28th of June - Last day of treating .....

The morning routine is well and truly set, 7.30 am we wake to an amazing breakfast of mango, omelets, porridge, chick peas, chai masala, cereal, toast etc etc all prepared to perfection with attention to every detail by the Seva Kendra staff - we are all really going to miss this wonderful way to greet the day.

8am, we pile into the 4 cars going to the clinics, each day trying to make sure we work with a new student and/or clinician to maximise our experience here. We're all very good by now at configuring up to 14 people into a 8 seater vehicle, all perceptions of personal space were lost long ago .... 20mins to 1hr travel time we arrive at our respective clinics, if there are children there they all now greet us with a cheery "G' day Mate".

The translators understanding is that we speak two languages - English & Australian, even though we have tried to explain that "G' day" is a short version of "Good-day", they still see this as a different language to English. All of the translators have become pseudo-chiropractors, some memorising the questions & their order for taking a patients history and in some situations the students are just taking notes following the translators lead. They have all become a part of "the crew", sharing many laughs and experiences. Indra has been working with the Murdoch group for 3 years now and has just about perfected a spinal screen after hours of watching the students, she can spot a subluxation from 10 mtrs.

After completing as many treatments as possible in what short time we have left - the party begins. Many families, sponsors, school students etc were kind enough to donate gifts for the people attending the clinics so we spread them out between the clinics and begin the fun task of distribution. There are toothbrushes, toothpaste, finger puppets, stuffed toys, pencils, stickers, necklaces to name a few. Initially the children were quite dumbstruck with blank expresssions - as if not entirely sure what was going on, but they soon caught on and became as roudy as a bunch of kids greeting Father Christmas in Australia.

Father James had organised a special lunch at Seva Kendra for all of us and a "Farewell Program" for the late afternoon. The farewell program gave us opportunity to go over the events and discuss improvements for next year. The resounding feedback from all that instead of running an additional night clinic at Seva Kendra, this should be a permanent day clinic as the exhaustion suffered by students working late into the night was taking a heavy toll. The other improvement is formalising some proceedures for Clinicians & Students and collating a "Pack" of sorts to help initiate next years group.

The Farewell program also gave us opportunity to become more educated on Seva Kendra's activities in the community and how we can help. Once all the students return to Australia, we will be following this up and making an additional financial contribution.

But it wasn't all business ... there were songs (we learnt that in India you greet and farewell people always with song), so a couple of our multi-tallented students rewrote the words to "We come from a land down-under" and we sang this for the staff of Seva Kendra.

That night the whole crew went out to dinner with Father James, who was so kind to accommodate and drank a beer with us. Loads of laughs, great food and good times were had. This was then followed by a night on the roof of Seva Kendra (a place we will all miss).