Sorry for the overkill, but I have been storing up some blog entries and have three new ones below. Hope you enjoy them, and don't forget to check in and say hello!
*please also note that, in preparing your care packages, I no longer have need of a pillow case or hankerchiefs. Homemade cookies, however, are not yet covered.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Some Random Stories
For awhile now I’ve been wanting to write little anecdotes about funny things that have happened or are reoccurring. This’ll be a random hodge-podge, but it’s a sprinkling of daily life:The Doctor: As I’ve said before, I live with a three person family—the wife Jayshree works as the branch manager for the bank I work at, the husband is a veterinarian, and the daughter, Shweta is roughly 8 years old and in school. The husband, who presumably has a first name, is referred to by his family as “The Dr.” Apparently, in India, there are two professions that warrant calling you by your qualifications and not your good name: being in the medical field (in which case you’re The Doctor) or being a teacher (The Teacher). So, the Dr. is a very sweet guy who is probably the ideal adoptive father and is always making sure we are comfortable, healthy, and living safely uneventful lives. Every evening at dinner he goes through the same routine. He says “Do you have any problems today? You should have no problems while you are here, and if there is any problem, you call me and if I am within 30 kilometers I will come.” Almost every day, he assures us of this. He also, being a vet and therefore a scientist, likes to keep us abreast of the beneficial elements of our diet. As we eat dinner, he regales me with the nutritional value of our lentils, buffalo milk, papaya, or eggplant. He is so earnest about it, and so predictable in his timing, that increasingly I can hardly suppress laughing every time he starts in.
Animal House: Around Mhaswad, domestic animals run amok. Black bristly hogs are everywhere, and always with their hoards of piglets in tow, rummaging their noses through sewage and squealing the most surprising and blood curdling scream you’ve ever heard when they’re upset by something. I’m sorry to say that mangy dogs are also everywhere, sleeping in such random places that you would swear there are dead dogs lying everywhere when in fact, they’re alive. Unfortunately, I seem to inspire fear in two things here in India: babies and dogs. It seems, without even meaning to, I can cause hysteria in both. The other day, I made what I thought to be a benignly funny face at a baby and it proceeded to explode in screams in front of a whole lot of amused people. I also got stalked by an inexplicably angry, nastily growling dog down the main road of the village even though I did not even look in its direction. I eventually had to walk into a store to escape it, at which point some boys kicked it to get it to leave. Which it fully deserved. There are also donkeys everywhere, falling asleep in the most random of places, standing up of course, and swaying a bit to the rhythms of their dreams. And of course, there are lots of water buffalo and the random Holstein cow. There are also gobs of sheep and goats, which are a little hard to differentiate between because the sheep seem to be perpetually sheered. The goats make this near-human noise, so that Brenna and I are always laughing hysterically as we walk to work because it sounds like there is a crazy bellowing man walking behind us, when really it’s a goat that sounds like a bellowing man.
Speaking of crazy: There is a man here in the village, who can’t be completely off given that his English is very good, who stops what he’s doing whenever he comes upon us and gives us a salute and a “Good Morning!” Every time. (see picture)
Indian Meddling: Unfortunately, the famed Indian Meddling has recently succeeded in driving away the cook that makes me three meals a day. Because the women in our office are so sincerely interested in not minding their own business, they have apparently been giving relentless feedback to Vandana (our cook) about our likes and dislikes. Some of this is warranted, because her food can be overly oily, or unbalanced (we once ate a lunch consisting of tapioca balls cooked 5 different ways), or overcooked (blocks of rice substance more often than grains of rice). However, the food is good enough, often enough, to warrant bearing the inconvenience of the bad days, and by no means did we hope she would be driven off. Unfortunately, yesterday a tearful Vandana came to the office with our lunch tiffin and give a final “screw you baby” speech to our boss, in front of the whole office, and basically quit there and then. It must have been a glorious moment for her, and I wish I had understood what she said. Now, my poor host mother (who actually can probably blame herself because she was a major meddler in this situation) has taken on an extra domestic helper to cook our meals and seems to be perpetually in the kitchen. And nothing I say or do will ever persuade her to let me help.
Another example of Indian meddling is when it comes to shopping. People here always want to know how much you spent on something, and it’s not considered the least bit rude to slip it prominently into a conversation. An example:
“What a nice sari. How much did you pay? That's too much! Where did you go? It is not a beautiful sari, you should not have paid that much. Next time, I will take you.” (which is often not helpful at all)
The White Girls: Lately, the local children have taken to following Brenna and me home from work. They literally gather like a pack of giddy wolves, maybe up to 15 in total, and are hot on our heels the whole 20 minutes to the house. We receive this with varying levels of amusement/tolerance/frustration. In theory, it’s cute. But in reality, it draws huge amounts of attention to us, attention that we’re trying to diminish. It seems hopeless to ever blend in to village society and be an accepted norm. We will always be novel.
Which leads me to my last story. Last night we were invited to attend a drama put on by the Jain community. It took place in a meeting hall, and the men and women sat on different sides of the room on mats on the floor. A man went before the ~100 person audience to pray/give opening remarks, after which he signaled to Brenna and me that we should ascend the stage. We did, and lit ceremonial candles with a very very senior member of the group who probably actually deserved to be up there. Pictures were taken, and then we were allowed to rejoin the crowd. Unfortunately, our ride to town was leaving early and because it’s not safe to walk the country road back home alone, we had to leave to take advantage of the car. Grievously, we unknowingly ducked out an hour too soon because they had planned to present us with coconuts at the end of the drama to thank us for attending. Which of course we could not have known, but nevertheless feel TERRIBLE about.
Alright, there’s my random assortment of stories. More to come!
Another example of Indian meddling is when it comes to shopping. People here always want to know how much you spent on something, and it’s not considered the least bit rude to slip it prominently into a conversation. An example:
“What a nice sari. How much did you pay? That's too much! Where did you go? It is not a beautiful sari, you should not have paid that much. Next time, I will take you.” (which is often not helpful at all)
The White Girls: Lately, the local children have taken to following Brenna and me home from work. They literally gather like a pack of giddy wolves, maybe up to 15 in total, and are hot on our heels the whole 20 minutes to the house. We receive this with varying levels of amusement/tolerance/frustration. In theory, it’s cute. But in reality, it draws huge amounts of attention to us, attention that we’re trying to diminish. It seems hopeless to ever blend in to village society and be an accepted norm. We will always be novel.
Which leads me to my last story. Last night we were invited to attend a drama put on by the Jain community. It took place in a meeting hall, and the men and women sat on different sides of the room on mats on the floor. A man went before the ~100 person audience to pray/give opening remarks, after which he signaled to Brenna and me that we should ascend the stage. We did, and lit ceremonial candles with a very very senior member of the group who probably actually deserved to be up there. Pictures were taken, and then we were allowed to rejoin the crowd. Unfortunately, our ride to town was leaving early and because it’s not safe to walk the country road back home alone, we had to leave to take advantage of the car. Grievously, we unknowingly ducked out an hour too soon because they had planned to present us with coconuts at the end of the drama to thank us for attending. Which of course we could not have known, but nevertheless feel TERRIBLE about.
Alright, there’s my random assortment of stories. More to come!
Some Musings on Work
Thankfully, as I have begun to feel increasingly settled in the village and with my host family, my comfort at work and with my projects is gradually following suit!
I had been putting off facing the most daunting of my projects for a few weeks now, but finally determined yesterday that I need to put my hand to the plow. The dreaded task is developing the advanced financial literacy curriculum I mentioned in an earlier posting. Basically, I have absolutely no interest in developing curriculum or in financial matters, which may largely stem from the fact that I feel pretty insecure about both. But as I was saying, I steeled myself yesterday, and sat down with piles and piles of resources to begin piecing out remnants of an action plan. Barbara, our recently departed intern, received a formal training in how to go about this project (and keep in mind the student handbook I’m developing must be catered to semi-literate women. So largely image and activity-based material. For someone who loves to write, this is not good news.) Unfortunately, she never got around to tackling the project, so all I have are her notebooks of material. Luckily, they are incredibly helpful and designed by an organization called Micro Opportunities, funded partially by Citi Bank’s foundation. I’m beginning to see how edifying and educational this whole process will be for me:
Right now, I’m designing market research surveys to assess the needs of our target population and the abilities of our trainers using a Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. The most exciting part about this is that my university education, it turns out, was not a total waste of time! I learned all about PRA methods in a class once upon a time, and amazingly enough, I’m about to use them. It brings tears to my eyes.
Next, I’ll write a report for our funders about my findings. And then I’ll begin to draft a curriculum prototype (one set for trainers, one set for learners) to pilot-test on a focus group, and then tweak. And then I’ll finalize the material, make it look visually ‘pretty,’ and send it off to be printed. That’s right, I am to be a published author on financial matters. This should give my dad a good laugh.
Once printed, we will have a kick-off in February for the material with representatives from the Brookings Institute. So there’s no pressure, obviously.
As you can see, things are picking up. Luckily, I’m now really jazzed about this project. The more I work here, the more enthused I am about the merits of micro finance. It really feels like an ideal, capacity-building approach to development. It’s not a hand-out, it’s not charity, and it doesn’t perpetuate a role of dependency. It instead allows people to take initiative in their own lives in the same way we in the States do every day. A woman who tends goats and works as a sugarcane picker for a corporate owned farm can become a player in the market because she has access to money she can invest in economic pursuits. Seed money that will help her make MORE money that can, in turn, allow her to utilize other micro-services: pension plans, life insurance, health insurance. It’s pretty exciting to not only work with such an organization, but live in a village that considers its services a way of life. So many entrepreneurial women in Mhaswad who seem to have good lives and make an adequate income are regular customers of the Bank. It’s very impressive.
A success story, at last!
I had been putting off facing the most daunting of my projects for a few weeks now, but finally determined yesterday that I need to put my hand to the plow. The dreaded task is developing the advanced financial literacy curriculum I mentioned in an earlier posting. Basically, I have absolutely no interest in developing curriculum or in financial matters, which may largely stem from the fact that I feel pretty insecure about both. But as I was saying, I steeled myself yesterday, and sat down with piles and piles of resources to begin piecing out remnants of an action plan. Barbara, our recently departed intern, received a formal training in how to go about this project (and keep in mind the student handbook I’m developing must be catered to semi-literate women. So largely image and activity-based material. For someone who loves to write, this is not good news.) Unfortunately, she never got around to tackling the project, so all I have are her notebooks of material. Luckily, they are incredibly helpful and designed by an organization called Micro Opportunities, funded partially by Citi Bank’s foundation. I’m beginning to see how edifying and educational this whole process will be for me:
Right now, I’m designing market research surveys to assess the needs of our target population and the abilities of our trainers using a Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. The most exciting part about this is that my university education, it turns out, was not a total waste of time! I learned all about PRA methods in a class once upon a time, and amazingly enough, I’m about to use them. It brings tears to my eyes.
Next, I’ll write a report for our funders about my findings. And then I’ll begin to draft a curriculum prototype (one set for trainers, one set for learners) to pilot-test on a focus group, and then tweak. And then I’ll finalize the material, make it look visually ‘pretty,’ and send it off to be printed. That’s right, I am to be a published author on financial matters. This should give my dad a good laugh.
Once printed, we will have a kick-off in February for the material with representatives from the Brookings Institute. So there’s no pressure, obviously.
As you can see, things are picking up. Luckily, I’m now really jazzed about this project. The more I work here, the more enthused I am about the merits of micro finance. It really feels like an ideal, capacity-building approach to development. It’s not a hand-out, it’s not charity, and it doesn’t perpetuate a role of dependency. It instead allows people to take initiative in their own lives in the same way we in the States do every day. A woman who tends goats and works as a sugarcane picker for a corporate owned farm can become a player in the market because she has access to money she can invest in economic pursuits. Seed money that will help her make MORE money that can, in turn, allow her to utilize other micro-services: pension plans, life insurance, health insurance. It’s pretty exciting to not only work with such an organization, but live in a village that considers its services a way of life. So many entrepreneurial women in Mhaswad who seem to have good lives and make an adequate income are regular customers of the Bank. It’s very impressive.
A success story, at last!
Written on October 19th
We are currently celebrating the holiday Navarati here in Mhaswad, and unlike with Ganpati, I have no idea what this holiday is about other than the fact that the name Navarati means “nine nights,” which is the length of the celebration. This festival is much more low-key than Ganpati was, but still involves large religious statues under colorful tents set up around the village and speakers blasting celebratory music from sunrise to midnight (which gets a little obnoxious). I’m sure it involves much more than that, but those are the most obvious elements from a foreign perspective. And as my mentor here at the NGO says (who’s not from here), this village celebrates enough festivals to render them all unremarkable. I’m beginning to see what she means. Brenna had heard that this particular celebration involved some sort of stick dance, and really wanted to see it. I wasn’t initially very enthusiastic given that I envisioned the same drunken mosh pit of local men coated in radioactive pink colored powder that we’d seen a few weeks before. But, thankfully this was almost the complete opposite. Thursday night, we met up with a friend from the bank who took us to a peaceful little courtyard right off the main road and next to a temple that I had never seen before. About 20 people were sitting on steps and on the ground, watching another 30 or so youngsters do “the stick dance,” or as they would call it, “playing.” There were two circles, one inside the other, which would rotate in opposite directions. Each person has two sticks, and to the beat of the music you hit your sticks together and then against those of your partner in a regular pattern until you slowly rotate to the next person and continue along until the song ends. Brenna and I were content to sit and watch this innocent little diversion, but of course were inevitably expected to participate. I went first, trailblazer that I am, and in my fumbling lack
of coordination managed to make Brenna’s ‘playing’ look absolutely wonderful in contrast when I handed off the sticks. The sequence of stick smacking wasn’t hard to pick up, but it was amusing how much you had to adjust to each person’s personal style—the younger kids were more predictable, but the older ones had been doing this for years and had managed to individualize their stick-hitting to involve such varying flair and flamboyancy that they were practically unpredictable. It’s hard to hit a stick against another stick when you can’t tell where the other stick might be flying to, all the while trying not to laugh and fall and miss the beat. One girl seemed to prefer not hitting the sticks at all, so it was even harder to remember who she was, respect her boundaries, and mimic her “fake hitting” by missing her stick by just enough space that we were doing the moves but avoiding collision. Oy vey. But needless to see, it was highly amusing to the crowd that we joined in, and we had a lot of fun.
The next day got even better. After I taught my English class Friday morning, Brenna had been invited to visit a village school with Tinki’s (a employee at the bank) daughter Palavi on the birthday of the school, so I tagged along. Palavi took us to her classroom, past rooms teeming with children uproariously excited to see two white people at their school. They kept running up to us and yelling, “Hallo! Hut is your name?!” and furiously shaking our hands before running back to their rooms. Once inside Palavi’s class, perhaps eighty 8th grade students stood in unison and chanted “Wel-come Madame!” The teacher promptly told us the celebration must start immediately because we were an hour late (Palavi had been late in fetching us, and we had no idea where we were going). He then gave some sort of explanation as to why Brenna had been invited as a guest of honor, which included the venerable qualities of being a foreigner and speaking English. We were seated at the front of the room, and a smiling Jaishri (my next door neighbor), came from the back of the class to give us our two wild roses apiece, a candy bar, and a helping of some spiced rice puff-things. After the principal and another administrator had arrived and were seated next to us, it was explained to a bewildered Brenna that she, as the honorary guest, would be cutting the tiny chocolate birthday cake decked in flowers at the table in front of the student’s desks. At this point I could hardly contain my laughter, because this was so far from what we were expecting it was ridiculous. As Brenna cut the cake, the children cheered and a boy let off what seemed to be a hybrid between a blow horn and a silly string
device, covering Brenna in sparkly foam and probably the cake, too. Then the administrator handed us our pieces of cake (which led to an awkward moment because it seemed like she wanted to feed it to us, wedding style, but it was really hard to tell), and after eating our bite-sized pieces in front of an audience of watchful, probably ravenous students, the teacher asked Brenna to give an encouraging message to the class. At this point I was thanking God I had come. This should be good, I thought. Brenna, being the roll-with-the-punches person that she is, began to tell the class with great verve and energy who she was and how Mhaswad in many ways was very similar to her native Iowa. And then she told the class about her favorite upcoming American “festival,” Halloween. I don’t know how this came to her, but the class had this glazed over look in their admiring eyes that it probably didn’t matter if she had read them a recipe so long as she was looking at them and talking. Once done, the teacher looked at me with anticipation and said, “Yes? You?” So, I proceeded to go through my introduction, and babbled on for awhile about my beloved Oregon, the importance of education, and who knows what else.
When we left, the entire class followed us to the hallway to send us off. I shook nearly everyone’s hand and gave my full name over and over and over until everyone was satisfied. We then, on our way out, were invited to every other class in the school to introduce ourselves and give a short speech (there were probably only 5 other large classes, so this isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds). Surprisingly we were only there an hour, but if there had been any sense of order before we’d arrived, we certainly left a wake of chaos and near-hysteria when we left. The whole experience was as close as I ever hope to come to being a celebrity, but it was pretty fun, and a highlight of my trip so far.
of coordination managed to make Brenna’s ‘playing’ look absolutely wonderful in contrast when I handed off the sticks. The sequence of stick smacking wasn’t hard to pick up, but it was amusing how much you had to adjust to each person’s personal style—the younger kids were more predictable, but the older ones had been doing this for years and had managed to individualize their stick-hitting to involve such varying flair and flamboyancy that they were practically unpredictable. It’s hard to hit a stick against another stick when you can’t tell where the other stick might be flying to, all the while trying not to laugh and fall and miss the beat. One girl seemed to prefer not hitting the sticks at all, so it was even harder to remember who she was, respect her boundaries, and mimic her “fake hitting” by missing her stick by just enough space that we were doing the moves but avoiding collision. Oy vey. But needless to see, it was highly amusing to the crowd that we joined in, and we had a lot of fun.The next day got even better. After I taught my English class Friday morning, Brenna had been invited to visit a village school with Tinki’s (a employee at the bank) daughter Palavi on the birthday of the school, so I tagged along. Palavi took us to her classroom, past rooms teeming with children uproariously excited to see two white people at their school. They kept running up to us and yelling, “Hallo! Hut is your name?!” and furiously shaking our hands before running back to their rooms. Once inside Palavi’s class, perhaps eighty 8th grade students stood in unison and chanted “Wel-come Madame!” The teacher promptly told us the celebration must start immediately because we were an hour late (Palavi had been late in fetching us, and we had no idea where we were going). He then gave some sort of explanation as to why Brenna had been invited as a guest of honor, which included the venerable qualities of being a foreigner and speaking English. We were seated at the front of the room, and a smiling Jaishri (my next door neighbor), came from the back of the class to give us our two wild roses apiece, a candy bar, and a helping of some spiced rice puff-things. After the principal and another administrator had arrived and were seated next to us, it was explained to a bewildered Brenna that she, as the honorary guest, would be cutting the tiny chocolate birthday cake decked in flowers at the table in front of the student’s desks. At this point I could hardly contain my laughter, because this was so far from what we were expecting it was ridiculous. As Brenna cut the cake, the children cheered and a boy let off what seemed to be a hybrid between a blow horn and a silly string
device, covering Brenna in sparkly foam and probably the cake, too. Then the administrator handed us our pieces of cake (which led to an awkward moment because it seemed like she wanted to feed it to us, wedding style, but it was really hard to tell), and after eating our bite-sized pieces in front of an audience of watchful, probably ravenous students, the teacher asked Brenna to give an encouraging message to the class. At this point I was thanking God I had come. This should be good, I thought. Brenna, being the roll-with-the-punches person that she is, began to tell the class with great verve and energy who she was and how Mhaswad in many ways was very similar to her native Iowa. And then she told the class about her favorite upcoming American “festival,” Halloween. I don’t know how this came to her, but the class had this glazed over look in their admiring eyes that it probably didn’t matter if she had read them a recipe so long as she was looking at them and talking. Once done, the teacher looked at me with anticipation and said, “Yes? You?” So, I proceeded to go through my introduction, and babbled on for awhile about my beloved Oregon, the importance of education, and who knows what else.When we left, the entire class followed us to the hallway to send us off. I shook nearly everyone’s hand and gave my full name over and over and over until everyone was satisfied. We then, on our way out, were invited to every other class in the school to introduce ourselves and give a short speech (there were probably only 5 other large classes, so this isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds). Surprisingly we were only there an hour, but if there had been any sense of order before we’d arrived, we certainly left a wake of chaos and near-hysteria when we left. The whole experience was as close as I ever hope to come to being a celebrity, but it was pretty fun, and a highlight of my trip so far.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Ellora and Ajunta Caves
“I think the atmosphere in India suits you. Before, when you come, you are a little bit thin. Now, you are just a little bit fat.”
HA. People here crack me up. This was one of the first things my co-worker Vanitha said to me this morning. As much as I would like it to be true, I think she’s probably crazy.
On to the update. There is SO much to tell you all! I have been having the most wonderful time lately, largely because I have stopped taking my malaria pills, which have notorious psychological side effects and were making me exhausted, depressed, and pretty darn homesick. Not to mention the nasty nightmares. I stopped taking them a couple weeks ago, and since those last two weeks I have been chipper, energized, and happy-- I’m assuming there’s a connection. So that’s been a relief.
Another source of excitement has been my recent travels. The B’s and I planned a mini-adventure to coincide with the ceremonious dropping-off of Barbara at the Pune Airport. She’s leaving us for the Himalayas and a 3 weeks trek, before she finds other NGOs to work with for the remainder of her 2 year stay.
Mann Vikas generously offered up the use of a car and driver for our trip, allowing us to get everywhere twice as fast as state buses would allow and with a completely intact sense of sanity, which buses certainly DO NOT allow. If you can imagine sardines in a can, you have a very minimal idea of what it’s like to take a bus ride in this country. But I digress. So we drove to Aurangabad to stay with Ann, a beloved fellow AIF-er who is working with migrant labor education programs and has a fabulous and spacious apartment all to herself. She had the apartment beautifully prepared for our arrival—a bounty of fruit in the kitchen, extra mats and sheets to sleep on, curtains in the spare room. It was so sweet! We used Aurangabad as a home base and from there took two day trips to the Ajunta and Ellora Caves. Both sets of caves are religious temples, hand-carved (not naturally formed) and intended for use by monks during the rainy and flooded monsoon seasons.
The Ajunta ca
ves are all Buddhist, and were carved between 200 BC and 600 AD. There are 30 in total, and they ring around the inside of a circularly curved canyon (see my semi-aerial picture to the left). Inside, the caves were dark and cool and had some remnants of what must have been beautiful fresco-style murals on the walls, columns, and ceiling in addition to chiseled and detailed work everywhere. Huge Buddhas were, of course, the central sculptures of most caves, and the acoustics were amazing. Barbara has a pretty funny video on her camera of her singing a few notes, which were held beautifully in the air for the longest time by the breadth of the room, and me, randomly on the other side of the temple responding her to her spontaneously with another note, and eventually, we had picked out the tune of a symphony we both knew by going back and forth with operatic notes. It was funny at the time. I should note, too, that we got to the caves as early as we could and had the good fortune of having the caves to our ourselves, initially, before hoards of school children came encouraged us always to stay at least one cave ahead of them. Acoustics can amplify annoying noises, too :)
While I think the Ajunta caves were my favorite, the Ellora caves were impressive in their own right, and according to Lonely Planet are MORE impressive. The Ellora caves have a few Buddhist caves, but are from a later time period, 600 AD to 1000 AD, so they’re reflective of the fact that Buddhism had “gone out of fashion” at a certain point in time, at which point all the other caves (maybe 30 out of the 34 Ellora caves) are either Jain or Hindu. The most famous and awe-inspiring of these caves is the Kailasa temple (see picture below), which is apparently the largest monolithic sculpture in the world. Hewn from rock by over 7,000 laborer
s over a period of 150 years, it covers twice the area of the Parthenon in Athens and is one and a half times as high (all facts are courtesy of Lonely Planet). The temple is hard to explain, but I’ll try- it’s as though someone dug a donut-shaped area out of the inside of a cliff, so that there is still high rock in the middle, which was carved elaborately into a building/temple, but around that central piece is a ring of wide floor which is exposed to the sun , and around THAT are the high, vast walls of the mountain, carved into columns and internal caves. It’s incredibly hard to explain, but was quite literally the most amazing man made thing I have ever seen. Really. It was breathtaking.
From there we picked up Ann from work and headed on down the road to Pune for the weekend. There, we stayed with other wonderful AIF-ers (Sara, Alissa and Vaani, who was in Gujarat for the weekend), who have just gotten their own apartment in the heart of the city, next to the gloriously creepy Osho Commune, and the delicious German Bakery (which is where all the commune people hang out, but the muesli and coffee and wheat bread you can buy there makes it more than worth it). It’s really strange to be sitting in an internet café plastered with pictures of the Rajneesh and know that, despite his criminal reputation in Oregon and the minor infraction of trying to poison and overtake an entire town, he has still managed to maintain a religious following amongst white hippies from all around the world. But anyway. Over the weekend I was able to drink coffee, buy some books, do a little Christmas shopping, eat almost an entire chicken (involuntarily, but it was delicious), and mail some letters. It was a productive weekend, but Pune is crazy enough that I am always very happy to be heading back to my quiet little hamlet when my trip is over.
So that was my trip—it was pretty wonderful! It felt great to be a tourist and see something other than fields of crops, livestock, and the narrow streets of my village. Nothing official is planned for the future yet, but for now I’m feeling content to have at least a few uninterrupted weeks of being “home.” Ann and the girls in Pune are planning to get the village experience in early November by visiting Mhaswad for Diwali, the next big holiday and a BIG deal here. Diwali lasts for 5 nights and involves women wearing brand new saris, a bunch of country-fair style rides which attracts people from nearby villages, dancing at night undoubtedly by only men, and probably other things that I’ll have to get details about and write about later on. BUT, yesterday I happened to find an absolutely beautiful cotton sari while helping Brenna shop for sari blouse fabric, and bought it so that I could celebrate Diwali in style. I’m pretty excited.
Other thoughts:
-My NGO just launched its new website, which I haven’t even seen yet, but it’s supposed to be pretty nice. The address is: http://www.manndeshi.org/
-If you are so inclined, I would love to get mail! I would even go so far as to tastelessly beg for care packages. Things I would love are: granola bars, coffee beans, a New York Times, books, DVDs, a cloth handkerchief, a small pillowcase (random assortment, I know). There is, of course, the understanding that reciprocity demands I bring souvenirs for all who generously respond to this personal plug.
-Thank you for the comments you’ve been leaving on the blog!! I look forward, every day I get internet, to checking to see who may have written something. It keeps me connected to you, which is wonderful! Keep me informed of what you’re up too as well!
That’s it for now! Love you guys!
(I would love to post an album of all my pictures if I had more access to internet, but for now, I'll try to include more in the posts...)
HA. People here crack me up. This was one of the first things my co-worker Vanitha said to me this morning. As much as I would like it to be true, I think she’s probably crazy.
On to the update. There is SO much to tell you all! I have been having the most wonderful time lately, largely because I have stopped taking my malaria pills, which have notorious psychological side effects and were making me exhausted, depressed, and pretty darn homesick. Not to mention the nasty nightmares. I stopped taking them a couple weeks ago, and since those last two weeks I have been chipper, energized, and happy-- I’m assuming there’s a connection. So that’s been a relief.
Another source of excitement has been my recent travels. The B’s and I planned a mini-adventure to coincide with the ceremonious dropping-off of Barbara at the Pune Airport. She’s leaving us for the Himalayas and a 3 weeks trek, before she finds other NGOs to work with for the remainder of her 2 year stay.
Mann Vikas generously offered up the use of a car and driver for our trip, allowing us to get everywhere twice as fast as state buses would allow and with a completely intact sense of sanity, which buses certainly DO NOT allow. If you can imagine sardines in a can, you have a very minimal idea of what it’s like to take a bus ride in this country. But I digress. So we drove to Aurangabad to stay with Ann, a beloved fellow AIF-er who is working with migrant labor education programs and has a fabulous and spacious apartment all to herself. She had the apartment beautifully prepared for our arrival—a bounty of fruit in the kitchen, extra mats and sheets to sleep on, curtains in the spare room. It was so sweet! We used Aurangabad as a home base and from there took two day trips to the Ajunta and Ellora Caves. Both sets of caves are religious temples, hand-carved (not naturally formed) and intended for use by monks during the rainy and flooded monsoon seasons.
The Ajunta ca
ves are all Buddhist, and were carved between 200 BC and 600 AD. There are 30 in total, and they ring around the inside of a circularly curved canyon (see my semi-aerial picture to the left). Inside, the caves were dark and cool and had some remnants of what must have been beautiful fresco-style murals on the walls, columns, and ceiling in addition to chiseled and detailed work everywhere. Huge Buddhas were, of course, the central sculptures of most caves, and the acoustics were amazing. Barbara has a pretty funny video on her camera of her singing a few notes, which were held beautifully in the air for the longest time by the breadth of the room, and me, randomly on the other side of the temple responding her to her spontaneously with another note, and eventually, we had picked out the tune of a symphony we both knew by going back and forth with operatic notes. It was funny at the time. I should note, too, that we got to the caves as early as we could and had the good fortune of having the caves to our ourselves, initially, before hoards of school children came encouraged us always to stay at least one cave ahead of them. Acoustics can amplify annoying noises, too :)While I think the Ajunta caves were my favorite, the Ellora caves were impressive in their own right, and according to Lonely Planet are MORE impressive. The Ellora caves have a few Buddhist caves, but are from a later time period, 600 AD to 1000 AD, so they’re reflective of the fact that Buddhism had “gone out of fashion” at a certain point in time, at which point all the other caves (maybe 30 out of the 34 Ellora caves) are either Jain or Hindu. The most famous and awe-inspiring of these caves is the Kailasa temple (see picture below), which is apparently the largest monolithic sculpture in the world. Hewn from rock by over 7,000 laborer
s over a period of 150 years, it covers twice the area of the Parthenon in Athens and is one and a half times as high (all facts are courtesy of Lonely Planet). The temple is hard to explain, but I’ll try- it’s as though someone dug a donut-shaped area out of the inside of a cliff, so that there is still high rock in the middle, which was carved elaborately into a building/temple, but around that central piece is a ring of wide floor which is exposed to the sun , and around THAT are the high, vast walls of the mountain, carved into columns and internal caves. It’s incredibly hard to explain, but was quite literally the most amazing man made thing I have ever seen. Really. It was breathtaking.From there we picked up Ann from work and headed on down the road to Pune for the weekend. There, we stayed with other wonderful AIF-ers (Sara, Alissa and Vaani, who was in Gujarat for the weekend), who have just gotten their own apartment in the heart of the city, next to the gloriously creepy Osho Commune, and the delicious German Bakery (which is where all the commune people hang out, but the muesli and coffee and wheat bread you can buy there makes it more than worth it). It’s really strange to be sitting in an internet café plastered with pictures of the Rajneesh and know that, despite his criminal reputation in Oregon and the minor infraction of trying to poison and overtake an entire town, he has still managed to maintain a religious following amongst white hippies from all around the world. But anyway. Over the weekend I was able to drink coffee, buy some books, do a little Christmas shopping, eat almost an entire chicken (involuntarily, but it was delicious), and mail some letters. It was a productive weekend, but Pune is crazy enough that I am always very happy to be heading back to my quiet little hamlet when my trip is over.
So that was my trip—it was pretty wonderful! It felt great to be a tourist and see something other than fields of crops, livestock, and the narrow streets of my village. Nothing official is planned for the future yet, but for now I’m feeling content to have at least a few uninterrupted weeks of being “home.” Ann and the girls in Pune are planning to get the village experience in early November by visiting Mhaswad for Diwali, the next big holiday and a BIG deal here. Diwali lasts for 5 nights and involves women wearing brand new saris, a bunch of country-fair style rides which attracts people from nearby villages, dancing at night undoubtedly by only men, and probably other things that I’ll have to get details about and write about later on. BUT, yesterday I happened to find an absolutely beautiful cotton sari while helping Brenna shop for sari blouse fabric, and bought it so that I could celebrate Diwali in style. I’m pretty excited.
Other thoughts:
-My NGO just launched its new website, which I haven’t even seen yet, but it’s supposed to be pretty nice. The address is: http://www.manndeshi.org/
-If you are so inclined, I would love to get mail! I would even go so far as to tastelessly beg for care packages. Things I would love are: granola bars, coffee beans, a New York Times, books, DVDs, a cloth handkerchief, a small pillowcase (random assortment, I know). There is, of course, the understanding that reciprocity demands I bring souvenirs for all who generously respond to this personal plug.
-Thank you for the comments you’ve been leaving on the blog!! I look forward, every day I get internet, to checking to see who may have written something. It keeps me connected to you, which is wonderful! Keep me informed of what you’re up too as well!
That’s it for now! Love you guys!
(I would love to post an album of all my pictures if I had more access to internet, but for now, I'll try to include more in the posts...)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Picture!
Hello all! I know an update is a little overdue, but for now, here's some visual information. Brenna is featured here in the beautiful office we call home. This is where I spend my days.
Will write more soon.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Everyday Life, in Copious Detail
Here’s a little more detail about my work and homelife, as requested:
I work for the NGO organization Mann Vikas (I’m shortening some names here), which also serves as the umbrella organization for a micro finance institution, Mann Deshi, a cooperative bank for rural women. In addition, there is also the Mann Vikas Udyogini Rural Business School for Women, which is literally a bus converted into a classroom which travels to remote locations and offers trainings in financial and computer literacy, tailoring (sewing), yogurt making, and other useful entrepreneurial skills.
The projects I’ve been assigned are broad and yet nondescript at the moment. I will be teaching, as I said in an earlier post, a weekly English class (I’m bolding all my projects for emphasis. There’s a lot). I am also inheriting several projects from Barbara, a departing intern (the Scot). She, bless her heart, is an uber-productive individual who has never said ‘no’ to anyone and therefore is handing off more projects to me than I would have ever allowed myself to become involved in. Those include:
-Developing a financial literacy curriculum for the rural business school based on her notes and materials from a training she received in Mumbai;
-Establishing a Global Giving account for the NGO, which is an online website through which people can donate money to Mann Vikas. Because this is a U.S. website however, we have to endure a lengthy process of due diligence by proving through extensive documentation that we are actually who we say we are (the equivalent of a 501(c)3), and not scam artists or funders of terrorism; and finally
-Smart Card technology…roughly put, it’s an electronic version of a passbook which I have just learned from our resident Brit is some sort of documentation of all your bank transactions which you take to the bank with you. This technology allows bank “pigmy agents” (the very P.C. way people here say field agent) to electronically access information about rural clients without the paperwork.
In addition to Barbara’s projects I’ve got plenty of my own. After hearing I was interested in agricultural issues, my mentor decided I should help realize her long burning ambition to have a pomegranate tasting contest amongst growers in Maharashtra. Apparently, there are some damn good pomegranates here, and she’d like to promote them. Or something. I’m not totally clear on why this is a priority, but it’ll be fun nonetheless.
Also, I’ve just been handed off the project of helping to develop the terms of a new partnership with Baja Allianz, a life insurance company that is pitching a Woman and Child Insurance package for us to provide to our clients. I sat in on a scintillating 2 hour meeting, all in Hindi, about their services, from which I have some fantastic doodling on notebook paper to show for. Baja is the world’s self-purported largest and most trusted manufacturer of two-wheelers (motorcycles), and this somehow makes them very interested in life insurance. I’m new to the business world, but this amuses me.
And lastly, I have just been informed that I may well be providing computer training to….judges. This is really all I know. Vanita, the communications person in the office, just told me that I will give her a copy of my resume. I, then, ask why I will be doing this (this is my only form of rebellion around here: having the audacity to ask “why.”). And she answers by saying that I will possibly be giving computer training to judges. Judges who sit in court with lawyers, I ask? Hm, she answers with the classic Indian sideways headbob that can as easily mean yes or no depending on the intent of the bobber themselves, known only to them. What I then said I won’t repeat, but needless to say, I have no idea what they may expect to find on my resume that would qualify me for such a task. Oh goodness.
I think that covers it. These are my projects—seven in all, and these are just the ones they’ve bothered to tell me about. I should acknowledge that this NGO is a very well respected organization with a large client base and internationally recognized success. But as you can see, they spread their interns and fellows very, very thin. Rather than focus on one thing from beginning to completion, as I would prefer, they expect you to keep more than a lot of balls in the air at once, and all the while giving no time to actually work on them as they fill up most of your office time with the regular tasks of report writing, editing, email composition, etc. It’s an office culture I’m going to have to learn to navigate and negotiate within, lest I go insane!!! Different coping mechanisms are arising as time goes by….the mid-morning tea break……the pre-lunch guava snack…long lunches…utilization of the ipod, the universal signal for “I need to be left alone for awhile” which doesn’t always work…and finally, another tea break. The final strategy, which Brenna has begun to masterfully employ, is flatly saying “no, I can’t do that right now.” If they so much as suggest an 8th project to me, those very words may fly out of my own mouth.
As for my home life, it is the EXACT opposite. Overly tranquil doesn’t begin to cover it. I live with Jaishri, the branch manager of the Mann Deshi Bank in Mhaswad (there are multiple locations), her husband Dr. Narale (as he is known to his family, a veterinarian whose connections bring the household fantastic buffalo milk), and their 9 year old daughter Shweta. I walk to work with Jaishri most mornings, but come home before her, so those of you who have gotten phone calls from me are usually helping to fill my time during the long walk through town, filled with hundreds of staring and bewildered eyes, and then down the long stretch of country road to the house, all the while dodging sleeping donkeys, honking trucks, whizzing two wheelers, and most deadly of all, huge turds of poop everywhere. Once home, I usually engage in some sort of wordless but laughter-filled game with Shweta (last night she picked the heads off of some flowers and we threw them back and forth to each other for about an hour). When Jaishri gets home she usually makes tea, refuses all offers to let me help her, and delivers me a steaming cup of my favorite ginger chai. Drinking this kills only about 5 minutes of my evening. Then I read, write emails, do laundry (in a bucket, in my bedroom, just because I can. There’s a woman who does the family’s laundry, but I’ve decided to spare my clothes the heavy discipline of being beaten against rocks and rubbed with metal brushes), and usually devour a lot of peanut butter as I wait rapaciously for dinner at around 10 pm. After dinner, sometimes we sit around and watch an Indian TV show, or if I’m lucky, some really great American movies being shown on the English station like First Daughter or The Pacifier. Then I retire for the night, take a quick cold shower to wash off the grime of the day, read more, fuss with my mosquito netting, kill any killable bugs, and then attempt to sleep under the white noise of my fan and the soothing melodies of country music. (I’ve had some pretty terrifying mefloquine dreams, but I’ve found that honky tonk must scare any subconscious and negative thoughts that nightmares feed upon. So far so good.) Behold, my terribly glamorous village lifestyle.
Despite the ongoing frustrations, there are, of course, beautiful moments that I am awed by. Like fording a shallow river at dusk as boys in the village wrestle and dive in the beautiful water. And seeing someone I’ve met only once as I walk to work, and though I don’t comprehend a single Marathi word that he’s saying I wind up getting whisked away on his two wheeler and receiving a welcome and unsolicited ride to work at exhilarating and breakneck speeds. And like Monday night, when we had an unusually long power outage for a few hours. The family and I lit candles in the kitchen and ate strawberry ice cream in the dim light, and then took our cups of chai up to the roof and sat under the blurry streak of the Milky Way while Shweta narrated stories to us in the dark. Later, I realized what a fitting metaphor that was for my experience here. In the midst of the unexpected, of being deprived of what we take for granted and come to rely on, we can experience something uniquely beautiful, intimate, and simple. I wish those moments of realization came to me more, but I’m learning to appreciate them as they come. Food for the soul!
That’s it for now…how’s that for some detail! Whew. Kudos to anyone who actually read this. Be well!
I work for the NGO organization Mann Vikas (I’m shortening some names here), which also serves as the umbrella organization for a micro finance institution, Mann Deshi, a cooperative bank for rural women. In addition, there is also the Mann Vikas Udyogini Rural Business School for Women, which is literally a bus converted into a classroom which travels to remote locations and offers trainings in financial and computer literacy, tailoring (sewing), yogurt making, and other useful entrepreneurial skills.
The projects I’ve been assigned are broad and yet nondescript at the moment. I will be teaching, as I said in an earlier post, a weekly English class (I’m bolding all my projects for emphasis. There’s a lot). I am also inheriting several projects from Barbara, a departing intern (the Scot). She, bless her heart, is an uber-productive individual who has never said ‘no’ to anyone and therefore is handing off more projects to me than I would have ever allowed myself to become involved in. Those include:
-Developing a financial literacy curriculum for the rural business school based on her notes and materials from a training she received in Mumbai;
-Establishing a Global Giving account for the NGO, which is an online website through which people can donate money to Mann Vikas. Because this is a U.S. website however, we have to endure a lengthy process of due diligence by proving through extensive documentation that we are actually who we say we are (the equivalent of a 501(c)3), and not scam artists or funders of terrorism; and finally
-Smart Card technology…roughly put, it’s an electronic version of a passbook which I have just learned from our resident Brit is some sort of documentation of all your bank transactions which you take to the bank with you. This technology allows bank “pigmy agents” (the very P.C. way people here say field agent) to electronically access information about rural clients without the paperwork.
In addition to Barbara’s projects I’ve got plenty of my own. After hearing I was interested in agricultural issues, my mentor decided I should help realize her long burning ambition to have a pomegranate tasting contest amongst growers in Maharashtra. Apparently, there are some damn good pomegranates here, and she’d like to promote them. Or something. I’m not totally clear on why this is a priority, but it’ll be fun nonetheless.
Also, I’ve just been handed off the project of helping to develop the terms of a new partnership with Baja Allianz, a life insurance company that is pitching a Woman and Child Insurance package for us to provide to our clients. I sat in on a scintillating 2 hour meeting, all in Hindi, about their services, from which I have some fantastic doodling on notebook paper to show for. Baja is the world’s self-purported largest and most trusted manufacturer of two-wheelers (motorcycles), and this somehow makes them very interested in life insurance. I’m new to the business world, but this amuses me.
And lastly, I have just been informed that I may well be providing computer training to….judges. This is really all I know. Vanita, the communications person in the office, just told me that I will give her a copy of my resume. I, then, ask why I will be doing this (this is my only form of rebellion around here: having the audacity to ask “why.”). And she answers by saying that I will possibly be giving computer training to judges. Judges who sit in court with lawyers, I ask? Hm, she answers with the classic Indian sideways headbob that can as easily mean yes or no depending on the intent of the bobber themselves, known only to them. What I then said I won’t repeat, but needless to say, I have no idea what they may expect to find on my resume that would qualify me for such a task. Oh goodness.
I think that covers it. These are my projects—seven in all, and these are just the ones they’ve bothered to tell me about. I should acknowledge that this NGO is a very well respected organization with a large client base and internationally recognized success. But as you can see, they spread their interns and fellows very, very thin. Rather than focus on one thing from beginning to completion, as I would prefer, they expect you to keep more than a lot of balls in the air at once, and all the while giving no time to actually work on them as they fill up most of your office time with the regular tasks of report writing, editing, email composition, etc. It’s an office culture I’m going to have to learn to navigate and negotiate within, lest I go insane!!! Different coping mechanisms are arising as time goes by….the mid-morning tea break……the pre-lunch guava snack…long lunches…utilization of the ipod, the universal signal for “I need to be left alone for awhile” which doesn’t always work…and finally, another tea break. The final strategy, which Brenna has begun to masterfully employ, is flatly saying “no, I can’t do that right now.” If they so much as suggest an 8th project to me, those very words may fly out of my own mouth.
As for my home life, it is the EXACT opposite. Overly tranquil doesn’t begin to cover it. I live with Jaishri, the branch manager of the Mann Deshi Bank in Mhaswad (there are multiple locations), her husband Dr. Narale (as he is known to his family, a veterinarian whose connections bring the household fantastic buffalo milk), and their 9 year old daughter Shweta. I walk to work with Jaishri most mornings, but come home before her, so those of you who have gotten phone calls from me are usually helping to fill my time during the long walk through town, filled with hundreds of staring and bewildered eyes, and then down the long stretch of country road to the house, all the while dodging sleeping donkeys, honking trucks, whizzing two wheelers, and most deadly of all, huge turds of poop everywhere. Once home, I usually engage in some sort of wordless but laughter-filled game with Shweta (last night she picked the heads off of some flowers and we threw them back and forth to each other for about an hour). When Jaishri gets home she usually makes tea, refuses all offers to let me help her, and delivers me a steaming cup of my favorite ginger chai. Drinking this kills only about 5 minutes of my evening. Then I read, write emails, do laundry (in a bucket, in my bedroom, just because I can. There’s a woman who does the family’s laundry, but I’ve decided to spare my clothes the heavy discipline of being beaten against rocks and rubbed with metal brushes), and usually devour a lot of peanut butter as I wait rapaciously for dinner at around 10 pm. After dinner, sometimes we sit around and watch an Indian TV show, or if I’m lucky, some really great American movies being shown on the English station like First Daughter or The Pacifier. Then I retire for the night, take a quick cold shower to wash off the grime of the day, read more, fuss with my mosquito netting, kill any killable bugs, and then attempt to sleep under the white noise of my fan and the soothing melodies of country music. (I’ve had some pretty terrifying mefloquine dreams, but I’ve found that honky tonk must scare any subconscious and negative thoughts that nightmares feed upon. So far so good.) Behold, my terribly glamorous village lifestyle.
Despite the ongoing frustrations, there are, of course, beautiful moments that I am awed by. Like fording a shallow river at dusk as boys in the village wrestle and dive in the beautiful water. And seeing someone I’ve met only once as I walk to work, and though I don’t comprehend a single Marathi word that he’s saying I wind up getting whisked away on his two wheeler and receiving a welcome and unsolicited ride to work at exhilarating and breakneck speeds. And like Monday night, when we had an unusually long power outage for a few hours. The family and I lit candles in the kitchen and ate strawberry ice cream in the dim light, and then took our cups of chai up to the roof and sat under the blurry streak of the Milky Way while Shweta narrated stories to us in the dark. Later, I realized what a fitting metaphor that was for my experience here. In the midst of the unexpected, of being deprived of what we take for granted and come to rely on, we can experience something uniquely beautiful, intimate, and simple. I wish those moments of realization came to me more, but I’m learning to appreciate them as they come. Food for the soul!
That’s it for now…how’s that for some detail! Whew. Kudos to anyone who actually read this. Be well!
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