Chennai Rainbow Pride

NEWS FLASH! Aimee is a lesbian.
http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20110626/1779891.html 

On a more serious note, we spent the weekend supporting the LGBT community in Chennai.  On Friday, we attended a panel discussion on sexual minorities hosted at the U.S. Consulate.  The people in attendance were members of the LGBT community and enthusiastically voiced their concerns about the way the government of Tamil Nadu is addressing their needs.

Something that we have noticed is that the lesbian and female-to-male transgender members of the LGBT community are for the most part invisible. One attendee brought this point to light.  Kalki Subramaniam, the keynote, attributed this neglect to "body politics" in a country where even if you identify as a man, your physically female body puts you at an even greater disadvantage.

In preparation for Sunday's Pride parade we spent the night with two other interns in Anna Nagar West on Saturday.  Our first Indian sleepover!

The Pride parade was held at Marina Beach- the world's longest seashore- at 10a.m. We were given a handmade sign that read "Celebrate Diversity," which earned us a lot of attention from photographers.  It is not clear whether it was the message or the fact that we are white foreigners.  Nevertheless, one of these photos landed on the front page of the Times of India.  Eleven days into our trip and we are already celebrities!

It is worth mentioning that Aimee was interviewed by a camera crew and quoted by a few websites. (See link above.)  For the record she did state that she was not a lesbian, but rather a straight ally in attendance to support LGBT rights.  She embraces her newly discovered sexual orientation. Though Michael's upcoming visit in July might trigger an identity crisis.

Dairy + Doxycycline = BAD

Hello again!

As we speak, we are transitioning living quarters from the International Guest House to a room in the Center for International Social Work.  It's a bigger room, the bathroom's cleaner, and we even have a little kitchenette.  Indian cuisine preparation, here we come!  The one downside is that we are without air conditioning, which won't be great to move in, but supposedly that's temporary.

This week we've been running around to different agencies that the SW department works with.  Madras Christian Counsel of Social Service (not affiliated with Madras Christian College) is an excellent agency that we visited on Wednesday.  We got lost on the way - the driver pulled over every five minutes to ask directions - but the little city was so confusing, no one seemed to know where to go.  That didn't stop them from giving directions, however.  When we finally got there, our hosts had prepared a traditional Hindu greeting for us.  We were given bindis, flowers for our hair, and sandalwood paste markings on our cheeks to ward away the evil eye.

MCCSS is doing lots of good work, but the most memorable was the short stay and protection homes for women and children with family problems or who have been rescued from human trafficking work.  We visited them, and they performed traditional dances for us.  We were even invited to join them, and they seemed thrilled with our attempts.

This weekend we'll go to a pride parade on Marina Beach and a few other LGBT events.  Being in the city will also be nice as we adjust to our new digs.

That's all for now.

P.S.  For any of you that ever take Doxycycline for malaria prophylaxis, avoid dairy!  Masters students though we are, it took both of us throwing up to figure out what we were doing wrong!

Malaiyamkulam and Orientation

Greetings followers!  We're excited to be able to share some of our experiences in India with friends and family - hence this blog.  Does everyone get it?  It's Che "nine" weeks, which sounds like Chennai, the city where we are, and 9 weeks, which is how long we'll stay.

Just wanted to make sure we got to that point all together :)

We have had a whirlwind of a first week.  We left Denver on a flight to New York at 1:00 a.m. on June 15, and after layovers and flights in New York and Delhi, we got to Chennai at 11:00 p.m. local time on June 16.  For those of you doing the math, that's almost 2 days later.  We were delighted to get to our beds at the International Guest House on Madras Christian College (MCC) campus that night.

Friday morning, a number of spontaneous decisions ended with us joining a short-term visiting group from Appalachian State University for a weekend stay in the rural village Malaiyamkulam.  Though perhaps different than we first expected, we had a great "trial by fire" experience getting to know other MCC students who accompanied us and interacting with members of the rural village and their church.  We woke at 5:30 a.m. each morning, did manual labor, helped cook meals (eaten traditionally with our hands), interviewed villagers, interacted through broken English and Tamil with the children and church leaders, and finally performed the ChaCha Slide and taught the Chicken Dance to a very receptive village audience.

Not bad for a couple people recovering from a half-day internal clock change!

Since returning to the college, we've maintained a calmer orientation schedule.  We often participate in lectures and discussions of Indian culture, or cross-country comparisons of Social Work related issues.  Today and for the next two days our agenda is agency visits.  This morning we saw Little Drops, an organization that provides basic residence and medical care support for the elderly, and Reheboth, a care facility for the mentally ill.  Many of our interactions with the residents were very fulfilling, some heartbreaking. The facilities and programs fall short of the quality of care we've come to expect in the United States, but there is great need and Little Drops and Reheboth at least cover some distance in meeting those needs.  It will be good to talk with our Indian colleagues about how they perceive this agencies' capacities and what improvement could be made in the future.

Our brief time has already yielded some great recurring topics for investigating, including how religion is incorporated into counseling and mental healthcare in India and by MCC social workers more specifically, women working and attending school after marriage, and alcohol-driven domestic abuse as a national concern.  We're hoping to have a lot of time to explore this and other topics during the workshops we plan to lead for the social work students here.  We've also been prepared for counseling work with a girls school, and hope to have a sense of other opportunities with the agencies we'll see over the next few days.

And our experiences don't stop with the formal agenda.  There are cultural confrontations at every turn as we travel by train in the ladies' car, are targeted by shopkeepers in the mall Spencer's Plaza, and make the harrowing trek as pedestrians across Chennai's wild roadways.

So thank you for joining us on this journey! Until next time!