Indian Summer

In Hindi, India is known as भारत गणराज्य but to my volunteer team, India is also known as Land of the Fleeting Internet. At our hostel, wifi comes and goes in accordance with its fickle will. My fellow volunteers and I have developed an acute sixth sense to detect when we are blessed with wireless internet, the presence of which spurs everyone to jump on their laptops within seconds. And, oh, how sweet it is! I'm hoping that by the time I'm done writing this entry, the wifi gods will still hold me in their good graces. (FYI, they didn't.)

I'm here with about twenty other volunteers with an NGO doing HIV/AIDS prevention work in and around the city of Chennai. Almost all of the volunteers are from Tucson, whom I had only met once before arriving in Chennai. As the bulk of my interactions back home are within a bubble of weirdo/twee/punk/bicycle/diy/political/queer/music/artsy/fartsy folks, I was wondering how I would do with living, and working, with so many “normal” people (whatever that means). Alas!, everyone on the team has been an absolute joy to spend time with - I couldn't ask for a better group of people with whom to spend this summer.

Approaching the end of our first week, our training/orientation is half over. Each teaching team consists of three or four US volunteers and two or three Indian CPs (counterparts). I won't bore you with details but in short, our days consist of Tamil lessons, crashcourses in culture and history, team-building activities, and practicing lesson plans with our Indian counterparts. As a volunteer, I will be splitting my time between the HIV/AIDS prevention work and a "special project" of my choosing, and I'm leaning towards working with a local gay rights NGO; two of their coordinators came and talked with us about their work, giving us insight as to just how hard life is for the people that have been pushed to the fringes of society. My favorite activity, by far, gave us a chance to sit down with our CPs and have an enlightening conversation about our cultural differences regarding sex, dating, alcohol, womens rights, etc.

Chennai, aka Madras, is home to some four and a half million people and is located in the south of India. Chennai, founded in the 1600s under British occupation, is far from the images of India that dominate the western psyche. Chennai is hot, humid and bustling with traffic, so western tourists don't normally venture to Chennai as it doesn't have the history, glamor or mystery of some of the other regions in India. After spending the past few weeks being a tourist in Hong Kong and Thailand, I'm happy to, finally, be getting a small taste of real life outside of America. Still, by any local standard, I'm living here in extreme luxury. I can't begin to know what life is like for the men and women that are forced to sleep on a filthy sidewalk, or the disabled man begging on the side of the road without any of the government support that he would receive if he were born in the same country that I was.

But I'll avoid getting into heavy topics on this post - those things will come, no doubt. In short, I'm really enjoying my time here – getting to know my team, going out to dinner, fearing for our lives every time we get on the motorized rickshaws, venturing to the wine shops, etc.

For now, here are a few pictures. More than likely, they won't be as good as the previous ones because I can no longer follow my every whim... I've got shit to do!






Can you see it? Bird - 0. Electricity - 1...


Ryan and I narrowly escaped a similar fate this went down right next to us...






James and Anjali...


Sanjay and Tulika...


Neha and Abhishek...


Sheema and Alwin, two members of the India staff...






My, Ronak & Anthony's well lived-in room...



That's all for now. Anthony turned me on to a cheap internet cafe just outside of our hostel, so my internet access will become more regular, meaning more blogs.

I hope you're doing well. Please feel free to call, Facebook, etc.