypertension, which made me think, if some kind of screening would help them to be diagnosed early and treatment started.
In one of the podus, a small boy and his sister were asked to take us to their temple "dodda sampige". The tiny boy kept running down and up the contours of the hill to take us there, forgetting to see if we could keep up to his pace. Luckily his sister, who was a little older than him was keeping a watch on us :)
They led us deep in the forest to a big tree which was their worshiping place. It was a treat to the eyes. This was a very peaceful place where all one could hear was the leaves we stepped on and the happy stream running. There were bells hanging high and low considering both adult and kids who would want to ring them, rocks which were covered in vermilion.
In another podu, a 2 month old baby was brought for cough and cold by it's mother and grandmother. The baby had tachypnea and chest indrawing due to difficulty in breathing and looked like it needed immediate care for pneumonia. Hence we scared them to make sure they ran to catch the bus to the hospital and were happy to see them waiting in the bus stop while we left that place.
We'd stop the jeep in an area where the people would come with their problems. We checked the BP of all the adults who came and found some of the readings high. They weren't known cases of hypertension, which made me think, if some kind of screening would help them to be diagnosed early and treatment started.
In one of the podus, a small boy and his sister were asked to take us to their temple "dodda sampige". The tiny boy kept running down and up the contours of the hill to take us there, forgetting to see if we could keep up to his pace. Luckily his sister, who was a little older than him was keeping a watch on us :)
They led us deep in the forest to a big tree which was their worshiping place. It was a treat to the eyes. This was a very peaceful place where all one could hear was the leaves we stepped on and the happy stream running. There were bells hanging high and low considering both adult and kids who would want to ring them, rocks which were covered in vermilion.
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These were our cute little guides |
On our way back, right when we were discussing that all we got to see of the elephant was it's turd, we found one elephant near some water, a tusker! That completed our feeling of a ride in a forest.
That evening we went to the hills by steps because Dr. Akhil took us there. Puffing and panting, we some how made it to the top and then realised why he took us there. The sunset was amazing. It was like an orange ball falling into a green carpet. None of the photos could capture it well enough to do justice. We bet on the time the sun would take to set and it sank twice as fast to the smallest time we mentioned and thus the day ended.
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