Casts, Crowds, Cricket

I was going to write that my first weekend has been going pretty well so far, but I'm not actually sure that anyone in Hyderabad counts Saturday as a weekend. Most folks in the hospital, at least, kept the same schedule as a weekday, at least in the morning. Is Saturday then a half day, you're wondering? Hard to say - no one really does too much work on the weekday afternoons, either. Too hot. Plus, sometimes the cricket world cup is on and the patients refuse to be treated during the games.

So I'll just say my first Saturday went well. I spent the morning in the physiotherapy suite for the leprosy patients, watching the esteemed Mr. Ganapathy oiling/casting hands and educating/leturing patients. He has the kind of teaching style that I sort of love, where he'll say an important sentence ("This is an example of a patient with a trophic ulcer"), and then immediately repeat himself, with an obvious verbal blank space ("This is an example of a patient with Aaaaa?.....[wait for it]....trophic ulcer"). I like to feed him answers.

Most of the patients came to the suite today at various stages in the series of operations that fix lepromatous claw hands, which are caused by contractions due to malfunctioning motor nerves. First, if the patient's been clawed for a while, skin tends to grow across the joint angle, making it impossible to actually extend the fingers at all; these folks require liberating skin grafts from their own abdomens. Ow. Once that's healed, they can then approach the SRH resident orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Beine, who does a nifty sort of tendon switcheroo, essentially reattaching the fingers to different, functioning nerves and giving patients back their pincher grasps. (Other med students, I'll give you the technical lowdown later.) Suffice to say it is pretty sweet. After a long few weeks of daily casting of the individual fingers at physiotherapy, they're free to go - not perfect-looking or good as new, but well enough to drive mopeds, count out rupee bills, pick up grains of rice - all key to the Hyderabadi lifestyle.

Later in the afternoon, at the urging of the one female board member at SRH, I was sent out shopping at what was simply described as "Central City Mall". As more of a wander-around-the-bazaar kind of foreign shopper than a mallgoer, I admit to being a little wary. A similar thing had happened back in Dar es Salaam, where the western-style mall is a point of pride for many locals; but overly bright indoor lighting, shiny floors, and shops selling tshirts and jeans really weren't what I came to Tanzania to experience.

But I have to admit - the Indian mall was kind of fun. There are the fancy jeans and tshirt stores, of course, but there are equally fancy stores selling very hip, Indian-style clothing. Western dress and saris/salvars/kurtis exist side-by-side, both in the storefronts and among the chatty teenagers bouncing around the place. Likewise with the food - a prominent McDonalds out front sat right up against a Super Chaat store selling savory little snacks. Even the entertainment works out nicely - the Muzak seemed to be stuck on "Time After Time", but downstairs a large posse of people with ice cream were watching a single TV turned to the aforementioned cricket world cup. India vs. Sri Lanka! I'd like to tell you the outcome, but I watched for a good 45 minutes and just looked up the google results - and I honestly have no idea who won or if the game is even over. "SL 274/6(50) Ind 35/2(9)" is the first hit. What does this mean? And is cricket truly Calvinball in disguise?