Tuesday, December 13, 2011

I'm at Rising Star Outreach now, the school for children of parents or relatives who have leprosy.  Yesterday was awesome!   I went to the medical clinic to help clean the feet of the leprosy patients in a colony.  My job was to rub oil on their feet after Diane and Amy (another recent volunteer) washed them.  After the oil, the nurse would cut off the dead skin, clean out their sores,  and dress their wounds.  We worked for about 3 hours straight.  I was afraid I would either start crying or get nauseated at the sight of their deformities and open sores, but I didn’t do either.  In fact, it was very rewarding. 

 The Peery Matriculation School - it's really very nice.

 Amy watching as a woman's foot is dressed.  One of the other volunteers was taking all the pictures, and I don't have hers yet with me in any of them.

After cleaning up the clinic, we drove to a place where several lepers had their paintings on display for sale.  I understand that one even painted with his toes, I believe.  They were beautiful, but I have no wall space for them, as they were rather large.  It would have been fun to buy one, however.

Then we went for “lunch” and had chappatis and dipping sauce.  They were pretty good, but a bit spicy.  My body has been “revolting” on a number of things ever since I was in Nairobi, so all this spicy Indian food hasn’t been the best for me.  I try to eat, but I don’t eat much.  I think if this is still happening once I get back into the USA, I’ll have to go to a doctor to see if I’ve picked up a parasite or something somewhere along the way.

We also walked into the Thottanaval Village where some of our students are from.  Although it was very different than the villages in Kenya, the people, especially the kids, were all very friendly and wanted to have their pictures taken just as in the Kenyan villages. In the village, I got an ice cold Pepsi – the first one I’ve had since August – and it was sheer heaven!  I’m not a big pop drinker, but it tasted like manna from heaven!

 Everything in India is extremely colorful - their billboards, their clothes, their houses, etc.

 Where I got the Pepsi in the village - a little store on the side of the walkway.

Every aspect of the day was a high for me.  We had a Family Home Evening dinner here at the Elephant House with the staff and talked about our lows and highs for the day.  I really had to stretch my brain to even come up with a low. 

 In front of the Elephant House.

The door to our room - "Peafowl".

I have worked in the evenings with the kids, which has really been fun.   Last night, I worked with three boys to test them on their science book in preparation for an exam.  The night before, I read stories in the girl’s dorm, and the first night, I helped some boys study for a social studies test and visited with others.

Standard V boys studying for a science test.

One of the boys in Standard VII made me a Christmas card this morning and said how he "knew I missed my family, and he loved me so much."  It was a great way to start my day!

Today, the director's wife wanted me to observe her teaching conversational English to an adult worker here to see if I can give her any pointers.  I also worked in the school during the day for the first time. After helping with the ESL student, I  mostly did one-on-one tutoring.  I really wish I had just come here to begin with now and not even wasted my time with the first week in India.  It was less than wonderful - by a LONG shot.  I'll only be here until Friday night, then we'll fly out for So. Korea at 4:10 AM on Saturday from Mumbai.  I've got only a little over a month left to my trip now!  That's hard to believe.

After school, we went over to the “Star Store” where the students can turn in stars that they earn on their assignments for various items.  Diane and I were standing there as a few kids wanted to read the books I’d checked out of the library to read to the kids tonight, when four little girls started literally picking head lice out of each others’ hair and either playing with them or throwing them on the ground.  It was at that point that Diane and I decided that seeing how the Star Store worked wasn’t as enticing as we thought.  We made a beeline for our dorm and later put tea tree oil in our hair as a preventative (or so we were told).  I guess we’ll see about that one.  Having encountered head lice for so many years during my teaching career, I know how difficult they can be to get rid of.  I’m NOT interested in sharing my head with a blood-sucking louse!!!  I bought a bed bug pillow cover before I left home, but unfortunately, I left it in our last hotel before coming here.  The dorm rooms are really quite nice and only a couple of years old, but I know that many of the volunteers have also gotten head lice, so I’ve been a little concerned about that.  Oh well, there’s not much more I can do at this point.

Around 6:00, we went to a house warming for one of the teachers. We drove about 40 minutes to her village.  It was nice to see, but Amy had a flight to catch tonight, and Diane and I didn’t know any of the people, so we all left before they had served dinner.  It smelled good, but I was a little nervous about eating anything there.   We walked over to the hostels to help Amy pass out DumDums to all the kids before she left for the airport.  Diane and I were really hungry.  All we could find to eat here was a piece of toast with peanut butter and an apple.  I’m not eating like I do at home by any stretch of the imagination!  I sort of came to that conclusion before I even left home, but I have to admit it’s been hard!  I don’t feel like I’m getting a balanced diet at all, and I’m having to eat really weird things.  All part of the experience, I suppose.

 The teacher, Jayanthy, and her Grandmother at their new home.

They had this sign out in front of the house.

Well, that’s about it for now.  Sleep well and don't let the bed bugs, mosquitoes, or head lice bite…

Kadi

Sunday, December 11, 2011

I'm so excited... I've got excellent internet access right now, so I'll probably be able to post more often this week - until Friday anyway.

Today was a great day.  We left for church at 7:00 AM and drove for almost 2 hours back to Chennai.  They have been waiting for 12 years to get a chapel, and last week was their first week in their new ward house.  It’s absolutely beautiful and looks more like a small temple to me than a meetinghouse. 

         The new Chennai Chapel.

A "subdivision" ready to sell plots of land.  If you look really hard toward the back just to the right of the middle, you can see one house that is under construction.

This is a separate subdivision.  I thought it was a miniature golf course.  Each of the little "umbrellas" represents a plot of ground for sale.

After church, we came back home and they had a good lunch prepared for all of the adult volunteers and visitors.  It was one of the better Indian meals I’ve had, and Pam (the Director’s wife) made a vegetable salad and REAL brownies with frosting.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven!  It’s amazing what small things can make you so happy.

Lunch served on a piece of a banana leaf as a placemat.  I couldn't tell you what most of it was, but it was pretty good.

The school cuts all of the children’s hair at the same time over a two-day period, so today was hair-cutting day.   I hated to see some of the girls’ hair chopped off so short when they had such beautiful long hair.  The boys’ hair is cut every two months.

Promethean Sparks, a dance group that works in the USA and a couple of other countries, has two volunteers here right now – Ann and Diana – who have been teaching the children dance.  Tonight, the kids wanted to do an impromptu dance for us.  They were incredible!  Even this little tiny boy, maybe 5 years old, was awesome and danced all by himself when I asked him to dance for me and I would record him on a video.  Being a former modern dancer, I totally loved what they did.  I was very impressed.  There was one dance they did to a David Archuletta song that actually brought tears to my eyes.  At one point in the song, the children had to dance as if they had leprosy.  They took poses that made me realize just how real it is to them.  They knew exactly what to do because they’ve seen it in their own relatives’ lives.

Here at Rising Star Outreach, there are 190 students.  None of the students have leprosy.  Most are from surrounding villages, but some come from as far away at New Delhi.  They only get to see their parents about once a month.  They live here on campus in hostels with “mothers”, having about 18-20 children in each “family”.  The boys are in one hostel, and the girls are in another. 

Tonight we went over to the girls’ hostel and read stories to some of them.  The children are so starved for love and affection that it seems like they just glom onto any person they can.  I’ve gotten used to it somewhat from Africa, but it could be overwhelming otherwise.  There just aren’t enough adults around to give them all the love they need.  They are absolutely darling, however, and very polite.  They always ask my name and try to get into a conversation with me.  I love that.

We’ve decided to go work with the leprosy patients tomorrow.  I’m excited and nervous at the same time.  I’m not so much worried that I’ll get leprosy from them as much as I’m worried about how I will react to their deformities and wounds.  I hope I’m up to the task.  We leave here at 9:00 and won’t be back until 2:00.

Wish me luck,

Kadi

Saturday, December 10, 2011

I am currently at Rising Star Outreach in Thottanaval Village.  It’s about 2 hours north of Chennai (Madres), India.  We will be working at a school with the children of some people who have leprosy.  About 70% of all the lepers in the world live in India.  It’s really sad to think that if they had only had antibiotics, their bodies wouldn’t become so deformed.  We might also work at the medical facility to help clean their wounds, etc.  I think that will be extremely difficult for me to see and do, but I also think it will be an amazing experience.  That will be our choice to work there or not.

We met with a few of the boys tonight after dinner in their hostel.  I worked with several on their homework, and Diane sang a few of them to sleep.  I already enjoy being here.  We arrived around noon today, but since we got up at 4:00 AM to get ready to leave for the airport in Cochi, we were a bit tired from flying and then driving another 2 hours.  We basically had the afternoon to regroup, go “shopping” in their closet for authentic Indian clothes that we will wear all week, and take a nap.

Tomorrow, we leave at 7:00 AM to drive all the way back to Chennai to church.  The driving here is even crazier than in Kenya, which is hard to believe.  They have painted lines on the road, but everyone still just makes up their own lane.  They just honk at each other and then move in wherever they want.  I’m NOT looking forward to driving through that noise and chaos and back again tomorrow, but I AM looking forward to church.  Apparently, they just got a brand new building.  This is only the second week they’ve had it.  The other problem is that there are so many people everywhere on the road and otherwise.  It’s extremely congested.

Wednesday, we drove to Tusker Trails in Thekkady.  When we arrived, we asked Jose, our taxi driver, what we were going to do there.  He said, “Relax”.  Hmmm… we drove 4 hours to sit in a hotel to relax!  I ended up getting an auryvedic massage which was like nothing I’ve ever had before!  We won’t go into that.  It was good, however.  We’ve discovered that all the hotels close after lunch at 3:00 and don’t reopen until 7:30, so we’ve missed many lunches due to our traveling from one place to another, and then, we have to wait until 7:30 to eat dinner.

                 Tusker Trails

                  All our baggage!

My body is already starting to revolt from eating Indian food.  Every place we’ve stayed at has an Indian buffet for dinner and breakfast.  They are all the same.  I hate to say it, but I would die for some plain old American food.  I’ve finally reached my limit on foreign food that I have no clue what it is.  I thought I liked curry, but I think it will be a long time before I order it at home.

Thursday, we drove to the Lake Song Hotel in Kumarakom for 4 hours.  We stayed in a beautiful hotel on a lake.  We paid for a motorboat cruise, but the hotel gave us a free sunset cruise on the lake, so that’s the one we did.  I was told we would be “going up a river in Allepay in narrow canals and seeing the village life along the backwaters.”  An hour cruise around a lake that just had hotels and condos along the side wasn’t exactly what I thought we were paying for!  That’s all we did there, too.

             Me, Jose (our taxi driver), and Diane

 Lake Song Hotel

Lake Song Hotel

Friday, we drove back to Bolgatty Palace and Island Resort in Cochi again.  I thought we were going to Fort Cochin, which we did, but it’s not a fort at all, it’s just the name of the town.  Jose told us we could go visit the Jewish synagogue and the Dutch temple, but apparently, they are always closed on Fridays, so we didn’t see either one.  All we did in Cochi was shop – which was fun at least.

(There are two political parties in the state of Kerala - National Congress and Communist, but they have a democratic government.  I find that very interesting.  There was a Communist party convention in this town we passed through.)

 In Indian rug weaver

 Our sunset houseboat ride

 They sell these everywhere and hang them in shops, homes, in cars, etc.

Chinese fishing nets

I have to admit that I WON’T miss this part of our trip at all!!!  I’m wishing now that we had just spent two weeks here at Rising Star Outreach and forgotten all the rest.  Oh well, it is what it is.  This coming week is going to be great.  We’ll be out of the winding roads in the mountains (which were very beautiful, but hard to ride in a car for so many hours twisting and turning), horn honking, dirty streets, millions of people, dirty bathrooms, etc.  It feels calm and peaceful here away from all of that, and we actually have sit-down toilets that flush, toilet paper, soap and water to wash our hands.  The shower may prove a bit interesting because they use the bucket and little scooper method, but I’ll adapt…

Anyway, we’re in a better space now and things will get better.

Kadi

Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011

The Continuing Saga…

Our Indian experience began with a BANG!  We arrived at the airport on Saturday at 3:00 PM ready for our second attempt at the 5:35 PM flight from Nairobi to Mumbai.  Things seemed to go quite smoothly and unremarkably, which was a good thing.  We had met a couple that had also been bumped from the flight the night before.  Charlie was born in India, and Jasu was born in Kenya but is full-blooded Indian.  We enjoyed their company both days.

Like I said in my previous two blogs, I was able to even work on my blog in the airplane, so everything seemed to be going very well.  We arrived in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India about 2:10 AM on Sunday morning.  That’s where the next bit of excitement began.  There was something wrong with the baggage carousel and all the bags took forever to get off.  I made a comment to Diane that I wasn’t worried that our bags hadn’t come yet because there were a lot of other people around, too, waiting for bags.  Eventually, Diane and I each had one of our large bags, but the crowd had thinned to only a couple of people when Kenya Airways said that was all the baggage.  TWO of our bags had not made it with our flight!

By the time we dealt with all the paperwork, etc., it was after 4:00 AM.   Kenya Airways said our bags would be there at 2:10 AM on Monday, and sent us on our way.  Our taxi driver was supposed to pick us up at 2:10.  We didn’t know his name, the name of his company, the address and phone number for the hotel we were to stay at, didn’t have a phone that worked, and couldn’t log onto the internet.  All we knew was the name of the hotel – Kihnoor Hotel.   We were completely frustrated and tired!  Security in the airport was very strict, and if you crossed through a door that lead to this one area where the taxi drivers picked people up, you couldn’t go back in.  We tried to explain what had happened with our bags and that we doubted that our taxi driver would still be there after waiting for over 2 hours.  We just wanted to check to be sure.  They finally agreed to let Diane stay inside the door with all of our luggage while I went around the circle to see if anyone had our names posted.  They didn’t.

I went back through the door to figure out how to get a hold of Praveen, our travel agent in New Delhi, India to get some contact information for the hotel.  I couldn’t get the airport’s WiFi to work, and eventually a guy behind the Foreign $ Exchange counter offered to call Praveen for me.  We then called the hotel to send the taxi driver again.  When he got there, we couldn’t figure out where he was parked, so eventually, the guy with the cell phone had to literally leave his counter to guide us out to the taxi.  Thank goodness for his help!!! 

We finally got to our hotel at 5:30 AM.  We only had 1 ½ hrs. of sleep because we had to leave the hotel at 8:00 AM to catch another flight out of Mumbai to Cochin around 10:00.  We got on the flight without any problems and arrived safely in Cochin where our long-term taxi driver was waiting for us.  What an experience HE was!!!  He could hardly speak any English, he literally honked at almost every single car he passed – even when the road had two lanes in one direction, we were in one lane, and the other cars were in the other lane, he was weaving in and out of traffic, and he used his left foot for braking, so his driving was very jerky.  After the 45 minutes drive to the Bolgatty Island Palace Hotel, we were tense and total wrecks!  Not only that, but he kept trying to take us to see Ft. Cochin rather than just checking into our hotel.  We arrived at the hotel at 2:45, and he was determined that he would come back at 3:30 to pick us up again.  Somehow, we managed to make him understand that we were tired, we’d lost our luggage, had missed a flight, and all we wanted to do was go to our hotel for some downtime.  He eventually understood and said he would pick us up at 8:30 AM the next morning (Monday) to head to Munnar, about a 4 hour drive.

One of the first things we did at the hotel was to hand wash everything we could.  I had no clothes at all in my bag, and Diane had mostly only clothes in hers.  Between the two of us, we were like one complete person.  Luckily, I had put in one extra blouse and underwear in my carry-on, so I at least had something I could change into while I washed.  By the time we got settled in and finished washing, we discovered that the hotel’s restaurant was closed and wouldn’t be open until 7:00 PM.  We hardly had time to eat anything for breakfast because sleep was more important, we flew through lunch, and now we’d have to wait another 2 hours to eat dinner. 

          At the Bolgatty Island Palace Hotel

Bogatty Island Palace Hotel

Clothes drying on the railing of our porch at the hotel

We ended up having a full body massage, watching a Kathakali dancer (the traditional cultural art of Kerala), got a sandwich, walked around the hotel grounds, and got our wash done.  We were relaxed and ready for the next day.  That was so much better than what our taxi driver was trying to make us do.  We can still see Ft. Cochin when we return to Cochin on Friday.   I also emailed Praveen to see if there was any way we could get another driver for the remainder of our trip.

      Kathakali dancer (it's a male)

Monday morning, we found out that our luggage hadn’t made it to Mumbai.  That was a blow since from here on, we will only be in one place for 1-2 days, and our luggage might just be one step behind us all the way.  Praveen went to bat for us to see what he could do.   He also got us a new driver, Jose, who is awesome!  He speaks English quite well and is a very good driver.  Our prayers were answered at least in one department.

We left the hotel at 11:00 AM because we were waiting to hear about our luggage.  We drove 4 hours to Munnar and stopped at the spice plantation for a tour, and at a restaurant for lunch.  It was a beautiful drive, and we drove through several little towns through the mountains.   We arrived at Tea County Hotel early evening, got settled in, and had some dinner.   We had a nice day.

All their buses are very different and colorful.

 Men wearing dothis.

 Audorickshaws - like tuktuks in Kenya.

Beautiful falls 

We had hoped that the luggage would arrive last night or early this morning, but not so!  We decided to give all our laundry to the hotel, and Diane let me wear some of her clothes today.  We left for the day with Jose.  We went to a wildlife sanctuary called Eravikulam National Park.  The only animals we saw were mountain sheep, but the ride was spectacular through all the tea plantations up high into the mountains.  We met a really cute Indian couple on their tenth anniversary there.   They actually have been living in Seattle for 6 years and just recently moved back here.  We spent time with them and later kept running into them wherever we went. 

 Diane and couple from India

 Group of school children we met in the national park.

A mountain sheep.

Next, we headed to the tea museum, Matuapetty Dam (built after at flood of 1924), and the elephant ride.  We rode an Indian elephant, which was really fun.  Then, we headed back to our hotel.  Again, the restaurant for this hotel was closed, but we were able to get a sandwich.  While waiting for the elephant ride, we got a call from our hotel stating that they had received our bags!  We rejoiced!  We haven’t seen our bags since 4:00 AM when we checked them into Cape Town on Friday morning.  It’s now Tuesday night – that’s almost FIVE WHOLE DAYS!

 Tea factory

Matuapetty Dam



Women cutting tea - tea plantations grow everywhere.

My battery died, so we didn't get us on the elephants, but this is what it looked like.

Notice the "Rush Bag"  sign Saran-wrapped to our luggage.  It took 5 days - I'd hate to see their "slow" method!

All in all, I would say that India is very similar to Kenya’s rural parts.  Mumbai was very dirty and congested – from what we saw leaving the airport.  We totally missed the Mumbai part of our trip, so there might have been something better than what we saw.  We seem to be almost the only white people around.  Where we are now is gorgeous, but there is a constant haze that is common this time of year apparently.  It’s been most interesting to see how Indians live, their bathrooms (which are even more interesting than in Kenya, if you can believe that!), and to try some of their foods.  People honk a lot at each other, but it’s more about saying that they are passing or something like that, or as a warning.  It’s not done in anger at someone like at home.

Things are looking up now.  Tomorrow we head off to Thekkady for the next part of our Indian trip.  Let’s hope it is only fun and very uneventful.   Well, I’m finally caught up on my blog for now.  Hopefully, I’ll have internet access in all the rest of our hotels until we fly to Chennai (formerly Madres).

Hope to have you visit my blog again soon,

Kadi