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.