Height & White (Random Ramblings)

Hi. How are you?

My third week (out of eight) in India has come to a close and it was also the first week of proper volunteering. The week started out with a bang, teaching 9th and 10th graders at two different schools. Overall, the students seemed receptive to what we had to say and even enjoyed themselves. Sometimes we have to do a bit of crowd control but I've discovered that my low voice has the power to pipe kids down.

All over India, but especially in the schools, I attract an awful lot of attention because of my size. I thought that I stuck out a lot in the US but my stature has practically made me an instant celebrity with these kids. I found my fifteen minutes of fame and it exists at Indian primary schools!

Our teaching was canceled on Wednesday - one of the teachers at the school died the night before so the students stayed home. We took advantage of our free time and a couple of us went to Shelter House, the orphanage for HIV infected children (see this post for pictures). Starting about two weeks ago, they can no longer pump the waste water out of the house and the kids are already starting to get rashes on their bodies. They can no longer take showers every day and the standing water in the backyard is making breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Needless to say, it's imperative that this problem gets fixed immediately. We spent a few hours at Shelter identifying everything that needed to be done and we've set up a meeting on Monday with contractors and such. I'll keep you posted and I'll probably ask you for donations, too.

Thursday morning, at dawn, we headed out to a fishing village about 100 kilometers from Chennai for two days to speak to fishermen and some community groups, which was a little discouraging as there were few people that were interested in the information that we had to give. Still, there were the small handful of people that really valued what we had too say and that made it worthwhile to me. Falling asleep on a straw mat under the Indian sky, I was quite grateful.

Today, after a pleasant wake-up call from a friend back home, I got some much-needed alone time. Currently, I'm at a coffee/hookah bar and it looks like this:




That's all I have for now. Here's a slew of random pictures for you...


Sheema, hooking it up with mango...


Poobendhan chopping up some durian...


Ronak: coconut master...


Pray before you go to bed...


Straight up gangsta Tulika...


Fishing boats...


Tar...


Carrom...


Beast of burden...


I really like eating without utensils...


I jus' don't give a fuck...