If The Shoe Fits

I have some serious updating to do...So let's timewarp back to Thursday...
As you all know we have been at Karigiri working and learning about the leprosy patients this week. Today we were invited to attend a mobile clinic with a dermatologist. This morning was somewhat like what we did with the nurses at CHAD, only this time we set up shop in an old building and the patients in the village stopped in if they had a medical concern. We saw quite a few patients who needed basic hypertension/diabetes check me ups. One of the most interesting patients was this lady here in the photo. First of all this beautiful lady is absolutely the tallest Indian I have met so far. I mean this gal's like Andrea Dillard model height type of tall. So that was crazy. But anyhow, she actually has seizures and came by to talk about medications. We noticed her prosthetic leg and asked her how it had happened. Turns out about 10 years back during one of her seizures she fell into a fire and lost her leg due to flame burns. She walks very well with the prosthesis, though. One of the best parts about the mobile clinic was getting to chat it up with the dermatologist physician. She was a super teacher and, even more important than medical knowledge, she really cleared up alot of my confusion regarding who the heck actually owns all these damn cows. So that was just oober helpful and even more importantly, she let us in on the ultimate secret. The secret the locals have kept from us for 3 weeks. Folks, the secrets out. Theres a Baskin Robbins in town and we heard they're selling hamburgers. We took the docs advice and hailed a rickshaw to the so called haven of cake and ice cream and meat. After a detailed examination of the menu, however, we discovered the small Hindi script next to the photo of the juicy delicious Hamburger. It read "AMERICAN STYLE chickenBURGER!!" And so we got icecream to go and dreamt all evening of a day when beef will be available to all and Filet Mignon will rain from the sky. We headed back to Karigiri for an afternoon in the Prosthetics/Orthotics Dept. This guy in the pic who's showing off all the stylin' footwear works in the department and he led a portion of our tour of the facility. He explained that leprosy, diabetes, and polio patients benefit immensely from the specialized footwear they make in the workshop at Karigiri. There is a ridiculously long process that all this tree sap goes through to become black leather that then becomes a variety of prosthetic or orthotic devices. So after our tour we got to looking at the Wall-O-Shoe options that they give the patients to pick from. I'm not sure if the curry is starting to affect our judgement or if the shoes were legitimately attractive but either way these guys can throw together a good looking pair of kicks. And I swear, this has to be the best bargain in town. We paid 300 Rupee ($6.50ish) for these crafty men to make us black leather sandals, specifically molded for our foot idiosyncracies. (Arch supports and everything!!) As we made our way home in our new orthotics I couldn't stop thinking that the whole operation was absolutely an Indian version of my mother's lifetime dream come true. And since I am becoming my mother, I'll admit I'm now on their mailing list.