tansportation woes!

16 hours on a rocky bus up to the Dali lamas house wasn't fun and i met the mountains with my head in a bag and shitting my pants. guess who suffers from motion sickness... up the mountains, a few days later down the mountains, through Delhi and on a plane (that was late so of course we missed our connection flight therefore having to buy ourselves new tickets for the next flight) to Goa. Ohh the beach and the sunburnt skin that was the outcome. Emily and i are now terrified of cows (thanks cows in Varanasi - the most amazing love i have for that place), train lagged and on our last stop together in Mumbai - which is amazing city life!
I am tired and happy and loving this india to the umpteenth degree. exciting news is that we are getting the kids photos published by SAGE magazine! it's hot here, boy is it hot. i am looking forward to returning to kroea despite the fact that i'm a little nervous to return and to situations i may be returning to.

god speed...

bye bye bhopal

All of Ishrat's friends gather outside of her house to have their picture taken. The little girl with the hennaed hair kept telling me to take off my goggles (sunglasses). They also wouldn't stop screaming DIDI(older sister) at me at the top of their lungs, even though it was Ishrat who was controlling the camera...and the camera is what they want...

Out of all our kids, I think that Ishrat lives in the worst conditions. Her colony is definitely the most tight on space and when we went to her house it seemed just to be a front room and a cooking area with a curtain for a door. Her colony also seems to be the one with the most children, leering men and babies. When we first came to her house and we were inside teaching her about the camera, over 20 people were spilling in the doorway..

This picture is by Shabans, from our day at the park. We all ate at this little park restaurant but the food wasn't the type of food most of the kids are used to (they usually eat subgee (potatoes or peas or cauliflower), rice and dalh) so all of us had to finish off plates of Chinese style noodles!

We think that Shifan's older sister took these pictures at her school.

These pictures were taken by Shifan when we went to the park

Arman took this picture of the walls surrounding the playground outside of his school.

The school is a pretty big building with 4 or 5 different rooms. I didn't really get that much information about the school because I didn't go with a translator (Armans older sister took me around to each of the rooms telling me " lunch room" "school room" "physio room" which was helpful but a little evident.... Most of the children that were at the school on the day I was there were mostly kids with growth problems due to CP (and I'm not really sure what other illnesses...) so these kids are of perfect mental capabilities and of perfect I WANNA TAKE A PICTURE WITH YOUR CAMERA capabilities, i had to fight off a little boy for a good 10 minutes.

So ya... these are some pictures from the photo project. We've developed the pictures at two different shops and have had shitty results at both! The last shop we asked for a cd and clearly just assumed they would scan the negatives at a high resolution, oh who were we kidding, the quality is HORRIFIC! and you can see on the last picture that they didn't even cut it proper. The shop also decides which pictures from your roll are fit to print so images that they don't consider in focus or framed they don't print (the picture above (the red one) by Shabhan wasn't printed!)

Anyway...what else!

Em and I are off tonight for our 3 week mega tour of India. I have no idea how we are going to fit what we have planed into the coming 3 weeks, but hey, we've included 4 days on the beach in Goa. The past 3 days have been excellent, thank god for the turn around in my moodiness sate of being, I guess I get moody often, but maybe it doesn't last for long... tis good I think.

I've been all over Bhopal by myself the past two days, which is sort of a feat considering the way one feels when outside the clinic alone and all the attention that is placed upon you by EVERYONE... a little tiring, a lot tiring! I feel pretty comfortable here which makes me a little sad to leave because i just kind of had Bhopal figured out... but no... not too sad, because i'm really really excited to see more of India.

Me and my googles, taken by Ishrat...

snotty nosed andrea

I just received an email from one of my old Keric Students Rachel! What a nice surprise and what a sweet email. The letters we receive from our students are clearly ESL works of art, the kids usually write bluntly and in a straight forward manner (with a little bit of backwards English thrown in) but something about the wording and the way the letters sound comes out so sweet and makes me smile, widely.

Yesterday we spent the day with the photo project kids. Everyone met at Chingari and the kids got their cameras and pictures back and it was exciting! All the kids showed up (which was something incredible considering it's not easy for people to get around - the bus may not be an option because money isn't an option or constraints with the movement of some of the children) and we went through their photos, scolding parents and siblings for taking the bulk of the pictures (something that clearly happened when a lot of the pictures are at adult eye level) and asking the children which pictures they took, and which ones are their favourites. One of the girls, Ishrat had told us at her house last week, when we asked her what she wanted to take pictures of, she had said herself, well receiving her prints back from the lab we laughed so hard because there she was in EVER picture on the roll striking a pose for the camera. So a little explaining was done as to who should be taking the pictures. And then off we went... filling up autos and the chingari bus, a caravan of 30 of us headed for a park in New Bhopal. The kids were great, Shifan (who has CP) was running RUNNING all over the place snapping this and that. I can't wait to upload the photos and scan what the kids took pictures of.


On Monday I'm going to the State School that a bunch of the Kids go to, (Chingari pays their tuitions, buys their uniforms and busses them back and forth) so the kids can take some pictures of school and their teachers. I'm really excited to go because secretly in my head I want to see what it would be like to work in a school like this (orrrrrrr maybe work in the new school that Chingari is opening when they open up their rehabilitation center for the kids).


anyway, what else... I can't wait to go to Varanasi (and hope hope hope it's not overrun by touts and scammers). Writing this post has actually made me feel so much better, I don't want to be down down...
My body is letting me down. I now have a cold, insomnia and I still have the shits. Adding this to my unstable emotional state from having to switch to a new birth control (something I'm going to have to do AGAIN in 1 month) is making me have a hard day. But (a la rocky) hey, forget about it.... I will be fine tomorrow...pumping some fits in the air and jump up yelling raspberry!

shits and giggles and children that change your life

5 more days left in Bhopal and I just got over my second bout of travelers diarrhea so hopefully I’m good to go...

The last week has been an educational experience in everything that is truly India.. Emily and I have started a photo project with 7 children living in the Basties (the slums, the communities, the colonies, whatever you wanna call them) around Bhopal. Of these Children 3 are physically special needs (they have physical deformities such as bow leggedness, which prevents them from standing or walking normally), 3 are mentally special needs, and 1 is Yogiata, the sister of 2 brothers who were born with physical abnormalities. All these children are born from parents who were somewhere in old Bhopal the night of December 2nd 1984 when the gas cloud from the exploded pesticide factory Union Carbide passed over their homes and changed their lives.

We went into the Basties with a woman who works for Chingari Trust she brought us to each of the homes that the children live at. What an amazing experience to have chai in these houses and get to meet the people who experienced the worst when the carbine factory exploded and hear what they say about that night and what has happened since. Going to the basties is ... pretty insane... these people live in the smallest of spaces, with the largest amount of family, and some of them have next to nothing. And then there are the kids. Adil, Radisha Bi's (one of the women who started Chingari) nephew sat in my lap and covered my eyes before giving me giant bear hugs and kissed me a million times. how can you hold back the tears. How can I type this and not feel what I felt then, I can't. The tears flow. His little legs bent all sorts of ways that they shouldn't be. And his 16 year old body the size of a 3 year old...

the kids in the photo project are so clearly excited that it's terribly contagious. I can't wait to see what kind of pictures we get back and what we can do as the next step.

ok veggie burger calls...

happiness is a warm bed

It's cold here at night time. not canada cold (hahahahhahhaha terri...) but cold enough that emily and i hide inside my mosquito net bed, under the blankets with beer and gin and a hot mac on our laps while we watch the show weeds. we just finished the second season and I actually really liked it. I just soo relate to the drug dealing black people or the rich white people. yeah right

I'm feeling really happy. India is easy in so many ways. I forget where I am and what I do and the future. All that future thinking that i did when i originally went to korea has gone flying out the window. It's all in the moment and the moment is happy sunshine on my face with delicious lunch in my belly. I feel very lucky. So lucky that i can come and travel and do these things, SEE these things, and then put them out of my mind. That's the luckiest part. Slums, oh yeah...slums slums...what..lunch oh ok.... buy more kortas...oh ok...
back to work...

dalh farts and anticipating hearts

my lag in posting is making me irate because i narrate my days in my head when instead i want to narrate it here, but alas the annoying internet connection is sllllowwww, snail slow. India has been good to me so far. I actually absolutely love it. The smell of cow shit, goat shit, mixed with curry, fresh pineapples, smoke, the garden, incense and people makes me happy. Not horse shit though, that just stinks!

I wake up inside a mosquito net of dreams and rise to the sun and coffee and sometimes the poops. Eat some eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches and start doing my work for the day (now organizing law files in Sambhavna's library then wandering around smoking cigarettes, taking rickshaw rides to a restaurant and paying a dollar for the most delicious lunch ever, reading, reading and stretching. I'm living at Sambhavna clinic, deep inside the lanes of Kwasi Camp or Bafna colony, i don't really know which one it's called. The area is predominately Muslim, with women walking though dusty lane ways in the all covering black burquas and the loudspeakers (which are seriously 10 feet away from my bedroom window) blasting (AND I MEAN BLASTING) the call to prayer 5 times a day, this wakes me up every night. I actually had a dream that a man was in my room singing to me, but it was the call to prayer playing tricks on me. We live in old Bhopal, where it's poor and there are slums and camps and no women on the streets at dark. I spit on the street and fit right in. well no, not really, but i still like it.

The city of Bhopal is quite big and we tend to go to two areas, the chowk (market) in the old town and the new market in new bhopal. The auto (rickshaw) ride to anywhere is also an adventure in itself. Transit is FUN! Last weekend another volunteer Judith and I went to Sanchi a town an hour or two away from here that has a hugeeeee Buddhist site from the 6th century on top of the hill. There were these things called stupas, huge round tombs with stairs and gates and there were ruins of many monasteries. I really had never EVER seen anything like it. On such a large scale anyway. The bus ride to Sanchi was fantastic, it was the first time I've taken the bus anywhere. But alas India seems to be the best of things and the worst, the worst ruins everything of course. But you can't let it get to you. The biggest problem in India is the men. They stare, they leer, they have a sexual maturity of the age of 13.... and 90% of the men are like this. It infuriates me to no end, but you have to let it go and ignore it when they stare STARE at you and bump into you to touch your tits, or grab your ass (thank god i haven't had this experience, poor Emmie).

days 5 and i'm alive

I have the shits. oh the india shits. but it ain't so bad and hopefully I won't get the full blown delhi belly that so many folks get here, but i'm sure it's going to come sometime... The past few days have definitely made me calm down a bit from the shock of first arrival. It's shocking and a lot of people are very poor but it's home for the next bit so get used to it.

The clinic really is the savour of it all. It's really really amazing to start my trip off here and get used to the land of loud before i really have to plunge right into it. I've started working on my project which is researching on the medicinal garden they have here. Today I spent time with Ratna the woman who runs the garden and made her explain all the ins and outs of it to me. now i'm in love with her. This woman is amazing. She came to the clinic to work in the garden and didn't know much about it, now she is the authority on medicinal herbs. She knows everything about that herbs and what they are used for and what they can do etc etc.

So many people here are like that, insanely inspiring in awesome ways.

i have to go poop again now so I'll cut this short.