mehendi and water contamination

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Yesterday I had a really fun and interesting day. I spent part of the morning trying to do some of the typing work that Rachna gave me. It was pretty slow going, because the report has been badly photocopied from somewhere, so parts of the text are almost completely blanked-out. However, after doing that for a couple of hours I was informed that the cleaning staff was doing a thorough scrub of the bathroom! Apparently the cleaning staff that had been responsible for the upstairs was moved downstairs, where an eye could be kept on him… all of the dirty areas that I had assumed were the responsibility of the volunteers to keep clean, are, in fact, his job, has just wasn’t doing it. So the woman who had been cleaning downstairs has been moved upstairs, and has been scrubbing the entire floor!! Oh cleanliness, how I love thee…

Anyway, after I found out that I didn’t need to spend my day cleaning the bathroom I went back to my typing, only to be interrupted by Joe telling me that there were some girls downstairs asking for me. I thought that it might be a mother and daughter who had invited me over the day before, but had never shown up back at the clinic, so I went to investigate. At first I didn’t recognize any of the girls, and was rather confused at how they knew to ask for me by name. After a minute I recognized the little girl, who has been coming to the gazebo sometimes to play. We sat in awkward silence for a few minutes before I decided to go and get Aanya to translate what they were asking me to do. She came downstairs and said that they were inviting me over to their house. I decided why the hell not, got my camera and headed out. They lived just around the corner from Sambhavna, in a clean but extremely stuffy little house. The power was off in the neighbourhood (which seems to happen in brief but frequent intervals), so the cooler couldn’t be turned on, which meant that it was absolutely sweltering. For those of you who don’t know, coolers are these kind of budget versions on air conditioners. There is one in the girls’ dorm here at Sambhavna, as well as in several of the offices. Essentially they are these metal boxes with mesh sides about two by three feet long and high. You open the tops of them and then pour in a bucket or two of water and then this giant fan blows the cool water around. I’m not entirely sure how they work, but they are pretty effective because I’ve been into a lot of stores that have them. At any rate, the cooler was off, and I was absolutely sweating to death in the house.

I had brought my camera with me for some photo ops, which of course attracted a crowd (it seems to no matter where I go in India). Many of the other women on the street hovered around outside the door, and one woman kept asking me to take picture of her and the pants-less baby boy she had on her hip. She thought it was hilarious that she was having her picture taken when he didn’t have any pants on, and kept yelling something in Hindi and pointing at his naked butt and laughing hysterically. It was pretty funny.

The girls gave me a glass of Fanta to cool me off, and almost immediately set to work beautifying me. First up, it was decided that I needed some bangles. Unfortunately my hands are too fat, and they weren’t able to fit any of the bangles they had past my thumb. In the process of trying to squeeze my hand into one, it snapped and actually cut into my hand a little bit. The girls took some cream out of the fridge and put it on the cut… I have no idea what the cream was, so hopefully it was some sort of disinfectant. Eventually they found a fat-hand bangle and managed to squeeze it on with the help of some soapy water, but I have the feeling its never going to come off unless I smash it. After that they painted all of my finger- and toenails a bright, rather garish, red. I’m not a fan of having polish on my fingers, so I have since managed to chip it all off, but I left it on my feet. It makes them look cleaner, or at least relatively. Then, the little one, Anam, went out and returned a minute later with a tube if mehendi (henna), which one of the older girls used to make a fantastic design on my arm and hand with. It looks really cool, and I’ve decided to get it done on my feet too. I’ve been told that the tubes only cost about Rs. 3 here, so if anyone wants me to bring some back, let me know! Finally, a bindi was stuck on my head, and I was deemed beautiful. I couldn’t help but feel like I full-grown Barbie-doll with all of this stuff, especially since the mehendi has to take a few hours to dry, so I was stuck not being able to use that arm for quite some time.

After that the father came home with a little baby boy and some sweets from the street vendors. I had been warned countless times not to eat anything from the street vendors because the quality of the food is highly questionable. However, they were quite insistent that I have some of this little white square that looked like cheese and tasted like pure sugar. Luckily they didn’t insist that I have the other thing he brought, which looked like tiny red intestines curled into a little ball (which Anisha says are delicious sweets as well). After eating a bit of the sweet, I decided that I needed to get back to the clinic and do some work, so I begged my excuses which I’m sure they didn’t understand) and they returned me to Sambhavna.

Joe, Aanya and the other Emily had a good laugh at me when I came back, because I was so covered, but they also took some photos of me in the wet mehendi, so make sure you take a look. Soon after that, Aanya told me that she and he other Emily were going to the community just North of the Union Carbide factory to do some interviews with gas-affected women. They invited me to tag along and take photos, so I was off again (with my Mehendi still wet). We took an auto down the bumpiest road I had ever experienced in my life; it was literally made out of chunks of brick and rock that jutted out of the road in such a way that it was almost impossible to drive on. Sareeta, a fifteen year old girl who was guiding us around and taking us to her house, kept arguing with the auto driver that the road wasn’t that bad so that she could get us a cheaper rate, which I thought was kind of hilarious. As soon as we got out of the auto we were surrounded by en enormous group of kids all wanting their photo taken. Sareeta kept telling me not to take any photos, because each photo seemed to provoke the desperate cry of “DIDI!! PHOTO!!” from about twenty more kids.

We crossed a set of train tracks and maneuvered around huge piles of mud until we were at Sareeta’s house. Her house was a bit off the beaten track, so it was a bit quieter there. Her mother had just finished re-mudding the floor of the house, so the outside was still sticky with cow-dung and hay. We made ourselves comfortable inside the little house though (of which there are lots of photos, so please check them out!). I couldn’t help but notice that even though there was only one bed for four or five people, there was still a TV and DVD player. Anyway, Sareeta’s mother was really nice and friendly. She made us the best chai I’ve had since getting to India and we sat and chatted for a while. It turns out that Sareeta knew Jennifer and Diana, last years CIDA interns. She seems to be really active in all the political stuff surrounding Bhopal, and from what I know she is essentially the leader of the group of kids that Rachna has been working with to create awareness among the youth here.

Anyway, Sareeta brought over the mother of one of her friends for Emily and Aanya to interview. This woman had a four-year old son who could neither talk nor walk. He seemed to be in some sort of chronic pain, because every time she touched his legs or feet he would start to whimper and cry. It was absolutely heart-breaking to look at his little face, he was obviously so unhappy, you just wanted to give him the world to try to help him. They think that he was affected by the contaminated water in utero, but they really don’t know. They’ve been going to the government hospital for gas survivors, but she said that the help that they got was entirely symptomatic relief and did nothing to help the root of the problem. All over the neighbourhood there were these huge black drums with safe, uncontaminated water in them. But from what I’ve heard, there’s only about half enough water shipped into the neighbourhood as they need. We even saw one woman using a hand pump that obviously brought up contaminated water. You just wanted to scream at her not to touch the stuff, but without it they’d have no water.

Anyway, after that they did a couple of other short, impromptu interviews with women as e passed through the community. We had a group of about fifty kids fallowing us around begging me to take their photos. Sareeta forbid me from taking any more photos because of the crowd that we had attracted. Then we took an auto to the Chok, but since Sareeta was our guide we got to see an entirely new area of the market that I’d never seen before. I ended up buying more bangles (and broke yet another one in the process of trying to try them on), four dupptas (scarves) and two more shirts that are much nicer than the other ones I bought. I still haven’t found the kind of scarves that I really wanted to buy while I was here, which are silk ones with fancy gold embroidery on them. Maybe in my travels I’ll find the places that sell them, but until then I haven’t bought anyone any gifts yet! Sorry!

Anyway, as usual I’ve been writing this on and off all day. Today has been fairly uneventful though. I did do my first errand on my own today, which was entirely successful (I’m happy to report!). I took an auto to the local police station to have some stupid form signed by literally three different people, and then all the way back to Sambhavna. I also stopped by the tailor to have the sleeves put on my two new shirts (when you buy shirts here the sleeves are often not attached, they come sewn onto the back or something so that you can add them if you want to). So yes, I am finally becoming independent enough to do some things on my own! I think that it is about time, too, because, five of the seven other volunteers are leaving on Sunday and Monday, so its about to get pretty quiet around here!

I think that that’s about it for now… the internet hasn’t been working on and off again all day, so hopefully it won’t be too long before I’m online again!