pinches and family politics

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In case you didn’t notice, I have finally sorted out the photo problems and have uploaded them into the appropriate posts. So please check out the past few posts, which were without photos before!

I’ve managed to keep myself quite busy the past few days, despite the fact that I was worried that I was going t be horribly bored and lonely without the other girls here. It is certainly harder to communicate with people without Anisha around to translate the stuff that I can’t communicate, but I think that I’m slowly getting the hang of it. Mostly I am referring to Ankeeta and the kids across the street when I say that, because they speak almost no English, but I spend a significant amount of time with them. I realy enjoy their company, I suppose partly because they are a family, so it seems very familiar and homey to me. Although, the longer I’m here, the more I start to realize that they’re family has their dysfunctions as well!

After moving into the two-person room on Thursday, and spending most of the day cleaning, I was glad to get out of the clinic on Friday. Derek and I made arrangements to go to Arushi for Friday afternoon and sort some things out, and take some photos. I had also promised Ankeeta that I would get her photos of Risen developed by Friday, so I decided to stop by New Market to pick up the films that the kids had left and drop off the CD of photos for Ankeeta. Things were going smoothly until then, but unfortunately the address we had for Arushi was wrong. It turned out that the address that was on the back of pamphlet that we had was old, and they had moved. So after a long and bumpy auto ride, we arrived in the complete wrong part of town. Luckily I had my trusty cell phone, so we called Arushi and got straightened out. Anil, one of the people we had been in contact with there got straight to work orchestrating photo ops for me… until my camera battery died!!! Ack!! I think I must have left it on over night, because it has never died so quickly before; it usually lasts for over a thousand photos. Anyway, we made arrangements to come back on Monday afternoon, so I’ll have to make sure to recharge it properly this time.

Rachna phoned and asked if I could get enlargements of a couple of the photos that the kids had taken. There is a meeting in one of the Basti’s nearby tonight (about what I’m not entirely sure, but I plan to find out when we get there), and they wanted photos of the solar evaporation ponds to display. In case you don’t know, Union Carbide decided that the best way to get rid of the chemicals was to dump them into these large pools of water so that they would evaporate with the water and get dispersed so thinly that they are no longer hazardous. Ahem, except for it doesn’t work like that, and now there are these giant pools of poisonous water leeching into the groundwater supply. Euch… apparently the kids play in them, too, because they have nowhere else to play.

So after Arushi we went back to New Market to get those developed. We had to wait a bit, and I decided that I wanted a scrub brush for my filthy feet and fingernails, as well as to return the headphones I had bought that didn’t work. All was well until I went into the electronics store to exchange the headphones. I was in there for quite some time arguing with the guy because he kept trying to sell me different pairs of faulty headphones, and Derek had decided to wait outside. When I was finally finished arguing, Derek had moved inside, and told me that there was a group of beggar kids outside who were seriously harassing him and pinching him. They had moved on when we came out again, but caught up with us in front of the photo lab. At first they seemed innocent enough, but then one of them body-checked me into the oncoming traffic and I lost it on them. I was about to pinch one of them back, but caught myself. Luckily Derek found and auto quickly and we were able to drive off, unscathed other than my wounded pride at being beat up by a bunch of kids, and the red marks all up my arms where they had pinched me so many times. It was another one of those times I wished that I spoke Hindi, because I later decided that they were really just looking for attention, and that if I had been able to answer them then the whole scenario could have been avoided… at any rate, since it is always the same kids there, I’m not looking forward to going back to get my (yet another pair of) replacement headphones. I’ll have to figure out some why of dealing with those (pardon my French, but) little fuckers.

I went over to Ankeeta’s house last night and dropped off the photos, which I think that she appreciated. Although there never seems to be a moment without family politics involved. Derek and I were invited over by Ankeeta’s sister-in-law, Sunita (well, actually, her kids, Vishal and Pooja) for a fish dinner. It seemed innocent enough, but I got the sense that it was to show up Ankeeta and Paupoo, who are always short of cash for reasons I won’t go into. After the mayhem of the photos had died down a bit, Pooja started telling me (albeit in very broken English) that it was both Anjolie (her younger sister) and her mother’s birthdays on Sunday! So what a coincidence that we would be coming over for dinner! Then she said that we had better bring presents of else Anjolie would cry… hmmmm. I asked Ankeeta when we had a moment alone, and, as I suspected, it is no ones birthday on Sunday. Pooja had been taken out for her birthday a month or two ago by some of the other volunteers here, so I think she was fishing for more goodies, but it really infuriated me that she would lie so greedily and selfishly. Afterwards she kept telling me over and over again that Ankeeta had such-and-such a photos, and she wanted that one too. The first time I agreed to print her a double, but after I lost it and said firmly (and perhaps a little too loudly) “Pooja! Bas!” (meaning “enough” or “stop”). I should mention here that Pooja is thirteen years old, so I felt a little stupid yelling something like that at her, but her behaviour seriously merited it. Anyway, now I’m not sure if I should bring something small for Anjolie to keep up the charade that it actually is her birthday… sigh.

I spent most of today running around doing little things. I worked on the premature menopause booklet a bit, and discovered that I’m a far worse artist than I thought. Some kids from a convent school were here learning about the garden, so I went and took some photos of them. At one point while hanging around the gazeebo the kids surrounded me and demanded autographs once again. Fortunately the teacher was there, and she kept yelling "One turn at a time" at them, which seemed to quell the crush a bit. One little girl was albino, and I almost went up to her and asked her if people mistake her for a foreigner and yell “Didi! Hi!” when she walks down the street. Either way, I feel her pain at being different looking from everyone else.

I spent most of the afternoon stuffing the kids photos into the free little booklets that they came with and writing out little comments on stickies so I can remember what I wanted to tell them tomorrow. I don’t know which photos belong to who, but a couple of the rolls are really good. I can’t wait to talk to the kids about them tomorrow. Masaum has agreed to come and translate for me in the afternoon…

Anyway, I think that’s about enough for now… its super-hot out and I’ve been sweating like a pig all day. I think another shower is in order. By the way, they have ketchup chips here! I don’t even like them in Canada, I’m just so desperate for food that’s familiar that I’m eating them anyway! Haha…