End of Week 5

I have been having a rough couple of days. It seems like every time I am out walking I am attracting extra attention. Yesterday some guy grabbed at my backpack while I was walking and that really bugged me, then some guy yelled something obscene from his motorbike, and later I had to yell at another guy to leave me alone because he kept calling at me and was starting to follow me. And even if every guy on the street doesn't yell, "madam! madam! Hello!", just about every guy is staring or leering, and that just puts me in a bad mood.

I feel a little guilty. So, on the second day I realized that my malaria pills made me incredibly nauseous for an hour or two after I took them, so I immediately quit taking them. Another intern has been taking them this entire time, but didn't realize that they were why she felt so sick every morning. They had even made her vomit twice. I was like, dude, quit taking those pills. And so she did. And now she might have malaria. I feel terrible--I just hope her fever is caused by the bedbugs she caught during a stay at a nearby guest house (this has not been her week). Or mostly I hope she just feels better really soon.

Today on the bus my driver was singing to himself, and that was really sweet.

It has been so hot this week that the local schools are adjusting their hours to end earlier. I feel like curling up and sleeping until August. I hadn't realized that it had cooled off until just now when it has fired back up. It is almost unbearable this time. It didn't bother me as much at first because I was excited to be in India and experience the new climate, but after six weeks I would really like to be dry for 30 minutes. And not so salty. I'm sweating the prints off of my new Indian shirts! The three days of monsoon were just a cheap trick.

I also never thought this would happen, but I might be ready to branch out from Indian food. It is still delicious, and I enjoy it when I eat it, but I would love some fresh vegetables or fresh fruit, or normal cheese, or milk without sugar. The only salad I eat here is fresh onion and cucumber. I'm starting to miss bland! How crazy is that!

Here are some positives: I am buying kulfi almost every day, I found and then bought some fresh plums this morning, the public transportation system still fills me with excitement and adventure every morning and every night, I love having staring contests with the old, turbaned, sheet-pantsed village men who are on the bus with me, my host family is very accommodating of my napping needs, the other interns are full of other perspectives and help me be more reasonable, and yesterday I made friends at McDonalds with an Indian man who is now a french astronaut and back in India with his french wife to visit his mother . So my life isn't all rain clouds right now! Or maybe hazy dust storms?

Also, here are some pictures that probably should have gone with my last blog entry: Sorry about the layout, I don't have the patience today to make it look great.

My neighbor during the monsoon

Mandore Gardens

Review of Week 4: Business as Usual?

For a few days this week I felt like I joined Corporate India. I bused to the office and then did research and wrote some of my report on my laptop all day. Except at this office I was frequently interrupted by the 7 year old who lives upstairs. Sambhav is always excited to run downstairs and practice a little English with me and then lapse into rapid fire Hindi that I just sort of laugh along with. The other day after lunch I played Snakes and Ladders with him for about forty-five minutes and I got to practice counting and losing gracefully in Hindi. That same day I was encouraged by my supervisor to take a nap on the floor, so I did. Then Thursday I had five cups of chai in one day! So my corporate India is maybe a little different from corporate America.

In addition to working with women and children through the Anganwadi Center system, my organization works with leather artisans in Jodhpur. Meera Sansthan is trying to organize the artisans into Self Help Groups so that they can apply for loans from microfinance organizations. They also organize trainings on leather design development and quality improvement. They also are trying to help the artisans find a better path to customers. In any case, one day this week to break up the monotony of office life (which is actually usually pretty eventful) my supervisor decided to send me off to the leather cluster to see the leather workers in action and ask them some questions. They really do amazing work--Jodhpur is famous for producing Jutis, which are leather embroidered shoes, and the designs are sometimes quite intricate. What blows me away is the price of all these leather products. The Jutis sell for about 170 Rs., or $4. Handmade, all leather, hand stitched--such a labor intensive product for so little profit. Which is a problem--most leather artisans are barely getting by, and the men I talked to said they weren't letting their sons go into the family business because it was so much work with so little return. However, somehow one guy had the time and energy to build the world's largest Juti! It was 8 ft long, three men can sleep inside, and 12 children can sit inside. He said his next project was to build an entire room out of leather.

As part of my host sister's 17th birthday celebration on Friday we went to the McDonald's which just opened in Jodhpur. I was pretty curious what would be on the menu since this country is mostly vegetarian and almost completely beef-free. There were a lot of chicken products and then three or four veggie or paneer options. The whole experience was a little overwhelming--there were a lot of people and I'm not sure how familiar my family was with the American fast food process. They asked me for recommendations and I just had to say that the entire menu was new to me. I didn't elaborate on the American version--the last time we brought up the fact that Americans eat beef they all seemed pretty scandalized. We all got the Tikka Burger which had a patty of potato masala. It was nice, but not as spicy as the name implied. About an hour and a half later we went out for real dinner (burgers are just snacks, I guess?) and the place knew my family so well that when we sat down we didn't even order. The servers just brought out "the usual"--onion salad, roti, dal, malai kofta, and then some papad at the end. Dolly said that the dal here was the best in all of Jodhpur. I'm not experienced enough with Jodhpur or dal to agree or disagree, but it was really spicy and had about a cm of straight ghee sitting on top. Even my host family agrees that the food there is really rich.

The interns got together to celebrate the 4th of July yesterday. We had some group birthdays this past week too, so we had birthday cake, biryani, mutton, chicken, egg curry, paneer, dal, salad, tons of fresh fruit which none of our host families seem to want to give us ever, and gaudy Indian birthday decorations. We even got some fireworks and shot them off in an abandoned lot across the street from the office. That attracted a lot of attention--a bunch of foreigners yelling and shooting off fireworks on some random night in July? But it was pretty exciting. Someone's hand almost got blown off (of course). And I forgot to take pictures.

Today was apparently the hottest day so far, and somehow we had decided to spend it outside touring Mandore Gardens. They are a popular picnic spot for Indian families, so on a Sunday they were starting to get a little crowded, even with the heat. Since Rajasthan is mostly desert, I was expecting the gardens to be sort of dried out. Instead everything was very green and lush with bright flowering bushes. We walked through some shrines to past maharajas, saw lots of monkeys, and wandered back to what we thought might be ruins of the original fort. One of the other interns also was accosted by a local old woman who really wanted to touch a white face.

I think this last weekend was my last quiet weekend. I have travel plans for the remaining three before I have to leave. Next weekend the interns are going to Mt. Abu which is a hill station not too far from here. Apparently it's a popular Indian tourist spot, which is intriguing. The following weekend we have an intern retreat in Udaipur. Then my last weekend another intern and I are going to try to make it to the Taj Mahal, which is about 12 or 13 hours from Jodhpur. And then the next weekend I fly to London! But it's India, so who knows what will really happen.