Monday (January 8) marked the first full day of our mission, and two words sum up the bulk of our day: meetings and logistics. Still a bit jet-lagged (given the 30+ hour flight, and the fact that we didn’t leave Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport until the middle of the night), we woke up for a 9am breakfast meeting with the full team, thoroughly going over the mission plan and doing an initial “mapping” of our trip. The crux of our mission will focus on doing a report of prison conditions here in India, covering a wide range of public health concerns. As of now, we have yet to get access to any prisons, meaning that the report will focus on the input of stakeholders as opposed to directly interviewing prisoners. But judging from our initial mapping, just getting a handle on the many stakeholders involved could fill up an entire three weeks and then some.One breakfast meeting and several charts of mappings later, we were off to downtown Mumbai, to meet with our partner NGO. Our driver was simply amazing, weaving and bobbing in-and-out of traffic that puts Boston rush hour to shame. After about a half-hour ride, we arrived at our partner NGOs offices, in the heard of Mumbai near the financial district.
At our partner NGO’s office, we gave quick introductions, and met most everyone there – legal officers, advocacy officers, project coordinators, receptionists, interns and more. The six of us then met privately with two legal officers, getting debriefed on the NGO’s work with prisons (and a host of other issues, including a petition before the Indian Supreme Court to overturn the country’s ban on sodomy, and a focus on children’s rights, in particular looking at cases where children have been removed from schools because of their HIV-status). The crux of the meeting was twofold: to introduce ourselves to the NGO in person (after a six-month email relationship!), and to listen to and build off of the network of relationships they’ve built looking at issues of public health and prisons.
With the help of one of their legal officers, we set up a meeting with an NGO that works with drug users and HIV-infected individuals for the following day. It was a jam-packed afternoon meeting, and following we joined the staff for a tea break, and also got a handful of literature from the NGO, including newsletters, magazines and more.The first day’s meetings were finished, which meant that it was time for logistics, namely buying prepaid cell phones for every member of our team. We walked through the financial district, through the busy streets of downtown Mumbai, and made our way to the Hutch dealer, where we all purchased pre-paid phones. Though this was relatively easy, the process took quite a bit of time, not to mention quite a number of copies of all of our passports. A word to the wise on field missions: the logistics can sometimes be more of a process than you might think!
Finally, we ended the night by joining a remote family member of a student on our team for a great meal in Southern Mumbai, off the coast of the Back Bay. Their apartment was located in an historic area, where leaders of India’s independence first met more than 60 years ago to map the stages of what would become India’s breakaway from British colonial rule.
We arrived back at our place at 11:30pm – a nice 13-hour day to start off the mission.
