JSS has three outreach clinics in different villages, and I had been to the closer two. Last week, Dolly and I went out to the most remote one in Bamhni. The Bamhni clinic is in the tiger reserve, and JSS leases the land it is on. They can not buy the land because only tribals can buy land from other tribals. It was built with labor volunteered by the village, and when it was complete, the government filed a lawsuit against JSS for having a health center in a forest area. The people of the villages went and had a sit-in in the government buildings, and the case was dropped.
The clinic is about 70km outside of Bilaspur, and it took about an hour and half to reach from Ganiyari. On the way, we went through a few gates marking the edge of the forest area. The village itself is "rather large" for a forest village - about 300 people. When they have the clinics, people come from even further in the forest, sometimes walking for hours even if they are sick.
The building which houses the clinic is built in the traditional manner, from mud and straw. It is horse-shoe shaped, with two examining rooms and a storeroom on one side, a long open room in the back, and a pharmacy and kitchen on the other side. There is also a laboratory area near the back, under the roof, but otherwise outside. When the weekly clinics are held, at least one lab tech goes with a microscope and an array of chemicals and tests, allowing them to examine blood and other fluids for parisites and other problems.
White people are infrequent visitors to Bamhni, and I got a lot of stares. At one point around sunset, I took a walk with two of the workers to find the one spot in the village where you get cellphone reception, and we ended up standing for a while in front of a house, messing with the phones. A little boy, maybe 7, and his younger sister stood at the wooden front gate staring at us. After a short time the little boy went to the back and came back a few minutes later with an axe. He made some slow and deliberate chops on the gate while staring at us, as best I could tell threatening us, and specifically me. It might have been menacing if he weren't so small. After about 30 seconds his mom yelled at him, and he moved onto staring at us from some shadows, still holding the axe.
The morning we were there, the doctor was waiting for her tea, and explained that she had asked them not to make it "like syrup". When the tea came, it was clear what she meant. My black tea could have passed for warm, flat Coke.
