A Winter in India

Some of you have asked if we are actually doing any work. Thanks for asking. :)

We are working, although neither of us are doing what we had anticipated doing. In meeting with all of the Fulbrighters at the meeting in Chandigarh, I would say our experience is universal. None of us had enough information before we came to India to know what was really needed at our host institutions. We proposed a list of things. In my case many of the things I had offered to lecture on, they already cover. There seems to be a reluctance to say “No, what we really need is ….” So we are being “cultural ambassadors” (Fulbright’s term), and learning to read between the lines and decipher what would be useful. In the process, of course, we are learning a lot. A lot about culture and how science is changed by the culture it is embedded in. A lot about our own hidden assumptions about the way things “naturally” ought to work. A lot about how to teach students whose worldview is completely different so the usual analogies and metaphors are meaningless. I have given talks on science education. I also gave one to the Dental students on How to Plan and Give a Presentation. They are expected to give three but aren’t given any guidelines. Our Bates College Biology website and Seri Rudolph’s tips for poster presentations at Mt. David were helpful. Do you know I couldn’t find a single photo anywhere on the Bates website of any Bates students actually attending classes!

I have been asked to give lectures on HIV/AIDS both at the Dental College, and at Chandigarh. These photos are from the lecture at Chandigarh on Dec. 1, which was World AIDS day. It was also the 50th anniversary of the State Library, the main library for the states of Punjab and Haryana. And it was the one-year anniversary of the American Corner, a small part of the State Library that has an enormous number of resources, print and electronic, about the United States. This is funded by we the US taxpayers through the Public Affairs branch of the US Embassy, a good use of funds, in my estimation. This particular day the American Corner was doing a whole day of presentations for different groups of high school students from Chandigarh. The Information Resources Officer from the US Embassy was here to give a talk on the role of libraries in the changing world.

My audience was about 80 high school students and their teachers. From the questions, I would say that the students’ knowledge about HIV/AIDS is pretty high. Dave’s comment was that he thought it was the first time they had heard anyone say some of those words out loud, especially in a mixed group of boys and girls. There is a lot in the newspapers right now about AIDS here, and India has 5.13 million cases, second only to South Africa in the number of cases. There is a lot a lot in the newspapers about the changing morals of the young generation. One actress from Tamil Nadu has been just about run out on a rail for saying that educated Indian men no longer expect their brides to be virgins. She did also advocate lack of promiscuity and the use of condoms, but that didn’t help. One of the Fulbrighters who is here on a high school teacher exchange was talking about the shock the teachers at her school in Chennai had when, as a result of someone setting off a firecracker in school, the principal locked down the school and did a locker check. Didn’t find any fireworks but did find condoms in the lockers of ten students. The teachers were stunned, horrified and at a loss for what to do.

So it is a critical time here and an honor to be asked to speak on the HIV/AIDS. In 45 minutes I covered the epidemiology, the biology of the virus and of the immune system, the routes of transmission, while delicately (I hope) making the point that prevention is everyone’s responsibility.