Almost done

This may be a little premature but I am getting really antsy and thirteen days to go seems very much like I am almost finished with the program. I have not written for a while because I have started to have a great deal of resentment toward www.dano211.blogspot.com and the time that it takes to keep it updated. Not that I am especially busy these days just annoyed and ready to keep traveling. Also I was recently pretty sick. Thought I might have malaria but no such luck.

One interesting thing happend this last week though. There was a festival(when is there not?) celebrating Lord Krishna. Back in the day when he was a youngster he used to get into trouble by breaking the clay pots that people here use to make curds and then eat the innards. For this festival people get these clay pots and string them about fifteen feet in the air then make a human pyramid and the person on top of the pyramid smashes the pot showering himself and the crowd below with bright yellow smelly partially curdled milk. Sounds fun huh? Well this festival was going on last sunday during the hieght of me being sick. I had been laying around all day not daring to go out becuase I did not want to get sprayed with water from a hose, forced to dance, and then covered head to toe with red dust as the other interns had when they braved the streets earlier. It was about four in the afternoon when I finally got fed up with lying around feeling sick and decided to go out and use the internet and get some food. Things had slowed down a bit and the streets were fairly empty. In fact most of the shops where closed including the internet cafe so I started walking back home. I picked up a tasty samosa on my way back and was eating it and enjoying the empty streets when I turned the corner to my house to be confronted with a group of Indians dancing like mad in the middle of the street. Upon seeing me they immediatley and forcefully incorporated me into thier party. Soon I was drenched covered in red stuff and dancing in a crowded street. After a while I notice that they have strung a clay pot decorated with fruit and flowers above the street. A human pyramid is forming and there is motioning that I should be on the top and be the one to smash the pot.Maybe it was the dancing, or the delerium from the fever, or the cold water but I decide to do it. How hard could it be? As I climb onto the backs and shoulders of Indians who are half my size I realize the how precarious my situation on top is and also how drunk many of these festival goers are. Crouching low at the top of the pyramid in order to not fall off the clay pot is still a good five feet above me. I will have to stand up in order to smash it. I steady myself as much as possible then briefly let go of those supporting me to strech up and smash the pot getting instantly drenched with yellow curd. The crowd cheers, the pyramid crumbles and I barely make it to the ground in one piece. After this there is more dancing and then the party seems finished with me and I am allowed to return to my house and clean up.

A nice day for a motorcycle ride

We have received a brief respite from the monsoon only to pummeled by the brutal Indian sun. After a day spent riding to remote villages on the back of a motorcycle I now sport the most wicked of tan necks. We start of early in the morning around 11:00 am heading toward the market area so that we can fill the hog up in preparation for the days journey. Weaving through traffic I hug my knees in toward the bike as images of my knee catching on the bumper of an oncoming truck fill my head. After filling up we are soon out of the city and I spend the next fifteen kilometers winding up a surprisingly smooth road to the village of Jaituchiwadi. The social workers that I am with drop off some papers and we all sit down and visit for a while in the shade before taking off to the next village Ghote, which has a population of about three hundred and is fairly close to Jaituchiwadi. Upon getting arrival the social worker that has been driving me around shows me around the village, which is a tribal Thakur community, and then we go to the big house of the man in charge. He is described to me as the "lord" of the village. One of the strangest things I have noticed about these remote villages is that a surprising number of houses have satellite television usually attached to a thatched or tiled roof of some kind. This mans house is no exception and we hang out for a while watching tv and drinking tea. After a while we head back to the CFI offices for lunch. Overall a very productive afternoon.

I have moved on from Sadhana village and said goodbye to the many friends that I made there. I am now working for an organization called Children's Future India in a decent sized town called Pen. It has been really good to get to a new place and do something fresh. I tried to attach my final report on the SHG that we had been working with but can't seem to figure it out so if anyone is interested just let me know and I can email it to you. A warning though it is about fifteen pages single spaced but I think it presents a pretty good picture of the life that these women live and the challenges they face.

Going to Goa

So I stumble, bleary eyed, off the bus after only four hours of a fourteen hour ride. It is midnight and drizzling rain. I see a sign for the restroom and head that way only to be yelled at by some guy in a uniform. Aparrently that is not the way to go. So I head to the attached building which is some sort of resturaunt and wander around in a daze for a bit, semi oblivious to the attempts of a person behind the counter to sit me at a table. Finally I find the entrance to the restroom and do my business. Later I go outside and although I would love to eat at the resturaunt I do not know if we are stopping for long enough so instead i buy some snacks from a nearby stand an wait, with Dimitar and Aoi, to herded back onto the bus. We slowly realize that the purpose of the stop was to eat at the resturaunt but by that time it is too late we have to be content with our measley snacks. As I notice the stares of my fellow Indian travelers (something I have gotten used to) I am struck by how wierd they must think we are. Having almost no frame of reference for how I should act or behave in this totally foriegn culture I realize that I have gradually just given up trying to act in a culturally "normal" way. I suddenly have a possible picture of myself through thier eyes. I am wearing a dirty t shirt and shorts( most Indian men do not wear shorts), I am eating snacks when I should be eating a meal, and I have not shaven in a few days. I must look like this crazed dirty giant of a forienger to these small polite and clean middleclass Indians who are going to Goa for the Independence Day weekend.

This is only the beginning of the scariest and most painfull of busrides. I still have ten hours to go and they are mostly spent frantically gripping the armrest next to me so I don't go flying off of my seat. We booked the bus last minute so we sat in the back where we feel every bump. Like any bus there are two isles going down the right and left sides of the bus making rows of four seats. The back row is the exception as it has five seats with one directly in the middle of the bus. I foolishly choose this one so that I will have leg room. As a result every time the bus slams on the brakes, and this does happen quite often, I don't have a seat in front of me to brace agains so unless I am holding onto the armrest I will go flying into the aisle.

The roads in India are already narrow and treacherous but during the monsoon season they get worse. We go up and down what seems like an endless mountain pass filled with the most brutal switch backs which the driver takes at full speed causing the passengers to get thrown, first to the left, then to the right, every ten or fifteen seconds. Needless to say I get hardly any sleep and by the time we arrive in Margao I am a broken mess. Towards the end of the trip I seemed to have developed nausea and a fever so when I get off the bus all I want to do is find a place to lie down. But nobody has eaten, aside from snacks, since lunchtime the day before so we go get some food then find our way to the railway station so we can book our return ticket to Panvel and then travel to Vasco De Gama which is on the coast and where we will meet some friends. We find out that, in the words of the ticket agent, we have, "No chance" of booking a ticket and so have to again ride in a bus to get home. However we are able to book a ticket to Vasco and wait for about an hour for the train to come. We board our train and ride for another hour before getting to the coast and our final destination. Luckily the hotel we are staying at is only a few blocks from the railway station and it is sooo much luxury. I promptly lay down and pass out for a few hours.

The next day I am feeling much better and we are able to go a beach which is very nice even though it is cloudy. We get to swim in the ocean for a bit which is nice except for the few peices of floating garbage that we have to share it with. Aferward we go to a resturaunt with a view of the beach and just relax for a few hours before heading back to the hotel. I wish that we could spend more time in Goa, it is a very beatiful state with many old buildings left over from when it was a Portugese colony. Vasco is a very nice city as far as Indian cities go and we were pretty much the only foriegners around. Goa is a very small state but I think a person could spend months here just discovering different places.

Today is our last day here and we leave by bus at 5:00 pm hopefully reaching Panvel by 7:00 am and then taking the bus to Pen where we will start work at 10:00. This time at least we have a sleeper car and I am equipped with sleeping pills so hopefully the return journey will not be so bad.