Lets talk about sex

I want to take you back to when you were 13 and sat in a class room listening to ‘Sir’ talk about sexual reproduction. The overwhelming feeling of wanting the ground to swallow up and die rather than listen to another syllable as this is terribly embarrassing for all involved really.  Oh how lucky I realise I was…now.

I discover cultural differences all of the time but I did joke to a colleague recently that I find it amusing that people will not talk about sex but will talk be the regularity and indeed consistency of your ‘motions’, that will be the toilet variety.

We have been base lining for the programme that is being run combining maternal and new-born health and sexual and reproductive rights. It has been a stressful exercise as the timelines were so short and I have only had an initial look at the data but it makes for some interesting reading.

We have been conducting Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) surveys with women from the age 15 to 49 (the reproductive age) as well as focus groups discussions with men and women. The types of responses we get vary with the age ranges vastly – namely anyone over 25 will on most occasions talk about it whilst the 15 to 24 age bracket just will not answer some if not most of the questions. A large majority just do not know the answers.

I have come to learn that if you go into a school in India and start talking about sex you will be unceremoniously thrown out and told to never darken their door again. So it has to be phrased as ‘life skills’ instead. An accurate term perhaps but it does pose a massive quandary to me as to how you get around the issue of an ever burgeoning population (the second largest in the world according to the latest census), delaying pregnancies and ensuring the people don’t have 2+ babies by the age of 19… it’s a tricky one and sometimes I am thankful that I just collect the data.

The main issue is around taboo and how to get around it. In order to educate people you need to be able to talk about it in the first place. I’m not sure how you can get around this especially when asked women will respond that they really don’t know that much about contraceptives and the people who decide if she will take contraceptives are the in-laws, close knit indeed.

The good news is that there is an impact being made through hard work and commitment; marriages are being delayed, the messages about contraceptives are getting out there and safer pregnancy and birthing practices, it just takes a bit of time and a lot of tact.

Enemy Number 1

Mosquitos - I have developed a hate for the small, flying, blood sucking critters that is bordering on pathological.

Mosquitos can be divided into two groups. The morning mosquitos that are small and don’t make that much noise and the evening ones which are large and make an intensely annoying shrill buzzing noise. Not that they don’t cross the boundaries of morning and evening but more often than not I can be seen chasing around the smaller ones before going to work and the larger ones after work.

I have a wonderful contraption which looks like a tennis racket which has an electric current running through it which kills them. On a nightly basis I come home from work and start tennis practice. The veranda looks a bit like a mosquito grave yard as I’m seen furiously swatting at them until I am satisfied I’ve killed enough for the evening and be quite often heard shouting to the rest of the them ‘yeah let that be a lesson to you’.

I can also blame mosquitos for the need to take anti malaria tablets which are not actually that pleasant. Apart from the dizziness and feeling like I am on a ship I also have visual disturbances which again aren’t great especially when you think something is flying towards your head. I have on a number of occasions startled people by crying out and ducking. I completely and utterly blame the malaria carrying horrors for having to take them and as I am seemingly quite tasty I have to.

The question I have to pose is why they bite people several times? Why not just the once? I woke up having obviously trapped a little darling in the net with me with no less than 6 bites around my left calf, which is I think is actually jolly unfair. If you must bite me just bite me once and have it over with.

One of my friends dared to broach the subject of how amazingly resilient they are especially with the number of blood borne diseases around – they have after all been around for millions of years, which was met with a little bit of resistance. Unfortunately the only argument I could come up with was along the lines of - but why have they survived they are horrid and no one likes them! Not my best argument I think you will agree!

Tennis anyone?

Kolkata baby, yeah!

Last week I returned from Kolkata following a four day workshop on baselining for one of the programmes NEEDS are running in alliance with other partners in India. It was tough going but there were some amazing people there which more than made up for it.

I arrived in Kolkata following a 5 hour train ride which was very very nearly on time, well 15 minutes late in Indian terms is practically early. Now don’t get me wrong I enjoy riding on trains but as the weather is getting warmer sitting in a rather large metal cage on plastic seats actually feel like you are being cooked alive. I also find it incredibly difficult to fall asleep in trains, planes and automobiles which is not much fun as you cannot spend hours in the land of nod. In actual fact the only time I came close to falling asleep a vendor walked past demonstrating the most annoying small plastic drum which is alarmingly loud. I managed to resist pulling the offending article out of his hands and throwing it out of the window…well he was a child after all.

So I arrive in Kolkata to a hotel which is amazing. Air conditioning, hot showers, a proper mattress, all you can eat buffets morning, noon and night… I was in heaven. They also had a GYM! So having researched beforehand I took my trainers and work out gear and headed to the super gym (their name not mine) I fling open the door to discover a tread mill, a flat exercise ball and some scales which told me I had gained an enormous amount of weight (I haven’t verified if they were lying or not, I couldn’t take it if they are correct) and air conditioning that did not work. Now sorry to sound a little scathing but that’s not so super in my book, but when in India… I tried out the treadmill without air conditioning in very humid heat. This adds up to looking and feeling like your head is about to explode in around 20 minutes or so, as my hair is also getting larger (not longer, just larger) it meant I looked like a tomato with an afro. I am quite impressed I didn’t get stuck in the door way when I was getting back to the room it is that big.

I also went out for a couple of nights which was lovely. I went to a mall and there I bought tooth floss, a foot file and fresh coffee. It can be said it is a strange shopping list but they are things that are in short supply in Deoghar. Some of us also went out for a meal on Saturday night. You don’t realise how much you miss things sometimes but getting together and going out for a meal with friends is really very nice and the opportunity to do so was appreciated.

The last morning at the hotel was, well an experience yet again. I went down for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and the power went off when I was in the lift. One thing that is very good in Kolkata is electricity but on Sunday it had a little bit of a wobbly. So I rang the telephone and no one picked up, I rang it again and no one picked up and then I heard the other lift working and decided that I was definitely stuck. I was stuck between the third and fourth floor so I rang the alarm and was found by the nice maintenance men who opened the outer door for me to jump out. The smallest of the two men was very sweet and made a catching a motion but I asked him to move back as being twice the size of him and probably double the weight (if the dreaded super scales are correct)  I didn’t want to end my time in Kolkata by squashing a poor man to death.

So I finally made it down to breakfast to discover a rather loud tourist complaining… now the one thing you don’t want to hear when you’re drinking you white coffee is: ‘and I found a dead cockroach in the hot milk’. Yes the coffee is made with the hot milk. I like strong coffee but I’m not a massive fan of the crunchy stuff. Cockroaches are part of everyday life here – you see them all the time, all the same I don’t want to drink them.

The trip was ended with another 9 hour car journey. At the risk of sounded ungrateful someone saying car journey to me makes me twitch. I’m still too tall for almost all of the vehicles and it takes so long. Also my family especially know I’m a nervous passenger so being on tender hooks for the whole 9 hours takes it out of you. My fellow passengers get pretty annoyed by the strange sounds I’m emitting and my hands flying up to my eyes every couple of minutes.

I am now back in Deoghar and I have received a large welcoming committee of mosquitos. Oh how I did not miss them.