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.