6 Foot, 7 Foot, 8 Foot...

Yes, this man is holding a very close model of a human foot.

     We our entering the last third of our time here - which means that the formal classes (aka in a classroom) are winding down. In somewhat of a frustrating turn, that means that our Sustainable Development and Social Change seminar has turned from the theme of "What are the problems with everything in the world, and why can't people fix them well?" into asking the question, "What works?" So we are finally taking some field trips that have a positive spin instead of learning about female infantoecide, lack of education, inequality, etc.
    What that means is that on Thursday of last week, we went to Jaipur Foot.

Foot mold. Obviously.

    The organization was certainly a change of pace from when we roll into villages in our "Tourist" bus, and ask people to tell us what is wrong with everything in their lives. Instead, we were welcomed by D.R. Mehta, the director of the organization, who was full of inspirational sayings  and impressive magazine clippings about how awesome his organization is. Like this one, for example.
   It was so lovely to have someone talk to us who so clearly knows what they are doing, and is full of things like "Do you know what E = mc^2 really means? Effect is equal to money times compassion squared!"

Feet in the making! This whole day felt like the alternate, nice version of Frankenstein's laboratory.

    Basically, Jaipur Foot gives prosthetic limbs fitted to each individual who comes to them for free. Everyone. And they also make wheel chairs. And they also designed their own artificial knee.
  We walked around to the waiting room, and saw amputees and accident victims waiting to be met with, and other people in the middle of the half hour casting process to get their new limbs.

Men working on piles of limbs outside of the factory.

     And then to show off how good their limbs are, this man jumped out of a tree with his Jaipur Foot.