Goodbye India

So here it is: my last blog post from India. Tomorrow I'm flying from Varanasi to Delhi, then Delhi to Newark, and finally Newark to LAX. At 9:30 AM I'll be back home. I've had the "Oh wow you're leaving! When will you be back?" conversation with my rickshaw driver, my co-workers, and my gueshouse.

At the beginning of my time in Varanasi, I was eating dinner at a restaurant near my guesthouse, and an Indian girl asked if she could sit down with me and talk. I said yes, and we had a conversation about our educations, what we were doing, etc. At one point, she asked if I was staying here and asked how much I was paying per night (Indians don't have the same hangups about talking about money as Americans do). After I told her, she started telling me about the dormitory she stayed in, and how much cheaper it was, and how I was only staying here because there were other westerners around and it made me more comfortable. Her tone was somewhat accusatory and made it seem like, because I was working in India for the summer, I shouldn't want to be around westerners. I've been thinking about that conversation ever since it ended, and I couldn't figure out what bothered me about it.

At first (in my head), I was defensive about my decisions and was angry about her accusations. But then I came to a realization. So what? So what if I want to be around foreigners? I did make a conscious decision to stay in a more touristy area in the hopes of meeting other westerners in Varanasi (that didn't really work out though). And can you blame me? I'm staying here alone for the summer...it's only natural to want to be around people from your culture, who you recognize. I came in to the summer after spending the semester in & around Jaipur. Yes, with a group of 21 other Americas, but our staff was Indian and so were our homestays. I had a group of people I could talk with and relate to. And I was worried about what would be like to be alone for the summer. It hasn't been bad at all - I've seen 3 friends from my program who were/are still in India, my Hindi teacher and her husband, met an Irishman working at an anti-human trafficking NGO, spent time with my boss at her in-law's home, met two women from Holland at the stencils workshop, met a guy from North Carolina who teaches in Seoul, had good conversations with my rickshaw wallah, turned "come see my shop" into somewhat of a friendship with a 14-year-old, etc. I think the only time I really felt lonely was during my time in the villages, and even then I was surrounded by people.

Anyway, this "so what?" has morphed in to a realization of sorts. I can do India. I can act Indian. But at the end of the day, I'm still American. I prefer coffee to chai and sitting toilets to squat toilets. I'd rather wear jeans than a sawar set. I'm not good at waterfalling. I like toilet paper and still haven't figured out how to get truly clean from a bucket shower. I wish there were crosswalks and that people on the road followed traffic rules. But just because I know these things about myself and recognize them doesn't mean that I don't like these things about India or that I don't like India as a whole. That's completely untrue - I already know that I would come back in a heartbeat. I still drink chai when offered and have gotten really good at using a squat toilet. I wear sawar sets (and haven't worn jeans since January). I've figured out a trick to waterfalling better. I can cross the street and not have a heart attack in a rickshaw. But at the end of the day these things I prefer or "would rather" are deeply ingrained in who I am and how I think things should be. And, as Dipti always tells me when we talk about Rangsutra's projects, "It takes time." It takes time to fully abandon your own culture and embrace a new one. Part of surviving in a foreign country, especially (I think) in a developing one, is mediating between "yours" and "theirs", "familiar" and "unknown". And mediate I do. If that means that sometimes I need pasta and apple pie for dinner, than so be it. I don't care. And I don't think I could've gotten through the semester if I couldn't have had the occasional meal at Anokhi Cafe, or worn western clothes (almost) whenever I wanted. Sometimes this need for mediation manifested itself in bizarre ways - like the time Andrew and I watched the U.S. men's figure skating championships over ISP, and got SO into it. Or like how we bought a coffee maker and ground coffee beans with a mortar & pestle so that we could have real coffee.

Anyway, that got kind of rambly, but you get my point. I've also realized that no matter what, Indians will generally see me as a tourist - a wealthy westerner with money to spend. Even though one of the first things our Hindi teachers taught us to say was, "I am not a tourist," it's easier said than done.

It's hard to separate my time in India with SIT from my time in India traveling from my time in India with RangSutra (though I will have to for the reflection paper I have to send to my school as a part of the grant I got to fund this experience). They are all very interconnected - I came in to contact with RangSutra through SIT. Even though I want to say that interning with them has been the highlight of my time in India, I don't feel like I can because that would minimize my other experiences or make them seem less significant than they are. This was just the experience that allowed me to focus specifically on what I'm interested in and has made me realize that this is the kind of work I want to do in the future. I've started looking at graduate programs in International Development & Business/Economics. Oh my!

I can't believe I'm saying goodbye to India after spending the past 6 months here. I know I'll be back someday, hopefully soon, and hopefully as more than a tourist.

I wrote a grand total of 45 blog posts while I was here. I was hoping for 50, but 45 is just as good.

Positivity

Ok so that was way too negative yesterday. I need to post about some happy things. In a list form.

1. On Saturday my co-workers and I went shopping. Enough said.
2. Also on Saturday, my friend Jessie from my program and her friend came to visit. They're working with one of the NGO's we visited in Jodhpur and is leaving India a few days after I do. We went to the Benaras Hindu University campus one day, and it was so beautiful! Everyone had been telling me to go see it but I thought it was much further away from my guesthouse than it actually is. Lots of colonial architecture in a tropical setting, one of my favorite things. Also we got shirts made.
3. Yesterday the lunch pack my guesthouse makes for me every day was really heavy, and I couldn't figure out why. When it was lunch time I opened it and saw that there were two bananas and a knife. I was SO confused. I picked up the knife, and underneath it was a mango! Instead of giving me a sweet they gave me a mango. I was SO excited. I felt like a little kid who had gotten cake for dessert in their lunch box or something. Also the manager of my guesthouse was so confused when I returned the knife that night.

Sweaty

On Tuesday I had a really frustrating day of fieldwork in Bhadohi, the other district that RangSutra works in. I was supposed to interview 10 women, but I only got 6 interviews that I thought were complete/of decent quality. At the first village, I was supposed to interview 5 women. Midway through my fourth interview, the woman whose house we're at's husband rolls up on his motorcycle and situates himself right behind us. Great. The women immediately ceased to be chatty and open like they had been. The woman who I began to interview next was really quiet and it was a struggle to even get her to talk. When I got to the question about what she thought could be done to improve business practices, she refused to answer, and the husband (not her's) got up, walked over, and yelled something at her. The other intern, who was translating for me, said that he said regular orders would be how to improve business practices. I went on to the next question, but instead of translating Saurauv said, "it's probably better if we go." Great. So we left, and went on to the next village.

I got to interview one woman here before they had to leave, and this interview was also really frustrating. I was immediately discouraged by the presence of a woman's husband, but he didn't seem to be disturbing the interview at all. However, all the women in the group would answer the questions for the woman I was interviewing. I felt really helpless because I don't speak the language, so I didn't feel like I could tell them that I only wanted to talk to the woman I was interviewing right then. After the first interview, they all started to stand up and started pressing to leave. I got about 4 questions in to my next interview when they said they needed to leave.

The day progressed like that. Dipti was in the village we did the stencils workshop in, paying the women for their participation and evaluating their work. We were supposed to pick her up on our way back to Varanasi, and Saurauv and I told the taxi driver this when we dropped Priyanka, the field supervisor who was with us for the day, off. But he forgot or didn't listen, and we were almost back in Varanasi when we realized this. After we backtracked (after getting lost) and picked Dipti and her husband up, it took us two hours to get back in to Varanasi.

Last night, it took me two hours to get back to my guesthouse from the office, normally a 20 minute journey, because there was such bad traffic. I felt so nauseated from all the exhaust fumes. And the power's been going off and on for the past day, and it's been incredibly hot and humid. Also I started to organize my things last night and found a ton of ants hanging out in my suitcase/clothes. Yuck.

I'm sorry that this is pretty whine-y but so it goes.

Victory!

This is Nirmala, one of the artisans that works with Rangsutra (and one of her daughters, who officially wins the My Favorite Indian Child award). She's kind of a group leader, but kind of not at the same time. I hung out at her house for an afternoon when I was in Arjunpur, and we watched the wedding DVD of a girl who I didn't even realize was in the room because she looked SO different (meaning younger, meaning not even 18, but I'm really bad at judging the ages of Indian people) with all the makeup and jewelry and her sari on. Nirmala's husband was lurking around in the background, but I never really interacted with him. Dipti's told me that he is pretty awful and abusive to her, but he lives in Mumbai for most of the year, painting houses. Unfortunately even when he's there in Mumbai and Nirmala does something like leave their home, their neighbors will call him and tell him. Anyway, he had been back in the village for 4 months, and when he bought his return ticket to Mumbai he bought one for her too, and was going to make her live in a slum there with him. So she asked Rangsutra for work, any kind of work, so that she would have a valid (economic) reason to stay in the village. We gave her work, and he went back to Mumbai on the 5th without her. Minus points against distressed migration and abusive husbands.

Security

I forgot to mention in my last post about how intense the security was at the hotel. First, there were armed guards at the gate who we had to tell why we were there. They were from a security company called "Black Power Security", which I found really amusing, but had no one to share in the joke/fact that the phrase "Black Power" has a completely different meaning to me/Americans with. Then after walking down a huge driveway, there was another security guard, to whom we had to state our purpose again. Then we went through metal detectors and put our backpacks through a scanner (like at airport security) as well. I don't really blame them - the Taj in Mumbai was targeted in the 26/11 terrorist attacks - but I thought it was interesting.

"Too Bad it Was in Hindi"

So that meeting last week that my boss took me to with the UNDP? It was actually a day-long conference for all of it's IKEA Women's Social Empowerment projects in the area at the Taj Gateway Hotel, probably the swankiest chain of hotels in India. I'm glad I got to see the inside of one before I left, but I wish I had brought my bathing suit to sneak a dip in their pool before I left. It was held in their "Gulabi" (pink) room, was fully catered complete with two chai breaks, and was set up just like our ISP presentations from SIT - complete with a notepad & pencil at each place and glasses full of candies intermittently placed around the table. Lucky for me, one was placed in between Dipti and me, and I have a way bigger sweet tooth than she does.

Anyway, there were representatives from each project, which were either Technical Agencies - groups like my company that do value-chain intervention programs, or Community Facilitation Organizations (I think that's what CFO stands for) - groups that run women's self-help groups in the same villages that the TA's work in. The CFO's and TA's in theory work together to promote women's economic empowerment. Each TA gave a presentation on their projects. My favorite one (aside from Rangsutra's, but I'm biased because I made the power point) was a TA that taught women how to make papad and rear goats. I love papad and goats. I could eat papad all day, every day, and I want a pet goat like no other after coming to India. So I was very interested in this project for personal reasons. Too bad the presentation (and all the others) was in Hindi. All the power points were in English though, so I still got the gist of each organization & what they were doing.

Presentations were the first part of the day. Then lunch, which was delicious. Fully catered buffet and butterscotch ice cream for dessert.

The second activity of the day was what I've been referring to in my head as a "modeling exercise", but I think that's incorrect because the UNDP wants the "modeling" done in the exercise to actually come to fruition. I'll explain. The TA's and CFO's that work together got together in to three groups, and were given the scenario that they are to merge in to one group. They were to develop their institutional mechanism, their name, their scale-up plans, and their trainer's platform. I referred to this as a "modeling exercise" because I do things like this in my classes at Wheaton a lot - being put in to a group and given a scenario with specific points to hit, a set amount of time to do so, and a presentation to everyone else at the end. I guess it surprised me because everyone jokes that the liberal arts don't teach you about the real world, but there I was sitting in a conference being run by the UNDP and ready to dive in to this task. Too bad, again, it was in Hindi.

One of the things that struck me the most about the conference was the way the hotel staff treated me in comparison to everyone else. I was the only foreigner in the group - everyone else was Indian (and I was one of 3 women, but that's another issue). When it was time for chai, a waiter came up to me and specifically asked if I wanted coffee instead of chai. I appreciated this because I do prefer coffee to chai, but I was the only one he did this to. What's to say our caffeinated beverage choices are determined by our ethnic identity? For all he knew, I could've grown up in India too. After all, I was wearing a sawar kameez.

In other news, the Ganges is now super high because of the monsoon. I'm a little worried it will rise up and block the road that runs in front of my guesthouse, but Dipti told me that won't happen so I guess I'm just being paranoid. Also there's another road out so I wouldn't be trapped or anything if it did.