Thursday, 18 August 2011

The Good, the Bad, and the Interesting

We do not have the distance to truly summarize our experiences in India.  Nonetheless, it feels like we've been reflecting non-stop the last few days, and we have three more top ten lists that will hopefully encourage continued discussions when we get home.

High Points
Honorable Mentions: Sameer, Kochi/Hyderabad, figuring out transportation in Chennai
  • Allan using techniques that we had taught in our Psychological First Aid module.
  • Being recognized by a worker at Sai Balaji Bhavan, a restaurant near Madras Christian College.
  • Taking a risk and taking a ride to Spice Cinema with a friendly stranger.
  • The traditional Hindu greeting and dancing presented by MCCSS.
  • Meals: family-style at Al-Arabi, Delhi; dinner with Megan and Molly, Bangalore; homemade prawn, Mamallapuram; Sheila's traditional Keralan meals, Ambalamoola; dinner with Prince, Princy and Abby, Chennai; Arca Nova barricuda with Michael, Kochi; goat head with Sid, Hyderabad; and ice cream, everywhere.
  • Goofiness and hilarity in Mysore
  • First looks: Karamuli, the first village we visited in Nilgiris-Wynaad; Taj Mahal; Cape statue and temple at Kanniyakumari; and Mathoor Hanging Bridge, Tamil Nadu. 
  • Getting Jefrin to fall asleep (the first and second times)
  • Chennai Rainbow Pride Parade
  • Wayanad Trip with Razlyn and Whitney: overnight trains, NWTWS mobile outreach vehicle, monsoon weather, jackfruit (see the dedicated post)
India Fails
  • Pollution/Environmental Care/Sanitation/Smoking in restaurants
  • Anarchical traffic/line etiquette
  • Welfare of beggars, the disabled, and animals
  • Public Education standards
  • Cinema experience at the theater and on TV
  • Government Corruption
  • Double standard between sexes/recognition of sexual minorities
  • White preference
  • Objectification of white women tourists
  • American cuisine
Cultural Moments
  • 10 (June and July) days without A/C
  • Cop hitting a pickpocket with his shoe
  • Being confronted by an Aravani on the train
  • Being regularly asked to produce exact change (and the hassles that follow failure to do so).
  • Caroline's rickshaw fight in Pondicherry (see dedicated post)
  • Effects of speaking Tamil - surprise, delight (with knuckle cracking), tears
  • Wearing sarees to MCC Campus School
  • Bathrooms - squat toilets and bucket showers
  • Haggling
  • Cultural insights from teaching - Indian English vs. American English, practicing self-care in India, "Excuse me, miss" before entering a room, thanni (water) hand-signal, tattle-taleing and Christianized children's songs. 

Delhi to Denver: The Final Saga

In seven hours we will be landing in Denver.  Presently, we are enduring our layover at JFK airport in New York.  In the last thirty-two hours we have surmounted some not insignificant and unexpected detours.  But let's start with two days ago when we were in Agra...

Our journey to Agra began before dawn on Tuesday, August 16.  We boarded the fancy-shmancy Shatobdi Express train - A/C, morning tea, breakfast, and only a two-hour ride. After two months in India we've become pretty comfortable dealnig with pushy rickshaw wallahs, but when we arrived we had to figure out what to do with a seemingly nice one.  We hired him for the day.

Sameer, said rickshaw wallah, was a gem.  He showed us sites we would otherwise have missed, including  a riverside view of the Taj Mahal, the "Baby Taj", and an alley-way restaurant that only those "in the know" could find. He also took us to jewelry and marble demonstrations.  He even helped Aimee haggle for a special gift at one of the shops.  At no point were we concerned about Sameer's intentions. However, we wanted desperately to know the intentions of the passenger seated  with his machine gun in front of us on the train ride back to Delhi. Though they remain a mystery, we made it back to Delhi incident-free, only to be confronted with a group of protestors marching in support of Anna Hazare, an anti-corruption leader who was arrested on Tuesday. Perhaps it was time to leave Delhi.

And leave Delhi we did, but our flight was fifteen minutes late. Ergo, when we arrived in Mumbai we learned quickly that we had missed the very important flight to JFK. In the words of Sally Wall, one last "personal f***ing growth experience." We had to exercise both firmness and patience to finally find the sympathetic Duty Manager who arranged our flight to Newark, New Jersey and transportation to JFK from there.  He even let us in to the First Class Maharaja Lounge while we waited. Though it was 1:30 a.m. and not 8:00 p.m. when we finally departed, we were on our way home. 

Sunday, 14 August 2011

Top Ten Reasons Why We Like Delhi So Far

(For clarification: We recently finished our summer field placements in the big city of Chennai and flew to the bigger city of Delhi to spend our last few days in India.)

Honorable Mention: Ajay Guest House - selected by the brilliant Ms. Caroline, this guest house couldn't be much better located for the many things we are doing in Delhi, and it even puts us close to the New Delhi Railway Station for our day trip to Agra.  It's clean, colorful, air conditioned (usually), and there's hot water for the showers you always need.  What's more, there's a ground floor bakery and a rooftop restaurant that are open 24/7 and will bring you food through room service for no extra charge.

10. The Delhi Metro (Allan, you were right!)  The metro is clean, air-conditioned, efficient and cheap!  It's the latest in a long list of transportation means we've used in India.

9. Our guest house forgot to send a car to the airport, but that meant we got into the city for Rs. 250 rather than Rs. 900...never mind that our driver was reckless and his horn was pathetically dying from overuse.

8. Everywhere, but especially at Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India, dozens of people (usually young guys and kids with cellphones) have been taking our pictures more or less obviously.  So we took some pleasure in starting to take pictures of people taking pictures of us.

7. After a rather excessive detour, we re-energized with food new to our Indian palate: Dum Aloo & an ice cream milkshake.  The dum aloo was a sweet tomato and onion curry with cottage-cheese-and grape-stuffed potatoes.  The milkshake was "new" because India usually understands a milkshake to be made with milk...they have a point, but with ice cream is best.

6. We saw monkeys in Wayanad, where they seemed to belong, but on a major thoroughfare in New Delhi, they were sort of startling.  Especially when Aimee knelt down to get a picture and they charged her.

5. We weren't supposed to walk down Bazaar Chitli Qabar Marg and we're not sure how we ended up there.  But at last, here was the chest-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder, bustling alley-posing-as-a-road, packed with bicycle rickshaws, scooters, vendors, fruit carts, trash, drying laundry, and street food aromas.

4. Foreigners are always charged more at national sites than nationals, to the tune of Rs. 300 vs. Rs. 20 at the National Museum.  But when we flashed our international student IDs, we got in for Rs. 1.  Boo ya!

3. We're taught not to accept rides from strangers, but when the alternative is rickshaw-wallahs fleecing you because you're a tourist, they might just be your best bet.  Kids, don't try this at home.

2. We took a shot on a restaurant not in our guide book and ended up with a family-style feast made especially for us at Al-Arabi on Main Bazar Rd.  Falafel, babaganouj, greek salad, hummus, marinated steak and dry-roasted chicken...we could not recommend it more highly.

1.  The number one reason we like Delhi so far is that the "room service" knocking on our door turned out to be Molly Pike and Megan Rafferty!  Indian reunions strike again!   

Monday, 8 August 2011

Around South India in Eight Days

Who: Aimee, Caroline, Razlyn Abdul Rahim and Whitney Anderson
Where: Approx. 2525 km; Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Ambalamoola, Nagercoil, Kanniyakumari, Tirunelveli), Kerala (Kozhikode, Kalpetta, Sultan Bathery, Padmanabapuram Palace), and Karnataka (Mysore, Bangalore)
When: 8 days; July 30-August 8, 2011
Why: Because Lonely Planet needs new writers

Price for train tickets: $52
Price for cheapest meal: Rs. 13 (26 cents American) for idly
Seeing Wild Elephants: Priceless

Highlights 
Traveling - Seeing India by bus and by train are worthwhile activities unto themselves.  There is no better way to see kilometers of countryside and snapshots of daily life that you'd miss by air.  There's more opportunity for relationship making; cutely, like the pajama-clad boy with his trucks and cars, or more imposingly, like the aravani asking for money.  When the trains travel by night, they make excellent and cheap sleeping accommodations.  Minus the middle-aged men who snore - sometimes they snore in unison; sometimes they snore in a round; sometimes its a symphony in which the apnea-suffering pig is the featured soloist.  

Buses have their own collection of sounds - horn honking for passing, for cows, for pedestrians, and for fun; music videos with high-pitched, infantile voices (seriously, the gods are portrayed by kids), the same default Nokia ring for every text and call, and incessant, throat-clearing hacking and spitting.  

In Wynaad, we enjoyed the one-lane, monsoon-swept roads in jeeps and in the mobile outreach vehicle to reach beautiful tea-covered mountains and remote tribal villages.

We used autorickshaws when absolutely necessary, but our favorite way to travel was to walk - to walk through elephants' footprints, up muddy mountain paths, down vendor-lined sidestreets, barefoot through palaces, the beach and our host family's dining room.  Sometimes we walked with a purpose; sometimes we walked to find a quiet place.  Though our trip was planned, the in-between traveling allowed for unexpected and rewarding moments.

Wayanad - It was thrilling to be in an area where nature dominated.  Though this statement includes leeches on the muddy ground, it also included monkeys and wild elephants!  Every inch of land was covered in bamboo, tea, coffee, green chili, eggplant, rice, tapioca, banana, butterfruit (avocado), peppercorn, guava, coconut and jack fruit.  Jack fruit were just newly coming into season, and after mentioning idly that we hadn't tried them, suddenly a local man was up the tree and throwing us two of the massive fruits.



Standing on the roadway, we enjoyed the challenge of plucking the fruit-covered seeds from the stringy pulp.  Though not the prettiest of fruits, their flavor and texture mixed banana and pineapple.  Even with seven of us, eating just one half of the jack fruit was a feat.

Mysore - At the perfect middle of our trip, we had a collective spaz attack.  Perhaps it was in reaction to our well-located but thoroughly disgusting hotel (thanks Lonely Planet).  Maybe it was due to the shoe-snapping epidemic that orphaned Caroline and Whitney's flipflops.  But maybe we just wanted an excuse to see Harry Potter.  With the help of the entire wait staff at Parklane Hotel, see it we did.  However, Caroline and Aimee might find it in Delhi once more because the projection could not have been screwier.  But we made some friends from the Netherlands to make up for it.  

In the morning, we tried to behave for Mysore Palace, but when people kept asking for pictures with us, we kind of lost it again.  Caroline made the ultimatum "only if you make silly faces" to the next group of guys looking for a photo op.

Kanyakumari - On the overnight train between Bangalore and Kanyakumari, I (Aimee) found out that Seth Dunn, a friend from my undergraduate, had died in a terribly sad accident.  Word came by the groundswell of social support circulating through the dispersed Bethel community through Facebook, and though connected virtually, I felt suddenly alone in my sadness...for a moment.  Then Michael, my husband, appeared with expert timing for a much appreciated online chat.  I was given instant and generous support from Whitney, Caroline and Razlyn, together and each in their turn.

I enjoyed my time immensely in Kanyakumari, but the effect of this news is not avoidable.  I could not have anticipated how Seth's death would alter moments in Kanyakumari, mostly because we never anticipate such sad things, but also because of the foreignness of my social and physical environment.  I found that being on the coast where the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal converge in visible current collisions provided beautiful images of continuity and universal connection.  Sitting in Tsunami Park provided a contemplative spot for thoughts about loss.  Quiet was more appealing than the noise brought by the large tourist crowds, and I appreciated my companions offering time for me to find that on small, out of the way, overlooks and beaches.  On one such beach, I etched Seth's name in the sand, letting it get swept away by the water.

These actions were for me as much as him, I know; he probably would have enjoyed the guys running around with the puffer fish more than I had patience for.  I'll work on laughing more for him in the future, because that's the most memorable thing about him.  For all of those still grieving, my thoughts are with you too.

Day Tour - Near the end of the trip, we found ourselves with an extra day to organize, and though we'd woken up at 5:00 a.m. to see the sunrise, we wanted to make the most of it.  So we booked a tour of four sites: Suchindram Temple, Padmanabapuram Palace, Mathoor Hanging Bridge, and waterfalls.

Padmanabapuram Palace, though in Tamil Nadu, is considered Kerala territory.  We enjoyed the palace for its intricate carving and indigenous structure and the way the light played through windows and against the dark wood.  There were so many passages and corridors that made for many fun pictures. The view from Mathoor Hanging Bridge is breathtaking, both for its height and for the Eden-like quality of the turquoise river pointing to mountains on one side and into a lush, emerald valleys on the other.  The waterfalls we visited seemed to double as a mass shower for anyone who came to visit.  They had an outrageous camera charge, so Caroline snuck a few illegal pictures in the cover of the crowds.



Epilogue - We have felt like we've had the opportunity to make a lot of our time in India, this trip being a prime example.  Prince Solomon, a social work at MCC, helped a lot in its arrangements, but we did a fair amount of leg work ourselves.

Our time in Bangalore, for instance, was short - only about three hours between our arrival from Mysore to our departure for Nagercoil.  But look who we managed to find for dinner in those short three hours!


Carpe Dium!

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Kochi and Hyderabad

For the first time during our stay in India, Caroline and Aimee parted ways this last weekend for long weekend trips to Hyderabad and Kochi respectfully.  Here are some highlights from those trips.

Hyderabad (Caroline):

While Aimee was off to Kerala I went north to Andrha Pradesh to reconnect with a friend from my life back in Baltimore, Sid. I landed at the Hyderabad airport Friday night around 10pm.  Sid picked me up and promptly went the wrong way on the highway.  No matter.  This is India.  Even if the next exit is 5km away, you can just go back down the on ramp that is just 1/2 a km behind you.  So we did. Lucky for us traffic in Hyderabad is nothing like the chaos of Chennai. The highway only had one other vehicle on it!

That night I met a couple of ex-pats who live in a hotel and ordered mutton biriyani from room service.  Thus the stage was set for me to eat and drink my way through the long weekend.  I spent too much money and ate and drank too much.

Some food highlights.  Saturday's lunch was at Sid's home.  I had dahl, and prawn, and chicken, and some spinach thing that was out of this world.  Sunday's lunch was street food.  Pani puri, which is a hollow crunchy orb filled with spiced water and onions served in a little plastic cup, and chud (?) which is also awesome, but don't ask me what it is.  Monday was the gastro-apex of the trip.  We went out for lunch and I ate deep fried quails and also goat brain. Yep. I did.  And they were amazing!  Lunch on Tuesday was super filling and I felt really bad about leaving so much left over, but a veg thali is a great way to have little bit of everything. On the way to the airport I stopped at Karachi's bakery and picked up some of their world-famous (according to Sid) fruit biscuits.  I haven't sampled those yet.

So aside from eating I did my fair share of nothing and just hanging out. I also went to see the Galconda Fort 122m above the plain and surrounded by concentric circles of walls.  The city is encroaching and there are lots of buildings within the boundaries of the outer walls now. Admission was free in honor of a Hindu festival and all of the steps were painted with red and yellow stripes.  There was also a goat being led in by the ear.  I suspect headed for the dinner table.  I shopped and bartered. Stopped at Hussain Sagar Lake and saw the large Buddha Purnima statue.  Did some drive-by photography of Charminar in the old city and cruised through the Salar Jung museum.  And I had a 2 hour massage.

Mostly, I was made to feel welcome and loved. I was reminded of things I had forgotten about my 20s in Baltimore and I am grateful to have such a good friend. Thank you, Sid!

Kochi: (Aimee)

Michael (my husband) and I had a relaxing and culturally exciting visit to one of India's oldest port cities, Kochi (or Cochin), on the west coast of India.  We stayed on the island area of Fort Kochi, experiencing the monsoon downpours most mornings and late evenings as well as surprising times in between.  This made for pleasant weather when it wasn't raining, but it also meant we had some tropical visitors in our room.  There was a roach we named William Howard Taft due to his size.  You can imagine.

Saturday night we went to the Kerala Kathikali Centre to see the traditional performance art, Kathikali.  It is more than dance; it's an intricate coordination of drum, cymbals, singer, meanings of makeup, hand gestures, facial expressions, and pantomime.  We also saw five other traditional dance forms from South India (Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh).

Sunday we went on a backwaters tour on a punted houseboat, and then through the hand-dug village canals in a punted canoe.  We were served a Keralan lunch on banana leaves at an island in the backwater villages.  One of the most interesting interactions I had was when I unknowingly gave away my G2 Pilot pen to a young village girl.  Apparently pens are highly valued since they are comparatively expensive.  She told me she would use it for her studies, so I think it was a good accidental gift.




Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the absolutely fabulous meal that Michael and I had at Arca Nova.  We had barricuda steak that made Michael blabber about "best meal ever."  We were the only ones in the restaurant and waited on by two very attentive men every minute of the meal.  There was a lamplit-jetty, a pebbled floor, and purple flowers that we'd seen growing in the backwaters.  It was a great 1st anniversary meal, and the trip was a great 1st anniversary experience.  I'm so pleased to have shared this unique part of my India experience with Michael.

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Catching Up

To our followers - apologies! The odyssey of buying technology as a foreigner in India is epic, and as we settled into a regular field placement schedule, there was less time to spend on computers in the Social Work department.  But enough with excuses.  Here's a rundown of recent trips and highlights.

July 2-3: We went to Pondicherry, the old French Indian capital. We loved the peaceful quiet and clean streets and being repeatedly blessed by Lakshmi the elephant.  We managed a little drama when Caroline fought with a rickshaw driver in the pouring rain.

July 5: At FLI, one of our regular placements, our day was disrupted by a road accident between a "drunk" motorcycle driver and a young gypsy boy.  Fortunately he was ok.  Though a traumatic event, it was inspiring to see the local gypsy community gather together.  The next day, we were intrigued to learn the community blamed FLI because the boy had failed out of the FLI primary school, and it was on his walk home from the gov't school he now attended that he was struck by the motorcycle.  It was fascinating that the circumstances of how the boy came to be on the road were blamed rather than the driver's recklessness.

July 7: We offered a module on Self-Care for the 1st year Social Work students and enjoyed a discussion of the barriers Indian Culture erects to such practices.

July 8: During our time with I.C.W.O., our cheek muscles maxed out from the endless pictures we took with the female sex workers.  Cell phone after cell phone and grouping after grouping, it was clearly an expression of affection, but ouch!

July 9: This day was sponsored by Tom Hanks.  We saw Forrest Gump at the U.S. Consulate (for free!) and Larry Crowne at Skywalk.  It would have been nice to have a third movie to watch in the non A/C, 2 hour ride home.  Lesson learned: don't go into Chennai on Saturday night.

July 13:
Work with Jefrin, a child with special needs in lower KG at MCC Campus School
3rd std. - begin work on "The Gifts of Wali Dad," a Indian/Pakistani readers' theater story
7th std. - riddles
5th std. - cultural comparisons (1.8 - average number of TVs/household, 1.86 - average number of        children/household
Meet Davidson faculty and receive invitation to dinner
6th std. - riddles
Dinner at IGH with Davidson and MCC faculty and staff
Michael Voth Siebert, Rachel Voth Schrag and Samuel Voth Schrag arrive in Chennai!

July 15:
Michael, Rachel and Sam joined us at I.C.W.O. Chrompet, where we were taken to visit a government hospital that partners with the organization.  Michael became the first among us to ride a motorcycle through Chennai traffic - hard core.  After lunch, on the way to St. Thomas Mount (site of disciple's martyrdom), the following poem was prompted:
Upon the stairs at Chrompet Station
A sleeping man caused consternation
He wore no undies 'neath his dhoti
And his scrotum he did show me     

July 16-17: 
Michael, Rachel, Sam, Razlyn, and Whitney came with us for a lovely weekend in Mamallapuram.  We visited the World Heritage Monuments Shore Temple and the Five Rathas, dipped our feet in the Bay of Bengal (or her entire skirt if you're Aimee), saw a dead puffer fish washed ashore, and got pretty well sunburned for the first time.  We were treated to a scrumptious, home-cooked meal of crab and prawns thanks to Sir Hariharan of I.C.W.O.  We also wrote the following ode to a diligent stone merchant:
We fled down the street of Five Rathas
A stone carver on motorcycle caught us
We bartered and haggled
Till all were bedraggled
But up to our guest house he sought us.

July 18:
We missed opening weekend, but Rachel, Sam, Michael and Aimee were determined to get to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 before Rachel and Sam left for Andhra Pradesh.  So we dared a cross-Chennai cab ride in the hopes that AGS Cinema in Villivakkam would have four tickets left.  The nerdish hopes were rewarded and the movie was great!

And now, July 19, we have internet!!!  Our schedule is still quite packed, but we'll do our best to better about regular postings from now on.

Tuesday, 5 July 2011

Honoring guests




From Aimee - 

When we arrived at Madras Christian College's rural extension Family Life Institute, the elementary school children there were waiting for us.  The girls in pink are in 2nd and 3rd std., and they placed a beaded necklace around each visitor's neck, standing with us as we watched the morning assembly.  These girls and others in the 5th std. had also prepared traditional dances to perform for us.  We have a video of the performance that we would have liked to post here, but it would have taken all day to load.

When we visited MCCSS, an organization that both offers microloans to self-help groups and shelters women and girls who have been rescued from commercial sex work, the community greeted us with flowers, sandalwood paste and traditional Hindu blessings.  The rescued children had also prepared dance performances, and we were even invited to dance with them.

At MCC Campus school where we teach classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, we are given chocolates whenever it is a child's birthday.

The wife of one of our placement supervisors bought us each a sari.

And in day-to-day interactions, using just a hint of butchered Tamil thrills our hosts immensely.

We have felt blessed to receive such hospitality, and it has made me consider difference between this hospitality we receive as Americans, compared to the hospitality we give foreigners in the United States.  Would American elementary schools really invite groups of ordinary foreigners to tour the premises, take pictures, and would they prepare special assembly performances?  Do we regularly greet groups of foreigners with gifts, simple but generous from the standpoint of having relatively little to offer?  Are we thrilled when visitors speak our native English?

Likely the answer is generally no.  It's easy to point to anti-immigration movements and the difficulty foreigners experience trying to get a visa.  There are surely exceptions to this, but generosity seems very ubiquitous here.

For one thing, we have been amazed by the number of people who speak English, and how easy that makes it for us to exist here.  Given how little Americans are encouraged to learn foreign languages, it's not as easy for foreigners in our land.

We have felt like honored guests here, and that is different than just being a guest.