StoryTelling
13CHAPTER
13-1
Janaki and Saraswati: a story from India*
Once upon a time, not long ago, there was a young health worker named Janaki,
who lived in a small village called Mumabundo in northern India. After making a list
of the health problems in her village, Janaki realized that one of the biggest problems
was that women did not eat well during
pregnancy. They ate too little, and were very
thin and anemic. As a result, many babies were
born small, thin, and weak. Many of them died.
Some of the mothers died too, from bleeding or
infection following childbirth.
Janaki began to call pregnant women
together on Tuesday afternoons
to teach them about nutrition. She
explained the different food groups
and the importance of getting
enough to eat. She told the women
about vitamins and minerals, and
which foods contained iron that
would keep them from becoming
anemic. To make the meetings more
interesting, Janaki used flash cards
and a flannel-board, and even had the
mothers bring different foods from
their gardens and the market.
But as the months went by, nothing changed. Pregnant women continued to come
to the Tuesday meetings. And they continued to eat poorly.
One night, one of the mothers who had regularly attended the Tuesday meetings
gave birth. She had become more and more anemic during pregnancy, and from the
loss of blood following childbirth, she died. Her baby died, too.
Janaki felt partly to blame. She decided to go talk to Saraswati, a wise old woman
whom everyone went to for advice. Saraswati also practiced ayurvedic medicine—
the traditional form of healing.
Janaki explained her problem to the old woman.
Saraswati put her wrinkled hand on Janaki’s shoulder. “I think your problem is this,”
she said. “You started with what you were taught in your health training, instead
of with what the women in the village already know. You must learn to see things
through their eyes.”
“How do you mean?” asked Janaki.
*Many of the ideas in this story have been taken from “Education by Appropriate Analogy,” a paper by
Mark and Mimi Nichter.