ganesh day and an holding hands

Its official: it is possible to be bored even when you are in a completely foreign country, surrounded by unfamiliar things. I have spent much of the morning looking at the classified ads in Toronto to see if there are any jobs that a) I am qualified for and b) I actually have a remote speck of interest in doing. It turns out that there aren’t, so I switched to the real estate ads to see if I would be able to afford an apartment on my measly salary of zero dollars. As it turns out, either the housing situation in Toronto is worse than I thought, or the Star has lousy listings, because everything cost well over a thousand dollars, even for shitty basement apartments.

I was prompted to do all of this searching when I have started to wonder a bit about what I will be doing once I get back to Canada. Dan’s father recently offered to pay for him to finish up his degree at Concordia, although Dan has decided that he wants to switch programs, so he may still have another couple of years to go. For me, I’m not entirely sure what this means: either I am going to have to get yet another crap-tastic job in Montreal, and suffer through one last frigid, depressing Montreal winter, or I will go back to Toronto and find a job that actually appeals to me in some minute way… or that is the hope anyway. I find the options somewhat less than appealing, since the former means being miserable on a daily basis at work at the latter means being miserable on a daily basis at home. However, as Dan says, there really isn’t any point in worrying about it now, since what will happen will happen and there isn’t a whole lot to be done about it.

Things are quiet here at the clinic. As I mentioned, Ramadan has started, so there are much fewer patients coming in during the day. The health workers have been out supervising a study that the Government of India is funding to determine whether or not the water-affected people should get free health care. Unfortunately the study is being conducted by some group that has absolutely no interest in seeing justice for the water-affected people, and so they are doing a terrible job of it. One of the health workers from Sambhavna who has been sent to observe them doing the survey has been secretly recording footage of them on her cell phone, and it is absolutely appalling how little care they are taking in the study. The questionnaire is seven pages long, and the surveyors sometimes only take a few minutes to fill out the whole thing; they guess people’s ages, they skip entire sections and sometimes pages, they don’t bother to weigh or measure people properly. At one point a woman complained that she has cancer, and the doctor just ignored her and took her blood pressure and said she was healthy. Anyway, I’ve been slowly finishing the pamphlets on breast self-exam and menopause. I had a good meeting with the two gynecologists earlier this week, who were very helpful in telling me which changes should be made for the BSE pamphlet. Now I have to track down the health care workers to get them to take a look at, and translate the menopause pamphlet. At any rate, most of my days have been spent trying to colour in the pamphlets, or attempt to draw things that look like people, which is becoming less than stimulating. So when I complain of boredom, that is why.

I think that I would much prefer to be out and about, trying to do things within the community and interacting with people, but the whole Hindi thing makes that somewhat impossible. I have started up in my Teach Yourself Hindi book again, in a vain attempt to understand verbs and their conjugations. It turns out that my Hindi has actually improved since I got here, and I have added a number of words and phrases to my vocabulary that I hadn’t even noticed, so that is promising. Although I am still a far cry from actually understanding more than about 3% of what people say to me.

Apparently this week has been a festival for the Hindu god Ganesh (that’s the one that looks like and elephant, and therefore the only one I recognize). There are these little makeshift temples set up all around the city for him, particularly in the Chowk, but also in people’s homes and front yards. In fact, Vikki and little Vishal’s family has one in their front yard! You know how I know that? Because there is also a set of loudspeakers attached to the temple thingie, which blare music until about twelve o’clock every night. All I can say is thank god it has cooled off enough that we can sleep with the windows closed, because it noisier than living next to a bunch of frat boys for about two hours every night! Anyway, the festivities are supposed to be over in a couple of days, so that will be the end of that… until next week when there is a similar celebration for another god and people will set up statues of him.

Sareeta wanted us to come and visit her house on Wednesday, in particular to see her family’s own little Ganesh temple. I couldn’t help but have visions of myself sinking waist-deep into the mud outside of her house after the heavy rains the night before. So, in an effort not to be led around by the hand and treated like a particularly incompetent two-year-old, I wore my trusty Chuck Taylor’s for the walk there. I haven’t worn anything but flip-flops in so long I forgot how much easier it is to walk in actual shoes! Anyway, I succeeded in not sinking this time, and anyhow most of the mud had dried up since the previous night. It turned out that, as usual, Sareeta had plans for us that she had not bothered to divulge before the trip to her house, so we were lead to the Chowk on something of a hunt for the dozens of Ganesh temples set up all throughout. I have decided that I do not like having my hand held, and am becoming increasingly annoyed at the various people who try to impose this on me, particularly when I feel as though I am being led around like a dog on a leash, which despite the fact that she is eight years younger than me, Sareeta manages to make me feel like. Luckily Prabjit was there to take over the hand-holding duty, so I was off the hook this time. I’ve noticed that it is a form of affection between friends of the same sex here in India (although heaven forbid that a couple of the opposite sex hold hands. They’d probably be stoned to death). But when I first arrived here I couldn’t figure out how there were so many openly gay men walking around everywhere holding each other’s hands until I realized that all of these guys were just friends. Or I guess that’s the official line anyway. I wonder if there is a word for “gay” in Hindi. There isn’t in Mandarin/Cantonese. Anyway, I don’t like having my hand held, it annoys the crap out of me, especially when I’m keeping watch for motorbikes and rickshaws flying towards me from every direction, and have to be able to jump out of the way at a seconds notice.

After the first five or six Ganesh temples Prabjit, Derek and I had seen enough Ganeshes, but Sareeta and her friend Pinkie were ready to Ganesh-spot all night long if need be. When it started raining around eight o’clock we insisted that we had to go back to the clinic for a late night meeting with Rachna. It turned out that the guard had thought that we weren’t coming back to the clinic for dinner, so he had sent Shanti Bhai on her way. We went directly back to Manohaur (which is right next to where we had just left) to eat. Dinner on the whole was very good, as usual. I had my first plate of french fries since I got here, and they weren’t half bad. Unfortunately, as I was snacking on a few final pieces of vegetable kote to finish up, I didn’t notice as I “snacked” on an entire chunk of a chili that had been fried up with the kote. As soon as it hit my poor, weak, British stomach, I was quite sure that it was going to be rejected and spewed back onto my plate, so I looked ill and made for the bathroom. Fortunately I didn’t vomit up my perfectly good dinner, but I’ll think twice before I eat the kote again.

Earlier this week I put on a pair of pants that had one of those furry caterpillars lodged in the hem. I didn’t notice it until I was downstairs eating breakfast and my ankle had this rather urgent burning feeling and I looked down to see that the stupid thing had embedded about a zillion little spores into my ankle. I tried washing them off, but to no avail, so my ankle continued to have this unpleasant burning/itching sensation all day. At about three o’clock I asked Dr. Jay what the hell was wrong with it, quite convinced that it was only a matter of time before my foot feel off. He laughed at me and told me to go and get an anti-histamine from the medicine counter, which I forgot to take anyway, and I still have the full use of my foot, so don’t worry. However, I now check the inside of my pants every morning, because it could have been much worse if had been somewhere else inside my pants…

Holy shit, we interrupt this broadcast to announce that I have lost almost 20 lbs. since I got here. That is insane. I guess that is what happens when you don’t like what is served to you three meals a day, and you spend the rest of your time sweating and dreaming of real pizza and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of nice, sharp cheddar cheese.

salman's house

Yesterday on our walk we ventured as far as the Chowk, which we had previously always taken a rickshaw to. It turns out that it is about a half hour walk, which really isn’t far at all! I wanted to buy some cloth for a couple of long courtas, as the tailor had been confused by my directions the last time I came in and had made me short courtas instead of long ones. I can’t wear the short ones with my churidad pants, because they look absolutely ridiculous, so there you have it, I am not buying excessive amounts of clothes at all! Okay, maybe a bit more than I need… anyway, I picked out a couple of things, as well as some green fabric to make an entire salwar suit out of, so then I will have three or four “appropriate” outfits that I can wear out and about without the local women asking me “why aren’t you wearing…?”.

I can’t help but notice that everyone absolutely hates it when I wear my hair in little, tiny pigtails, which I find kind of funny. There really is only one acceptable way to wear your hair if you have hit puberty: long, long and longer. My short hair, especially in its pigtail form, is the great amusement to many of the women and children here. The other day Shushma teased me and asked if I had had lice, and that was why I had to cut it all off! Yesterday Shivani’s grandmother came up behind me and pulled the elastics right out of my hair, telling me (in Hindi of course, so I only think this is what she said) that I needed to wear my hair out and long.

I should mention here that yesterday afternoon a guy named Salman showed up at Sambhavna, looking for Derek. Salman is somewhat like Mausam, in the sense that he serves as a sort of welcome-wagon for many of the new volunteers. He was close friends with a few different ones who have been here over the years, and has since decided that all of the volunteers should want to be his very best friend. On my second or third night in Bhopal I went to his house with a number of the other volunteers, since Mel had been hanging out with him a fair bit during her time here. However, Mel also warned me that Salman was extremely jealous and perhaps a little on the creepy side, so I had been avoiding him when he came for visits with Anisha afterwards. This wasn’t hard, since he didn’t seem terribly interested in hanging out with me, so I hadn’t seen him since my first few days here. (Ah yes, with the exception of when he came and brought Anisha an enormous pair of earrings for friendship day). Anyway, it turns out that a past volunteer that Derek knows had sent Salman a letter saying that Derek was here at Sambhavna, and that they should get in touch, so Salman came by yesterday to invite us to dinner.

Salman has a huge, very welcoming and sweet family. He is the eldest of five sisters and four other brothers, as well as some of the kids of his oldest sister, or at least that’s who I think they were. Yesterday was also the first day or Ramadan, so the entire family had been fasting since sunrise that morning. So before dinner was served, we ate a huge snack of fresh fruits (luckily all had been peeled or were peel-able) and sweets. It was pretty interesting to see the traditions. At the beginning of the snack we each ate a date, which is apparently the first thing that you are supposed to eat after a day of fasting. So that was interesting… Anyway, Salman showed us all of the photos of the other volunteers he had befriended, and it quickly became clear to me that he is generally only friends with the male volunteers, which is why he was more interested in Derek. Although he did say “Emily I am very, very sad. Do you know why?”. In my head: “No, but I can guess that it has something to do with the guilt-trip you’re about to lay on me.” “Emily, I am sad because you did not come to visit me all this time you have been at Sambhavna.” Ten points for Emily’s guess. Anyway, I’ve decided that this isn’t going to be something I lose sleep over. Derek can be friends with him, and I’ll try to quietly and politely bow out of that one…

I’ve spent most of the morning reading The Namesake, which is a novel about a Bengali family moving to America, and their eldest son trying to adjust to being the middle ground of the old Bengali ways and the new American ways. It’s strange how well I feel like I can relate to some parts of the book since coming here. One of the things that really struck a chord with me is the feeling of being temporary in a new place, because that’s how I feel here a lot of the time. I just can’t quite imagine moving to a new place forever and always feeling like that. At least my feeling of impermanence will end when I get back to Canada, whereas when you immigrate somewhere permanently you feel temporary for the rest of your life. I think that it makes me understand why Grandma and Grandpa Gibson kept wanting to move back to England, but never really could.

Anyway, we are supposed to be going to Sanchi later this afternoon on Mausam’s bike. I’ve been to Sanchi before, my first weekend here; it’s the ancient Buddhist stupas about an hour outside of Bhopal. Originally Derek and Prabjit were supposed to go with him, but Derek ate some street-vendor food that has made him horribly ill (thereby finally vindicating my strict no-street-food policy), and so I get to go instead!

By the way, I forgot to mention that there are the most adorable little kitten living somewhere in the clinic!! I came across them on Saturday night when I was going back to room for bed, a little later than usual since I had watched a movie. And what did I find in the hallway, but a mother cat and two sweet little kittens. The kittens got scared and ran into the bathroom, so naturally I had to take a photo of one of them... the other one ran out, so thats the picture of the one scrambling down the stairs!! They are soooo cute!

birthday blues and the supermarket

I just finished reading the book “Five Past Midnight in Bhopal” and have decided that it should be on the reading list of every high school and university class. The book recounts the story of the Bhopal tragedy from many perspectives: the survivors, like Ganga Ram who were (and still are) living in the bastees around the Union Carbide plant, the plant’s engineers and designers, the politicians in Bhopal, and the UC executives who decided that cost cutting was more important that human life. I went up to the crow’s nest at Sambhavna to read the final pages of the epilogue, and I couldn’t help but wonder that I was so close to such an immense catastrophe: from the crow’s nest you can see the flare tower that, should there be a leak, was supposed to burn off the MIC. The flare tower had been turned off for maintenance, while all of the other safety measures of the plant had been turned off to save, quite literally, a couple of bucks. You can also see the top of the decaying structure of the plant, left to fester and rot, leaking more poison into the ground water of people too poor to do anything about it.

It is amazing to think that the people written about in the book are real, living, breathing people, some of whom I have met. I couldn’t help but cry when I reached the part of the novel that depicted the horror that people faces when the MIC started to escape the plant. I could feel my own lungs and eyes burning, and I pictured myself running down Berasia road in an attempt to flee the poisonous gases. It makes me wonder how, knowing the injustices of the world, we can sleep at night. Although, as a side note, I slept terribly last night. I woke up a few times to itch my hands, which felt like they had been bitten by a dozen mosquitoes. This morning I had not bites though… maybe it was my own subconscious bubbling through my dreams. Either that or I have malaria.

Work is going very slowly here still, and perhaps that is contributing to my general feeling of malaise. I had sent an email to Diana, the much-loved CIDA intern who was here last year, and she recommended that I set up a volunteer meeting with Rachna to try to get things moving, which has proven to be very effective. To tell the truth though, when the meeting was over I couldn’t help but feel like it had simply been an opportunity for Sathyu to reprimand me for not being productive enough, and then cease to dispense with any advice that might actually enable me to do more work. However, Rachna has had me write up a detailed proposal of what I would like to do with the photography project, which I am optimistic might get things moving a bit on that front.

For the meantime I have been working on a pamphlet about breast self-exam to distribute to women in the bastees. Many of the women are illiterate, so it is important that the pamphlet describe everything using pictures. Unfortunately my drawing skills leave something to be desired, so I hope they can tell what the hell I am drawing. Ritesh, one of the health workers, told me that the pamphlet could be about eight pages long, so I had almost completed that particular task. However, Sathyu took one look at it and said “its only supposed to be on one page”. Sigh. So I started all over again. The health workers seem satisfied with what I have come up with, but they want actual photographs of some of the thing to look for when doing BSE, so that it is clear to the women what the warning signs are. I spent a good chunk of yesterday looking up pictures of breasts on the internet…

Part of my frustration with the work has lead to me being a bit despondent of late I think. Some days I love it here, and feel like I might actually be doing good work, other days, like today, I’m ready to jump on the next flight home, where I can bury my head in the sand and have a hot bath and eat some chicken wings with my beer and/or Diet Coke. Maybe my lack of youthful optimism is part of getting older. For those of you who don’t know, I turned twenty-four on Wednesday. I didn’t really tell too many people around the clinic, because I didn’t want a big fuss made of it by anyone, particularly Ankeeta’s family. When it was Anisha’s birthday they wanted to buy her a cake and have a celebration, but couldn’t afford it, so I though I would try to avoid any repeat scenarios. Instead, Mausam Derek, Prabjit and myself went out to dinner at the illustrious Wind’n’Waves restaurant by the lake.

You may remember Wind’n’Waves from my first few nights here, as it was where we went for Mel’s goodbye dinner. Mausam stopped on his way there and bought me a birthday cake and some flowers, which was extremely sweet. He also sent me a text message the night before my birthday that was extremely sentimental about friendship, which I have learned bears the same sentimentality as in, say, Japan or China: a little over-the-top by Western standards, but very wholesome and sincere. Prabjit got me material to make a proper salwar suit (which I have been avoiding by buying various different fabrics separately instead of buying stuff that matches… people will have to stop asking me where my duppta is!). Derek got me an enormous bottle of Limca (which I have finished), and some cookies that are like Oreos, only better. We had a good time at the restaurant, especially because I got to have a beer! They come in 650ml bottles here, so I split one with Prabjit, but I still felt a little light-headed on the ride home! I must be loosing my tolerance…

Last night we were invited to a pooja by Shushma, who has been working in the canteen with Ankeeta since Paupoo’s recent relapse into drug abuse and idiocy. I’m still not entirely sure which gods were being prayed to and for what reason, but I did glean the following: the girls had been fasting all day in an effort to ensure getting a good husband. The pooja itself was very interesting to watch. There were only women in the room, with the exception of five-year-old Sumit, and another young boy I didn’t recognize (oh yes, and Derek of course!). First the older women painted their feet and the feet of the younger girls with yellow stuff, bordering them with a bright purple paint. Eventually it was decided that Prabjit and I should also partake in this particular practice, so my toenails are still tinted a purply-pink colour. Then about a million little plastic bags were produced, full of incense, flowers, various foods and powders. The woman whose home it was being held in (I didn’t catch her name) decorated and set up a little alter to put a little statue of the gods. Before the Pundit (priest) arrived to perform the actual ceremony, the women got out a drum, and did some rituals with it, which included some chanting and singing. This part peaked my interest, because I thought “how cool would it be if they just did their own pooja and didn’t have a priest?”. Eventually he arrived though, and read some stuff from a book while the women took turns placing various things on the alter (presumably as offerings). There was everything from marigold petals to bangles to milk up there by the time he was done! The incense in the room was overwhelming, and part of the ritual involved several other things burning as well. I caught myself wondering if all this burning of things had any effect on keeping mosquitoes away… Mosquitoes aside, however, the pooja was very interesting to watch. It seemed like it was a real bonding experience for mothers and their marriageable-aged daughters. It was the daughters who were dressed up in their best saris and salwar suits, and who participated in the pooja. Apparently they stay up all night together, and perform the same pooja again four more times throughout the night. And they have to take a shower between each pooja. Anyway, I thought “hey maybe Hinduism is the way to go… n opportunity to pray to whoever you want for whatever you want”. Not that I’m converting, it just seemed like a good way of mother-daughter bonding during those “difficult teenaged years”. I bet Annie would have hated it ☺.

My back pain from lack of exercise in combination with my desperate need to get out of the clinic for a few hours every day has prompted me to go for little walks with Derek and Prabjit every day around dusk. The weather is still pretty hot here, especially in the heat of the day, but since going out after dark can be a bit on the sketchy side, our walks have been late in the afternoon, as the sun starts to set. So far we haven’t made it very far down Berasia Road, but yesterday we came across a SUPERMARKET!! Now, keep in mind that the only North American style stores I have been into here (ie. meaning that they aren’t stalls that you can’t even walk into) are the Sony store, and a clothing store in New Market that is four stories high. So when I say “supermarket” you must grasp the full extent to which this place is a fully North American style market: air conditioning (!), aisles, plastic baskets to load your food into, a produce aisle, prices clearly marked, the whole nine yards. They didn’t really have anything that you can’t get at the markets and protein shops, but it was just such an amazing and incongruous find in the middle of crumbling old Bhopal. I bought a few chocolate bars and a couple of bags of Lay’s chips, one of which is “American Style Cream and Onion,” and tastes shockingly like the real thing!

the (in)famous emily

After the disappointment of not being able to beat open a piñata full of butter on Tuesday, I have other exciting news! I was in a newspaper called the Raj Express on Sunday! There is a picture of me taking a photo of two women looking at the display that we set up In Sambhavna to celebrate the 11th anniversary. I’ll back up a bit and say that on Saturday Sambhavna had organized a bit of a celebration, which they call a “program” here, hence the photographers from the newspaper. They showed a movie about Sambhavna at the beginning, and then there was a somewhat didactic-sounding lecture from one of the doctors in Hindi about malaria. I didn’t understand word of it, but there was a lot of finger-pointing and gesticulating to drive the point home. Afterwards we moved out to the front of the clinic where a tent had been set up, and a group of school children performed some little skits about Sambhavna. It was actually the same group of school children that I had taken photos of in the garden a few weeks ago, if you recall the photos of the little kids in white that I posted a few weeks ago. At any rate, I also didn’t understand any of the skits because they were in Hindi, but fortunately I had been designated the “official photographer” of the day’s events, so I got a front-row seat for the entire show. But I digress, at the end of the day’s activities, I was chatting with the two school-teachers when a couple of guys with cameras asked me to be in some photos. I thought that they were the same photographers who had come with the school on their previous gardening trip, so I obliged in pretending to take some photos. It wasn’t until the next day when Mausam showed me the photo of myself in the paper that I realized that the photographers hadn’t been from the school!

So that was fun… although I was perhaps roped into giving someone English-with-a-North-American-accent lessons. One of the school teachers spoke English and the other didn’t, so the one that spoke English was translating for the other one. Eventually the non-English one, who had been asking all sorts of questions about whether I had made any friends yet, phoned her fiancé and I was told that he wanted to practice speaking English with a North American accent. It was very awkward. I was hoping that they would just forget about it if I seemed vague, but the cell phone numbers were exchanged. Anyway, he has called a couple of times and I just haven’t answered. Euch, awkward. The kids are coming back to do their skits again on Wednesday, so I’ll have to think up a pleasant excuse for not wanting to spend my time giving ESL lessons.

We had dinner at Mausam’s house on Sunday night, which was really good. I had his mom and his sister the last time that we were there, but this time we got to meet his grandma and his dad as well. Mausam is this little skinny guy, and his dad is about three times his size. Its kind of funny because his father is this big man ho works as a guard at the jail, but he was so shy with us in his living room! He made Mausam come out first and ask if it was okay that his dad came out to meet us. Anyway, I just thought that it was very sweet and funny.

We had a fun time getting back from Mausam’s house as well. As I mentioned before, he lives on the outskirts of the city, so we took a city bus there and back. So on the ride back I decided to take some photos of the bus ride. We had to change buses at one point, and the second bus full of people were highly amused that there was this crazy white lady photographing them in the bus… I think that I thoroughly embarrassed Prabjit, Derek and Mausam, but what the hell, I had a good time! Unfortunately we all felt uncomfortable saying no to the drinking water at Mausam’s house. I don’t know why, because I haven’t accepted water that I don’t know for sure isn’t filtered from anywhere else, it just seemed extra-rude for some reason. So both Prabjit and I had mildly upset stomachs last night and this morning. It wasn’t too bad though… Derek wasn’t sick at all though, which made me think that perhaps it wasn’t the water at all, just the extra-spicy subjie (vegetable dish).

Today we ended up going back to Orya bastee so that Prabjit could meet Gangaram and check things out. When we arrived he took Prabjit and Derek on a tour of the garden, which I had already had on a previous visit, so I just hung out in the schoolyard and took photos of some of the little girls that were following us around. It actually turned out really well, since there was just a small group of them, and the older one and I were able to communicate through my broken-down Hindi. It was pretty fun. Then we asked Gangaram to see some of the rest of the bastee, so we went on a little walk up the street. We got to see Gangaram’s house, too, which was fun except for his wife was there and she scares me. She was the one that kept yelling at me in Hindi because I wasn’t doing the traditional dance properly. This time I got the sense that she was thoroughly annoyed at me because I’m not serious enough and I’m always joking around. I imagine that in her head she is thinking something along the lines of “this white kid has no pride”. It’s hard to have pride when you don’t speak the language or understand the customs and you spend your days being the butt of jokes though… Anyway, we had a good visit, that was only about an hour and a half, so that was nice.

Tomorrow there isn’t much going on. I’m thinking about taking Jeannie’s advice about making photo booklets instead of drawing booklets about breast cancer and self-exam. I’ll have to talk the idea over with the health workers, but I think that that is a good way of combining my talents in a useful and productive way!! So thank you to Jeannie for the idea!

In other news, Mom and Dad have been scrambling around trying to make arrangements for the visit in December. It turns out that they are coming the peak of peak season, so the travel agent had warned them that things are really booked up a lot of places already!! Ak! Anyway, there are a million places to visit, so I’m sure that we can find some second choices if need be… and I think that is about it for now.

a note about photos...

a quick note about photos: much to the disappointment of my dear sister, i have had to convert to photobucket.com for photo storage. the webpicassa program just didn't allow enough storage space, and i have filled up my account yet again! i know that photobucket.com's interface isn't as nice, but it has the biggest storage space! anyway, the biggest annoyance of it is that it doesn't seem to show the photo album that is linked to the blog entry, instead all you see is a narrow box underneath the title of the posting... so if you click on that it will take you to the appropriate album within photobucket. if you are confused, email me.

lakeside photos and krishna's birthday

On Monday morning I got up bright and early to help finish decorating the clinic for the anniversary. Devaker had bought some marigold strings, so Biju broke them apart and made them into one long string up around the entrance of the clinic. It looked very pretty… In the afternoon I ended up going to Arushi to take more photos. At first I took some photos of the kids in the school room, which was really fun. This one little guy with downs syndrome started to sing and act out these Bollywood songs every time I took a photo of him. It was so incredibly cute! It turned out that they wanted to go to the lake to take photos of some of the kids! So we drove back down to the lake in their van, with one little guy in a wheelchair and four blind kids. We took photos of each of the kids feeding the geese, riding horses, in a boat, and looking out over the lake. Some of them turned out really, really well, so I’ll be sure to post them. It’s really amazing how much the little blind kids are able to move around on their own, though. This one little guy learned English by listening to the BBC radio, and can walk around places that he’s never even been without a stick or anything. He’s really pretty amazing! The lake trip was fun though, and I think that it was a fun for them to get to go on an outing as well.

The next day was a festival for Krishna’s (a Hindu god) birthday. We had been invited to Meera’s house for the celebrations, but Mausam also wanted us to come with him to his house. It turns out that the prison that Mausam’s dad works for opens its doors to the public once a year, on Krishna’s birthday. Everyone is allowed in to see a film and some speeches and stuff, so Mausam wanted us to come to see that, too. Unfortunately the prison guards stopped us at the door, suspicious white people that we are. Mausam had to talk to them and tell them that we were with him before they would let us in. They wouldn’t let us bring our cameras unfortunately, which is really too bad. The prison was really dressed up and decorated. People were only allowed into one big hall of a room, where the superintendent of the prison was making a short speech. The superintendent actually decided that he wanted to know why there were two white people in his audience, so we were asked to go and sit next to him. He asked us where we were from, and asked us if we wanted to say something to the audience; we politely declined. Anyway, we weren’t allowed to see any of the other parts of the prison, so we left to go to Meera’s house at that point.

Meera’s house wasn’t terribly exciting. We quicky realized that we had been invited so that Meera could use my camera to take photos of her sisters tying Rakhi bracelets on her brothers. Apparently Rakhi actually lasts eight days, and Sunday happened to be the last night of the festival as well. We each got a Rakhi bracelet and some red holy powder put on our foreheads as well, so that was fun. It turned out that the festivities for Krishna’s birthday didn’t start until 11pm. Considering I am usually falling asleep at about that time, and Prabit was still jetlagged, we decided to bow out at about ten. Apparently the Krishna festivities involve a giant piñata-style thing filled with butter that the kids bash down with sticks, and then everyone eats the butter from inside it. I’m sure there is some perfectly logical reason for this particular ritual, but I’m not sure what exactly the reason is. At any rate, Mausam told us that the bus out there didn’t run that late, and we would have a hard time getting and auto, so he drove us back to the clinic is two batches Derek first and then Prabjit and I.

When we got back we realized that the internt hadn’t been working for a while, and it continued to malfuntion into the next day. Having gone to the Chowk to get Prabjit material for new salwar suits and to the photo store in New Market for me the previous day, we were a bit bored sitting around the clinic all day without the internet. We decided that we would go and check out Jehan Numa Palace, the ritziest hotel in Bhopal, since they have free wireless internet. Since Mom and Dad were interested in staying there I got to check out one of the rooms as well. The whole place was pretty shwanky, and it certainly was nice considering how much it cost, by Canadian standards anyway. It was weird to be in such luxury after spending so much time in the poor areas and the bastes here in Bhopal. It almost makes you forget what a lot of the luxuries are… but I sure am looking forward to having a meal there eventually! Apparently they make Western-style food there that tastes almost like the real thing! I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but as you can tell, I’m more than a little excited about it☺

Yesterday we started watching a Bollywood movie that we bought in New Market earlier in the week Even though the plot was pretty easy to figure out, I was definitely glad that there were subtitles (badly done as they were), because after the first hour and a half, I was getting a bit bored. Bollywood movies are always about a million years long, so even though we watched about two hours of it, there is at least an hour that we were too tired to watch last night. We also registered Prabjit with the local authorities, which turned into a bit more of an adventure than we would have liked. Derek cam with us, and I made the idiotic mistake of introducing him as “another Sambhavna volunteer”. They immediately wanted to know where he was staying, etc., etc. There are all sorts of restrictions about different sorts of visas when you are coming into the country, and on a tourist one you aren’t supposed to be doing volunteer work… thus I shouldn’t have mentioned to the official that Derek, with his tourist Visa, was doing work at Sambhavna. Anyway, the don’t appear to be following up about it, so I’m not too worried.

Today has been pretty eventful so far. I have been working on a pamphlet for breast self-exam for women in the bastes to use. We were trying to get it printed up for tomorrow, but the gynecologist had a look at it and wanted the text changed, so they won’t be done for another while. Tomorrow they are having a “program” as they say here for the anniversary of the clinic. I’ve been officially been put in charge of taking photos of the festivities here tomorrow, so I’m glad that I can be of some practical use. After spending the day trying to get things translated into Hindi and feeling rather useless, its good to know that I’ll be able to do something myself tomorrow!

For now, Prabjit and I are thinking that maybe we should go and take a walk for some exercise, but not much else going on. Its already dark, which makes it hard to walk around here…

By the way only five days left until my birthday!!

boat rides and autorickshaws

Wednesday I ventured back to the Chowk to have mehindi done by Sareeta’s “big mother’s” sister. By the way, I discovered that her name is Sunita, and her son’s name is PJ, which is helpful, because I was finding it embarrassing to refer to her as a “big mother”. Derek was quite bored after about the third hour of mehendi time, and was ready to go. She did an amazingly detailed job though. I wish that I had taken some pictures of it to post, alas, I didn’t, and most of it has washed off now. Sunita’s daughter, Perna, did take a couple of photos of it though, so maybe sometime I’ll be able to get them from her via email. I’m still hoping that I’ll be able to see some of her designs for clothing as well.

So on Thursday, I went to Chingari Trust’s school to take photos of some of the kids born with disabilities. The mothers were all pretty welcoming to me and Mausam, who came with me to translate. He asked the mothers the kids ages and names, and wrote everything down, which I think helped people to think that we were “official” in some capacity. Anyway, the power was off in the building, which was a bit of a pain, because a lot of the photos turned out a little bit burry or whatever. Anyway, I’ll try to post some of them as soon as I can get the Photobucket account up and running again. My Web Picassa is, yet again, full, and I can’t seem to get any of the other photo-sharing programs to upload with any efficiency.

I picked Prabjit, the other CIDA intern, up at the airport later on Thursday night. Masaum took me on his bike, which was fun. Prabjit looked a little frazzled and tired when we got there, so I think that it was good that we picked her up… I know that I felt relieved when I finally made it to Sambhavna after all of my many misadventures in Delhi. Anyway, she is really nice, and we get along very well. I even discovered that she shares m love of George Stromboulopolous (sp?)!! How exciting is that?

On Friday Sathyu asked us to come to the weekly staff meeting that happens every Friday. He said that now that we had Prabjit to translate for us, we should start coming to them (they’re in Hindi by the way). The meeting was a little (ok, a lot) on the long side, especially since I couldn’t really understand much of what was going on. Prabjit isn’t fluent in Hindi, her family is Punjabi, which I guess is similar, but not exactly the same. So she was having a hard time translating every detail of the meeting for me.

Eventually we extricated ourselves from the endless meeting, and went to Arushi to take some more photos of the kids. It turned out that they had quite the adventures planned out for us. Thy took us to a place called Bhopal Heart, which has booths set up from most (if not all) of the states in India, selling things that are traditional to their states. They wanted photos taken there because Arushi had had he plans of the building changed so that there are wheelchair ramps throughout. Anyway, one of the women who works at Arushi (whos name I don’t know) insisted that she buy me this necklace that I had been eyeing. I felt bad accepting anything from them, but she was insistent to the point that it was embarrassing to say no. The photos turned out really well, so I’ll be sure to get them posted, too!

The clinic had its eleventh anniversary on Sunday, although it is closed, so on Saturday we decorated for Monday. There are about a million posters stored up in the library, so Prabjit and I helped Biju and Jothi (the yoga instructor) to patch up the various holes, dust them off and hang them up around the clinic. I think it looks very colourful downstairs now, even if the posters are hung up on privacy curtains taken from disused examination rooms… in the afternoon a former doctor from the clinic came to talk to the staff about early detection of cancer. He spoke fluent English, but since his talk was mostly in Hindi, I didn’t get everything that was going on. Luckily the PowerPoint presentation was in English, so I was at least able to follow that. I asked him about the HPV vaccine, ad whether or not it has been approved here. He said that it hadn’t been, and that people weren’t really all that excited by its prospect, since it was so costly. I hadn’t really thought about it before in the context of a developing country, but even in North America it’s ridiculously expensive, so I can’t imagine even a fraction of the population here being able to afford it.

After that we trekked up to New Market to get a cell phone sorted out for Prabjit (she says thank you for the phone by the way Casey). I was quite proud of myself; despite getting slightly lost in the market trying to find the cell phone shop, I felt that I was very efficient in sorting things out, and getting all of the paperwork together. When we came back to Qazi camp we went next door to pay Ankeeta a visit. The power was off in the houses, so it was hard to make it through the muddy back yard. It was fun to sit in the dark house though… although it did make me notice how difficult it is to communicate when no one can see you. Generally I rely a lot of hand gestures and exaggerated expressions for people to understand me. Not being able to do that meant that our conversation was a little more limited than usual…

Sunday was quiet for most of the morning, but I had promised Sareeta that I would go to the Chowk with her again in the afternoon. I wasn’t entirely sure what we were doing in the Chowk, and because of our limited communications I wasn’t able to figure out very easily, so we just had to wait and see what we were doing there! It turned out that she was taking us to her Auntie’s house once more. It was nice to see them again, although I think that we may have interrupted them by arriving unexpectedly. PJ was in the middle of a shower, and it looked like Sunita was cleaning or cooking or something. So we didn’t stay too long in the house. Sareeta still wanted yet more Rakhi bracelets on her way out of the Chowk, so we made a bunch of stops for that as well.

In the evening, Mausam came to take us to the lake for a bit. We ended up renting a paddleboat for half an hour and putting around the corner of the lake, which was nice. It reminded me a lot of the Toronto harbour, with a big cruise ship with music and dancing in the distance. The lakefront is really pretty, too, with some of the nicer restaurants and kind of touristy stuff. It’s almost North American… almost. Anyway, we had to rush back to the Clinic because Vishal had been reminding us daily about our promise to come and eat chicken and drink beer at their house. So, at about nine o’clock we showed up at their house. I quickly realized, however, that we were definitely not being made dinner. Derek and I ended up having a conversation in French to discuss what we should do. We ended up staying for chai, ad then excused ourselves, discussing our learned lesson about dinner invitations on the way home. We ended up going to Manohar for diner instead, which was delicious and wonderful, so all was not lost!

On a side note about Sundays activities, we were twice embroiled in the disputes with rickshaw drivers. The first time was on the way back from the Chowk. We were stopped at Sambhavna, and Prabjit paid the driver with a Rs. 50/-. She was asking how much more we needed to give in order to send Sareeta to her house as well, and then he started to insist that she hadn’t given him anything! Anyway, half the neighbourhood came to watch the dispute, and in the end there was nothing we could do. We walked out to the rickshaw stand at the entrance to Qazi camp. All of our usual drivers wanted an outrageous price to drive the few blocks, so Sareeta ended up flagging down another guy and getting a reasonable price from him. However, it doesn’t end there! When we went to get a rickshaw to go to the lake a while later, we got into an auto before we reached the auto stand at the entrance, and then the fat mean driver (I don’t know his name) flagged down our driver, looking rather annoyed. When our driver slowed down, the other driver jumped into the rickshaw and jammed his foot onto the brake. He started yelling in Hindi at our driver, and he screamed back! Then, to break up the fight, I started yelling at them to cut it out! It was mayhem! It turned out that the fat, mean driver was claiming that we were his rightful fare, because he had been waiting for us all afternoon long! The other driver eventually conceded and we had to take the fat, mean driver’s auto to the lake. Anyway, we were thoroughly annoyed, because the fat, mean driver always charges us too much, and now he’s scaring away the other auto drivers and treating us like we’re his property! I wanted to tell him that we aren’t taking his auto anymore because he’s mean to everyone and he over-charges us way too much, but I didn’t know enough Hindi… so we’re still stuck with him…

anyway, there is more to report, but i'm not finished writing it all up yet, so... perhaps later this evening....

no internet

alas, the internet at sambhavna appears to have crapped out in major way. no one has been able to connect in a few days, even when plugged in, so i'm sorry but no blog for now. i am currently sitting at the fanciest hotel in bhopal, jehan numa palace. its fancy even by western standards!! anyway, they have free wireless internet out on the patio, so i braving the barrage of malarial mosquitoes to write this!! at any rate, keep sending me emails, because i love opening my inbox after a few days and finding lots of new messages... it makes me feel popular:)

next time i come here i'll be sure to write out an entry beforehand so that i can post it!