Chill-out Weekend

Satuday evening was Berhampur-filled yet again. We went around to the shops that we were shown around the last time to get some standard things, like shampoo and conditioner, toilet paper...and cookies (like you do). It was a lot faster this time around, considering we had a little more understanding of the city's ways and the thrill of being off campus was slightly dulled from our fieldwork during the week.

I was trailblazing the group, getting us here and there in the city. And I remembered then that it was actually one of my favorite parts of traveling to foreign cities; that is, figuring out the city in limited time. It was kind of like I have a compass/map installed instantly into my brain while I look around new cities. I take pictures of specific signs in my head; I make mental notes and signposts about streets; I remember places based on what conversation/thought was going on at the last moment of being there. It makes me happy to know I can find my way around a city, understand how it is mapped out, and not feel totally hopeless there.

Though, I almost got ran into by a cow with a nice set of curved horns pointed directly towards me, because I was paying attention to where we were going...

My group was very surprised at how I could navigate us around the area of Berhampur that we were walking around. I was just glad we didn't have to look as much like lost tourists.

Anyways, we grabbed some goodies, got some fruit and other things....and I got a guy to open up a coconut. The ones with the meat in it, not a green one. It was amazing. For 8 Rs, I got to savor a real live fresh coconut, freshly opened. And I was blissed out for about a few hours because of this amazing and appropriate experience.

We ate some disappointing chinese food this time around before cramming back onto the bus towards GV.

We went back to Cristina (from Romania)'s room and talking about light matters until 4 am. Light matters include: child trafficking, changing the world, women's empowerment, violence, caste difficulties, India, and similar matters.

Sunday is a great day on campus because you can do literally nothing. We slept in late, and woke up for lunch. And read as much of the day as we want.

Another note must be said about our feeding here...about the quantity of food.

So, when Joe first met us while in NYC, he made a point to tell us that we would not be eating much food at all while staying on their campus. Our team had interpreted this as meaning that we'd be only eating rice and lentils for 3 weeks straight during extreme heat, thus becoming very thin in breakneck speed. For me, I was rather excited about the potential of flying to India to live an ascetic monk's lifestyle and coming back super thin to tell the tale. It could have been the most efficient, cost-effective diet ever to hit the fad market!

And then we arrived. Rice, dhal (and often potatoes) are our staple meals, however.....it comes in massive quantities.

I don't know how all of these men and women stay so supremely small. Everytime we eat in the mess hall, I come out feeling overly stuffed and bloated from the large sums of rice they plop onto our metal trays. Granted, having such a basic diet with little seasoning or variety for 3 weeks have made me feel indeed monk-like, but this wasn't what I had in mind. I grieved the first week we were here, realizing that my diet plans had come to a screeching halt. Now I have simply accepted the fact that I will come back the same (if not slightly larger) as I had gone.

Anyways, we went for a walk outside of the compound (because it only took us over 2 weeks to figure out we could actually do this), and it was really great. We first managed to climb over some of the craggy, hilly land that held a GV water tank in the middle of ample briars and sandy terrain. The view never ceases to inspire me. Green hills with puckered tops on one side of our panoramic view roll away into green rice paddy land and tropical trees for the other side.

We stood on our incline to look down on the road and heard very loud Indian music blaring from a rickshaw. And we danced to it, as they stared up at us and smiled. At first I assumed that they had turned it on for only us (since we seemed to be the only ones in sight for quite a long distance), but then shortly after a line of Kanwar pilgrims came walking through the trees, jingling down the road and up the hills to the next Shiva temple. The music was for them and not us, after all.

We walked back towards the campus and some of us went back inside. The rest of us (Cristina, Maulin, and me) walk in the other direction, towards Berhampur proper. It was such a nice day, why not enjoy the walk more? And so we walked past the fields, and trees, and residences, and small villages.

Women walked by us in groups, holding water jugs and field tools on their heads. Some smiled and waved. Some looked at us with a sort of scorn.

The men drove by in usually pairs. They would stare, smile, stare some more, turn around while on their motorbikes or in their cars to keep looking....and more often than not, I wanted to shout "KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD AND STOP SWERVING!" I didn't. When we walked by men, they would gawk some more, and Cristina and I would simply look at each other and smile with a shrug.

We walked for a while and ended up on the campus of the Berhampur University-affiliated College of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In my humble opinion, it is not the best situated campus, but there is it. The campus was strange, and felt more like a ghost town than a university campus. No one was there, and everything was slightly overgrown (though that might have just been that way because most places in this part of Orissa seem to have ruthlessly growing flora). But the buildings were dilapidated and unkempt. Everything was fading. They had a locked up herbal garden that looked overgrown from the outside. They had a college canteen that looked more like a cow shed. And their bioscience department was a blocky square of a building situated in a very obscure field a hundred yards away.

This was the end of our tour of the area outside of campus, and we made it home in time to have a nap before our dinner. Rice, dhal, and potatoes.

Final Failed Village (aka Field Day 4)

Yesterday, as I was writing in my blog, a sniffling Sudhansu (I think that some nasal bug is going around the office) came to our office and told us that we were, in fact, going to the field in a few hours to our final village, a failed GV attempt.

Unfortunately, I had jump roped in the morning, and it was extremely hot (104F or something?), so I was suffering from dehydration and heat. I had to sink a hydration tab into my water jug and hope that I wasn't going to get sick while in the middle of our carride, or worse...during our focus group meeting.

We were told it'd be an hourlong ride. With the beating sun and the sweat rolling down, I fell asleep in the car and woke up about 2 hours later to find that we hadn't yet reached this far off village. We had, however, picked up some staff woman from another GV village on the way, and an older village man from another village (the oldest GV village, we later found out).

This seems to happen every time we are traveling to villages. It's like once we are driving, our Jeep becomes a bus and more people pop out of the woodwork to get picked up and join us. A lot of random staff members have come with us to places, or have been shuttled from other villages on the way (but now I'm not so sure how "on the way" they all are). There have been a few times where Hallie, Molly and me were in the middle of the Jeep, while crammed in the trunk and front seats were quite a few Indian men; it must have looked like us 3 girls had a whole lot of bodyguards for our travels, as if we are celebrities.

When we got to this village (quite big, about 264 households, 1200 people), which looked a bit different than all of the other villages we had seen. For one, it was bigger. It was also more narrow and tight (with the huts, houses, and people). And it had some similarity to post-Soviet villages that had been victim to battle. Things were a bit messy, some trash was strewn out on the street, and people were roaming around the streets (clothing optional).

We got out of the car while a parade of children were walking in the street, and they all took a swift halt to gawk at us (again, see "White Stare") while we got onto the street.

We were given chairs on which to sit on someone's porch. It was a very odd setup, and it made us look like we were on a stage, being presented to the town in some kind of panel discussion or whatever, with the white girls in the middle and the guys bookmarking us. The men slowly began to circle around us, in what would be the "audience" section of the "theatre" setup we had going on. No women. Maybe 1 or 2 village women were seen walking through the streets the entire time we were there. Apparently empowerment of women is still weak in this village....

Anyways, as the village men and children stared at us, some of the village leaders took chairs across from us and began answering our questions. They answered a lot of questions for us about their village, why the GV project failed for them, and all of the information we were looking for. I was designated the question asker for Sudhansu, while he would talk to me and everyone else took down the notes. It worked our really well, and our interview went so much better than the previous one!

While we were in the middle of our conversation, some villagers pulled out fans and directed them at us while we were talking. Though extremely helpful, considering the heat, it made talking and listening a lot harder for us.

And then they came out with coconuts for each of us to drink. Straws included. It was an amazing little treat from a village that doesn't even work with GV. They were so delicious, and exactly what we needed with such hot weather.

After our meeting, we scaled the village (and saw broken hand pumps, brick piles in the middle of the road, the area for the lower castes....still no women) and head back in the car to go home.

The drive back wasn't nearly as painful. The sun had gone down some, and we were all in better spirits (because of the coconuts, methinks). We dropped off the people we had picked up back in their designated villages, and head for Berhampur.

Sudhansu gave us a little surprise, though! He invited us into his home (he lives with his family in an area close to Berhampur) to have tea before going back to campus! It was so sweet, and the tea was great, as well as the snacks (called "tiffin" in Oriya & Hindi)!

His house was incredibly nice! I don't just mean compared to the villages we were viewing in the tribal villages, either. The floors were all marble (or was it granite?). The outside ground had paintings drawn by the doors. The house had a courtyard, and clean spacious rooms. There was a refrigerator with filtered water! They had houses in the back that they were renting out to people. They had their own well in their backyard. And they had a little prayer/shrine room off of the kitchen. I was really impressed with his living conditions (I could totally live there...). Clearly his family has been doing alright

We joked around a lot, talking to him while his family looked and giggled at us. Hallie & Molly danced for everyone, and we watched TV! The old 70's show was called "Coolie", and though I didn't understand a word of it, it was very interesting.

Got home, ate dinner, read some, went to bed.

Today is another day at the office (Saturday, I know...). We go to Berhampur for another wild city evening in about 5 hours, and I can't wait!

Field Day 3

Yesterday was another day in the Jeep, tackling more villages...

Luckily for us, our full days of fieldwork have been on the 2 hottest days we have experienced yet in India. Today is about 40C (104F), but yesterday was probably hotter. It has not been raining lately, which means that the sun is blazing, and the sweat runs down our cheeks and thighs constantly, even while we are doing nothing but sitting on a chair talking. I actually don't mind it so much; it's like living in a sweat lodge. Just have to make sure that we drink enough water, regardless of how hot the water may be.

So we Jeeped it. The drive was about 90 minutes, on rickety, turbulent roads. Some paved, some with potholes, some unpaved dirt paths. Up and down, up and down. Speed bumps are on every road, regardless of it its paved or not. Not to mention that our roads are usually narrow anyways, and everyone shares the roads: big trucks, Jeeps, cars, little trucks, rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, goats, water yaks. I'm serious. And the standard driving laws of 2-way traffic on designated sides of the road are nonexistent. Swerving, speed-bumping, speeding, stopping.... Our tailbones are hurting after all of these joyride.

My favorite part of the car-ride yesterday was when we were supposed to drive on a pedestrian dirt road. So basically, this one village was very far out, and nestled behind a huge rice paddy field. There was a dirt road that went to the village, but it was maybe the side of a NYC sidewalk (at most). On either side of this elevated road were rice paddies. We were in a Jeep, and the driver looked wary of this road. We volunteered to walk there, but they insisted...so here we went, teeter-tottering on this dirt road to the village, praying to not tumble into one of the paddies. Mission success.

We started off with going to a school and watching Sudhansu (Soo-dan-choo, our translator) talk to the little kids. The classroom had about 30 kids in it, ranging from very young to maybe teenager, all in uniform and sitting on the floor. They looked very interested by us, but luckily Sudhansu was more interesting. He started singing with the kids, and playing games with them, and they were all taken by his charismatic personality and listening fervently to everything he had to say. He is a great singer, too! It was really cool to hear him sing call-and-response with the kids.

Meanwhile, us white folk were sitting in the front of the classroom watching, and drinking Thums Up. Slowly but surely, the small door of the classroom was crowded by people gawking at us, and the windows were being taken over by curious faces and colorful saree-covered eyes (see "White Stare" from previous post).

We took a tour of this village also, while the community watched and followed us around to see what we were doing.

Sudhansu is really a good translator. He is a 27-year-old single Berhampurian from GV, and he's now our buddy. He understands us for the most part, and he is expressive enough to get his thoughts across, even if his words aren't correct. And he has a great presence; while he translates for us the entire time, he is also managing large numbers of people in a discussion on the Oriyan side. He basically facilitates and leads the conversation on both ends, but he is still able to pull aside and tell us what is going on. He really showed his great leadership and public speaking skills with kids as well. He sings in the car sometimes, and shows us things in the markets. He has taken us to the market twice and helped us get whatever we'd like to get. What a fun guy!

Our next failure village we visited was not very helpful. Everyone was getting tired, and the translations were getting a bit funky by the end of it, so I wonder how effective that meeting really was.

As we were ready to drive home, the GV men offered to show us a deer park (sacred animals here and elsewhere) and a sacred hotspring of Goddess Kandhuni in Taptapani! The deer were adorable (though I was being eaten alive by the mosquitos). The hotspring was indeed hot. It was really neat, walking into this shrine/temple area that was dedicated to this Goddess of the Forest, and seeing a spring flowing into this pool. We walked in it, surprised that anything could be in fact hotter than the actual outside air.

The drive there was really amazing, too. Be surprised, all of my pictures are of these super landscapes. When we were driving to Taptapani, I realized we were driving through a nook of the mountains, and surrounding us were huge, luck mountains. The sunset behind the mountains made it even more incredible.

We talking to our driver about our "town", and I noticed how silly of a concept NYC can be. He asked us if we had mountains and forest, no. Do we have coconut and mango trees? No. No?! No. Do we have any fruit trees? Nope. Rice paddies, vegetable farms? No. (It was really complicated to explain to him that all of our food has to be brought in from other states for our consumption) Do you have blue skies? We don't even have STARS?! Moon on occasion... I think his flabbergastedness was appropriate, and I wonder how we could all live in such an unsustainable environment.

A note on colors: Why is is that developing countries look like bright, colorful rainbows everywhere, while it seems like developed countries are beige, black and white? The colors people wear here are amazing, and happy! They drench their houses with colors. Everything is festive, almost, and your eyes can feel satisfied after a long day because it has been full of colors. And yet, in the US and Europe, it's almost like we are scared of colors. Colors, too bright, too fun. We might be sophisticated, and that means sucking out the great colors of the rainbows from our daily lifestyles and only using them sparingly for "flare". Like color, for us, is a luxury. Why can't colors be prominent everywhere? Any ideas I'm open to hearing.

It was dark by now, and we had to head back to campus for dinner.

And with that, it's my pleasure to tell you that open defecation is alive and well in rural India, still.

Field Day 2

So the last few days we have been in the field, going from village to village (both successes and failures) to see what makes this organization tick.

The first day we watched a self help group (SHG) full of women learn how to manage money accounts, then proceeded to have an interview with some GV staff and village leaders. Afterwards, we drove off into another village and took a tour of the village's pond (where they fished) and of some houses, asking women questions as we walked through.

The pond was less-than-pristine, but while touring around Orissa, I can safely say we've seen worse.

The kids in these villages love us. Maybe not me so much, as I don't give them much attention, but the rest of our team seems to really be taken by the kids, and play with them, take pictures, etc. They giggle and scream when Hallie jokes around with them. They ambush Maulin when he takes pictures of them. The Halie & Molly try teaching them songs in English, and often we get blank smiles in response, since they haven't a clue as to what we are doing. It's always funny to me, though, how little language can count when bonding with people. Most people cannot talk to us at all, and yet there seems to be this appreciation, respect, or something between us all. Understanding, perhaps. The kids don't seem to mind that we can't talk to them, and they pick up on our games pretty quickly.

And then we went to a failure village. This was quite an experience, because it was a room full of men. And as we began (and continued) our conversation, more men piled into the room. Our questions were about why the GV project failed here for the village. The noise crescendo-ed quickly, and soon we were surrounding by a bunch of yelling men. At first us girls were worried that we had begun a big argument, and were stuck in the crossfire. Our translator assured us that this is just how the people here have normal discussions, no problem.

Though it was dark out, we went back to the first village and had a meeting with the villagers. Mostly women came the meeting. I sat across from the translator and became our team's ambassador for the translator, trying to simplify the questions for him to understand, and trying to make sense of what he was explaining back to me, while following how the villagers responded with body language & tone. It was actually kind of neat, and I liked feeling like I had a good hold on what was going on with the villagers. We got the women to break off of the rest of the men and ask them female-oriented questions. They were so sweet, and were clearing excited about seeing us in their village.

Another note: we have began deeming this issue as "White Stare". Because it seems that we can actually stop a village from its daily routine and chores, just for the fact that we are white (women). We have witnessed traffic jams in cities from our coloring, and men almost swerving off of their bikes while staring at us, and men in the village walking by us drop their jaws and gawk at us like we're purple. We might as well be purple, it seems. Some people look at us baffled, completely confused, like they don't understand what happened to our pigmentation.

Villagers often will stop everything they're doing just to stand by and look at us. If we smile at them or wave, they giggle and stare more.

By the end of our meeting with the women, a female bonding experience happened. They were all looking at us 3 women eagerly, and an older woman next to me was talking to me in Oriya (i have no idea what I was saying), patting me on the arm and leg. Then someone came out with bangles, and took our arms and started putting bangles on our arms, as some kind of gift or token or something. It was really amazing to see how welcoming these women were to a bunch of strange foreigners in their town, how they were willing to touch us and give us a piece to remember them for when we go home. They all smiled when they finally got them on all of us (they were hard to get on, Molly accidentally broke one). They were almost going to start painting our nails, but we had to go back to campus.

We got back in time to finish dinner and go to bed, knowing the next day would be longer.

A Quicky

Yesterday we went to the field all day, and it was eye opening.

And I got home exhausted

More on that later.

Today we're hitting the field for 11 hours, so I cannot talk right now.

But a lot to say about it all. Later, later.

The Field! Success!

So just after I ranted on this blog yesterday about how we had not been able to access the field yet, Chitra came back into our room and offered to show us a few villages this morning. Of course we said yes!

So this morning we got up and got into a Jeep with Chitra to view some villages!

The villages were small, very very small. They made the campus look huge next to it. But I was a bit surprised to find that they were also very clean and sanitary. The only things on the streets that were unpleasant were the cow dung (which weren't even that bad because they were all clearly fresh), but we were told that they were cleaned up nightly to use for the fields as fertilizer.

Mind you, the only comparison I had prior to this trip were the slummy villages next to Berhampur and Dehli, which reek of fecal matter and rotting food, and every step is a health hazard. Compared to these areas, our village visits were stunning and pristine.

The people in the villages were very curious about the clearly foreign (and white) people who had entered their villages, and would come out to look at us, smile, say "Namaskaar" and continue to look. But I don't feel like we were much of a bother to them otherwise.

They had toilets for every house in these villages, which was a bit odd to see because here were these concrete toilet houses next to tribal huts with thatch roofs and stucco-stuffed walls. But no less, these successful villages of GV were working out well, as far as I was concerned. They had electricity, water, sanitation standards, and everyone looked clean. Little kids wondered around naked and animals roamed the villages, but what else is new here?

We even got to talk to some of the village members and ask them question about their villages, water, sanitation, women, etc. They were very pleasant with us, and helped out our field research quite a bit, considering our small amount of time with them.

We also got to visit the GV school. Yes, this program has a school, ranging from 8 years to 15 years, co-ed. The school is also very clean, and the kids wear very nice uniforms of different color blues. We got a nice tour of the facilities, and even got to look at their very proud collection of awards and medals that they've received for their students' fine talents. I was not really clear on how the areas of the campus were mapped out, but I got the general gist of the whole place.

We were there for the children's lunchtime. We went over to look at how their food is prepared, and as we walked over to the kitchen we were greeted by the sight of all of the boys lined up (more like smooshed up, since they were literally stomach-to-back with each other) for their rice and dhal (things that we normally scorn at GV). As they saw us (foreigners), they started in a slow roar of "Namaskaar!" and waving at us. It was really adorable, and bit humbling/embarrassing to have gained such a reaction from the kids that we were there. We took pictures as little eyes stared and smiled at us.

The little girls were waiting for the boys to finish, so they stood across the small campus, staring at us. Maulin started taking pictures, and they began running into the pictures. Molly decided to take a picture with the girls, and they clamored over to see their faces in her digital preview, giggling and squealing at the picture. When we left, they all smiled and waved, "Bye!" to us.

We came back for lunch then.

Did I mention the landscape is absolutely incredible?

As we drove through the rolling hills, and walked up the mini-mountains, I was taken aback by how absolutely green and lush, and stunning, our view of the area was. At the first village we saw, we got to climb the top of one of the buildings on the hill, and got the most fantastic panoramic view of the viewable Orissa area. Fields were full of water, and green. Mountains rolls around the backdrop, while being touched with mists of clouds. Palm and coconut trees surrounded nearby small villages that donned Gram Vikas water towers. Trees and flowers everywhere! I took a lot of pictures.

Oh, and the flies are horrifying. I think they are the real terrorists of this area. They won't leave you alone, and some of them bite. Our team has been slapping and waving and growling at flies constantly, and I'm about ready to lose my cool on these rampant insects. They will crawl into your clothing, and even fly straight into your mouth and eyes! The GV staff shrug with a laugh and say, "What do you expect in the jungle during monsoon season?"

Clearly, not so many flies.

A Small Venting Session

Our team is getting very upset and antsy. We have been at the GV campus for over a week now. While we believe we were told that we'd be able to go onto the field to get our quality as soon as possible, we have been stuck in an office looking at data and papers that we should only look at upon returning to the states, where we will not be so close to our field.

It is one thing for an NGO to invite a group of graduate students from far away to work on evaluating their program's progress through annual reports, but it's another thing to have them ship themselves 8000 miles away to the actual work sites so they can look at the actual WORK and make recommendations on the actual field PROGRESS. We are the latter, but they treat us as the former, and it is clearly going to negatively affect our report at the end.

Other summer Capstone teams have been writing about the great amount of time they have been visiting their fields upon arrival, making them very very busy and probably inundated with information. Our group simply sits and waits. For them to finally REMEMBER us and say that it's okay for us to actually do our work now seems to be too cumbersome for them. It's not that we haven't tried; we have written notes and come to supervisors and asked everyone when we would be able to go out. With monsoon rains making our traveling time precious and fleeting, we should have been able to start as soon as the first rains let up.

They have told us to expect that each of us will get approximately 2 days in the field. 3 weeks on our project, 2 days in the field. I have no clue how they have been able to rationalize that such a small amount of time will give them a legitimate scaling report from us in the end. Perhaps it is enough time to get our findings, but according to my feelings on this whole matter, it's not.

We are, simply put, at the mercy of their whims and convenience.

And I am, simply put, put off by all of this stalling.

Great Weekend

This morning Maulin, Molly and I were out for a jog. And we literally ran into a meter-long snake (you should have seen Maulin shriek & run!). And a few minutes afterward, I landed in the mud...to find myself falling into cobra position.

But about the weekend...

Our team met up with the GV volunteer, Christina from Romania, & got on the crowded, rickety bus to Berhampur. It was so exciting, and we were all squealing with joy for the adventures to come. Driving through the land again, smelling the smells, and seeing the people reminded us that we were, in fact, in India.

As we got closer to the city, the scenery got slummier and we started noticing the abject poverty that we get to conveniently miss while on the compound. Children running around naked; women washing their clothing and dishes in the dirty potholes on the street; men urinating anywhere they please (and I mean anywhere). It was a well-needed slap in the face a bit, to see the reality of India again.

And then we got off of the bus in Berhampur...

Cities in India are hard to compare with cities like New York. No sky scrapers catch your gaze. No real paved streets. Cows sitting on the streets, not cars. Honking horns of rickshaws, not cabs. Gutters with trash and other bodily matter in it, not just homeless people. But it was a great change, no less. The busyness of the streets was refreshing, and we were saturated with shouts from vendors and strung lights over shops.

Christina has been living at GV for about a year now, so she was our tour guide around, while we all looked around excitedly and aimlessly. She was running errands, and we were just happy to be out, so we trailed behind her like her ducklings.

So our team betrayed our GV diet of rice and daal. We bought a lot of biscuits, some COLD beverages (something we hadn't experienced for a while now), and other junky foods to taste and experience. We went to a bakery and bought some really tasty cookies for the week, all costing about $3 per person. We went to the market and I bought 2 coconuts (COCONUTS!) for 25Rs (= $.50) while Hallie bought bananas for 15Rs. We also landed a liquor shop (much to my surprise) and they bought a few beers for the evening. On the streets they were selling the bright orange poles and clothing of the Kanwar pilgrims, which made me tempted to join them in whatever pilgrimages they take.

Of course it was raining, and crossing the streets in Indian cities make crossing the street in NYC a joke (so I'll have you know there are crazier pedestrians than me in the world, thank you very much).

Our amazing 4-hour field trip ended with us foreigners landing a chinese restaurant for dinner. And the food was delicious. I had ginger shrimp and sweetcorn, which was so good I can't begin to describe it. However, it did take a while to order because they didn't truly understand what we wanted, despite our pointing to the menus, and they couldn't understand that I am, in fact, a fish-eating vegetarian. They kept on trying to serve me chicken, and I kept sending it back.

A few more notes on India:

1) They only ever talk to or take orders from Maulin. He's male. He's Indian. Sometimes it's like they don't even see the rest of us because we're white females. It can be frustrating at times, because here I am right next to Maulin trying to order something, and they'll ask Maulin instead of me. And they always give the checks to him, or take our purchases from him first. The gender gaps are a lot wider in subtler ways than I had anticipated.

2) Restaurants don't have toilets. In fact, many of the local buildings (including nice houses, strangely enough) just don't have them. It's like while they were constructing their buildings, the idea of sanitation or bowel movements never even crosses their minds.

Christina and Chitra have explained to us that it's just part of the older customs, open defecation and urination. Hence why we're here, studying, I guess. But much to Hallie's dismay, while we were in the restaurant, she had to go to the bathroom and wasn't able to (it wouldn't make sense for a student on sanitation to go to the gutter and squat, would it?).

After our wonderful galavant ended with Maulin and me going to Christina's room to chit chat and share a beer. Her room is really really nice, actually. The roof is made of bamboo, and it's a huge room with a fridge & kitchen, very clean and rather pretty! I guess it makes sense, since she's more longterm than us. We were heavily distracted by the resident cat, who took a fancy to Maulin instantly. But our conversation was great, and we ended up getting back to go to bed around 3am.

Sunday's reading day as we've grown accustomed, and we slept in until lunch. It was delicious. I am almost done with my second book now, also! So we relaxed and read and had tea (because I bought a whole box of tea for us).

We met up at lunch with one of the coordinating guys that we've become rather close with, Gobardhan ('Go-bard-on'...we call him Gordon in private because we didn't know how to pronounce his name at first). He is a really powerful, spritely guy, and he loves to talk to us, especially about spiritual stuff. So we ended up in his room and he gave us all of an impassioned talk about his wonderful philosophies on life and talked about the saints and sris that he follows (addressing Maulin, of course). We were there for a while, and he said some really good things that I hope to keep with me for a while. I hear he also teaches yoga, and I'm thinking about asking him for a lesson (but I have a feeling it might be really intense...).

We had dinner at Joe's house, with his family. It was really quite lovely! We had (boxed) wine, and some really good vegetables like okra (my favorite) and beans and cauliflower! No rice! We had some really fun conversations about the US, politics, travels, and his 17-year-old son came to join us too. He was a trip! He's going to RPI in the fall, and we were trying to prep him a bit about the US. But the kid's worldly already; his summer he was all over Hong Kong, the Philippines, and worked on roughly 1000 Websites in some Indian government office (which is when I asked him how old he really was and why did I feel so under-accomplished next to him). We joked around and ate good food until late, and got home to sleep.

Moments to Share

Men hack up phlegm while we eat in the mess hall. They are not discreet about it; they make loud hacking sounds, then spit colorfully into the sinks. Every meal. And we always make upset faces in response, since our meals magically become unappetizing after the hacking. They can't see us, luckily, but we can surely here them.

There have been hundreds of men coming onto the compound the last few days for job interviews. Yesterday there were 150 taking exams and having interviews; today they expect around 100. These people are all trying to land one of 15 jobs they have at Gram Vikas. Talk about competition, right? This means that there is more of a push for meals, and more people running around the office, and it makes our job of trying to get a hold of our supervisor, Chitra, nearly impossible. It also means that Hallie, Molly, and I are getting even more intensely stared down (than usual) while on campus, walking about and working. Maulin is always nearby, but they still stop their conversations, and stop to follow our movements. And there's not much we can do about it.

....

So here's my comedy movie moment of the week:

We were given hope at the beginning of the week of leaving GV for a few hours, on Saturday night. Bus leaves the campus at 4pm to go to Berhampur, and returns by 9:30pm. FOUR HOURS OF FREEDOM! That meant different meals (which was very important for most of us, because the slightly bland Indian meals with rice and daal were starting to become a chore), REAL FOOD (we could buy coconuts, and mangoes! and other joyous things!), walking around in newer areas, and the potential of purchasing some cheap bangles and sandals!

We began the countdown to Berhampur a while ago.

It started with just ideas of eating chinese food. Then pizza. Then mangoes, and bananas, and coconuts. Then we could go shopping! And so it became a daily game of imagining what this marvelous, elusive Berhampur would bring us. We even planned our trip around our tastings. We talked about trying to get one meal in every hour while in Berhampur, just so that we could revel in the diversity of foods we'd find.

Every meal, every break, we talked about, "Just two more days until Berhampur!"

So last night, we were walking to the mess hall and ran into the founder & Executive Director of GV, Joe. (Very sweet guy, very lovely, and he rides a bike everywhere. He is the leader of this grand pack, in every possible meaning of the term. He's kind of like a swami or royalty. He is the man of this post's image.) And we chit chatted for a little while about how our project was going, how the heat was, about the snakes and scorpions on the compound, and so on.

We said goodbye, and the team started jovially trotting again towards the mess hall, with relieved thoughts of Berhampur in our strides. Yet right away, Joe turns around on his bike and says, "Oh, before I forget, you are all invited to my house tomorrow night for supper."

A quick note before I continue: Awkward silences. They seem to be the standard conversational garnish in all of our interactions with Indian locals, particularly with GV staff members. I can't tell if it's language barriers, cultural differences, or what, but there it is.

And so, after the whole teams' hearts stopped while Joe invited us to dinner, and there were no words to use, we experienced yet another awkward silence. Only this time, it was a silence brought on by mixed emotions and internal screaming, not just the standard awkward sincerity that we usually have in our talks.

We all eked out some, "Yeah, sure, great, thank you..." remarks.

Joe looked at us, and with an awkward "Ok...." biked away from us. We panicked after his leaving, worried that our week-long dream of Saturday's ice cold drinks and different foods had come crashing down. What are we going to do?! All of our talk of Berhampur for nothing?! Both honored at the privilege of dinner with Joe & heartache from the idea that we were still stuck on campus, we brainstormed what was the best way to go about the situation. And so, we have decided to eat 3 dinners today (Saturday): 2 in Berhampur, and 1 after coming back at Joe's house.

...

I have come to appreciate the rain a little bit. The last 2/3 days the rain ceased, and it became beautiful and sunny out. And then the humidity got worse. And then the temperatures started shooting up. It hasn't been as hot as I had originally anticipated, and it's definitely not unbearable, but it is pretty warm.

Now, I personally don't really mind the heat; it's nice and makes me feel warm and sweaty. But it's the humidity in the air that's a killer. In normal dry heat, you can sweat and it will quickly dry on your skin, making you cooler. And your linen pants are breezy and nice. In THIS kind of humid heat, you sweat and it sticks on you. And then you keep on sweating, and it still sticks on you. It doesn't go away. Your linen pants become gooey, heavy, and cling to your body. I have been wearing my punjabis throughout the heat and have noticed the loose light cloth gives me a bit of a break, proving that there is a reason why it is advised to buy Indian clothing while in India, after all.

But it started to rain last night, and it broke the heat right away. Now we're all just wet again.

I have come to accept that I will never be dry while here in India.

Let the Odd Happenings Commence!

On a quick note about yesterday: it was like walking in an interactive zoo. On the way to dinner we first ran into a big big beetle (which is good luck in Egyptian cultures), the size of a sand dollar. We then got halted by some workers then because there was a small (yet probably very lethal) snake slithering across the road. After dinner I was chit chatting with Maulin, only to have him give a mannish "shriek", grab my arm and pull me right before I stepped onto a scorpion. The workers warned us about these things, but yesterday it was real. We were all jumpy afterwards.

And I finally understand why it's called a rainforest! Because after it rains, the forest pops out of the ground in hours!

At last! After being cooped up in buildings nonstop while it rains and pours outside, and while out electricity frequently fails, it is sunny out today!

For the last few days we have done little else but read, write, wand work on this project. I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say that we're making any headway (what, with knowing practically nothing on our project still, and having limited resources to use), but we have been working about 8 hours a day (at least) on our findings. We haven't left the campus in days, almost an entire week now. Though utopian, it can be a bit smothering at times. For the last days I have been felt a little imprisoned, and a bit claustrophobic. I long to see what's beyond these walls...

But not today!
Today it is beautiful and hot and sunny out! It's been so nice out that I have been singing since waking up.
Despite the electricity being off completely for about 5 hours or so (in the middle of the night I noticed that I was unable to feel cool air from the fan), things have been going well!
We girls went on a run this morning before it got too hot out. Molly and I went across our side of the compound and talked while running, and it was wonderful!
And the breakfast we had today was different! We had upma, which uses Indian semolina instead of rice. It was really good.
And we got to work to find the electricty back on.
So I went back home to go to the bathroom (we have western toilets there) and to pick up some things for the rest of the team. I brought my camera with me to take some scenic pictures. After I took a picture, though, Sir Jacob came from behind on his bike and stopped to ask me (a bit urgently) if I could take passport photos. Having seen the quality of passport photos from our cellphone experience, I replied, "Oh, probably." So he pulls over one of the schoolboys on the campus and asks me to take a picture of him. Then he asks me to take a picture of both of them. He then gives me his USB key and asked for the photos. And leaves.
I keep walking home, to find Ilias walking my way.
If I haven't talked about Ilias before, he's a really sweet reporter guy on campus working on writing about development for Gram Vikas. His english isn't great, but he's got a really sweet nature, is a bit fliracious, and has wonderful energy in his eyes. We see him usually during every meal, and we all walk home with each other at night; he usually asks really deep questions like "What is love" or "What is education".
Anyways, he walks over and asks me how our work is going, where I reply, "I don't know yet." And then he stumbles on a metal cross on the ground. Mind you, this is a predominantly Hindu area of India, so the idea of seeing a Christian cross on the dirt road was very peculiar to me. He picks it up and walks with it, and I ask him if he's Christian (though I could tell fully well that he was Muslim). So we start talking about religion, right before I get bak to the house.

I wonder why I ever believe that strange happenings (small and large) don't really happen to me; they follow me across the world.

Some "Truth Be Tolds..."

Just an FYI, our days have been full of research, data collecting, regressions, and trip planning to the field. Not much to discuss of particular importance. We really have been working without much fun for the last few days.
We are having a fine time here, but nothing terribly eventful. To re-iterate, before continuing on, we are NOT having a bad time. But there are some things that I want to note that have my head slightly tilted to one side, scratching my head.

My list of items under the "Truth Be Told..." category:

• It is like sleeping in an army barracks. Our bed mattresses are very, very thin. Essentially, we are sleeping on beds comparable to sleeping on the floor. It is better than sleeping on the concrete, but other floors feel about the same as our beds. I sleep on and off all night, having to rotate slightly so that my sides don't get bruised.
• I am not a huge fan of eating with my hands only. We are offered occasional spoons to soup up our rice and daal (and assorted other curried dishes), but it is customary to eat with your hands. Imagine making your hand a pecking device, and voila! an Indian utensil. This is hard to do with liquidy, mushy foods. It's even harder when you're a left-handed person (like 3 of us in the team...), because you are supposed to use your right hand only for food. The left hand is for "impurities" (figure that one out yourself).
  
• I like rice, but not as much as I'm eating it right now.
• It is not that hot here since we arrived. But it rains constantly. So that means it's warm, and humid, and rainy. Rain rain rain. I don't know why we bother to shower sometimes.
• I do like the chai tea that they pass to us while working in the office.
• People really don't know their christmas songs here, I guess. Our mess hall water filter sings when you turn it on...all of the songs being Christmas Carrolls. We've got "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Jingle Bells" and other random songs that one normally hears with Santa Claus on the mind. Even some of the men's cellphone rings here are christmas tones. It is quite bizarre to be sitting in an office room working and then hearing "Jingle Bells" ringing on a mobile while someone picks it up. Granted, we are in a Hindu-prominent state, and maybe it is just a standard ring tone, but I still wonder every time.
  
• I am not very good at mastering the Indian head wobble. Instead of nodding their heads up and down for recognition, they wobble their heads back and forth. And I can't do it. There must be some kind of inherent art to it.
  

Travel Day, Fun & Surprises, Etc.

On Saturday we woke up early to get our flight from Delhi to Bhubaneswar, Orissa. It started off just like any other travel day; go to airport, wait, eat processed food, queue up for the plane, and get into the plane. It was interesting that, upon entering the plane, we noticed a fog filling the whole plane. More of a mist, really. We looked at each other worryingly, until a stewardess came over to let us know that it was from the humidity outside affecting the air conditioning. I slept most of the flight, off and on.

We got into Orissa and noticed that it was yes super humid but also very aromatic. Delhi smelled like burned food and rotten organic matter. Orissa was smelling like fresh organic matter, burning wood, and the tropical smells you would normally imagine for anyplace remote to urbanity. Thick, fragrant air was warmly welcomed by us after our travels in Delhi.
The driver was waiting for us with a car that normally government officials in India use. He drove us to where we could each get cellphones (according the NYUWagner policy, we must all have a phone while we are on our Capstone travels). We had previously decided to go for AirTel because of its extended availability in Orissa.
So, first thing to note was that it is very bizarre how the roads are dirty and lined with cesspools yet there were cellphone boutiques on every corner. Granted, most of them were probably bootlegs, but it was still an odd idea to think that people had cells but not running water in their houses. Also, white people in this area seem to gravitate towards each other. While in the middle of our phone negotiation, we spotted 2 white people on the street, and they stood outside our phone hut and waved to us. They were Spanish tourists, and were happy to see some white people, it seemed. We talked briefly about nothing of importance.
Another thing to note was that there seems to be some discrepancy with work hours here. We entered our final cellphone hut and there were about 8 men in there. How many people actually worked in this small one-room store and how many were just there for hanging out, we are not sure. We just know that one of the most helpful guys with this whole ordeal, towards the end, shook Maulin's hand and told him that he "has to go to work now". Then what was he doing there in the hut doing more of the job than the other guys? I wonder.
The cellphone fiasco took roughly 2 hours, where by the end of the transaction we were all tired and hungry and pretty grumpy. First, we haggled with some guy about the price of phones. Then we haggled about which phone service we were going to sign up for. Then we had to argue some about Maulin's phone and coverage with them for some time. Mind you, things were slower due to language barriers, cultural barriers, and the extreme congestion in the room. Anyways, we started getting a bit angrier when they told us we not only needed to give them photocopies of our passports, but they needed passport pictures of us. The helpful guy brought us to a copy center, where they took their time and took our photos and xeroxes. We had to pay for that, along with the phone, and the service, so our tabs were running up rather quickly. When we got back to the hut, they wanted more photocopies of other things, like Gram Vikas's business card, and we put up a fight so they did it themselves free of charge. They didn't believe us that we were not staying in a hotel, and they wanted a hotel bill. "NO, we're going to see a friend in Berhampur." And so on. FINALLY we were able to walk out with charged phones each. With Oriya (the Orissan language) keys.
Our driver drove us to a local restaurant where we ate dosas and some coconut uttapams, which was actually really really good, and about US$1 per person.

Then we drove. And drove. For 4 hours. With our luggage on our laps and under our legs. The cars in India honk constantly, and the back of cars actually ENCOURAGE constant honking with painted signs on the trunks saying "horn please" and "blow horn". I guess it could be considered just a declaration of arrival, since most cars lack mirrors.
We tried napping, but mostly we were just uncomfortable and a bit thirsty. We did stop on the trip at a gas station and picked up bottled water. We were stared at intensely.
The scenery in Orissa is absolutely stunning, though! The landscape is lush and green, with tropical trees all over the place, and irrigated crop fields. Did I mention that there are mountains spotting the backdrop here? Rolling mountains. Not too large, but rolling. It is almost a bit like British mountain/hills, almost. The main road that we took the entire way there was overall a straight shot, and incredibly rural. We drove through little towns that had markets all over the place, and people lined the streets and the huts were all different shapes and colors.
And cows, lots and lots of cows, stood/mewed/walked steadily across all roads. We might have hit as many stops due to cows as we had with cars and trucks.
There are these people that walk up and down the roads for long distances barefoot wearing bright orange/yellow/red outfits. They carry poles with bells and 2 hanging items (and a lot of varying fluorescent bits and bobs) that bob up and down while they walk. We've been told they're pilgrims, and that they walk a lot, but other than that we have no real clue as to who they are. When I have reliable internet, I'll do some research on it. Something about Kanwar? We like them, though, and we try to see where it is that they are going. We haven't found it, yet.

And then we finally reached Berhampur & Gram Vikas. It was a glorious moment that almost brought us all to tears.
Gram Vikas is a closed compound, mostly made of trees & assorted vegetation. It is kind of like living literally in a jungle. We have been told there are scorpions and snakes a plenty on the compound, so we are trying to manage our footing carefully. The frequent ant hills here are more like metropolises. They can be taller than any of us, and kind of look like a larger version of the Grand Canyon.
The driver pulls over in front of a little house. Our house. Gram Vikas gave our team an entire 1-story house while we visit. That's pretty awesome. It is a concrete house, with some dust on the floor (because India is all dust) and a few concrete shelving units. We have screens on all of the windows, and fans to keep us cool. The building has minimal furniture, with a table and beds as the main furnishings, so a few rooms are vacant. We have 2 western toilets, and 1 standing toilet. Maulin has his own room in the front of the house, and us girls share 3 beds in the back of the place. We were given mosquito nets, but we don't know how to install them yet.
We also have a terrace on the top of the house.
But the electricity goes out every hour or so, or many every few hours, but it has been at least 6 or 7 times within the first 21 hours. So sometimes we end up in pitch blackness. We have a lamp, and a few flashlights for these instances. Also, we have a lot of little friends in our house. Ants are the main co-inhabitants, which isn't too surprising. But we also have some beetles and iguanas. And frogs, methinks.

We went to dinner early (so we met no one), and a Sir Jacob came to meet us. He explained to us the rules of the mess hall, which are basically to come on time, clean up before and after yourself, and don't take more than you will eat. Doable. Also, the mess hall will serve us 3 times a day: 8:30am for breakfast, 1pm for lunch, and 8:30pm for dinner; no more, no less. The food was actually very very good, and we ate enough rice to make us all stuffed.
And here I thought I would starve to death. Though, Jacob did promise that we will lose weight while we stay here. He even weighed us, which made us pretty uncomfortable actually, and I did not appreciate his insistence on taking our weights to prove his success at weight loss, and his reaction to our weights. I'm going to try to chalk up this to a cultural difference or insensitivity.

We all called our families on our new phones and went to bed at 10pm, exhausted.
We woke up today at 6am to go for jogs, FINALLY! Sadly, us girls got lost on a "trail" and we all rolled our ankles at the beginning of our jogs. Note to self: use main roads.

So Sunday at Gram Vikas means rest. We ate breakfast, met the 2 French interns staying here (because I am never anywhere without at least one french within a 1-mile radius), and came back to our house and slept. It's been raining all day (monsoon season indeed), and everyone is out it seems, so we have been sans internet or research meetings. We read and nap, rinse repeat. Sometimes we talk. We also play card games on occasion.
It is a little odd to me, however, that we are here to do research, but are unable to do research right now. It feels more like camp, to be honest. Chilling out on the weekend, without much motivation to even leave the house. And with the limited access to electricity (and essentially no internet) our lives have become very slow.

Today is Monday for us already, and we woke up with so much rain outside that there are ponds forming in our yard. I resorted to yoga in our empty room, while the ants from our bathroom sought refuge directly under/next to my bed (because I am next to the toilets). Thank goodness I have a raincoat and rainboots, eh?
I am finding that we are eating a lot less in the mess halls than we were the last few days, which means that our "diets" are under way.
We finally have found access to the Gram Vikas office, and have met up with some workers in the compound to talk about our project and actually start our research! This is exciting indeed! We have scheduled a meeting with some staffers to see what exactly we are doing here, and what we should be expecting in our agenda. Will we be actually doing fieldwork, or will we be stuck in the office for the next few weeks?
Sadly, we also found that internet is only accessible in the office, and one must pay 20 Rs. per hour of use. Translation, expect my updates to be in bulk and infrequent.

Tune in next time to hear about "Our Capstone Project in Question".

Last Day in Delhi (for now)

We had quite a final day in Delhi....

Maulin and I woke up early and I missed another morning of exercise. I do miss working out, but we keep on saying that Orissa will give us a lot of space and time to get our bloods pumping.

We started off getting stuck in traffic and getting lost in the northern area of Delhi for a long time. Lots and lots of traffic + Indian streets = hours of driving and honking. Also, the rains of the season finally poured in while driving looking for our destination. That means quite a lot of heavy rain for about an hour.
We were on our way to the Delhi School of Economics to meet up with economics Professor TCA Anant, thanks to one of our leads from the previous day's meetings. It was our last last-minute meeting in the city before we head out to the field, and we were not really sure as to why we were bothering to meet the guy. But surprisingly, it went really well, and we had some great insights from him on our project and fieldwork in Orissa.
On a side note: The campus is placed in the older, skeezey area of Delhi. Things around the campus are a mess, and it is rather slummy. However, the campus itself is gated in and quite lovely in comparison. And there were a lot of lush trees spotting the campus. Again, another retro building.

Afterwards, we hit another long line of traffic, and I consequently fell asleep in the back of the cab. We then stopped at the State Bank of India and waited for probably over an hour for Maulin and Molly's traveller's checks to get reimbursed. It was a very, VERY silly bureaucratic system where papers were signed, resigned, new papers emerged, photocopying, etc. It reminded me frustratingly of French bureaucracy, actually. We then got stuck in even more traffic on our way to south Delhi.

We thought we were being driven to the Lotus Temple, but instead we found ourselves magically at this place called the Delhi Haat (pronounced "haht"). Deborah had mentioned it to us the night before, but we all had the assumption that it was similarly to the bazar, or at least a mall. Not so at all. It was like a small warehouse full of textiles, shoes, paintings, carpets, sarees, punjabis, bangles....ivory and marble statuettes...you name it. Cottage marketing at its finest, for India at least. You walk in and feel like you are crammed into the backroom of some large department store, attached to their warehouse. Colors saturated my eyes while I struggled to figure out where it began and ended.
This place is government-ran, which means that there is no commission and prices are fixed. This means that it actually was a bit cheaper to buy things here, particularly for foreigners because they are constantly overcharged in the haggling markets. It's a way for the GoI to promote tourism & culture and consumerism in India, I suppose.
So my team and I are ushered into a backroom with some salesman. We are sat down on some couches, he sits down in front of us, and amazingly spends FOUR HOURS (4 hours!) with us, showing us every possible fabric quality and color that they had to offer. He opened up bags of punjabis and pashminas and we all pointed at what we wanted and didn't want. And then we short-listed our piles of options. And then we tried on a size, and the on-hand tailors took our clothing and catered them all to our sizings for free.
Meanwhile the salesman was getting us tea, coffee, and other drinks. He even got my teammembers beer, while I sipped 3 bottles of Fanta. For hours and hours we laughed and looked and touched and laughed more. Our driver finally came in to find us because we were there for so long. Families of Indians came in and out as we sat there. Surprisingly, few foreigners were in the whole place the entire time we were there. The salesman finally coaxed me into singing in the room for everyone. The servers all stopped to listen. A bit awkward for me, but everyone seemed to really like it, including my team.
We all ended up coming back with bags of really amazing sarees and shirts and scarves.
It was probably the best shopping experience I have ever had in my life. And I don't even like shopping!

After the great trip to Delhi Haat, we were rejuvenated and excited and babbling in the car with our driver. He finally drove us to the solemn (and surprisingly not-so-tourist-fully) Lotus Temple, which is a Baha'i temple. It looks like a lotus, go figure. It's 25 years old, and really stunning! We walked the nice esplanade there, and stared at the beauty in front of us. Really great building, kind of looks like the Sydney Opera House, only more spiritually inclined.
Oddly enough, on our way up to the temple, we were stared and pointed at by all of the Indians walking around us. We were stopped by a lot of groups of people to have their pictures taken with us. I'm serious. People were almost standing in line, like we were the attraction instead of the temple.
Taking our shoes off, we entered the silent temple. It was hot! Well, that makes sense, it was marble, after all. Really pure and white and simple, and lovely. I walked in and sat down for a mini meditation in the temple, and what an experience! The heat made me feel like I was in a sweat lodge again, and I began sweating profusely. I was feeling amazing and got really clear while in the temple.
By the way, we hadn't eaten anything since 9am that morning...

So we shuffled our way back to the cab, and hit our long line of traffic for the umpteenth time of the day. An emergency hospital break had to be made, and we pulled over to a nice gas station and grabbed some snacks to take with us on the flight to Orissa in the morning.

We got back to the hotel and had a nice dinner. Our flight got pushed back 2 hours, so now we only have to wake up at 6am instead of 4am.
We are now packed and ready to go to Orissa!!!!

Full-Time Interviewers

Today I woke up very, very early because Maulin (my current roommate) went to the bathroom early and I thought he was awake because it was time to wake up for our appointments. So I got up, found out he was only awake for the bathroom, we both tried to go back to sleep. We tried seeping, to no avail. So I got dressed up and jogged up and down the stairs of the 5-story hotel, taking intervals per flight to run up and down the hallways. It made me sweaty almost immediately (heat + stairs), and I may have injured my ankle again. Maulin joined me on the staircase run after a time. I think we may have been upsetting the servers, though, since they would watch me run up and down the stairs, and when we returned home tonight, we noticed they had put some "obstacles" on the staircase, like flower pots, and a couch in a hallway.

A fast note on the liquids situation: we currently buy all of our water in bottles. If we are offered drinks no from the bottle, they must be boiled. Otherwise, we could get sick from the different, foreign amoebas and bacterias potentially in the local water. That means tea and coffee (and hot milk) are our social drink. And I have had a lot of tea in the last few days. Our massive water bottles are always lying around. I am wasting a lot of plastic.

After a creative breakfast of cereal with hot milk, we started our 9-hour day of interviews. Initially we only had 2 interviews spread out in the day to attend, but by way of Indian "go with the flow" customs, we ended up with about 6 separate interviews with government officials, professors, and World Bank experts. We were like the embodiment of an NYUWagner panel!

The first two interviews we had were at the Government of India's sanitation office. They were extremely informative, we left with complimentary scarves and oodles of readings. The men were really pleasant and knowledgable. I think that really encouraged us in our project and our objectives.
The office, however, was less than impressive. It seems like the funding for the GoI buildings is little to nonexisttant. We walked into the building and found ourselves in a grimy building with falling wall laminate and rickety elevators. We were escorted into the the appropriate office, while walking through a messy hallway that was brimming with old ramshackled office furnitures. Going into the offices, you feel like you might have been transported to the 1970s not only by decor and design, but by the outfits of the men-dominant workforce as well. Chances are, that's about right.

It is also interesting when we walk into any building; they all have security and metal detectors. However, us 3 girls walk right in and they smile at us without a hint of question, but Maulin is always stopped, checked, and his bag opened. Clearly he is with us, and clearly he is speaking perfect english with us, but apparently the brown male needs to be checked because he's suspicious...

We went over to the Habitat Center and ate lunch after making some phonecalls for more meetings with the contacts we were given. I ate a pizza and curly fries at a little shop called "Wild Willy's Western" to see their interpretation of "ethnic foods", which was surprisingly good and fairly American. Good job, India, you are officially the best country at imitation American food.

We had to run back to the old GoI building to have a meeting with the joint-secretary of water. Overall, the meeting was a waste, but we learned a lot about what NOT to expect from certain government officials, as well as what we need to try to do more to drive a conversation on the right path. We redeemed our meeting morale with another World Bank expert, Smita, who quickly enriched us with her great knowledge on rural water issues in India and lavished us with even more publications for us to read.

After a fruitful day full of notetaking and listening, we came back to the hotel to undress, relax, and buy tickets for our flight to Orissa.
We met up with Deborah from NYUWagner for a nice dinner out, Lodi Garden. We found ourselves at a restaurant in something like a garden. Another swanky night, but the food (although not Indian) was really delicious, and the ambiance was super neat. Something similar to a teahouse, with a garden restaurant (for nicer weather). The lime soda (sweet/salty) was pretty good, too!
We talked about our Indian experiences so far, and about school and random stories we all have. A very nice night with Wagner kids.

Our evening cabbie was, unfortunately, a pretty grumpy and aggressive guy. He used the horn almost every other meter, and I was tempted to warn him that he may indeed break his horn if he continued.

Day One - Jet Lag & Naan

My team woke up early in the morning to get a complimentary breakfast. We were jetlagged and hot. The food was pretty decent. We decided to go for a walk outside, and to figure out what was going on in our area. We walked around for not long at all, and ended up hiring a 4-day chauffeur while we stay in Delhi. Cars are a great investment here, considering we have so many different interviews to attend. Otherwise, I feel our whole group would be either lost or kidnapped in no time.

India is very very warm. And very warm, humid. I kind of feel like a constant state of gelatin, which means it's pretty nasty.

A few notes on the Delhi streets. There are cars and motorcycles and bikes and rickshaws going in every possible direction on the narrow streets. Everything, absolutely everything, has dirt on it in some form or another. People sleep on the streets and on the main roads -- kind of like they just decided to sit down and take a nap on the side of the road -- all over. It is noisy. People line the streets and hang out and will not hesitate if you approach to talk to them or ask a question.

We had a meeting at the World Bank with Dr.Connors, and what a great initial interview to have while in India! She was truly captivating, and really well knowledgeable. We had a nice, comfortable conversation with this woman (a real firecracker) about water and sanitation in India, and ended up leaving feeling absolutely great about our project. It was so informative, and we ended up leaving with a packet of papers, 4 emails with attachments, and a few additional contacts. Despite the heat, our groggy and disoriented team really rocked our interview.

We had a late lunch at the hotel. And then we promptly returned to the hotel to nap for a few hours.

After a long nap, we all crammed into our driver's car and went around town. First place we went to was a Hindu temple, which was relatively new (1980s) but beautiful all the same. The building was mostly an outside / open temple, and it was painted red and dripping with swastikas and OM icons all over the walls. It's all marble and you have to enter barefoot. The deities were bright and laced with gold and flowers. The overall temple was very light and flowing. Peaceful, yet to some extent vibrant. There was scripture in Hindi (and some in English) all over the walls inside and out of the whole complex. And I really loved Ganesh, like usual. While we were talking around the temple, I felt at ease and very appreciative of the shrines and quiet, solemn temple. Prayer began sometime while we were in there, and the sound of sober singing and chirpy bells pleasantly wafted through the air. Some guy who worked at the temple site got me to follow him into a temple room and showed me the shrine for Krishna, where he plucked a flower off of the altar and gave it to me, "For good luck." Very sweet.

We then went to the underground Palika Bazar, near Connaught Place. It looks like a mound on the outside, but underground it is like a packed, seething labyrinth of swarmy shop owners and hagglers. Walking around in the marketplace was intense, and the only visual explanation I could related it to was the fishbowl scene from "City of Angels". Thank goodness for Maulin, our token bodyguard in the group. He has been able to keep an eye on us 3 women while the rest of the Indian men oggle at our existence. I consider it a conundrum; we are being stared at for being white or female, or both, but I'm not exactly sure which one.

We ended up going to a restaurant at a super super ritzy, uber swanky hotel, Lalit Hotel. We just thought we were going for a nice meal near the bazar, but we endd up realizing that our restaurant was truly for the luxe-oriented and big spenders. Luckily, for us, the prices were still less than in NYC. They did not like that we ate only appetizers (which were great but incredibly filling), but the food was great, really creative and gourmet.

But I would LOVE to have some fresh fruit and veggies right now. Naan and cooked veggies may be the trip's demise.

Enter Delhi, Stage Left

So a few nights ago I arrived in Delhi, India! Here I am, working on a research project, for our NYUWagner Water Capstone project. We have come here to work on a program evaluation for an NGO in the state of Orissa called Gram Vikas. Four grad students who do not have a clue what their project really entails exploring the most obscure areas of India. And here we are.

I waited at the Newark Airport for a little bit of time. I went into the President's Club to chill out for a little bit, but I quickly realized that I didn't belong. People dressed in nice yacht get-ups, drinking wine in an airport lounge....and here I am, with a backpack still covered in Guatemalan dust and ratty old jeans ready to hop into the wilderness of India. I picked up some free food, sat for a quick second, and went to the line.
A note on the line for the plane: population control, people. They had to create an entire line devoted to the young children on he flight, and it was a long line. Most of the mothers had about 3+ children hugging their thighs. That was my brief first encounter with the Indian family way.
I had a 15-hour nonstop flight. It was a long time in the plane, but luckily dad got me a business class seat for the flight, so it was at least comfortable. I cannot believe how much food they feed you in the long-haul flights, sheesh.
I sat next to a sweet 77 year-old Kashmiri lady on the flight. We talked a bit about India, especially Kashmir. She was very lovely, and liked talking a lot.
I watched "He's Just Not That Into You", which was alright for a chick flick. I also watched "Madame Irma" (a french film about a transvestite fortune teller - only in french film...) and "Paris Je T'aime". And I slept a bit. And ate a lot.

My flight came in early and breezed through security, customs, and health check-in. My baggage was priority. I had to wait for Maulin and Molly at the Delhi Airport for a few hours. It was a quite long wait for me, considering the long flight and the lack of things to do in the airport here. No worries, though, a man from Rajastan came over to have a conversation with me. We talked about our professions, his wife, why I didn't have a husband, my travels in India, his travels in Europe, and of course the conversation ended with an open invitation to his place in Rajastan if I ever happen to be in his state. He also implied to me that if he wasn't (newly) married, then I would be in trouble. And so it begins...

Finally Maulin came and I had company. But Molly took a long time to get through because KLM lost her baggage. She has it now, but it took a few days.
The carrides here are ridiculously scary. You feel like you are always on the verge of getting hit by some other vehicles. But as Maulin said, "Just close your eyes and hope for the best." Wise words.

India is a country of extremes, it seems. Extreme poverty. Extreme luxury. Extreme gender dichotomies. And extreme beauty.

We get into the hotel to find we were given the top floor suites, NOT BAD! And the air conditioning is great. However, we slept only a little.