. PARTY

This evening at story time I was in one of the older girls room. They didn’t want a story so we were quietly talking instead. Maurine, one of the volunteers, was in there. She has been going to this room for reading time for a while now so she told one of the girls to show me her photo album. Imagine my surprise when the girl presented her photo album and the cover reads “My Period Party.”

Say what?

It was for reals though. Like really real. As we looked through the album I was amazed at what I saw. Apparently it is normal for girls in this region to a get a huge party thrown for her when she starts her period. There are banners made and professional photographers hired to take model shots of the girl dressed up in her first saree and other traditional jewelry. There is a religious ceremony that involves burning incense and painting different marks on the girls face, and a big feast. All the girls family and friends are invited to come, and come they do, bearing gifts of hygienic items such as soaps and deodorant. Some of the other girls in the room had Period Party Photo albums too, but they had left theirs at home. And of course there were other girls that really wanted to have a Period Party photo album but hadn’t been "lucky" enough to have reason to have one yet. The ones that were waiting were so excited to get their period so they can get have their Period Party too. It was all so fascinating to me—I’m sitting there trying to look at all the gorgeous pictures and trying to put together in my mind how it is culturally acceptable to have a party for the beginning of menstruation, but a total no no for boys and girls to interact when the girls interrupted my thoughts with, “What do you guys do when you start your period?” I kind of giggled and said “Oh nothing really. We do not have parties like this in America.” They were floored. “You don’t do anything at all?” and all I could say to that was “well some families may do something special but we as a culture don’t openly celebrate when someone starts their period.” I don’t think they liked that answer but it was really all I had. If I remember right, all I got was a pat on the shoulder, maybe a congratulations and a maxi pad the size of an Idaho potato. Which was fine because I would have been mortified had there been a huge party in honor of my newly found womanhood. I was terrified to even change a panty liner in the school bathroom because I couldn’t bear the thought of other people hearing the wrapper and knowing I was in need of these products. I would be lying if I didn’t feel a little gipped though. I mean—maybe I should of gotten a nice dinner or gift of deodorant from my extended family. Obviously, in this instance, I was the one living the deprived life! I’m still trying to come to terms with it, but I’ll make it through somehow. One thing is for sure though—my girls are getting some kind of a period party. Maybe not a whole village/neighborhood to do, but defiantly more then a huge maxi pad.   

(And of course I am not going to tell you who's pictures I was looking at!)

Bricks and Sand

I FINALLY got to experience the construction rotation this past week. I was able to go out with them a couple of times actually and it totally lived up to all the good things I’ve been hearing about it. I’ll be the first to admit that the idea of doing construction work in the melting Indian sun did not sound appealing to me in any way. I know that I am here to do work and it isn’t about having fun and being “comfortable” but I think there is a difference between hard uncomfortable work and hard uncomfortable Indian construction work work. But just for the record, my personal reservations had nothing to do with me not participating in the rotation until now, that was because my other responsibilities prevented it. And to be honest, all the volunteers talked about the construction rotation with such enthusiasm that my curiosity has been peaked for a while. But the wait is over! I have experienced the construction rotation! And it is hard. And it is super sweaty (but lets be honest you are always super sweaty in India no matter what you are doing), and the tools are the most basic you can get, and the labor is all you (without the help of tractors or machines, etc.)—AND IT IS A BLAST! We are working on building latrines in one a colony named Chettipunniyum. It is the cutest little colony just past what I call the Daybreak of India because there are all these brightly colored houses and apartment buildings down the road from it. The days I was there we were moving a lot of sand and bricks by loading them into buckets which most of us carried on our heads--with our hand helping of course, we aren’t skilled enough to carry things on our heads without our hands-yet. Since I am staying a year I am going to try to learn the art, but who knows if a year will be long enough to master it. It's way easier the carry things on your head.

There was a little bit of wait time from when we got there and when the Indian construction crew got there so we used that time to hang out with the residence some. I think this is key to why construction is so fun—because even though it is hard work, you are surrounded by the people you are serving. Seeing their circumstance and their smiles defiantly kept me going. The surrounding include the colony Hindu temple, jungleness and monkey families, which of course helps too. There are a couple of older ladies that live towards the front of the colony that come out to visit with us and “monitor” the work. They will talk for Tamil for whole conversations and I know they know we don’t understand, I just don’t think they care. We don’t really care either though because we just smile and nod and participate in the conversation as much as we can anyway. They seem satisfied with it so whatever. The lady in the pink shirt one, invited me into her house the other day. She was very excited to show me around the different rooms, show me the different kitchen gadgets she has, and have me take a picture of her in front of her favorite picture of Jesus.

The Indian construction staff brings a lot of party to the construction rotation as well. All the crew is great but especially Milo and Deverraj—simply because they are so animated and incredibly funny. Milo is the older one and Deverraj is younger. Deverraj and I are actually the same age, which he had a really hard time believing. That was a funny conversation. They both love calling us “Sista” (it is really sister but it comes out sounding like sista) and are constantly giving us high fives. They wear turbans which also adds some flare. Last week they were doing some work on campus and I walked over to say hello. I could only see Deverraj who called out to me-“Sista! Sista! Sista my friend hello!” We talked for a few minutes and it was great but his other half, Milo, was missing. I asked where he was only to be see Milo’s turbaned head pop up out of a hole he was digging inside off with his broad smile and of course the enthusiastic “Sista!!” I laughed SO hard. He looked like an real life whack-a-mole game. If ever I am having a bad day all I need to do is think of Milo coming out of that hole and at the very least I get the biggest smile on my face.
  

So......"Can we fix it? Yes we can!" (I’m not going to lie I was totally singing the Bob the Builder theme song in my head all day long—apparently I have watched that show with my nephews more times then I realized.)

Food

Food consumes way too much of my time/thoughts. Let me be very clear, the food here is great and I am in no way at a loss of things to eat. We always have plenty of fresh fruits and veggies-which I am eating CONSTANTLY. I thought I did fairy decent with fruits and veggies at home but compared to the amount I eat here I wasn’t eating much of them at home. I do miss large green salads though. Lettuce and cabbage can be found here, but it is not as safe to eat as other vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, carrots and green peppers. I still haven’t come to love green peppers though—I don’t know that I ever will, but its cool because I’m obsessed with enough other vegetables that it doesn’t really matter. After one of our meetings we were served with this AMAZING carrot dessert. We called it carrot pudding for a while simply because we didn’t know what it was really called. Then we found out that it is called carrot halwa-which translates to carrot carrot. In the end it doesn’t matter what it is called because the point is it is really really good-and this is coming from someone who doesn’t really like carrot desserts much (aka carrot cake-but I “eat” it anyway because I do have a slight obsession with cream cheese frosting/cream cheese anything). We cooked it as a going away dessert for the session #1 volunteers, but we could of eaten all of it by ourselves. Honestly, it was kind of hard not to. Look at that yummy lunch!

 We also eat a lot of bananas, watermelon, apples, orange and pomegranates. I can even cut and remove the seedlings (I have no idea what they are really called) of a pomegranate without inadvertently creating abstract art now! I didn’t think that day would ever come. For whatever reason I have been freezing different fruits lately. I am not sure if I like it because it changes the taste (in fact I’m not sure it really does that) or simply because it is cold. Let’s be honest, it’s probably a little more of reason number two.

Typically, we have some kind of vegetable curry for dinner, along with fortified red rice, another kind of vegetable side and the fresh fruits and veggies. We do have different protein nights—like a masala with hard boiled eggs or curry with fish or chicken. I still can’t do the fish but I make sure to eat nuts, peanut butter and beef jerky throughout the week as well. Which reminds me---did you know beef jerky can mold? I had no idea. Discovering that was really hard for me because I am about 99% sure I won’t ever find a place to buy beef jerky in India. It is UNREAL the amount of rice the people eat here. I only take a little bit and I think they have gotten use to it now but at first they would always try to give me at least three times more then I put on my plate. 

Of course there are the random little things that just make you laugh—like when we were served Diet Water. It is a for real thing here. I don’t know it qualifies as diet water because it is so little of because of some other reason I can’t think of—because in no way does diet water make any sense. I can honestly say that it is about the only diet beverage I can tolerate though.

 As volunteers we always seem to end up talking about food. There are for sure things that I miss but I think I’m doing just fine until I get a taste of American food. It. Makes. My. Taste. Buds. Go. CRAZY!!  For example, someone brought powdered ranch dressing mix from home and then graciously shared it with everyone at dinner. 1. I would like to think I would share my ranch dressing with everyone but I can’t honestly say that I would. And 2. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. For reals, I didn’t expect such a strong response to ranch dressing of all things. Another day, a volunteer made spaghetti with Prego sauce from home, and I literally licked up every last bit of sauce I could. The only negative experience I have had with American food is when I ate a can of spaghetti-o-s  that one of the nursing students left for me. They tasted so chemically like, they were nasty so either A. I got a bad batch (they were the microwave kind after all) of B. I may have finally outgrown my love of spaghetti-o-s. I can’t fully accept that until I try them again though so the jury is still out as far as that subject is concerned.

I was going to go into my cooking experiments but I realize this is a super long post about the non-exciting subject of food. But like I said, it is a very popular subject around here that takes up way to much of our brain cells so whatever, I would say a long post about it is fitting. 

Moosha

This is Moosha. I. LOVE. THIS. LITTLE. BOY.

He is SO sweet and loving, but still a little boy all at the same time. It is not unusual for him to run up and grab my hand at playtime or just jump on my back when I’m sitting down, which is fine because he weighs maybe 20 lbs. Maybe.

I found a “flightless” (which is just a nice way of saying dying) butterfly when walking over to the playground the other day. I carried it over to Moosha and we had a lot of fun holding the butterfly. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. He was so careful and tender with it, for a good 10-15 minutes or so, and then the little boy part of him came out when he discovered what happened if he wasn’t so tender with the butterfly. The good news is I’m pretty sure it had already died before he started pulling the wings apart. Even still, he completely dismembered the butterfly with total excitement and a little twinkle in his eye. 

  

 

Silent Pain

Today we went to Bethyl Nagar Leprosy Colony. It was a larger colony, but we still have enough volunteers that I wasn’t able to be involved with direct patient care, so I was the paparazzi for the day. One lady came in on a wheely board—not a wheel chair but a small rectangle board with wheels attached to the bottom of it, only about 4 inches off the ground. There seemed to be more prosthesis use and severely affected limbs and appendages among the residence here. Maybe I saw more havoc simply because it is a larger colony or maybe I was just paying closer attention to everyone coming in and not just the ones I personally helped care for. Either way, I also noticed a greater sense of “ump” and independence among these people. I would try to help some of them with their shoes or give them an arm to help them get up off the floor, but they were very insistant and wanted to do things by themselves—especially the lady with the wheely board. It wasn’t a bitter doing everything themselves either, just simple positive perseverance along with a genuine appreciation for the services they were receiving. These people are so sweet. They all are. When Claartje was taking off a lady’s bandage, the lady reached up and was helping to “fix” Claartje’s hair. I have said this before and I will likely say it many more times simply because it is true-being in the colonies, no matter what you are doing, is a very emotionally intense experience because you encounter the extremes of numerous emotions.  

 I have been reading this book called, “The Gift of Pain” by Dr. Paul Brand and some other guy…….Phillip Yancey. Dr. Brand is a surgeon that pioneered research of leprosy as a disease. He actually worked in Changletput, which is a city about ½ hour from us. A little known fact about leprosy is that like advanced diabetes and congenital indifference to pain—it attacks the carriers nerves. In leprosy the nerves most affected are the nerves in the cooler parts of the body—in the nose, eyes, hands, feet, earlobes, skin, etc. Once the nerves are damaged, the affected people can hit, cut or burn themselves without feeling a thing. They can break their ankle and walk on it for weeks, causing more and more damage which can lead to cracking of the skin, introduction of infections and/or permanent harm resulting in amputation of the affected toe, finger, leg, arm-whatever. Dr. Brand calls the loss of sensation a curse, and I’ve come to agree with him. Pain is a good thing, in that it allows us to know when something is wrong and when certain limits have been met. It sucks sometimes, but it really is a gift.

I’ve met so many people (at home and abroad) who will do anything they can to relieve or prevent pain. I’ve done it myself.  Don't get me wrong, that isn’t an evil thing, but it struck me as so ironic that I’m so use to seeing pain as an entirely negative thing when the people I am working with, would love to feel pain. In fact, their lives would be drastically different if they could experience pain. Emotionally there is pain. Actually, we have been implementing the 12 Steps within the colonies because many of the residence struggle with drinking problems as well. Being surrounded by all this pain—emotional or “silent” pain-has help me to KNOW that pain is necessary. I always knew and believed it was necessary, but now I KNOW it is necessary. Not being able to feel it leads to all sorts of issues. Trying to always be free of it leads to a ton of issues too. Personally, I know how painful life can be, painful physically, painful emotionally, painful spiritually and painful mentally. However, I think that only now can I honestly say that I would almost always prefer to have pain over having no pain at all.