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.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, July 8, 2011
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.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
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.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
"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.
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.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Village Livin'
Last week was definitely the best and hardest week of my time with RangSutra, and maybe all of my time in India. On Friday after a brief stop at Sarnath in the morning to get my Buddha on, I went to Arjunpur Village in the Mirzapur district outside of Varanasi. The plan was for me to stay there until Thursday, and then I would join my boss at a workshop she was running. On Monday, two of my co-workers were to join me in the village and serve as translators while I conducted interviews. But this is India. In June, the start of the monsoon season.
That Friday night I went to sleep on the roof of the home I was staying in, with my host mother next to me and her daughter-in-law less than 3 feet away. Earlier that evening she had massaged cooling oil in to my hair, shoulders, arms, and face. Which was wonderful but made my hair greasy and it took about 8 washes to get out. But that's another story. The next day, my host mother, Parvati, decided that my sawar kameez outfit was not ok, and dressed me in one of her sari's. There was literally a hush over the entire village when I walked out wearing it. It was one of her nicest ones - it came from a locked closet in her bedroom - and I felt guilty about that. That afternoon, one of RangSutra's field officers came and off we rode on his motorcycle to conduct interviews. Yes. I rode a motorcycle in a sari. Sidesaddle. It wasn't as terrifying as I expected it to be.
So things went south once we got to the interviews. He didn't ask the first woman the interview questions - he just told me what he thought she would say. It took about 5 rounds of me saying, "OK, well, can you ask her the question?" before he did. The next two interviews went alright - one woman's husband was right there and contributed to the answers she gave. Overall though I ended my first day pretty optimistic about how the rest of the week would go.
That night, right as we were going to bed, big fatty rain droplets started raining down on us. We moved to sleep under an awning - still outside, in traditional cots. Parvatti and I shared one - we were definitely spooning at some points. (Also, let me just say that sleeping in a sari when it's been wrapped by an Indian woman is the most unpleasant experience ever. I kept secretly loosening it, and she would notice and re-tighten it). It rained all night and for the next two days, so I just laid around the village not doing anything. Roads had been washed out so we wouldn't be able to get in between villages on a motorbike. My stomach was crazy-upset at this point too, and I was fighting a constant battle over being given way too much food. It went something like this: wake up. snack. another snack, with chai. another snack. breakfast: vegetables and rice. shortly thereafter, lunch: dahl, roti, vegetables, and rice. afternoon snack. pre-dinner snack. dinner. Oof. That, plus my stomach, plus being the only white person in a rural Indian village, plus my subpar Hindi language skills, plus really greasy hair from the oil, plus what I think were tons of bedbug bites on my feet, made me pretty worn out by the time Monday rolled around.
My coworkers showed up that afternoon, and after much fussing over me dressed in another one of Parvati's saris, I was told that I would be leaving the village that day because of the rain, and would be with Dipti for the rest of the week at the workshop she was running. So I packed my things and said my goodbyes. I was very sad to leave - don't get me wrong, the village was a beautiful place and the people there were really wonderful.
After making some quality check stops along the way, we made it to the house the workshop was being held in. We had stopped briefly there on Friday but I didn't really know what was going on. Come to find out, it's Dipti's in-law's home. And by home I mean huge compound - complete with a mango tree, temple, well, and three cows. Though it was by far the nicest home in the village, it was still very Indian in that the toilet was an outhouse, the shower was outside, and the electricity was sporadic. Dipti left soon after I got there, but I had mentioned that I was homesick so she called her husband (who was there) when she was on her way back to Varanasi and told him to put on CNN for me.
The next morning, the workshop started. We were training the women to cut stencils from designs given to them. The stencils would then be put in to a kit along with paints and an idea book, and will be sold in FabIndia stores and potentially overseas in the future. The idea is based off the fact that in rural Indian homes, people often decorate the exteriors of their homes with designs like those. But the kits will be sold in FabIndia, so the designs will ultimately be painted in upper class Indian homes. There's some kind of irony in this...or some notion of "bringing the village home" that I think is interesting especially in terms of development. But that's me being anthropological and overly analytical about it. Anyway, this project is a collaboration between RangSutra, Women on Wings, a women’s business and development organization based in Holland (that sounds really really cool and somewhere I'd want to work for in the future), Akzo Nobel paints, and FabIndia. RangSutra will train the women and oversee the production of the kits, Women on Wings will help create the business plan, Akzo Nobel will supply the paints and created the idea book, and FabIndia will market the final product in its stores. In addition to Dipti and me, there was a designer who works with RangSutra from Delhi, a woman from Women on Wings, and a woman from Akzo Nobel there as well. One of the best things (for me) about the team was that English was our only shared language, so that's what we spoke in. It was also really cool to hear about everything involved in making the project successful - packaging, materials, paint, marketing, costs, etc. The woman from Women on Wings really (I think) took some extra time to tell me about what she would be discussing with FabIndia in the meeting she had on Monday, which I really appreciated.
The 20 participants traditionally got employment from weaving, agriculture, bamboo crafts, riling yarn for carpet weaving, housework, and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. However, none of these jobs gave the women enough income and an alternative, sustainable form of livelihood was needed. In addition to creating employment for these women, they are coming out of their homes and actively earning their own money apart from their husbands. Also, one of the women who had worked in NREGA told (and showed) us that her right hand had become really swollen after working with them. It sounded like she had a pinched nerve.
I could write a day-to-day breakdown of everything we did every day, but that would be boring and unnecessary.
Some of the women had been to 12th grade, some had never held a pencil. One woman had exams on her wedding day, and made her father-in-law let her finish high school. Some had gotten married before they were 18. Some didn't know their exact ages. There were Hindus and Muslims. Some were related to one another. There was one mother-daughter pair. One woman dropped out on the 3rd day because she wasn't doing well. We got a woman who had fallen ill right before the workshop started to replace her. She had completed 12th grade and by the end of the week was one of the best students in the workshop.
At the end of the week, Dipti's husband had me, Liza, Willeke (the woman from Akzo Nobel), and Karen (the woman from Women on Wings) plant mango trees on their property to commemorate the workshop. It will start producing mangos in 5-6 years...I hope somehow I can be there to eat. them. all. Oh, I should also mention that Dipti's husband is incredibly supportive and sweet and caring - he served us lunch every day and Liza, Willeke, and Karen didn't even know that he was her husband, or that we were at her in-law's property, until we told them one day. It was funny. At lunch that afternoon he goes, "Sometimes, I am a journalist who oversees an office of 93 people. But sometimes, I am a waiter."
Ironically, it didn't rain for the rest of the week and it was hot, hot, hot by the end. One room in the house had a cooler, and we all slept in there after a few days: me, Dipti, her husband, his mother, her mother, and Dipti's 15-year-old niece.
Next week, Dipti and I will go back to the village to check on the women. They were supposed to be coming every day from 10 AM - 2 PM to practice. We put the best student in charge of keeping track of attendance and the paper/knives allotted to each woman. The 2nd-best student has the key to the practice room. A woman whose husband works on the property is in charge of collecting everyone's supplies. Oh, and my field interview project isn't completely lost - I interviewed 11 of the women who participated in the workshop, and will interview the other 9 when we go back next week. I'm actually happier about this because I feel much more invested in the stencils project.
On Saturday evening we came back to Varanasi. On Sunday morning my friend Roz came to visit and was here until Tuesday morning. I had a really great time just being a tourist in Varanasi...and I can now say I've been in the Ganges. It's risen a lot because of the rain, and at one point we were walking along the ghats and part of it was under water, but there was a step right there so we all just walked through it like Indians. It started raining heavily again on Monday and again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tomorrow I'm going to a meeting with people from the UNDP. I'm leaving for home in 18 days.
I'll post pictures from the workshop next time, but for now:
Top 3 Questions I Was Asked in the Village:
1. Are you married?
2. Why isn't your nose pierced? (ahem...take note Mom & Dad)
3. Why don't you eat meat? (this was based on the assumption that all Americans eat meat. Indians are always shocked when I mention that I'm a vegetarian. Also: cooked soybeans look like small meatballs (but taste DELICIOUS). That one threw me for a loop my first night at Dipti's in-law's. She had told me before that they're veg though so I ate it without knowing what it actually was.)
That Friday night I went to sleep on the roof of the home I was staying in, with my host mother next to me and her daughter-in-law less than 3 feet away. Earlier that evening she had massaged cooling oil in to my hair, shoulders, arms, and face. Which was wonderful but made my hair greasy and it took about 8 washes to get out. But that's another story. The next day, my host mother, Parvati, decided that my sawar kameez outfit was not ok, and dressed me in one of her sari's. There was literally a hush over the entire village when I walked out wearing it. It was one of her nicest ones - it came from a locked closet in her bedroom - and I felt guilty about that. That afternoon, one of RangSutra's field officers came and off we rode on his motorcycle to conduct interviews. Yes. I rode a motorcycle in a sari. Sidesaddle. It wasn't as terrifying as I expected it to be.
So things went south once we got to the interviews. He didn't ask the first woman the interview questions - he just told me what he thought she would say. It took about 5 rounds of me saying, "OK, well, can you ask her the question?" before he did. The next two interviews went alright - one woman's husband was right there and contributed to the answers she gave. Overall though I ended my first day pretty optimistic about how the rest of the week would go.
That night, right as we were going to bed, big fatty rain droplets started raining down on us. We moved to sleep under an awning - still outside, in traditional cots. Parvatti and I shared one - we were definitely spooning at some points. (Also, let me just say that sleeping in a sari when it's been wrapped by an Indian woman is the most unpleasant experience ever. I kept secretly loosening it, and she would notice and re-tighten it). It rained all night and for the next two days, so I just laid around the village not doing anything. Roads had been washed out so we wouldn't be able to get in between villages on a motorbike. My stomach was crazy-upset at this point too, and I was fighting a constant battle over being given way too much food. It went something like this: wake up. snack. another snack, with chai. another snack. breakfast: vegetables and rice. shortly thereafter, lunch: dahl, roti, vegetables, and rice. afternoon snack. pre-dinner snack. dinner. Oof. That, plus my stomach, plus being the only white person in a rural Indian village, plus my subpar Hindi language skills, plus really greasy hair from the oil, plus what I think were tons of bedbug bites on my feet, made me pretty worn out by the time Monday rolled around.
My coworkers showed up that afternoon, and after much fussing over me dressed in another one of Parvati's saris, I was told that I would be leaving the village that day because of the rain, and would be with Dipti for the rest of the week at the workshop she was running. So I packed my things and said my goodbyes. I was very sad to leave - don't get me wrong, the village was a beautiful place and the people there were really wonderful.
After making some quality check stops along the way, we made it to the house the workshop was being held in. We had stopped briefly there on Friday but I didn't really know what was going on. Come to find out, it's Dipti's in-law's home. And by home I mean huge compound - complete with a mango tree, temple, well, and three cows. Though it was by far the nicest home in the village, it was still very Indian in that the toilet was an outhouse, the shower was outside, and the electricity was sporadic. Dipti left soon after I got there, but I had mentioned that I was homesick so she called her husband (who was there) when she was on her way back to Varanasi and told him to put on CNN for me.
The next morning, the workshop started. We were training the women to cut stencils from designs given to them. The stencils would then be put in to a kit along with paints and an idea book, and will be sold in FabIndia stores and potentially overseas in the future. The idea is based off the fact that in rural Indian homes, people often decorate the exteriors of their homes with designs like those. But the kits will be sold in FabIndia, so the designs will ultimately be painted in upper class Indian homes. There's some kind of irony in this...or some notion of "bringing the village home" that I think is interesting especially in terms of development. But that's me being anthropological and overly analytical about it. Anyway, this project is a collaboration between RangSutra, Women on Wings, a women’s business and development organization based in Holland (that sounds really really cool and somewhere I'd want to work for in the future), Akzo Nobel paints, and FabIndia. RangSutra will train the women and oversee the production of the kits, Women on Wings will help create the business plan, Akzo Nobel will supply the paints and created the idea book, and FabIndia will market the final product in its stores. In addition to Dipti and me, there was a designer who works with RangSutra from Delhi, a woman from Women on Wings, and a woman from Akzo Nobel there as well. One of the best things (for me) about the team was that English was our only shared language, so that's what we spoke in. It was also really cool to hear about everything involved in making the project successful - packaging, materials, paint, marketing, costs, etc. The woman from Women on Wings really (I think) took some extra time to tell me about what she would be discussing with FabIndia in the meeting she had on Monday, which I really appreciated.
The 20 participants traditionally got employment from weaving, agriculture, bamboo crafts, riling yarn for carpet weaving, housework, and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. However, none of these jobs gave the women enough income and an alternative, sustainable form of livelihood was needed. In addition to creating employment for these women, they are coming out of their homes and actively earning their own money apart from their husbands. Also, one of the women who had worked in NREGA told (and showed) us that her right hand had become really swollen after working with them. It sounded like she had a pinched nerve.
I could write a day-to-day breakdown of everything we did every day, but that would be boring and unnecessary.
Some of the women had been to 12th grade, some had never held a pencil. One woman had exams on her wedding day, and made her father-in-law let her finish high school. Some had gotten married before they were 18. Some didn't know their exact ages. There were Hindus and Muslims. Some were related to one another. There was one mother-daughter pair. One woman dropped out on the 3rd day because she wasn't doing well. We got a woman who had fallen ill right before the workshop started to replace her. She had completed 12th grade and by the end of the week was one of the best students in the workshop.
At the end of the week, Dipti's husband had me, Liza, Willeke (the woman from Akzo Nobel), and Karen (the woman from Women on Wings) plant mango trees on their property to commemorate the workshop. It will start producing mangos in 5-6 years...I hope somehow I can be there to eat. them. all. Oh, I should also mention that Dipti's husband is incredibly supportive and sweet and caring - he served us lunch every day and Liza, Willeke, and Karen didn't even know that he was her husband, or that we were at her in-law's property, until we told them one day. It was funny. At lunch that afternoon he goes, "Sometimes, I am a journalist who oversees an office of 93 people. But sometimes, I am a waiter."
Ironically, it didn't rain for the rest of the week and it was hot, hot, hot by the end. One room in the house had a cooler, and we all slept in there after a few days: me, Dipti, her husband, his mother, her mother, and Dipti's 15-year-old niece.
Next week, Dipti and I will go back to the village to check on the women. They were supposed to be coming every day from 10 AM - 2 PM to practice. We put the best student in charge of keeping track of attendance and the paper/knives allotted to each woman. The 2nd-best student has the key to the practice room. A woman whose husband works on the property is in charge of collecting everyone's supplies. Oh, and my field interview project isn't completely lost - I interviewed 11 of the women who participated in the workshop, and will interview the other 9 when we go back next week. I'm actually happier about this because I feel much more invested in the stencils project.
On Saturday evening we came back to Varanasi. On Sunday morning my friend Roz came to visit and was here until Tuesday morning. I had a really great time just being a tourist in Varanasi...and I can now say I've been in the Ganges. It's risen a lot because of the rain, and at one point we were walking along the ghats and part of it was under water, but there was a step right there so we all just walked through it like Indians. It started raining heavily again on Monday and again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tomorrow I'm going to a meeting with people from the UNDP. I'm leaving for home in 18 days.
I'll post pictures from the workshop next time, but for now:
Top 3 Questions I Was Asked in the Village:
1. Are you married?
2. Why isn't your nose pierced? (ahem...take note Mom & Dad)
3. Why don't you eat meat? (this was based on the assumption that all Americans eat meat. Indians are always shocked when I mention that I'm a vegetarian. Also: cooked soybeans look like small meatballs (but taste DELICIOUS). That one threw me for a loop my first night at Dipti's in-law's. She had told me before that they're veg though so I ate it without knowing what it actually was.)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Happy Monsoon Season!
Today we had the first rains of the monsoon season...about time. The past two days have been around 100, cloudy, and humid. Das, my morning autorickshaw driver who knows every shortcut imaginable in Varanasi, and Dipti have both told me that now that the monsoons have come, the mangos will be even better! Here's a shaky video I took on my camera of the rain from our office.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Caste & Cooking
I forgot to include this in my last post:
Because we had spent the night at the office & wouldn't be able to bring food for lunch like usual, Dipti asked Sunil, the office boy, to bring lunch for all three of us on Saturday. He only brought enough food for two people, though. Dipti asked him why and he said that he didn't think I, a foreigner, would eat food prepared by a lower-class (caste) family. Appadurai would have a field day. It made me think that "Gastropolitics in Hindu South Asia" is still relevant. So now I'm hoping that Sunil hasn't been misinterpreting my insistence on doing things myself (ie. refilling my water bottle, plugging my computer cord in to the wall socket) as me not wanting him to touch my things. I'm just uncomfortable with someone doing things for me that I'm entirely capable of doing myself.
Because we had spent the night at the office & wouldn't be able to bring food for lunch like usual, Dipti asked Sunil, the office boy, to bring lunch for all three of us on Saturday. He only brought enough food for two people, though. Dipti asked him why and he said that he didn't think I, a foreigner, would eat food prepared by a lower-class (caste) family. Appadurai would have a field day. It made me think that "Gastropolitics in Hindu South Asia" is still relevant. So now I'm hoping that Sunil hasn't been misinterpreting my insistence on doing things myself (ie. refilling my water bottle, plugging my computer cord in to the wall socket) as me not wanting him to touch my things. I'm just uncomfortable with someone doing things for me that I'm entirely capable of doing myself.
Week Two, Sleepovers.
On Friday night my boss and I had a sleepover at the office. Yep. She wanted to work late, her husband was out of town, and she doesn't like to be at the office alone. So she asked me to stay on Friday night with her. We spent about an hour or two talking about our families and showing each other pictures of them. Except the most I could really do was show her pictures of me & Patrick (happy 19th birthday!!) because I don't have any family photos on my computer. There was also a wedding across the street, so we watched the procession, which I really enjoyed...especially because she had just shown me pictures from two of her siblings' weddings. And this isn't procession in the American sense - first, there was a kid with a giant sparkler on a huge stick. Periodically, he would stop and set off fireworks. Then, there was a marching band walking down the street in two lines. On either side of the lines were big light fixtures being held up by members of the groom's family (I think). Then there was a big van that I think was providing the power for the light fixtures. But it was also playing contemporary Indian music out of the back side. So naturally, behind the van were a whole bunch of men who I assume were related to the groom, dancing with one another in the way only Indian men can. I could've sworn a few of the songs were sampling M.I.A., but then I realized it was probably the other way around. Then there was a less active procession of men, and a horse-drawn carriage that the groom (and maybe the bride too, I couldn't get a good look at who was inside) in it. When it pulled up to the venue, guests would climb inside the carriage to give the groom gifts. At this point it got boring so I stopped watching but it was the first wedding procession that I actually got to sit and observe and figure out so I really liked it. It was very bright and loud.
Anyway, we've been working on an Ashoka Changemakers grant application that's due on Wednesday. She told me yesterday that my name is going to be included on the proposal because of how much I've been helping her with it. Whoa. She's also definitely the Indian person I've bonded the most with. No offense to my host family or anything, they were wonderful, but they've been hosting students forever. Same to the program staff. All wonderful people. But she & I get along really well.
We didn't end up going to a village this week, which I was a little bummed about because it definitely would help me to prepare for living there. I'm a very visual person when it comes to these things. I have a really, really hard time visualizing situations like this and anticipating what to expect. However, Dipti and Natasha, the business manager, will now be coming with me on Friday to drop me off in the first village. And will be in the second village at the end of the week, too. So I'm glad I won't be going in alone. Also, they're going to go with me to BHU and Sarnath before we go to the village. I was talking to Dipti about wanting to go to those places and she goes, "Well, who will you go with?" "I guess just by myself." "No, we will go with you. It's much better going with people."
I didn't sleep well on Friday night though, because I was in a new place (for sleeping at least), and it was windy, which would've been great except the windows kept slamming shut, and it was hot. I spoil myself with air conditioning in my room at my guesthouse. The wedding, surprisingly, wasn't loud at all. By any standards, not just Indian. So by the time we left the office at 8:30 PM on Saturday, I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was go home, buy a chocolate bar (I found out that Cadbury gets all (I'm pretty sure it's all) of the chocolate for their Dairy Milk bars fair trade and that sparked an intense ethical chocolate craving. Or, it validated the chocolate cravings I was already having. Though I wouldn't be entirely surprised if this wasn't the case for the bars they sell in India), take a shower, watch Gossip Girl on my computer (please stop judging me) and go to bed. But there's traffic in India. Lots of it. My cycle rickshaw driver took a different route to avoid the traffic, which I was very grateful for initially. Until it was so bumpy and he wouldn't pass other cycle rickshaws going slower than we were, and we had to stop so he could load up on chewing tobacco. Oh, and I'm pretty sure he was younger than me. I realized about halfway through the ride that I wouldn't hold up very well under torture, so let's hope that never happens.
Anyway, we've been working on an Ashoka Changemakers grant application that's due on Wednesday. She told me yesterday that my name is going to be included on the proposal because of how much I've been helping her with it. Whoa. She's also definitely the Indian person I've bonded the most with. No offense to my host family or anything, they were wonderful, but they've been hosting students forever. Same to the program staff. All wonderful people. But she & I get along really well.
We didn't end up going to a village this week, which I was a little bummed about because it definitely would help me to prepare for living there. I'm a very visual person when it comes to these things. I have a really, really hard time visualizing situations like this and anticipating what to expect. However, Dipti and Natasha, the business manager, will now be coming with me on Friday to drop me off in the first village. And will be in the second village at the end of the week, too. So I'm glad I won't be going in alone. Also, they're going to go with me to BHU and Sarnath before we go to the village. I was talking to Dipti about wanting to go to those places and she goes, "Well, who will you go with?" "I guess just by myself." "No, we will go with you. It's much better going with people."
I didn't sleep well on Friday night though, because I was in a new place (for sleeping at least), and it was windy, which would've been great except the windows kept slamming shut, and it was hot. I spoil myself with air conditioning in my room at my guesthouse. The wedding, surprisingly, wasn't loud at all. By any standards, not just Indian. So by the time we left the office at 8:30 PM on Saturday, I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was go home, buy a chocolate bar (I found out that Cadbury gets all (I'm pretty sure it's all) of the chocolate for their Dairy Milk bars fair trade and that sparked an intense ethical chocolate craving. Or, it validated the chocolate cravings I was already having. Though I wouldn't be entirely surprised if this wasn't the case for the bars they sell in India), take a shower, watch Gossip Girl on my computer (please stop judging me) and go to bed. But there's traffic in India. Lots of it. My cycle rickshaw driver took a different route to avoid the traffic, which I was very grateful for initially. Until it was so bumpy and he wouldn't pass other cycle rickshaws going slower than we were, and we had to stop so he could load up on chewing tobacco. Oh, and I'm pretty sure he was younger than me. I realized about halfway through the ride that I wouldn't hold up very well under torture, so let's hope that never happens.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Interning in India
So I figure I should say something about my internship aside from the fact that I work Saturdays...which I really don't mind. And I will say that I was given the option of not coming in & having a two-day weekend, but for the sake of cross-cultural immersion, count me in.
rangSutra (the website only talks about their Rajasthan division) was started in August/September through a grant given by the UNDP and Ikea. They work in two rural districts in Uttar Pradesh, outside of Varanasi on women's empowerment through business initiatives. The grant is for a 3-year pilot program that they are hoping to replicate in rural districts throughout eastern U.P., making it a sustainable business and development model. The UNDP/Ikea grant created women's empowerment and self-help groups that run savings and credit programs, village workshops, and campaigns about issues facing their lives. RangSutra focuses on using the traditional craft skills that the women have through capacity building initiatives including organizational building, management training, product development/marketing, and skills training to gain access to western consumer markets.
For the first two weeks of my internship, I'll mainly be working on building a big list of potential western companies for them to partner with in the future. I'll also be working on getting them organic cotton & fair trade certified.
Then, I'll be living in their artisan's villages for two weeks doing fieldwork for them. I'm going to be talking to them about how they think the business model can be improved on the village level, what challenges they face, and what they think about the future of the company. When my boss Dipti told me she wanted me to do this last week, I very quickly said I would, even though I was (and still am) nervous about it. Mainly because of the language barrier, but she said I'll have access to translators. Plus, non-verbal communication is equally important for rapport building. And Dipti keeps telling me that all the women are nice. It'll be a challenge, but will also be really u fieldwork experience.
When I finish in the villages, I'll be back in the office for a week preparing a final report for them. At this point I should also have some ideas about their U.P. branch's specific brand identity and how they can incorporate that in to rangSutra as a whole.
Tomorrow we're going to one of the villages I'll be working in, and I'll get to meet one of the women who will be hosting me, so I'm sure that will put me at ease. I'm really excited that Dipti and Natasha, the business & accounts manager, are letting me come with them.
I've definitely learned a lot already about the amount of fair trade retailers out there...before starting this research I thought that companies like Ten Thousand Villages were basically the only fair trade retailers. Wrong. Though they are the only national one I've found so far, I've found tons of great small retail outlets. And partnerships between small businesses, in my opinion, speak more to the values of fair trade. I've also learned a bit about organic/fair trade cotton production in India, since they're looking for organic cotton suppliers. Did you know that Gujarat produces a lot of organic cotton? I didn't, and I lived there for a month.
rangSutra (the website only talks about their Rajasthan division) was started in August/September through a grant given by the UNDP and Ikea. They work in two rural districts in Uttar Pradesh, outside of Varanasi on women's empowerment through business initiatives. The grant is for a 3-year pilot program that they are hoping to replicate in rural districts throughout eastern U.P., making it a sustainable business and development model. The UNDP/Ikea grant created women's empowerment and self-help groups that run savings and credit programs, village workshops, and campaigns about issues facing their lives. RangSutra focuses on using the traditional craft skills that the women have through capacity building initiatives including organizational building, management training, product development/marketing, and skills training to gain access to western consumer markets.
For the first two weeks of my internship, I'll mainly be working on building a big list of potential western companies for them to partner with in the future. I'll also be working on getting them organic cotton & fair trade certified.
Then, I'll be living in their artisan's villages for two weeks doing fieldwork for them. I'm going to be talking to them about how they think the business model can be improved on the village level, what challenges they face, and what they think about the future of the company. When my boss Dipti told me she wanted me to do this last week, I very quickly said I would, even though I was (and still am) nervous about it. Mainly because of the language barrier, but she said I'll have access to translators. Plus, non-verbal communication is equally important for rapport building. And Dipti keeps telling me that all the women are nice. It'll be a challenge, but will also be really u fieldwork experience.
When I finish in the villages, I'll be back in the office for a week preparing a final report for them. At this point I should also have some ideas about their U.P. branch's specific brand identity and how they can incorporate that in to rangSutra as a whole.
Tomorrow we're going to one of the villages I'll be working in, and I'll get to meet one of the women who will be hosting me, so I'm sure that will put me at ease. I'm really excited that Dipti and Natasha, the business & accounts manager, are letting me come with them.
I've definitely learned a lot already about the amount of fair trade retailers out there...before starting this research I thought that companies like Ten Thousand Villages were basically the only fair trade retailers. Wrong. Though they are the only national one I've found so far, I've found tons of great small retail outlets. And partnerships between small businesses, in my opinion, speak more to the values of fair trade. I've also learned a bit about organic/fair trade cotton production in India, since they're looking for organic cotton suppliers. Did you know that Gujarat produces a lot of organic cotton? I didn't, and I lived there for a month.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Call Centers
Last night I had to call Bank of America to unfreeze my debit account, despite the fact that they have been told multiple times that I'm in India. About halfway through the call I realized I was probably on the phone with someone who was also in India, working at a call center. Until the woman I was speaking with pronounced Delhi "Del-hi".
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
South in Photos
really freaky Hindu carvings, Elora Caves
sleeping-or-dead Buddha, Ajanta Caves
stray dog & the Gateway of India, Mumbai
dobi ghat, Mumbai
this is what we rode motorcycles through, Hampi
holding up the Golden Chariot, Hampi
the beach!, Allaphuza
backwaters, Kerala
Monday, May 30, 2011
South in Mouth
South India was amazing.
The first stop was Aurangabad, which was nothing special but about an hour away in each direction are caves (Elora & Ajanta) with Buddhist & Hindu & Jain temples carved in them. The train there was about 16 hours long, and our tickets were for general class, which means "everyone cram in as tightly as you can", but we got on in the sleeper class anyway to see if we could find beds and ended up paying the janitorial staff 500 rupees for one of their beds. Aside from that though the train ride was really beautiful.
From there we took a sleeper bus to Mumbai. It was all of our first times on an overnight bus and we were really excited because it looked super nice & comfy and like we'd actually get sleep in the beds. And then we started moving. It was super bumpy since Indian infrastructure isn't great. Neither is Indian driving. Anyway we made it to Mumbai after an essentially sleepless night at like 5 AM and went to our hotel, who said we couldn't check in until later. It was right on the harbor and near the Delhi gate so we walked down there and hung out with some stray dogs. The Delhi Gate was built for "their Imperial majesties" King George & Queen Mary, but it wasn't finished when they came so the architects just put up a cardboard facade of what it was supposed to look like for their visit in 1911, and it wasn't actually finished until a little over 10 years later. In Mumbai we also took the bus to the world's largest Dobhi Ghat, which is an outdoor laundry. We paid a sketchy guy that lived there 100 rupees each to give us a brief tour of it, which made me uncomfortable but it was cool to see inside. That afternoon we went on a super legit tour of Asia's largest slum, Dharvai. Our guide was an 18 year old college student and he was so smart. It felt like something I would've done with SIT, since we actually did visit a slum in Jaipur. This was definitely better in terms of information learned though. I think the guide was a little surprised about Andrew's & my knowledge of Indian policies/social issues/etc. from the questions we asked. That night we went to a restaurant called The New Yorker, which was funny. It was trying so hard to be American...they gave all the customers coloring/word search place mats, regardless of their age. And all the upper class Indian adults eating there got so in to it. Everyone around us spoke English (we were the only foreigners), which was interesting and funny to hear their accents.
The next morning we took an all-day train from Mumbai to some random city that was close to where we needed to be to go to Hampi. That was a beautiful train ride too. Like the other, we were in sleeper class, which has beds but the windows are completely open except for some bars across them so there were some beautiful views and also a lot of dust. But we actually had tickets so it was all good. It was the Indian school holidays too, so we were with a ton of Indian families who had been on vacation in Mumbai. We finally got to the random station at like 1 AM, and the train we needed wasn't coming until like 2:30 so we hung out with some giant cockroaches until then. We didn't have tickets for this train so we figured we'd just try our luck and climb on in the AC 3-tier car and see what happened (just like sleeper, but with closed windows & is air conditioned & they give you blankets and pillows). We didn't find any empty bunks there so we kept walking back and ended up in AC 2-tier, which is the nicest class on the train. And found 3 empty bunks. So we climbed in but were all too scared to sleep because we were afraid of being thrown off the train. Someone did come to the cabin but it was to tell us that we'd be getting to the stop we needed at whatever time. How they knew that we needed that stop will remain a mystery. But no one questioned our being there because it was totally where they'd expect the white people to be.
So then we got to Hampi, which is this city with a ton of old ruins. It reminded me of Tikal and Pompei all in one but cooler. We spent the day riding around on motorcycles looking at the ruins, and went swimming in a river that afternoon. We got a hotel room for the day to keep our stuff & shower in, and it was run by the most adorable Indian woman EVER. She ran that place so well. I wish we could've stayed longer for many reasons, one of which being to spend more time with her. That morning after we checked in, we went out for breakfast and I ordered a honey dosa. Sounds delicious right? It was, until I found a ton of ants in it that had gotten in to the honey. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate ants more than ANYTHING, so I was really grossed out. They gave me a new, ant-free one though, and brought the jar of honey (actually in a recycled Officer's Choice whiskey bottle) out to me as proof of its antlessness. Random, but there were a lot of cats in Hampi, including at this restaurant. We heard it meowing, and I was looking behind me to see it and our waiter goes, in the most deadpan Hindi-accented English ever, "cat". On very few hours of sleep, it was the most hilarious thing ever.
That night we had another sleeper bus to Bangalore, where we didn't want to go but had to to get to Kerala. I was so tired that I slept a bit more on this bus but the road was super bumpy again and I swear I bumped about a foot in the air at some points. So we had a random day in Bangalore, and I convinced the boys that it would be a better idea to cancel our 3-day train tickets in sleeper class from Kerala to Delhi and fly back instead so we could have more time in Kerala. We bought plane tickets & Andrew's friend did some souvenir shopping and then we took a semi-sleeper bus to Kerala that night. Semi-sleeper meant that there were no beds but the seats reclined and we got blankets & pillows. We were in the very back which was nice until the people in front of us put their seats back. Then our legs got crushed because we were slightly elevated. However, we almost didn't make it to the bus. Our rickshaw driver told us that it was very far away, and we hadn't left much time. However, after he called the bus company and performed some crazy driving moves we met the bus at what I believe was stop number two and happily climbed on.
Anyway, we wanted to go to Kochi, and were told we'd get there at about 8:30. False, we rolled through at like 6:30 and no one told us. So we got off about an hour later in a little town called Allaphuza, which was small but really nice and I'm glad we ended up there instead. We went to the beach on day 1. Enough said. The second day we took a boat ride in the backwaters, which was beautiful. it's this network of canals that are there naturally and there are villages there. I kept on expecting to run in to a Mr. Kurtz all of a sudden...it was very Heart of Darkness-esque. Our hotel really, really wanted to get in the Lonely Planet, so when we got back from dinner on the first night the owner sat us down and gave us his whole backwater boat tour shpiel...but we stuck with our original plan of just going to the docks & getting a boat, which worked out just fine and saved us money.
The next morning we caught an early bus to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, and flew to Chennai. After a 6-hour layover, we flew to Delhi and arrived at about 11 PM. The next day, we visited the temple of the Hindu sect that Andrew studied in Ahmedabad for ISP. It's crazy huge and being marketed as a tourist attraction for Delhi in general, which I think is interesting. After going back to Jaipur very briefly to pick up my luggage, I went back to Delhi for two days jam-packed full of sightseeing before going to Varanasi.
And now I'm in Varanasi. Now that the tourist season's over, it's SO quiet. I didn't realize just how much of the town revolves around tourism until now. It's amazing. However, on the flip side that means that a lot of the good cafes, where you can get real coffee, are closed.
The internet won't let me upload pictures right now, so I'll save that for later.
The first stop was Aurangabad, which was nothing special but about an hour away in each direction are caves (Elora & Ajanta) with Buddhist & Hindu & Jain temples carved in them. The train there was about 16 hours long, and our tickets were for general class, which means "everyone cram in as tightly as you can", but we got on in the sleeper class anyway to see if we could find beds and ended up paying the janitorial staff 500 rupees for one of their beds. Aside from that though the train ride was really beautiful.
From there we took a sleeper bus to Mumbai. It was all of our first times on an overnight bus and we were really excited because it looked super nice & comfy and like we'd actually get sleep in the beds. And then we started moving. It was super bumpy since Indian infrastructure isn't great. Neither is Indian driving. Anyway we made it to Mumbai after an essentially sleepless night at like 5 AM and went to our hotel, who said we couldn't check in until later. It was right on the harbor and near the Delhi gate so we walked down there and hung out with some stray dogs. The Delhi Gate was built for "their Imperial majesties" King George & Queen Mary, but it wasn't finished when they came so the architects just put up a cardboard facade of what it was supposed to look like for their visit in 1911, and it wasn't actually finished until a little over 10 years later. In Mumbai we also took the bus to the world's largest Dobhi Ghat, which is an outdoor laundry. We paid a sketchy guy that lived there 100 rupees each to give us a brief tour of it, which made me uncomfortable but it was cool to see inside. That afternoon we went on a super legit tour of Asia's largest slum, Dharvai. Our guide was an 18 year old college student and he was so smart. It felt like something I would've done with SIT, since we actually did visit a slum in Jaipur. This was definitely better in terms of information learned though. I think the guide was a little surprised about Andrew's & my knowledge of Indian policies/social issues/etc. from the questions we asked. That night we went to a restaurant called The New Yorker, which was funny. It was trying so hard to be American...they gave all the customers coloring/word search place mats, regardless of their age. And all the upper class Indian adults eating there got so in to it. Everyone around us spoke English (we were the only foreigners), which was interesting and funny to hear their accents.
The next morning we took an all-day train from Mumbai to some random city that was close to where we needed to be to go to Hampi. That was a beautiful train ride too. Like the other, we were in sleeper class, which has beds but the windows are completely open except for some bars across them so there were some beautiful views and also a lot of dust. But we actually had tickets so it was all good. It was the Indian school holidays too, so we were with a ton of Indian families who had been on vacation in Mumbai. We finally got to the random station at like 1 AM, and the train we needed wasn't coming until like 2:30 so we hung out with some giant cockroaches until then. We didn't have tickets for this train so we figured we'd just try our luck and climb on in the AC 3-tier car and see what happened (just like sleeper, but with closed windows & is air conditioned & they give you blankets and pillows). We didn't find any empty bunks there so we kept walking back and ended up in AC 2-tier, which is the nicest class on the train. And found 3 empty bunks. So we climbed in but were all too scared to sleep because we were afraid of being thrown off the train. Someone did come to the cabin but it was to tell us that we'd be getting to the stop we needed at whatever time. How they knew that we needed that stop will remain a mystery. But no one questioned our being there because it was totally where they'd expect the white people to be.
So then we got to Hampi, which is this city with a ton of old ruins. It reminded me of Tikal and Pompei all in one but cooler. We spent the day riding around on motorcycles looking at the ruins, and went swimming in a river that afternoon. We got a hotel room for the day to keep our stuff & shower in, and it was run by the most adorable Indian woman EVER. She ran that place so well. I wish we could've stayed longer for many reasons, one of which being to spend more time with her. That morning after we checked in, we went out for breakfast and I ordered a honey dosa. Sounds delicious right? It was, until I found a ton of ants in it that had gotten in to the honey. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate ants more than ANYTHING, so I was really grossed out. They gave me a new, ant-free one though, and brought the jar of honey (actually in a recycled Officer's Choice whiskey bottle) out to me as proof of its antlessness. Random, but there were a lot of cats in Hampi, including at this restaurant. We heard it meowing, and I was looking behind me to see it and our waiter goes, in the most deadpan Hindi-accented English ever, "cat". On very few hours of sleep, it was the most hilarious thing ever.
That night we had another sleeper bus to Bangalore, where we didn't want to go but had to to get to Kerala. I was so tired that I slept a bit more on this bus but the road was super bumpy again and I swear I bumped about a foot in the air at some points. So we had a random day in Bangalore, and I convinced the boys that it would be a better idea to cancel our 3-day train tickets in sleeper class from Kerala to Delhi and fly back instead so we could have more time in Kerala. We bought plane tickets & Andrew's friend did some souvenir shopping and then we took a semi-sleeper bus to Kerala that night. Semi-sleeper meant that there were no beds but the seats reclined and we got blankets & pillows. We were in the very back which was nice until the people in front of us put their seats back. Then our legs got crushed because we were slightly elevated. However, we almost didn't make it to the bus. Our rickshaw driver told us that it was very far away, and we hadn't left much time. However, after he called the bus company and performed some crazy driving moves we met the bus at what I believe was stop number two and happily climbed on.
Anyway, we wanted to go to Kochi, and were told we'd get there at about 8:30. False, we rolled through at like 6:30 and no one told us. So we got off about an hour later in a little town called Allaphuza, which was small but really nice and I'm glad we ended up there instead. We went to the beach on day 1. Enough said. The second day we took a boat ride in the backwaters, which was beautiful. it's this network of canals that are there naturally and there are villages there. I kept on expecting to run in to a Mr. Kurtz all of a sudden...it was very Heart of Darkness-esque. Our hotel really, really wanted to get in the Lonely Planet, so when we got back from dinner on the first night the owner sat us down and gave us his whole backwater boat tour shpiel...but we stuck with our original plan of just going to the docks & getting a boat, which worked out just fine and saved us money.
The next morning we caught an early bus to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, and flew to Chennai. After a 6-hour layover, we flew to Delhi and arrived at about 11 PM. The next day, we visited the temple of the Hindu sect that Andrew studied in Ahmedabad for ISP. It's crazy huge and being marketed as a tourist attraction for Delhi in general, which I think is interesting. After going back to Jaipur very briefly to pick up my luggage, I went back to Delhi for two days jam-packed full of sightseeing before going to Varanasi.
And now I'm in Varanasi. Now that the tourist season's over, it's SO quiet. I didn't realize just how much of the town revolves around tourism until now. It's amazing. However, on the flip side that means that a lot of the good cafes, where you can get real coffee, are closed.
The internet won't let me upload pictures right now, so I'll save that for later.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The End of SIT
So it would appear that I never left Ahmedabad. That's false. I happily packed up my stuff and left on an overnight train back to Jaipur. and by overnight, I mean that it left at 5:30 PM and arrived at 2:30 AM. But like most trains in India, it left late so we assumed that it would arrive late as well. False. It was early. What?! Luckily I was having trouble sleeping and realized we were rolling in to Jaipur when I started seeing "Jaipur Junction" signs. So I harassed Andrew until he woke up & we jumped off the train and in to a rickshaw to the program center, where we slept in the meditation room. Where they had conveniently put two really comfy mattresses.
The last week in Jaipur was spent editing, printing, binding, turning in, and presenting on my ISP, which I never really wrote about on here. But basically, I worked with a fair trade producer group in Ahmedabad called Saint Mary's, and studied how the structure of their organization promoted peace & communalism between the different women that worked there.
Our program moved us to a super nice hotel for the final banquet and presentations. It even had a swimming pool & really great showers. I hadn't felt that clean since January. I started calling it the Jaipur Marriot because I felt like I was at the Palm Springs Marriott. It was actually called the Hotel Gold Palace, and its logo was a dollar sign. All the girls dressed in saris for the final banquet, and mine was definitely one of my favorite things I've worn. I wish I had a reason to wear it again. We'll see.
(we call this the "Mafia Family Portrait")
The banquet itself was really fun too. My host family was one of the first ones to show up and my host sister immediately told me it was time to "get the party started," so we went up to the DJ booth & she requested some songs & we went on to the dance floor. I had no idea she loved to dance that much! It was really great. The DJ's played a mix of Indian & American music but got super repetitive. At the very end, when all the host families had left and it was just us, someone requested "Telephone" by Lady Gaga and we all danced to that. Great way to end the program.
The next day we bussed back to the program center and had a re-entry in to America session, which really freaked everyone out. My friend Aviva and I were more upset, because we're both staying in India longer so are trying to avoid the "going back home!" mindset. Then we went around in a circle and said nice things about each other, which made everyone start crying, watched a slideshow from the semester, got funny superlative awards, and had pizza & cake for lunch. It felt like the last day of school for sure.
That evening Andrew, his friend from home, and I left to travel in South India. But those are different stories for a different time.
The last week in Jaipur was spent editing, printing, binding, turning in, and presenting on my ISP, which I never really wrote about on here. But basically, I worked with a fair trade producer group in Ahmedabad called Saint Mary's, and studied how the structure of their organization promoted peace & communalism between the different women that worked there.
Our program moved us to a super nice hotel for the final banquet and presentations. It even had a swimming pool & really great showers. I hadn't felt that clean since January. I started calling it the Jaipur Marriot because I felt like I was at the Palm Springs Marriott. It was actually called the Hotel Gold Palace, and its logo was a dollar sign. All the girls dressed in saris for the final banquet, and mine was definitely one of my favorite things I've worn. I wish I had a reason to wear it again. We'll see.
(we call this the "Mafia Family Portrait")
The banquet itself was really fun too. My host family was one of the first ones to show up and my host sister immediately told me it was time to "get the party started," so we went up to the DJ booth & she requested some songs & we went on to the dance floor. I had no idea she loved to dance that much! It was really great. The DJ's played a mix of Indian & American music but got super repetitive. At the very end, when all the host families had left and it was just us, someone requested "Telephone" by Lady Gaga and we all danced to that. Great way to end the program.
The next day we bussed back to the program center and had a re-entry in to America session, which really freaked everyone out. My friend Aviva and I were more upset, because we're both staying in India longer so are trying to avoid the "going back home!" mindset. Then we went around in a circle and said nice things about each other, which made everyone start crying, watched a slideshow from the semester, got funny superlative awards, and had pizza & cake for lunch. It felt like the last day of school for sure.
That evening Andrew, his friend from home, and I left to travel in South India. But those are different stories for a different time.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Palitana
On Saturday we went to Palitana, a mountain with 800-something Jain temples on top of it. It was one of the most beautiful and best-smelling places I've been to in India so far. Yes, best-smelling. There were tons of fragrant carnations, jasmine plants, and also something else herb-y that I recognized but couldn't place. Palitana is about a 4 hour busride from Ahmedabad. We left at 7, got there at lunchtime, ate, and headed up the mountain. Like Junagadh (and Gujarat in general I've concluded) isn't well known to western tourists, so we were once again the only foreigners there. At only 3,600 steps, this was nothing compared to Junagadh...except we started at the hottest time of the day. The views were beautiful though, and the non-temple architecture made it feel like a Greek isle.
We spent a few hours wandering around the temples, then hiked back down, bought some much-needed water, ate a really nutritious dinner of potato chips and ice cream, and got right back on a bus for Ahmedabad. At one point on the bus ride back I was sitting in the aisle seat and dozed off briefly. The bus hit a bump in the road and I flew foreword across the lap of the Indian man sitting in the seat across the aisle from me. Whoops.
We spent a few hours wandering around the temples, then hiked back down, bought some much-needed water, ate a really nutritious dinner of potato chips and ice cream, and got right back on a bus for Ahmedabad. At one point on the bus ride back I was sitting in the aisle seat and dozed off briefly. The bus hit a bump in the road and I flew foreword across the lap of the Indian man sitting in the seat across the aisle from me. Whoops.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Hurricane Sangeeta
This is Sangeeta, the 3-year-old feisty/adorable Nepali girl whose family lives & works at our guesthouse. Last week she & I made friends, and this week she figured out what room I'm in. So now she comes banging on the door to play/go through my stuff any time between 8:30 AM and 10:30 PM. She is currently napping next to me on the bed, cuddling with my sunglasses and drooling on my pillow.
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