more malaria and marriage madness

This past week has been a series of ups and downs that is making me slowly lose my mind. I have been homesick a lot, I think mostly because I’ve been sick in bed, feeling weak and tired, so I’ve had nothing to do or think about but coming home again. On the other hand, I’ve been helping to reserve hotels and make some travel arrangements for mom and dad when they come, which is peaking my interest in traveling once again. I think that at this point that is what I am more interested in doing in terms of my time here. The frustration of feeling like I’m not actually doing much to help or to make a difference has really hit me hard the past week or so. Now that I am feeling better from my bout of malaria, I’m just looking forward to the part of my trip that involves the traveling. Too bad that is still another three months away…

I went to my first Indian wedding this weekend. It was a two-day affair of absolutely mayhem. I’m not entirely sure whether I actually enjoyed it or not, I’m still processing the insanity of it all. I’m not exactly sure whose wedding it was that we were at. We were invited by Ries, one of the rickshaw drivers who always waits at the edge of Qazi camp on Berasia Road, and I think that it was his brother-in-law that was getting married, but we’ll never know for sure. Anyway, we were told to meet Ries’s at his house, where we went to dinner last week for Eid, and that they would take us to the venue on Saturday nights. Well, Ries lives on the other side of Berasia Road, where I a not so familiar with the streets. We were headed in what I thought was the right direction, and rounded a bend to see somewhere in ballpark of two hundred men dancing in the street to music pumping out of loudspeakers on a truck. All at once, every face in the crowd turned and faced our little group, with me at the front. And then we were descended upon like vultures to a carcass. Every guy in the street surrounded us to ask us questions and say hello, but mostly just to stare with the most unabashed intensity.

At first I wasn’t entirely convinced that we were in the right place at all, since we seemed to have stumbled upon an enormous street party, and there wasn’t a familiar face in sight. After a few minutes though, there was a ruckus on the street behind us, and when I turned around I saw the groom approaching on a large white horse. At that point a semi-hysterical Ries jumped out from somewhere shoving us next to the horse so that our photo could be taken with the groom on his horse. Men were jumping around like Mexican jumping beans, shooting prays of party foam, and showering the crowd in sparkly confetti. After being sufficiently stared and photographed for about twenty minutes, all six of us were ushered into a Honda civic decorated with ribbons and marigolds. The car lined up behind the truck with the sound system, so we got to watch all of the men bump and grind with one another behind the speakers.

We were moving along at a snails pace, but I expected that we would speed up once we got out to Berasia Road again. However, we didn’t move much more once we got to Berasia as we inched along with the throng of pelvic thrusting dudes in front of us, setting off fireworks at regular intervals along the street. Our car stopped numerous times, and we were told to get out a couple of times so that we could watch the fireworks. As we stood about ten feet from where they were setting off long rows of cracking fireworks, I was a little nervous that a) I was going to go deaf from the blasts and b) either myself or one of the guys setting off the fireworks were going to get their face blown off. Eventually, Derek, Aio, Prabjit and I got into the car with Salman’s younger brother, Azmat, while Ruskin and Eurig were shuffled off into an open jeep of young men. We crawled along the street for about two and a half hours before we actually made it to the wedding reception. The whole procession was absolutely insane, since most of the guys who had been dancing had packed themselves three to a motorcycle, and were following the sound system with great reverie.

Once we arrived at the actually cite of the wedding, Prabjit and I were let to a separate area that was just for the women, where, once again, we were descended upon by everyone curious to know why there was a foreigner at the wedding. Although, after being stuck in a procession with a hundreds of gyrating men I was somewhat relieved to find out that there were also women at the wedding, the women were perhaps even more overwhelming than the men. Ries’ sister-in-law dragged me around by the arm, and up onto the stage where the bride-to-be was sitting with her eyes downcast, looking a lot like she was about to slit her wrists. I sat for a minute in silence, no sure whether I should say something to her or not, since no one else was talking to her, and then blurted out “congratulations?” with a confused smile. I saw her eyes flicker up at me as she tried to repress a smile, and I figured that my work here was done ☺ Melanie told me that the tradition in India is that the sadder the bride looks on her wedding day, the happier the marriage is supposed to be. I think it is also supposed to be symbolic of her being sad about leaving her parents’ home and family. Anyway, call me culturally insensitive, but I thought that it was the most insane thing ever. After that we were lead to a tent full of house wares and furniture, which I was told were “wedding gifts” (read: dowry according to Prabjit) to which I responded something along the lines of “Oh, isn’t that nice”.

Salman’s family was there, and his mother tried her best to protect us from the throng of women obsessed with introducing me to every member of their family and general fawning over the angreez. Very quickly after being introduced to the bride, we were lead to a tent over on the groom’s side, where all the men were hanging out, to eat dinner. We were pretty much the last people to arrive, and therefore the last people to eat, so I had some slightly cold rice and aloo curry with a puri, while being talked at by the extremely nervous brother of the groom. He was obviously wanted to impress everyone at the wedding, and felt particularly compelled to welcome us whities to the ceremony. About a minute into our conversation he told me that I was “doing good work here with the backwards people in India”… to which I responded “thank you,” and “I think” under my breath. He also insisted on telling us about fifty times that we were “lightening up the occasion” while deliberately turning his back to Prabjit while he said this.

At this point it was about one-thirty at night, so Ries told us that he would arrange for us to take a car home again. We milled around the outside of the venue (which was basically a large tent in a field) until a battered white Ambassador pulled up, and we all piled in. The drive home on the empty night streets took about five minutes in contrast to two-and-a-half hours that it took to get there. Also, I would point out that we spent less than an hour at the wedding itself. We missed the actual ceremony, which apparently took another two hours, since Salman’s mother told us that she was there until three-thirty in the morning. Prabjit told me afterwards that the first night of the wedding is about the bride’s departure from her family, while the second night is about celebrating the newlyweds joining, which might explain the whole procession thing about our arrival. At any rate, we arrived back at Sambhavna slightly after two in the morning, and, speaking for myself anyway, half insane from the evening’s events.

Now, the second night of the wedding Salman’s mom had invited us over to their house so that she could help us to put on our sari’s properly. We went over at seven o’clock, since the evening’s festivities were to start at eight instead of ten. It took the better part of an hour for Salman’s mom and younger sister to mummify both Prabjit and I in our saris, which made me realize why so many women wear salwar suits instead. I wasn’t entirely convinced I actually looked good at the end of it all, either, since I felt like I was about three times my actual width from all of the material wrapped around me. Salaman’s mom also put some large white costume jewelry on me as well, so that I looked like a proper lady for the wedding. We spent another hour waiting for the rickshaws to arrive to drive us there, and finally piled into three rickshaws and sped off to a different place that the previous night. Again, it was basically a huge open field fenced in by white cloth, with separate entrances for men and women.

Now, I had thought that there were a lot of people at the first evening’s celebration, but that was nothing compared to the number of people who were at the second night! I would have guestimated that there was somewhere in the ballpark of five hundred men women and children happily chowing down on mutton biryani, pani puri and a variety of other things. Being overly cautious of buffet food in general, I insisted on having veg food with Prabjit, so after a slight tug-of-war with Ries’ pushy sister-in-law about when I would have my photo taken with the bride and groom (they shared a stage this evening), Prabjit and I were lead over to an empty corner where the veg food was being served. It being a Muslim wedding I suppose that most of the guests were Muslim, so the veg buffet was pretty much deserted. We actually ate in relative peace, and were then lead over to the bride and groom to have our photos taken with them and the rest of the family.

After that we all piled into a rickshaw and made in home relatively early, or at least compared with the previous evening. Eurig, Prabjit and I had a few beers while discussing the evening’s events. Unfortunately, I think the residual malaria or possibly the med made the alcohol an unpleasant combination, and I have spent all of today feeling horribly depressed an sad. Note to self: no more alcohol for at least another week, and hopefully then my liver will have had a chance to recover from the malaria…

In other news, Aio also has malaria, although he seems to be coping with it pretty well. Salman, too, has malaria, and I found out about and hour ago that Dr. Quaiser, the allopathic doctor who prescribed my chloroquine, also has malaria. I guess that it is going around.

malaria fun!

Well, I apparently have malaria. Humph. Lucky for me I seem to have either an extremely mild strain of it, or the anti-malarials that I was taking are helping to keep the full effects of it at bay. In fact, I would say that it is only by complete accident that I even found out that I have it. Vikas phoned on Sunday night to find out if we were interested in seeing a movie, but I told him that I was feeling a little under the weather, and that I had a bit of a fever, so I was going to pass. Vikas phoned Dr. Jai, they ayruvedic doctor here, and he insisted that I have a malaria test the next day, even though I felt quite a bit better. So go figure, I tested positive for vivax malaria, one of the less dangerous strains! Anyway, I’ve been feeling shitty on and off since Sunday, although not in any extreme way. From what I have heard from everyone else who has had malaria, you feel absolutely terrible, like you are dying, when you are sick with it, so I can’t help but wonder why I don’t feel too bad. Anyway, I phoned Dan last night, and apparently he is feeling far worse than I am with some sort of flu-y cold. Poor thing!

The past week has mostly consisted of eating giant meals at people’s homes and Indian Coffee house, which we are completely addicted to. Last Wednesday we went to Sareeta’s house for her fifteenth birthday party. It was very sweet, a lot of the neighbourhood boys were there dancing up a storm. It was pretty funny to watch these little guys do these totally over-sexualized dances, pelvic-thrusting dances with the utmost of sincerity. Thursday night we ended up going to Indian Coffee House for dinner yet again, so that was slightly less eventful. Friday, however, Rashida Bee, who runs Chingari Trust invited us over to her house for a belated Eid dinner. We ended up talking business a bit as well, which was just fine, since I have been eager to do some more work for them for a while. It turns out that they already have fourteen interviews with gas and water affected people translated into English, and they are really eager to get them up on the website. My idea is to read through the interviews and try to find some of the families that wouldn’t mind me taking their photos to put up on the website. I could also, with Prabjit, do some more interviews with other families if we have enough time and there is a need for it.

Rashida Bee’s family are extremely sweet. She lives with her husband, her brother-in-law and his seven children. Her four sisters all live in the neighbourhood though, and they all came over to join in the fun. When dinner was over, everyone just hung out in the living room together, laughing and talking. One of the brother’s seven kids was this extremely sweet, absolutely adorable little boy who had been born with some sort of problem with his feet as a result of the water contamination. His feet have grown so that they are curved, almost completely underneath his body, and his legs are just skin and bone, with no muscle. He can’t talk at all, but he seems to understand a lot of what is going on around him, and makes gestures and little cries to communicate. The best part of the night, though, was when he came into the room, the first thing he did was to crawl over to me, climb into my lap and give me a bone-crushing hug. I’m not sure exactly why, but he seemed to take a shine to me, and spent a good hour alternately hugging me, and showing me some of the simple things that he had learned how to do – like making a ball out of a scrap of paper. Anyway, I left feeling very good about life in general, and even more so about the project that I want to do for Chingari Trust. I find Rashida Bee a very inspiring person, as she always speaks about the importance of women in struggles for justice on a global level. She told us (through Prabjit’s translation) that she has been all over the world, Africa, Europe, Asia, America, and she sees that women are held down in different ways in all of these places. I think that it is absolutely incredible that a woman with barely any education and so few resources has done so much with herself, and becomes such a spokesperson on an international scale.

In terms of work, I also spoke to Sathyu about my project ideas for the Health Workers on Saturday, and he was enthusiastic about all of them. The Health Workers wanted to tools to show women in the bastees how to check for signs of cervical cancer using acetic acid, how to do BSE, ad to explain the different causes, symptoms and cures for abnormal vaginal discharge. Essentially what I had though was to make a model of a woman from the waist down out of paper mache, and with a piece of rubber in the crotch to simulate a vagina. Then, I would also build a cervix out of paper mache so that the women could practice using a speculum to open up the vagina, and looking at the cervix. The second idea was essentially to make a female torso and arms, with a space left for a breast made out of two balloons – one inside the other. The inner balloon would have sand in it, and the outer one water, which I think would somewhat accurately simulate the feeling of a breast. That way the Health Workers can show the women how to do BSE, and get them to practice. The third thing is the discharge, the idea for which I just got out of a book called Helping Health Workers Learn. Basically, I’m going to make a few puzzles with each of the different types of vaginal discharge, the symptoms and some easy cures. Each puzzle will be of a different cause of abnormal discharge, so that way the women will figure out which types of discharge require which treatment! So fun…

In other news, we have been invited to our first wedding on Saturday AND Sunday evenings! The rickshaw drivers who always stand at the edge of Qazi camp invited us to their younger brother’s wedding, which should be fun. I have been waiting for an excuse like this to buy myself a really fancy sari, so I am tickled that this gives me the excuse. I’ve already looked at a bunch of stores in both Chowk market and this other market that Mausam took us to on Monday afternoon. I haven’t found anything that I absolutely love yet, but I am going to go to New Market and look in the expensive store operated by the Madhya Pradesh government to see what they have. The other times I have been in there I have noticed some absolutely gorgeous saris in styles that I haven’t seen in the Chowk or other markets. So wish me luck, those of you have been shopping with me know that I can take about a millennium deciding on what I want, and I’ll refuse to buy anything that I’m not sure about☺

I don’t have too much else to report right now. It’s only six weeks until my mom and dad arrive! Yay! I’m really looking forward to seeing them and getting to do some traveling with them… and then after that its only another few weeks until Andrea gets here!! Woo hoo!

eiding and more eiding

As of today, I have officially been in Bhopal for three months. It doesn’t really feel like it has been so long since I arrived here, but then, when I think back at all I have seen and done over the months, it feels like much longer.

The weather is finally starting to cool off to what I would consider an acceptable temperature. The heat of the day, in the afternoon, is still fairly warm, but nothing compared to the heat and humidity that I experienced when I first arrived. The monsoons are officially over, I suppose as of last month, and now it is dry and dusty here all of the time. I looked on the internet, and apparently Bhopal has only an average rainfall of a few days a month, except during the monsoon. I can’t say I mind, so long as the weather doesn’t get so hot again while I am here (which it is not supposed to).

We have another new volunteer, a Swiss-German guy named Aio. As per usual, Sathyu didn’t tell anyone that Aio was coming, most likely he completely forgot. However, just before dinner on Thursday night, Dr. Jai announced to Prabjit and I that there was a new volunteer in the boy’s dorm. We all crowded into the room and asked him a million questions, and just generally hassled him until we were ready to go and eat dinner. He was very patient with my hundred-miles-an-hour talking, so I think that he has passed the test, and we can be friends now. Just kidding Aio…

On Friday night we went to see a Bollywood movie with a huge troupe of people, which was actually really fun. I had been reluctant to go to an actual Bollywood film in the theater, mostly because they are never shorter that about three hours, and if it was as boring as some of them are, then I might have had to try to sleep through the entire thing. The whole night turned out to be quite fun though. We went out to Indian Coffee House for dinner, where I am quickly never tiring of eating, and then to the theater right next door. It turned out that the film we were planning on watching was sold out, so we all managed to pack ourselves onto Rachna’s, Vikas’ and Dr. Jai’s bikes, and drove a few blocks away to the other movie theater. The film was about a small-town girl trying to make it in Bombay, and who ends up becoming a high-class call-girl. According to Dr. Jai, this is a huge problem, since so many young women show up in Bombay every year trying to make money to send back to their families. Anyway, the film was really entertaining, and (Dan and G, are you ready for this?) everyone talks the entire way through the film!! It was great! People even boo and hiss at the screen when the villain came onscreen and cheer when the heroine prevails! It was like the Rocky Horror Picture Show with better songs. I love talking in movies, but am always reprimanded for doing it (except for when I watch movies with Lily and Sylvan, who may in fact talk more than I do), so this was like a dream come true for me! Also, it was somewhat necessary in order to follow some of the finer plot points, since it was all in Hindi and had no subtitles, Prabjit spent a lot of time translating for me. I was, however, surprised to see how much I could follow without her telling me… maybe it speaks to the expressiveness (or over-acting) of Bollywood cinema.

The Muslim holiday, Ramsan (or as we call it in North America, Ramadan) was over as of Sunday. Actually, when it was over was the source of great concern and confusion for us volunteers. Salman came by the day after Aio arrived (Salman always seems to have a sixth sense about these sorts of things, and shows up at exactly the right moment) and invited us all to his house for lunch on Eid, which follows the end of Ramsan. Unfortunately, no one was able to really explain to us what the last day of Ramsan was. We kept getting these vague answers about the moon, and it either being Saturday or Sunday. Eventually someone explained to us ignorant angrezies that if the moon is not seen on Friday night, then it means that Ramsan continues for another day, and Eid is then on Sunday instead of Saturday. It turns out that there was no moon on Friday night, so lunch at Salman’s was on Sunday.

I suppose that after a solid month of fasting I would be starving too, but lunch at Salman’s was like no other. There must have been ten or twelve different dishes; mutton kabobs, chicken biryani, chickpeas, roti, and so on. I stuffed myself silly, and thought that this will make up for the fact that I missed out on Thanksgiving dinner this year. Especially because there was this dessert thing made out of what I can only describe as noodles made out of sugar, that are then boiled or fried and served swimming in milk and topped with dried fruit. I can’t, of course, remember what it was called, but I have been assured that it is not a special Eid thing, and that I will be able to find it when Eid is over.

There was one particular kind of funny, and eye-opening incident at Salman’s house, that I couldn’t help but laugh at when Derek, Prabjit and I were talking about it later. Salman’s family appear to be fairly devout Muslims, and I’m not sure if his attitudes are the result of religious upbringing, or simply a cultural attitude that he holds more than most of the other people I have met here. In any case, the only women eating the Eid lunch were myself, Prabjit and Rachna. This was fine, but when lunch was over and Rachna took off, we were left in a room full of white courta-clad men. So Salman, dear boy, says to us “Emily, Prabjit, I’m thinking that you should go and help my mother in the kitchen”. Derek said that he was watching my face when Salman said this to me, and the look I gave Salman could have broken mirrors, but I managed to compose myself again fairly quickly. I realized that he was trying to be hospitable, and felt that we would be more comfortable hanging out with the other women, rather than in a room full of men, and to a degree he was right. I did not, however, have any interest whatsoever in doing the dishes unless all the other (male) guests were also about to help. I felt bad for his mom and sisters when we went into the kitchen, since there were enough dishes to rival one of Whitney and my Yanksgiving dinners, and as far as I could tell, no running water to wash them in. Yikes! Anyway, as soon as we came in, one of Salman’s sisters sat on the floor and chatted with us, and soon his mom and aunt came in and made paan. Essentially, there was no work being done, or at least not immediately, which I was glad to see. Oh man, I still shake my head when I think of Salman telling me to go to the kitchen to do the dishes….

We have since been invited to more people’s homes than I can count for Eid, despite the fact that the three day festival has now ended. In fact, we have dinner arrangements this entire week, from Monday through Friday, because of Eid. We’ve even had to turn a few people’s invitations down! I was talking to my mom and dad about it on the phone last night, and we couldn’t help but comment that if we had to spend an entire week entertaining people we would go completely nuts. I suppose that the Christmas season is somewhat like that, but it seems much more intense here for some reason. Anyway, I’m a little concerned that I am going to gain back the twenty or so pounds that I lost since I got here with all of this Eid food! Last night we went to the home of one of the rickshaw drivers who are always hanging around on Berasia Road outside of Qazi Camp. It was the guy that I really like, Ries, with the hat (although he has stopped wearing the hat). He had a really nice family, and about a million of his own kids and nieces and nephews running around the house while we ate. We also got our first wedding invitation!! Hurrah! An excuse to finally buy a sari! The wedding is next week, on Saturday and Sunday (we have been invited to the reception and the party, whatever that means…its two days anyway), so I had better get cracking and go sari shopping!!

This evening we are off to the birthday party of Sareeta, who is turning fifteen today! Prabjit and I actually took quite a bit of care to pick out a shirt that we thought that she would like in the Chowk yesterday. I also found some beautiful embroidered fabric for a churidad suit, so I of course had to buy that as well. I had only intended to get a nice black duppta to wear with some of my outfits, but couldn’t find one at the store I like. I ended up getting a white one, since I was told that it could be dyed black. The tailor, however, told me that its hard to dye anything black since it fades after just a few washes, so now I’m not too sure what to do with this white duppta. I suppose exchange it for a different colour…

tikrit and new friends

I left off pontificating yesterday, so I thought that I should change pace a little bit and write more about how I have been spending my time the past week or so. We have gotten into the habit of doing little day trips with Mausam on our Sunday’s, since that is the only day that the clinic is closed and we can go exploring. This past Sunday Mausam took Prabjit and I up to Tikrit (sp?), which is a temple on the top of this really high hill just at the outskirts of the city. There is a little cable-car ride up to the top, although we took Mausam’s bike because it is wayyy more fun. …and also I’m not entirely sure if I trust cable-cars in general, and more so in India. It was neat, because you could see almost the entire city from up at the top. We went up the stairs to this gorgeous temple (which I believe Prabjit said was to Hanuman, but what do I know about these things?). You weren’t allowed to take photos inside so I don’t have any photos, but it was a lot nicer than most of the other temples I have seen; the floors were all gleaming marble, and everything was completely immaculate. It had these really neat chandeliers made out of these glass orb-type things. I bet that had they been all lit up it would have been even more beautiful, because the orbs were each different coloured glass.

Mausam took us to the side of the hill that faced the sun so that we could watch it set. I have to admit that sunsets in India are a lot more intense than in Canada. Every night it seems like there is a spectacular sunset, even the ones that I just see here at the clinic. The sun is just so huge and deep orange. Also, they are a lot faster than Canadian sunsets, which suits me just fine, since I am too impatient to wait three hours for the stupid thing just to get under the horizon. Anyway, we ate ice cream and joked around and giggled at all of the romantic couples who had come to also watch the sunset. It was fun.

While we were up there watching the sunset, Mausam got very very serious all of a sudden and said he had to ask us something important. For a minute I was actually worried that he was going to ask us both to marry him. Luckily that was not the case. However, you remember how I talked about a different understanding about sentimentality here? The attitude is somewhat akin to being filtered through a cheesy, poorly translated Japanese greeting card. So keep that in mind when I say that Mausam officially requested that Prabjit and I become his friends. I was a little taken aback by it, since I of course had assumed that we were, in fact, already friends. But I guess Mausam was making some sort of distinction between the kind of friends that you see and hang out with once in a while, and the kind of friends that you pour your heart out to. I suppose I make that distinction as well, but usually I don’t offer the second kind to people so openly; I just decide after the third pint that sure, were good enough friends that I can tell them my deepest, darkest secrets. Anyway, after my initial shock, I decided that it was a really sweet gesture on his part. I of course gallantly accepted. Now when Dan proposes, I’ll be ready to look appropriately shocked without seeming silly, since I’ve gotten it all out of my system in this practice run!

After our special moment at the top of the hill, Mausam took us to his friend Monty’s house for dinner. Monty lives on the opposite side of the city from Qazi camp, actually much closer to Tikrit. His family’s house was very neat, since the living room was all open concept, and opened up onto this large deck. There was also a swing in the house, how cool is that? Anyway, Monty’s family was very nice, and we got to hang out with several of his little nieces and nephews and one of his sisters. We also got tomato soup, which I thought was absolutely delicious. There isn’t enough soup here I don’t think. Anyway, we also had really great chicken for dinner, but I, once again, was the source of great embarrassment by not being able to finish all of the food that was served to me. This happens pretty much no matter whose house we are at for dinner. I have tried to cheat the India stuff-you-till-you-vomit system by only taking excessively tiny portions, but watchful hosts, like Monty, always catch me in the act and put ten times as much food on my plate, which I, of course, then can not finish. Anyway, I have decided that I like being twenty pounds thinner, and I’m not stretching out my stomach to its previous girth for any reason if I can help it, so I’m not eating what I can’t finish… I just hope that it isn’t too rude…

When we got back to the clinic we realized that Derek had still not returned from a walk to New Market that he had left on at about noon. Since it was now 9:30pm, we were a little alarmed that we hadn’t heard anything from him. I went to inform Sathyu that we were starting to become concerned, to which Sathyu immediately replied “why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”. I grit my teeth and explained that we had only just returned ourselves. Anyway, Sathyu was about to leave for town for a meeting for two days, and he instructed us to contact the US Embassy if Derek wasn’t back by about midnight. In the meantime, we started calling every number we could think of to see if perhaps he had run into a friend on his way back; Rachna called shortly afterwards and said that she was calling the police; Biju and Vikas both went to New Market on their bikes to see if they could track him down: in short, we panicked. After Prabjit and I returned from rapping on Ankeeta’s door across the street and waking up the entire family to see if anyone had seen him, Derek came strolling down the street. It turned out that he had gone to Bharat Bhavan, the cultural centre, and had taken in a Hindi play. He had just forgotten to call. Anyway, we are all happy that Derek is safe and sound and back here at the clinic with us. Although his little disappearance reminds me of the time I went for a walk at Bill and Faye’s house, down by the beach, and everyone thought I had drowned.

We went out for dinner at the infamous Jehan Numa Palace on Thursday of last week. We had decided that we were going to take Derek out for his triumphant return to Bhopal after his terrible experience in Delhi. It also happened to be the same night that the new group of students came from Delhi, and previously the dinners for the large group had consisted mostly of rice, so we were eager to avoid dinner at the clinic. Anyway, Jehan Numa is certainly outrageously priced, or at least it is far more expensive than any other place in India that I have seen so far. That said, for four people to eat, I believe it cost about $47.00 CND (about Rs. 1800). I was upset because I had wanted a glass of wine if we were going to eat there, but my head was so stuffed up that I knew I would regret it if I did, so I didn’t get my wine. The food was good, but not out-of-this-world, and I think that if I was to go back (which I am sure that we will at some point), I would order off of the Thai menu or the Italian menu instead of the Indian now. In fact, I’m not sure why I didn’t this time around. After dinner we took a little stroll around the hotel grounds, which are really beautiful; everything is immaculately neat, fresh painted, decorated etc. I’m looking forward to mom and dad staying there when they come to visit. Maybe it’ll be warm enough that I can go swimming in the pool…

I won’t go into the details of the work I have been doing, since they aren’t that interesting. Suffice to say I have been looking up the causes of white vaginal discharge. Although I did have a good meeting with Masurat and Aziza late last week, and they showed me some of the teaching aids that they currently use, and explained what other ones they thought they needed. If anyone has any brilliant ideas of how I could make a life-sized torso that opens up and has the female reproductive organ in there, please do let me know. Oh yes, and you have to be able to take the organs out of the body and open them up and look inside of them, too. My best idea so far has been papier-mâché, so, as you can see, I am in need of some inspiration.

I’ve spent the past hour re-arranging the furniture in the volunteer’s room with Prabjit. I quite like the new setup, since now Prabjit and I are facing each other and can spend all of our time making faces at one another. Joking aside, I do think that the set up is far superior to the previous one. We also rearranged the furniture in our bedroom yesterday, and Prabjit finally unpacked the last of her suitcase. I joked that she had finally decided that she was going to stay.

Mausam came by after his coaching lessons (or as we call them, tutoring) last night. We sat in the empty canteen and got eaten alive by mosquitoes and chatted about various things. Mausam is interested in going to the US, either to finish university or afterwards, so I got one of the world maps from upstairs and showed him where Prabjit and I lived. I think that for anyone from pretty much anywhere else in the world it is impossible to grasp just how huge North America is. Just looking at how tiny India is by comparison really kind of shocked me. But I did promise Mausam that if he was ever to go and live in California (that’s where he wants to go) I would certainly come and visit him. I think that that is about all the news that is fit to print for now… so adios.

englightening thoughts and goodbye to an old friend

I’m over my head-cold, and back in full force! Whatever that means… I say that mostly because I spent one hour working in the garden this morning, between 9:30 and 10:30, and by the time I was calling it quits I was so tired and thirsty that I had to go and get a bottle of Limca and some mango-cream-filled cookies, which I of course ate all of and thoroughly spoiled my lunch. After my enormous sugar-rush I decided that I had to go and lie down for a while. Unfortunately there was still too much sugar sludge in my veins and I couldn’t fall asleep either, so I spent the best part of two hours writing in my journal (which, for those of you wondering, is where I write down all of my private and nasty thoughts that I can’t publish on here…yes, you Derek). Besides this being sad commentary on both my physical form and my work ethic, I came to some rather interesting conclusions about myself, or at least I hope that I did after two full hours of fracking self-reflection.

Last night I drank my third beer while in India (I would like to note here that I am now averaging one beer per month…not bad if I do say so myself!). We had decided to go out for dinner at a place Derek was curious about, in a hotel down by the lakeshore. We called Mausam to see if he wanted to come and hang out with us, but we hungry soon and decided to go to dinner after about an hour. As we were walking to the hotel/restaurant Mausam asked me why we were going to dinner. An excellent question: why were we going to dinner when there was a perfectly good free dinner waiting for us at Sambhavna if we should so choose. I have, of course, thought of several other good reasons to go for dinner since then, namely: we get the same four meals six nights a week at the clinic; that we have precious few other excuses to ever leave the clinic grounds…etc. At the time however, all I could come up was that we were bored and wanted to get out of the clinic, and this was what we decided to do. When I said it though, it just sounded kind of spoiled and decadent. I felt worse when the restaurant turned out to be fancy-ish (by Indian standards anyway, meaning linens on the table and no florescent lights), but cheap by North American standards (the main courses were about Rs. 120, or $3.00 CND).

I hadn’t really thought much of it before, mostly because I hadn’t been going out to eat very much, but Rs. 120 for most people here is a fair bit of money to throw away on a single dinner, even if it wasn’t for us. I also started to feel uncomfortable about my beautiful beer, which I even split with Ruskin because even I knew that I couldn’t (or rather shouldn’t) finish all 700mL to myself. As we sat there discussing the flavour of the beer and comparing it to British and North American beers respectively, I couldn’t help but see myself through the eyes of the Bhopalis sitting in the restaurant. And then I suddenly realized why Westerners are such celebrities here: we are totally fucking weird. How many places in the world is it considered appropriate for an unmarried woman, who *gasp* LIVED with her boyfriend in the West, to sit at a table with three other unmarried men, drink a beer and compare it to the millions, okay, thousands, of other beers that she had drank in her young life? Parents millions of miles away, and still trusted to be marriageable and respectable the next morning? I’m not saying that I agree with the mentality, I still believe that women have just as much of a right as men to get drunk, sleep with whoever they want etc. It was just the first time that I had ever really thought about how crazy I must look to the average Indian man. No wonder white women have the reputation of floozies here.

However, this did make me think, a lot actually, about the changes I was willing to make in myself for the time that I am here. Considering I have been here for almost three months, this may seem a bit delayed, but I don’t think that it is at all. I think that it takes a long time to figure out exactly what is expected of you for a variety of reasons, and which rules you can ignore, and which ones you can’t. Its certainly taken me quite some time to figure it out anyway. Three months in Bhopal hasn’t changed my attitude about certain things; I don’t really give a rat’s ass what people think if I drink a beer, I still like to wear my Western clothes on occasion (within reason of course -- no mini skirts); and part of me is absolutely desperate to take my nose ring out so that people can see it (I mean not have it flipped inside my nose). I know that that is a weird thing by which to define oneself, but I have good reason, or at least intellectually. Having a hole and a piece of metal through my nose interrupts the viewing pleasure of men staring at me, for one thing. It also contradicts everything else about my short, sweet appearance. I honestly think that in Canada anyway, people give me less shit if they see my nose ring, because without it I am far from intimidating. Besides, it looks cool, right? Hahaha. One of these days I’m going to walk down Berasia Road with my nose ring in plain sight and see if I still suffer the same harassment from all the hooligan men out there… little shits that they are. Humph.

The flipside of all of these thoughts swirling around my head, however, is that there are things about myself that I am flexible on, or even want to change. The main thing that I have noticed so much since I got here was my consumerism. I’ve even noticed this in Canada, in comparison to other people, but I buy a lot of stuff that I don’t actually need. I buy clothes that I never wear, food that I never eat, junk that I never use, and all of this becomes even more glaringly apparent when some of that crap costs more than most people in this neighbourhood make in a month. I won’t say that it makes me feel guilty, because change shouldn’t be motivated by guilt, but it does make me think twice about buying shit I don’t need when I have to walk by dozens of homes who could never afford those things. Even when I bought my Limca today, I was also buying one for Prabjit, and as I walked back to the clinic, I couldn’t help but wonder if a lot of the people in this area have ever even had a Limca before, let alone could buy two at a time.

Anyway, I remember during my pre-departure training from CIDA, the instructor was talking a lot about the re-entry shock that people experience when they come back home, and find that not only have things changed in their absence, but they have changed as well. Until I had my long contemplation today, I had been thinking that very little about me had changed since I left, and that I wouldn’t have any problem fitting right back in when I got home. Now, to put this in perspective, I was also very flippant about the culture shock I would experience when I got here, and simply assumed that it wouldn’t be so bad because I was expecting it… I of course, spent two weeks with my mouth catching flies in shock at every sight, sound and smell here, and could barely venture outside of the clinic without taking a small arsenal of hand sanitizers, Kleenex, water bottles, cameras etc. So, I am beginning to realize that maybe, as I once suspected it might in a glimmer of premonition, I might not be changing India so much as India is changing me... despite my intentions to spread my morally loose Western-woman ways of drinking and sleeping around among the women here (just kidding… sort of). I’ll admit that I have even thought about wearing a burkha so that the men can’t tell I’m white and will stop hassling me… however I later decided that that is another thing that I am not willing to budge on, and if it means poking out the eyes of every uncooperative man in Bhopal, then so be it.

Anyway, I just got off of the phone with Dan, who has had some very bad news: his cat, and best friend, Winnie, had to be put to sleep yesterday. His mom has been looking after Winnie since Dan moved to Montreal a few years ago, so Dan is very upset that he wasn’t there to say goodbye to his old pal. I was going to write more about my own lingering thoughts, but instead if you are reading this, I think that you should pick up the phone and give Dan a call or send him an email, since I can’t be there with him. Thank you.

dinner out and again...

Derek has returned to Sambhavna, after his passport and wallet were stolen as he slept on the train the other night on his way to Delhi. He was supposed to be on his way to Thailand for a month-long trip, but since he had his knapsack stolen, he wasn’t able to catch his flight. It certainly made me nervous about traveling around India once my internship is done. I’ve already had my wallet stolen while I was in the market here, and I like to think that that made me more aware of the dangers that I face, but I think that it is still hard to be on your guard absolutely all of the time. It should help that I’ll be in a group with Andrea and Louis, but you never really know, especially when it is so clear that white people are the target of theft so often.

I’ve got a nasty head-cold now, which is really annoying. Mostly my head is just stuffed up, but its hard to stay hydrate in the heat, especially because its still too hot to sleep without the fan on at night. I hate getting sick when it is hot out, somehow it feels worse than having a cold when its cold outside.

Another group of students came from Delhi this morning. This time they are from different disciplines, instead of all being psyche students, so Shalini was discussing what to do with them once they got here. She came up with a really interesting idea for how to get them involved and engage with people here in Bhopal. One group is going to do a sting-type operation at the gas relief hospitals here in Bhopal, by pretending to be patients needing treatment. Another group is going to spend some time with some of the kids with disabilities, and the third group is going to do some work with the women who do work at the trade union. Anyway, I think that it sounds like a really interesting way to get people involved in the campaign.

Tuesday was Gandhi’s birthday, so the clinic was closed, and most things were closed for the day. Mausam came and took Prabjit and I to Bhojpur, a little town about forty-five minutes outside of Bhopal. There is a thousand-year old temple there, which was very pretty. Although the Pundit was washing this giant phallus in the middle of the temple, which I have to say, made me mildly uncomfortable. Anyway, after the phallus-washing, we went to the edge of this huge rock formation, and hung around there watching the sunset. At the bottom of the rock cliffs is this river, so it was nice and cool as well. I took some very pretty photos of the sunset…so enjoy☺

We went to another pooja last night at Ankeeta’s house. Ankeeta is one of four daughters-in-law across the street, so there was quite a large group of people there. It was held outside, which was nice, since there is a lot of burning of things that goes on during poojas, and last time it got pretty smoky in the room that we were in. Anyway, the pooja was shorter than last time, which was fine, since the kids each wanted about four million photos of themselves taken with the other family members. Some of them actually turned out pretty well.

We ended up going out for dinner again last night, which we have been doing a lot lately. We branched out and went to a placed called Indian Coffee House, not to far from Manohaur, where we usually go. It was absolutely delicious, and incredibly cheap: Prabjit, Shalini and I ate for Rs. 150/- (about $4 CND). Tonight, in honor of Derek’s return to the clinic, we are thinking about heading to Jehan Numa Palace for dinner, to experience the wonder of vaguely North American food! Too bad I have a cold, otherwise I might even try to have a glass of wine or something… maybe I still will.

lice and fresh blood

Last time I had just had my first encounter with one of those furry caterpillars, which has left a rough path of skin on my ankle, and continues to be ever so slightly itchy all of the time. This time I am utterly paranoid that I have somehow managed to contract lice from somewhere. However, it could also be the serious sunburn that I got last Sunday on my forehead and scalp. Either way, my head has been incredibly itchy all week, so last night I finally blurted out to Dr. Jai that I think that I might have lice, and could he please take a look at it for me. Fortunately Dr. Jai was very professional about it, and didn’t laugh at me once, for which I am grateful. Of course, I couldn’t pass up this golden photo opportunity, so I have a photo of me having my head checked, as well as a short video clip! So you all can laugh to your hearts content at me.

Last Sunday Mausam and Dr. Jai drove Prabjit, Derek and I to Bhimbetika, which is about an hour outside of Bhopal. Bhimbetika are these huge rocks jutting out of the landscape. We found out that about 5 million years ago the area was under the ocean, so the ocean formed the rock caves. The rock caves themselves are pretty spectacular, but they are made more so by the fact that about five thousand years ago whoever lived here then (sorry I’m not more historically inclined) made paintings in these caves, which are still there! The paintings are in amazingly good shape, and are actually pretty good artwork, too. Anyway, we spent a while wandering through the pre-designated paths, trying to avoid a large group of male tourists that were there mainly to stare at us I’m pretty sure. Eventually we got off the beaten track a bit, naturally to get to the short cut back to where we were parked. This, however, lead to a rather arduous trek through the Madhya Pradesh jungle. I should interject two things here: 1) just to give you an idea of what sort of jungle we’re talking about, that the Jungle Book is set in the jungles of MP and 2) that I, once again, was wearing my crappy flip flops, which are not terribly great trekking shoes.

Anyway, I successfully managed to dodge the cobras and pythons lurking in the underbrush as we scrambled around and tried to figure out where the hell we were and how to get back to some semblance of a path. Naturally, with my innate sense of direction, I was of no help. Spurred on by the visions I was having of the headlines (“Canadian development workers bodies found after two-month search”) I kept saying “There’s no way through there. We should just go back the way we came!”. However, just as I said this for the umpteenth time, we emerged at exactly the place where we had started (god bless Mausam)… although I did have a mild allergic reaction to something in the jungle and had itchy arms for an hour afterwards. After this there was some debate about whether or not we should stop in Bhojpur on the way back, where, apparently, there is a very large, beautiful temple. In the end we decided not to, which I’m glad about, because by the time we got back to the clinic I realized that despite my efforts with my duppta and sunscreen my forehead was the colour of a lobster.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful by comparison (to the jungle adventure anyway). I ended up doing some data entry work for Jyoti, the yoga instructor, who wanted to compile some data for a new volunteer that was coming. It turned out to be a very mutually beneficial relationship, because I made up a few charts on Excel for her, and she translated the remaining premature menopause booklet and the BSE pamphlet that I had been working on, and unable to find anyone to translate for me. Word has gotten around the clinic about my “fantastic” artistry as well, so some of the cleaning staff asked me to make them some posters to hang up in the bathrooms, showing how to flush the toilets, and reminding people not to throw garbage in the floors but in the dustbins. These seem like rather basic things, but attitudes towards garbage are very different, since the government by no means comes and carts it away to dumps. People just throw their trash in the open spaces outside of their homes. Also, most of the people that come to the clinic don’t have flush toilets in their homes, so they aren’t sure what to do when they encounter flush toilets here. Anyway, I was happy to have something to do that made me feel at least marginally useful, even if it was in that fifth-grader sense.

Prabjit and I picked up yet more clothes from the tailor this week. I had some proper Indian salwar suits made, instead of the outfits that I have been putting together myself, which are mostly comprised of baggy sweat-pants-type things and a few shirts. Every time I wear one of the actual suits, I get innumerable compliments from all of the women who work at the clinic, and I can almost hear them thinking “thank god she’s finally stopped wearing those weird pants”. Anyway, on the way back from the tailors we randomly ran into Mausam riding his bike back from his coaching lessons. (All the older students I’ve met in India do tutoring for younger students, which they call “coaching”. I believe Mausam has four younger students who he coaches on a daily basis). We decided to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to the lake, which turned out to be really fun. We all had Top’n’Town ice cream, which is way better than North American ice cream, and a plate of french fries. I also bought a treat for Derek, since he didn’t have the opportunity to come with us, and a veggie burger to bring back, which I had seen there before and had been very curious about.

A couple of days later Prabjit and I decided to sample the veggie burger that we had brought home with us for lunch. It tasted pretty good, although it did have this strange mayonnaise-y type substance on the bottom layer that I was somewhat suspicious of. A few hours later was the weekly staff meeting, so I dutifully went down to sit through several hours of discussions in Hindi about the general operations of the clinic. I had great intentions of trying to further ingratiate myself with the clinic’s staff, but these were cut short by the vague need to possibly vomit up the veggie burger that I had eaten for lunch. So half an hour into the meeting (which turned out to be about two hours) I decided to spare myself the agony of sitting through the meeting in waves of nausea and went upstairs to lie down. Fortunately (yet again) I didn’t actually throw anything up, although I will use the polite euphemism to say that my stomach was a bit “upset”. Prabjit, despite also feeling mildly uncomfortable, stayed through the meeting, where apparently I was the topic of conversation. In essence, Sathyu told the health workers not to avoid me and try to help me out, which I appreciate immensely. Additionally, the staff at the clinic has decided that they want to know what we spend our time doing up here in the volunteer room, clacking away on our laptops all of the time. I can’t help but feel that all of the hours of the day that I spend reading the CBC and BBC’s headlines, watching podcasts of the Hour and uploading my hundreds of photos have been found out. Just kidding.

Anyway, Sathyu’s appeal seems to have worked, since the very next day, as I was preparing to track down one of the health workers for yet another of the infinite number of revisions on the BSE pamphlet, she, too, was looking for me!! I felt so grateful I thought that perhaps, as a token, I should offer her my first-born. Instead we had a nice chat about what else needed to be changed, and planned to have a focus group on Thursday with some of the women in the bastees to find out what some of the biggest health problems are that they would like more information on. I of course, happily took this information to Sathyu, who immediately asked my why I hadn’t looked up videos of BSE on the internet. Sigh. I felt like saying “because I was told to make a pamphlet, not a video you nitwit,” but kept my opinions to myself. As it turns out, that was probably a good idea, since as I chatted with Aziza today it slowly dawned on me that the health workers were planning on creating an entire workshop about BSE (information that I think that the language barrier had previously prevented me from understanding). Fortunately Shalini, the co-ordinator of Students for Bhopal in India, was there and able to translate some of the more complicated things that Aziza wanted to tell me. Now I feel that we re finally on the same page (although I’m sure a five minute conversation with Sathyu will change all of that again). Anyway, the plan right now is for me to develop the workshop that the health workers will give to women in the bastees about breast cancer and BSE, and, my favourite part, we’re going to make our own BSE video! How fun is that?! Well, for me, anyway…

Shalini arrived on Friday morning form Delhi along with twelve psych students from a school in Delhi. They were to spend three days in Bhopal doing a bit of fieldwork and interviewing survivors of the gas disaster. On Saturday they went to Chingari Trust to meet some of the kids born with disabilities. I, of course, decided to tag along to see the kids, of who many more showed up than when I went to the school about a month ago. I took some more photos of the kids, some of which turned out very well. It was nice talking to Shalini about the photo project idea that I had for Chingari though. I was saying that I had so much to do at Sambhavna that moved so slowly that I didn’t feel like I could really leave during the day and devote my time to doing something for Chingari, especially since my internship is supposed to at Sambhavna. She made it seem so simple when she said, “just start going to one family every Sunday, since then it doesn’t impede on your time at Sambhavna since the clinic is closed. Chingari will make the time for you since they want people to volunteer for them”. Now why didn’t I think of that? So Prabjit and I have decided that we are going to do that starting this Sunday. Maybe after some time we’ll be able to go on other days of the week as well, but for now I think that this is a good arrangement. So, Rashida Bee is supposed to phone us with our first assignment later this week,

The group of psych students has already gone back to Delhi, since they were only here for three days. I had kind of forgotten what it was like to be here with so many other people, and I have to say that I don’t really miss the company. The girls were all very nice and friendly, but by the time the evening rolls around, I mostly want to chat on Skype or read or something, and its hard to have privacy when there are so many other people around. I also don’t like to have my morning routine interrupted (those of you who have lived with me know that I am not a morning person by any means). The first morning the girls were here there was an accident in the girls bathroom, and the shower fixture was pulled out of the wall, so I awoke to no shower, which of course mean that I didn’t have my requisite ten-fifteen minutes of de-grouching before heading down for breakfast. Other than that everything went smoothly though… there is another group of twelve students coming on the fourth, so hopefully that goes well.

This past Sunday Mausam took Prabjit and I on a little walk up to the “solar evaporation ponds” north of the factory. Essentially, Union Carbide decided to dump a bunch of toxic waste in the ground, where it would evaporate into the atmosphere and be dispersed around the world so that the toxic waste is so diluted that it is harmless! What a wonderful way to get rid of it! Pretend that its not there! And to prevent it from leeching into the ground they put plastic down, which is now rotted through… This is not to mention that the government is trying to sell the land to build houses on. Currently it’s just an empty site with giant pools of toxic water where all of the kids play. Its really terrible… Derek and Prabjit also finally got their permission to go to the Union Carbide factory, which for whatever reason proved to be much more difficult than when I did it. Anyway, I tagged along, since the weather was marginally better than when I went. It turned out to be a good idea, especially since the guards actually took us up top of some of the old buildings and machinery stuff, so check out the new photos!


By the way, I forgot to mention that there is some fresh blood in the volunteer room. A new volunteer named Ruskin that has come from the UK. He arrived on Sunday amidst the chaos of the fifteen girls from Delhi, but seems to be settling in nicely. In other news, Derek has left for a month to go to Thailand, and then will return to do more work at Sambhavna afterwards.