In other news: random facts from the last couple weeks…
On Tuesday of last week, Andi and I visited an orphanage for young boys to meet with one of the women who runs it and to get to know some of the boys. These boys are either taken from off the streets or from parents who force them to beg and are (obviously) abusive. The organization, Forum for Street Kids, provides them with school clothes and supplies, a bed and three meals a day. They’re well-disciplined and cared for, but some still have a difficult time seeing the sense in sitting through school days when they could be out free on the streets. Andi’s been faithfully trying to set this up for the past month, and after many attempts at actually finding the place in a very residential section of Secunderabad, she finally got lucky. The woman was so welcoming and fed us some excellent curried beef and roti in her office before taking us to color with the boys and help them with their school work. The younger ones don’t speak much English yet, so it was a lot of smiling, nodding, basic colors and ABCs. We’ll be returning (with a translator, hopefully) to help them learn to use some computers that were recently donated, and we’ve also set up a drive here at the university for the other international students to donate supplies. I’m really thankful to Andi for giving me something productive to do with our spare time…there definitely aren’t enough hours in the day here.
Hakon bought a “scooter” for 3000 rupees with the help of Jimo, a Naga friend. Its name is Sally, it’s a lovely blend of rust and ash-grey, and it’s quite illegal. No license, no speedometer and no gas-gage—oh, and it’s manual and likes to slip in and out of gears to keep you on your toes. Why did Hakon invest in this death-wish, you ask? After we finish painting flames and Norwegian flags all over it, I’ll put pictures up and I think you’ll understand. It’s a rush—especially when you take it outside campus. A slightly retarded and death-defying rush…
On Saturday, Banks (who’s still warming up to shifting) agreed to take me into Lingampalli, an area of Hyderabad close to campus where we frequently go for the train station. I wanted to get a bouquet of flowers for the Naga party, so I (we) figured we could just zip into Lingampalli and find a flower stand. Hah. As soon as we crossed under the bridge into the dusty, honking, chaotic dirt streets, cars and buses and trucks and cattle and bikes and scooters and beggars were coming at us from all directions (and at all different speeds!) and we were stopping every couple of meters. However, every time we stopped, the scooter would die, and I’d have to hop off while Banks pushed it to an open spot in the road. Then he’d start it again, I’d jump on, and the scooter would leap into first gear, nearly plowing over an old woman hobbling along in her sari. Every single time. After we finally found a flower stall and I picked out a variety, I got to stand there peeling beggars off of my arms while the vendor painstakingly arranged the bouquet and insisted on covering it with tinsel and ribbon bows. It was very sweet; sadly much of the tinsel didn’t survive the journey home. This time we couldn’t seem to get Sally started, and every time she’d fire up, someone would decide to walk or cycle in front of us and our 3-second window would be gone. At this point, I wasn’t so much scared for my life as I was worried we’d never actually find a clear spot in traffic to hop on the scooter and move more than two feet. I will clearly never be taking Sally anywhere by myself—have no fear.
Tomorrow and Wednesday are holidays for the Holi festival—one of the best-known in India. It’s the one where everyone throws brightly-colored powdered dye and water on everything…and that’s the extent of my knowledge. Hakon and Jens took Sally to Lingampalli today to load up on ammo…
An internals schedule here is literally an oxymoron. My econ exam, which was meant to be held last Wednesday, was pushed to this past Saturday, and then (Friday afternoon) was moved again to this Wednesday. I got to choose the deadline for my third IR term paper, which is now due in two weeks. The paper I turned in today (due during last Wednesday’s lecture, which was cancelled) will apparently sit uncorrected until the rest of the class decides to turn theirs in. And my Culture of India course now has a take-home exam due next Monday instead of the two previous exam dates which have already passed. I was worried before coming here about not having my standard day-to-day planner, but the idea of planning anything in advance here is laughable. It’s great, though, because the attitudes and grading policies of the professors here seem to match the relaxed timetables…
I’ve abandoned my beloved running habits. There are much more interesting things to do here…at least that’s my excuse. Today I checked out a tiger wildlife photography exhibit and got to talk with the artist who spent 10 years living with the tigers.
And by the time I’ve spent the day sweating it out on my bike (it’s a pretty consistent 105 degrees now), I’m thinking about chai, chikkas and my bed. School work has been intense lately though—I don’t know how I managed to sign up for 19 credits—so I’ve been spending every free minute until I fall asleep studying. Hopefully if I can hit it hard during the Holi holiday, I can be set to relax this weekend…
The group (five of us anyway—Andi, Jens, Hakon, Banks and I) is headed to Goa for a long weekend this Thursday! So I’ll have some of the most beautiful pictures yet, I’m predicting, to post here.
Still no internet at our hostel…and when the power is on (the other day it was out all over campus for the entire day), sometimes it takes an hour to find a computer on campus that’s free and has all of its working parts. And sometimes, like on Friday afternoon, you spend the afternoon trying to run a list of errands of which none are successful…professors are out, secretaries can’t understand why (or how) you’d want to leave something for the professor, and the cell phone technician has decided to take the week off. But as soon as you get to that point where you’d normally give up and cycle home stewing, you inevitably run into someone who has something invigorating to talk about over a glass of sugarcane juice or some pista ice cream. And then you spot a peacock or an adorable little Indian boy in a bright blue school uniform smiles at you with his huge brown eyes and all is forgotten. I really do love India.
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