7/8/11
The last full week of my internship really flew by. Monday and Tuesday I worked on a couple papers and Wednesday I got the opportunity to visit a shoe factory in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. It was a 3 hour drive and Andre, Dr. Deepthi (a doctor in the Dept. of Comm. Health) and I went by hired car to Farida Exports in Ambur. I was eager to see some occupational health in action before my stay was over. The shoe factory visit was really a wonderful experience for me. First, Andre and I have become friends so getting to go with her was nice. And I hadn’t really had the chance to talk with Dr. Deepthi so it was also nice to be able to chat with her a bit and learn more about what she does. Andre taught a class to 15 women about reproductive health. The class was taught in Tamil, the language spoken in Ambur. Andre is from Pondicherry so Tamil is her native language. The women learn about various health topics. These women take around 6 of these classes (all on different topics) and then go forward with the materials given in the class and teach the content to the rest of the factory workers. This factory has around 1500 employees and 80% are women. The classroom and manager’s office were on the upper level so I had a bird’s eye view of the factory operations. They make Timberlands there! Too bad I couldn’t get any pictures- this was prohibited. We stopped for a yummy breakfast on the way there and I had a masala dosa, which was surprisingly different than the ones in Bangalore because we were in a different region (different tastes to the foods in different areas). For lunch we had biryani delivered to the factory by one of the local restaurants. Ambur is known for their biryani, which is a very flavorful rice dish. I had the chicken biryani, but we also ordered mutton biryani (goat)…but I had never tried mutton the whole time in India and didn’t feel like starting then! Because the place is so famous for biryani, Andre and Dr. Deepthi ordered lots of extra food to bring home. We even stopped on the way back for more take-out!
The following day I was supposed to go to Mugalur for one last time, but the car was full. It was OK though because I had a lot of work to finish up in the Department. Thursday afternoon I got a cake for everyone to say thank you and goodbye. It was a caramel praline cake and it was all gone in about 5 minutes! They devoured it. I felt bad because I don’t think everyone got a piece, but I really wasn’t expecting it to be so popular! It was a big cake, too. I passed out thank-you cards to people that had made an impact on me, and tried to talk to each person before I left. Friday was my official last day but by then I was done with my work, so I took a half day. Friday afternoon was relaxing! I prepped for the trip that evening to Pondicherry. Weird to be done with the internship but 2 months really flies by—it felt like no time at all. So happy to have met everyone and had such a wonderful field experience—especially because I know some others that are not having such great field experiences! I feel quite lucky!
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