Maxi's India Adventure

Week 17, Pune

2009-11-15T03:48:00.000-08:00

Our last stop in India before flying back to the UK was Pune. It was nice to visit ‘home’ one more time. We stayed with Susan and Caroline in our flat, so my mom got to see where I lived for the past 4 months. Then on Saturday we went to Shelter Associates. They got us a Maharashtrian thali for lunch from my favorite all you can eat thali restaurant. Here are Sandhya and Shoba explaining all the food to my mom. We spent the afternoon in the office because I had some work to finish, and my mom just caught up on all her emails and online games.

On Sunday morning we went on a day trip with Caroline to a village near Pune. The landscape was beautiful and I think my mom was happy to see a bit more of rural India, because most of what we saw was big cities. We did some shopping in Pune that afternoon and in the evening we completed the trip with a bollywood movie, Aladdin. Then on Monday morning we packed up and took a taxi to Mumbai. My mom flew out in the evening, and I flew the next morning.

Bye India!

Week 17, Varanasi the River Ganges

2009-11-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

I think Varanasi was the most Indian place we went to on our trip. Meredith, a girl I met in Belize in May, said that Varanasi was her favorite place in India and that it was “raw” India. I totally agree with her about the raw India comment. My favorite part of being in Varanasi was the two boat trips we went on, on the river Ganges. First we went on a boat trip at dawn. My mom and I each put two candles on the river Ganges. Here they are floating down river with the ghats (and our hotel) in the background.

A boat trip is the best way to see all the ghats along the river, and the see the raw India Meredith was talking about. Ghats are just steps leading down to the river and some have special purposes. The people in Varanasi use the river for everything: they do laundry, they hold pujas or prayer rituals, they cremate bodies at funerals, and they bathe. Varanasi and the river Ganges are holy places for Hindus, so they are supposed to take a ritual bath in the river every morning. Here is a photo I took at one of the many bathing ghats on our sunrise boat tour.

That same evening we went on a second boat tour just after sundown. First we went to the second burning ghat, Harishchandra Ghat, where we saw a funeral in progress. As we arrived they lifted a body onto a funeral pyre, big pile of wood, and performed a ritual that involved pouring oils and flowers on the body. They then stacked more logs on top and said more prayers. The whole ritual was performed by the oldest son the man who died; the son has to shave his head and wear white for 13 days after the funeral. When they were finished, a second group of people lit a pile of logs to the left, which has obviously been prepared before we arrived. It quickly grew into a large fire. We were told it would burn for another three to four hours before the last of the ashes were cooled by pouring Ganges water over them and then thrown in the river. We saw this final part of the funeral later in the evening when we went to the main burning ghat, Manikarnika Ghat. At the second burning ghat there were only the two funerals going on that I described, but at the main burning ghat there were at least 12 going on at one time and there was a queue of bodies waiting to be cremated next.

Between the two burning ghats we stopped for a while at the main ghat, Dashaswamedh Ghat, where they were performing the evening puja. A number of Brahmin priests were doing a ritual with some fire, and there were bells ringing and prayer music playing in the background. The puja itself got a bit repetitive after a few minutes, but it was impressive because of the number of people who came to watch. The river was full of boats, and the ghats above the river were packed with people.

When we got back to our hotel another typically Indian thing happened: there was a cow sleeping outside the entrance to our room. Before my mom came to visit me in India she asked me if there were cows everywhere, and there are, just like you would expect.

We only spent two nights in Varanasi and the only part of Varanasi we really saw was the river Ganges; we also went on two day trips with guides from the hotel to Sarnath and Chunnar Fort. Sarnath is where the Buddha gave his first lecture, and at
Chunnar Fort we got an amazing view over the river Ganges.

Week 17, Delhi

2009-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

After a nice day in Agra and visiting the Taj Mahal, we took an evening train from Agra to Delhi. It was supposed to be 3.5 hours, but ended up being more like 5 because we left late and then got more delayed on the way. Euan was feeling really sick and my mom and I were kept busy watching the small cockroaches crawl around on the floor and into/out of the seat in front us.

Since our hotel reservation in Agra did not work out, I decided to call ahead to the hotel in Delhi to make sure that was all set. It turned out that that reservation didn’t get made properly either, so before we left Agra my mom went on hotels.com and booked us a really fancy hotel with a western price to match. It was nice though, because Euan was able to spend his last day in India in bed in a nice hotel; I think he was very thankful for that.

So my mom and I did all the touristy things in Delhi. First we visited New Delhi: Connaught Place, India Gate, Qutb Minar, Lotus Temple, Hayuman’s Tomb. After Amber Fort and Fatehpur Sikri, the historical sites in Delhi were not that impressive. I think my favorite was the Lotus Temple. It’s the only really nice piece of modern architecture I saw in India. It was built in the 1980s and is one of seven Bahá'í Houses of Worship. Even though it belongs to the Bahá'í Faith, it is open to anyone of any religion for worship. It is really peaceful inside.

On our last day we went to Old Delhi to see the Red Fort. By this point a lot of the Mugal architecture was looking the same with the red stone carvings and the white marble with colorful inlays, but it’s still impressive to see these buildings that are almost 500 years old. They were built around the time of Henry VIII when a lot of Cambridge was being built, and before Bath or anything in the USA.

The funny thing about our time in Delhi is that we didn’t eat any Indian food. My mom was getting a little sick of it by this point, and there wasn’t anything near our hotel so I couldn’t drag her out to a restaurant. We ate mostly at the hotel, but also at McDonalds and the Hard Rock Café.

Week 16, Agra the Taj Mahal

2009-11-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

After Jaipur we hired a car and driver to take us to Agra via Fatehpur Sikri. Susan, who was another volunteer at Shelter Associates, recommended we go the Fatehpur Sikri. It was amazing. It was constructed in 1570 and then they only lived there for about 15 years and then abandoned the place. I don’t really know how it’s been kept so well maintained, but it’s just like a ghost town now. We spent a few hours walking around (including a big mosque, Jami Masjid, that is still in use right next door). Many of the buildings had really detailed carvings all over.

Then we drove to Agra. We stayed at the Taj Plaza hotel, which is really close to the east gate of the Taj Mahal. They messed up our reservation, so we ended up in the best (most expensive) room in the hotel with a view of the Taj Mahal from both bedrooms and the toilet! So we saw it at sundown the night we arrived, and then we got up a dawn to visit it the next morning.

The Taj Mahal is hard to describe. I was expecting it to be one of those places that you’ve seen in photos and on TV so many times that you feel like you’ve been there already. But it really wasn’t. It is even more beautiful than I could have imagined. The marble inlay work is so detailed, and it’s all over the place. We took the required photos from the end of the water as you enter the complex, and then walked all around to get a closer look. We spent a couple hours there, but I could have sat there and stared at it all day. It’s so white and shiny you just don’t want to take your eyes off it.

Later that afternoon Euan was not feeling well, so he went back to the hotel to rest. My mom and I tried to go to Agra Fort, but our rickshaw driver talked us out of it saying it was quite expensive and really small. We just took a picture outside and instead we went to see some more handicrafts. In Jaipur we saw textiles being block printed and embroidered by hand, in Varanasi we saw silk being woven by hand, and here in Agra we saw people inlaying marble by hand. It’s really neat to see these things being done, but on the other hand it’s sad because they are showing you exactly what we would call a sweat-shop in the West. They work sitting hunched over on the floor with very little light, 7 days a week, and get paid next to nothing. And we benefit from this by being able to buy cheap stuff. It makes you not want to buy anything because then you are supporting it, but if you don’t buy anything then these people become unemployed and have no money at all. So we bought a little bit of stuff.

Week 16, Jaipur the Pink City

2009-11-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Jaipur at 6am on 20 October. I slept pretty well on the overnight train, but I was still tired getting up so early in the morning. We checked into the hotel (the Umaid Mahal Hotel) and since our room was ready we ended up sleeping till noon.

The highlight of our time in Jaipur was our trip to Amber Fort. It was built up on a hill near Jaipur in the 1590s, and the view is beautiful. Some of the surrounding hills have a wall along the crest, and it looks a little like the Great Wall of China, which is funny. It’s really hard to describe these places. You’ll have to go there too see for yourself ;-).

There are lots of other things to see in Jaipur too. Jaipur is known as the pink city because the buildings in the walled city are painted pink. We went to the Jantar Mantar; it’s an astronomical observatory built around 1730 with 18 huge stone instruments. It was fun to figure out what they all measured, and one looked very similar to Stonehenge.

We also went to the Hawa Mahal, which was built so that women could watch what was going on in the street from behind screens without being seen.

A couple of times we let the rickshaw drivers talk us into going to places that we hadn’t heard of before. One of the places we went was called the monkey temple. We walked up a big hill to the temple and when we got to the top there were monkeys all over the place. Some Indian people fed them bags of food; we had some peanuts to feed them too. My mom went first and they took the nuts out of her hand very gently. I’m not sure how I feel about feeding wild animals, but I did it in the end and it was really cute.

While we were in Jaipur we also felt my second earthquake this year. The first was when I was in Belize in May; we felt a 7.1 earthquake in Honduras. Then in the early morning on 23 October we felt a 6.2 earthquake in Afghanistan.

Week 15, Udaipur the Lake City

2009-11-04T04:54:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in Mumbai after my 2.5 week journey through India, finally catching up on my blog entries. I met my mom at the Mumbai airport on 15 October as planned. She had a 16 hour flight from Atlanta to Mumbai, but she wasn’t too tired. On the 16th we flew to Udaipur.

The highlight of our stay in Udaipur was Diwali on the 17th. Diwali is the big Hindu festival, like Christmas for the Christians. The whole town was decorated with lights, and streamers, and everyone lit little oil lamps outside their homes and shops. The main square outside the Jagdish Temple was especially decorated and there we load of fireworks all night long.

I hadn’t been feeling well since my last day in the office, so I spent most of Diwali in bed at the hotel, the Mahendra Prakash Hotel. The hotel was nice and had a pool. Our room was at the far right on the first floor. The hotel also had 3 turtles that crawled around in the grass by the pool.

Then after Diwali Euan joined us, and we had one more day in Udaipur. Udaipur is known as the lake city. It’s a really beautiful little town on the shore of a big lake. There is a big palace (the City Palace) on a little hill overlooking the town, and two palaces built on islands in the lake. On our last day we went on a boat cruise on the lake. One of the island palaces (Jag Niwas) is a hotel that only guests can go to, but the cruise stopped on at the other palace (Jag Mandir). Here is a view of the City Palace from Jag Mandir.

On the 19th we took an overnight train to Jaipur. This time we took the 2AC class, which is one better than the 3AC we took back from Goa. Here Euan and I are on our top bunks.

Week 15, India Trip

2009-10-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my last day of work at Shelter Associates, and today I leave on my big India trip. I’m took a taxi to the Mumbai airport to meet my mom tonight at 9:30. Here’s our itinerary for the next two weeks:

We’re now spending the first night at an airport hotel in Mumbai. On 16 October, we fly to Udaipur, where we spend three nights; Euan is joining us there on the 18th.
On the 19th we take an overnight train to Jaipur, where we will spend 3 more nights.
On the 23rd we’re hiring a driver to take us to Agra via Fatehpur Sikri and we’ll spend only one night in Agra right next to the Taj Mahal.
Then it’s an evening train to Delhi on the 24th. Euan will leave us in Delhi on the 26th,
and then my mom and I take an overnight train to Varanasi on the 27th. We will spend two nights there,
then fly to Pune on the 30th, where we’ll spend 3 nights.
Our last night, on 2 Nov, we’ll spend in Mumbai again. My mom flies out at about 1:00 on 3 Nov and I fly out at 11:00.

Since I’ve been working with Google Earth so much, I decided to map it all out.

I’ll try to post updates from each stop along the way; I think we have internet in all our hotels along the way.

Week 15, India is Colorful

2009-10-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

When it’s not dirty, India is sooooo colorful, especially all the clothes that women wear. They dress head to toe in every color imaginable. When I was in Sangli shopping for a sari, we went into a material shop where they had petticoats is all colors to match any sari you can find. They also had an even bigger variety of materials for making the blouse for the sari. Here is the wall full of petticoats.

This is in our favorite material shop, called Lunkad Fabrics. We usually go upstairs where they sell sheets, blankets, pillow cases and dress material (for Punjabi suits that you get tailor made). Downstairs they just have loads of material in all different colors that you buy to get blouses and petticoats made for saris, or plain bottoms for the suits.

Before we came to India, Katie, the girl who went on the EWB placement last year, told us about ‘Bangle Alley’. It’s a little side street where all they sell are bangles in every color you can imagine. There are at least 15 little shops all selling the same thing. (It is a common occurrence in India to get all the shops selling a certain item in the same location: all the bangle shops together on one street, all the dress material shops together on one street, all the paper shops together on one street, etc.) I have a favorite bangle shop where they sell plane bangles for 20/- a dozen (that’s about 25p or $0.40). They also sell sparkly ones for 30/- a dozen and fancier ones with gold for about 80/- a dozen. Bangles are traditionally made of glass, but they also come in plastic and metal.

Week 15, Sweets

2009-10-12T05:24:00.001-07:00

I’m not a big fan of sweet things and dessert back home, but one of the fun things about India is that all the food is different. We have a favorite sweet shop on MG Road here in Pune that we sometimes stop at on the way home form work. Here are Jenny and Susan buying our usual selection of chocolate and mango barfi, and kaju katri.

My favorite desert is gulab jamun (one of the things we learned to make at Pratima’s house the other weekend). The first time I had it was in my first week here, and I had no idea what it was. They are little fried dough balls made mostly out of milk powder that are soaked in a sugar water syrup… YUM! Here they are before and after cooking.

At home I don’t drink coffee at all, I only drink tea. I love the tea with milk that they drink in England, but I also like herbal tea, which they do better in the US. Here they drink another variety of tea called Chai. (I drink chai tea at the coffee shop formerly known as Beaners in Michigan, but it’s not quite the same.) Here they boil a kind of black tea in milk, and add spices like ginger, cardamom and cinnamon; it’s really good. We get it in the office in the morning and the afternoon, and they always offer it to you whenever you visit someone’s house or other offices. A few times I’ve been given coffee instead, and you have to drink it to be polite; it turns out to be more of a chai-coffee, which isn’t too bad. I could get used to drinking it.

And just to make it seem like we’re not eating only junk food, I decided to include sithaphal (a funny fruit). It looks a little like and artichoke on the outside and is quite gooy inside; it’s made of lots of little cells, each of which contains a black seed.

Week 14, India is Dirty!

2009-10-09T04:43:00.001-07:00

One of the things I really don’t like about India is that everything is dirty and smells bad! People are generally clean and take pride in personal hygiene, but they don’t seem to feel the same about the places where they live and work, and they definitely don’t keep spaces outside clean at all. The interior and exterior of buildings are not maintained and look dirty and run down; this is in the Municipal Corporation in Sangli, and some houses in Mumbai.

It’s not uncommon to see piles of trash at the side of the road. There are occasionally skips/ dumpsters, but they are always overflowing, they smell from a long distance away, and they usually have some stray animal (pigs, dogs, cats, birds, etc) eating out of it. I think the only rubbish bin I’ve seen is one shaped like a penguin at a temple in Solapur. I think his stomach says something like ‘use me’, which we did because we had a small bag of trash that we had been carrying around not wanting to throw it in the street like everyone else does.

The most common smell in India is urine. I think one of the saddest things I experienced was at Ellora and Ajanta Caves, where many of the caves smelled like they were used as toilets; it’s really a shame since there were toilets available at both sites.

The fact that India is so dirty is ironic because everyone has a cleaner. Included in our rent is a cleaner, who is supposed to come in every day and clean the hall, the toilet and the bathroom. I think she sometimes comes in and sweeps the hall, she sometimes soaks the floor of the bathroom, but I don’t think she has ever cleaned the shower. I get the impression that having a cleaner is more of a status symbol than something functional.

We also have a cleaner at work, who smells terrible! She smells like a combination of body odor and the chemicals she uses to clean. She actually comes every day though. She starts by sweeping the whole office. Then she gets a bucket of water with some really bad smelling chemical in it and wipes the whole floor with a dirty rag; I think she just pushes the dirt around with that rag because the floor is no cleaner after she is finished. Then she soaks the floor of the toilet. I don’t understand what they think soaking the floor will accomplish, but both cleaners I’ve met do it. Everyone’s feet are dirty from walking around barefoot, so as soon as we go into the toilet the wet floor becomes a muddy floor. Finally, she does the dishes. I’ve started washing my own tiffin after lunch because when she does it there are always bits of food left and I have to do it again anyway.

I can’t wait to go back home, where the cleaning is done only once a week but it’s done thoroughly, there are trash cans in public places that people use, and where toilets are generally the only acceptable place to urinate. All these things we take for granted.

Week 14, A Trip to Sangli

2009-10-08T04:06:00.000-07:00

I spent the last two days in Sangli, which is a small town 3.5 hours south of Pune where Shelter Associates is working on a big project at the moment. Shelter has been working in the slums of Sangli for a long time now, and one of the biggest problems in slums is that people don’t have toilets. One of their first projects there was a community toilet project in Sangalwadi in 2002. Sangalwadi is a slum with about 256 people in 55 houses, and they built a toilet block with facilities for men and women, with living quarters for the caretaker (and family) in between. We only saw the women’s side, which has 4 communal toilets and 4 private toilets.

Next we visited Jatkar Samaj, where Shelter Associates did an individual toilet project in 2006-7. This is the ideal situation, where every house has its own toilet, but it’s too expensive to implement in all slums. Anyway, with Friends of Shelter Associates (http://www. friendsofsa.org/) funding, they built just over 100 toilets for 137 houses in Jatkar Samaj.

Finally, we visited Kolhapur Chawl, where Shelter recently (2008) did another community toilet and water tank project for 135 families. They also built a bio-gas tank next to the toilets that produces enough gas for a hand-full of houses, but only one is connected at the moment. In this toilet block the caretaker (and family) lives in a room above the toilets, so we got a birds-eye view over the slum. You can really see the conditions in which people are living here; the roofs are made of broken tiles, tarpaulin and corrugated sheets; those that have electricity probably steal it from the power line overhead; many houses got running water from the community toilet project, but none have access to a gas line so they cook using wood or coal.

Surprisingly the streets and houses in the slums are clean compared to the rest of India (post about that to come next time). The people don’t have money for basics like proper roofs, toilets, water or electricity, but they still take pride in the place they live. They smile at us when we come to visit, invite us in and offer us tea. We never have time to stay, but even if we did I would feel bad drinking their tea in case they can’t afford to buy more.

This isn’t the India most people see when they come here for vacation or travelling. I knew I was coming to India to work on slums, but you can’t really prepare yourself for seeing it first hand when you come from a place where everyone has so much. Access to a toilet with running water isn’t even an issue you think about back home. You can’t really describe it properly in a blog post, how people live with so little.

Week 14, Rickshaws

2009-10-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

Our primary mode of transport here is the auto-rickshaw. As opposed to the old fashioned cycle-rickshaws, which I hear are still more common in the north of India, these ones are more like little three-wheeled motor cycles. The driver sits in the front and controls the vehicle with the handle bars (no steering wheel or pedals), and there’s room for 3 people squeezed in the back. We take one to work every day, and this is the one we hired for the day to go to Ellora.

In some of the larger cities, like Mumbai and Delhi, rickshaws are not allowed in the downtown area so you take a taxi. To be honest they are not that different from rickshaws; they are the same color, they’re cooled by the air flowing around the vehicle, the driver always tries to rip you off, and they are small. Euan and Chris were too tall to sit in the taxi properly when we were in Mumbai.

Week 13, Jenny is Leaving

2009-10-02T03:06:00.000-07:00

Jenny is leaving India today to go back to Cambridge because term starts again on Tuesday. It’s kind of weird to think that I was originally booked on the same flight home. I think I was really lucky to have been paired up with Jenny; it would have been very unpleasant to have been stuck with someone I didn’t like for 3 months! I think we worked well together, and we also had a lot of fun. There are a lot of things I would not have done if I were alone and I think I would have been very lonely and home sick (especially at the beginning) if I hadn’t had Jenny to talk to. We already have plans to go to Glastonbury carnival in November when I am back and then hopefully Susan will visit us in the UK on her way back to the US form India in January, so I know I’ll see Jenny again after we leave India.

Now I only have one month left. I have two more weeks with Shelter Associates, and then I am travelling around a little with my mom and Euan. I fly back to the UK on 3 November. It feels like I only just wrote a blog post titled ‘30 days to India’, and now there’s only 30 days until I leave India.

Week 13, Dasara at Sandhya’s House

2009-09-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

We had Monday off from work because of the Dasara festival. I said before that this festival celebrates the triumph of good over evil, which is a Hindu festival; it’s the day when Rama defeated Ravana (an episode from the Ramayana, one of the great Indian epic poems) and also the day when the goddess Durga slayed the buffalo-demon Mahisha. I think it is also a festival to celebrate the beginning of the harvest season, and it is a sort of Labor Day where people celebrate the tools of their trade, which is what we did in the office on Friday. It turns out to also be a Buddhist festival (Ashoka Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din), which celebrates the day that Ashoka the Great converted to Buddhism. It is also the day Dr. Ambedkar, who revitalized Buddhism during the Indian independence movement, converted to Buddhism. I feel like there was so much going on all in one festival that I can’t really keep it all straight.

Sandhya’s family is Buddhist, and since Susan and Jenny were in Goa for the long weekend, she invited me to her house for the festival. Her brother-in-law also just completed the remodeling of his house, so they also had a puja (payer ritual) to celebrate that.

I got there at about noon, and all the houses around the housing society (neighborhood) had a Rangoli outside their front doors. They are made out of a sand-like material that, in this part of the country, is made of died, crushed rock. Rangolis come in different shapes, sizes and colors.

Then we went over to the brother-in-law’s house where they were having the puja. Everyone in the extended family was there. They sat on the floor in two rooms; the women were in the room where the table was set up with a Buddha statue and candles, and the men were in the room next to that. They all chanted and sang some prayers, and then we passed a long string around that everyone held on to and they sang another prayer. After the puja we all went out for a buffet lunch in the backyard. It was really good, especially the gulab jamun (which is quickly becoming my favorite Indian sweet) and the puri (a crispy, puffed up, deep fried bread); there were also papads, a vege curry, a dal, rice and palak bhaji (spinach deep fried in a chick pea batter).

I made friends with lots of the kids there, especially Sandhya’s niece Siddhi and her daughter Aakanksha. Siddhi is learning English at school and is very good at it. Aakanksha goes to a Marathi school and at first she was too shy to try the little bit of English she knows, but she got more comfortable as the day went on. Here is Siddhi with her lunch.

Here I am with some of Sandhya’s nieces and nephews. They have a very big extended family and I think they all live in the same housing society, which Sandhya’s grandfather founded in 1956. It’s an all Buddhist community that was established so that the workers in a local munitions factory didn’t have to go live in the slums when they retired. Six of these kids live in Sandhya’s household: the three girls and three of the boys.

At the end of the day Sandhya’s husband took me home. I showed him our flat and he was amazed that we each have our own room; I think they share about three or four people to a room in their house. I also showed him some pounds because he has never seen any foreign currency, and he was really happy.

Week 12, People at Work

2009-09-25T04:17:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be nice to show you all the people who I spend my days with. Here is a photo of most of the people in the office. From left to right in the back row: Shashi (social worker), Pramila (and art teacher who does workshops in the slums), Sandya (social worker), Zhaida (social worker), Shoba (social worker), Pradeep (he’s the one Jenny and I work with on GIS and Google Earth, also a social worker), Leena (receptionist/secretary), and Dipak (Pratima’s driver, who also makes us tea and does random jobs around the office). Just to clarify, the social workers are the people who go into the slums and survey the people; they enter the data into the computer and produce reports to summarize and present the data.

Sitting in the middle are Maushi (one of the Trustees of Shelter Associates who is an expert on composting and waste management) and Pratima (our boss, the director of Shelter Associates). And the volunteers are sitting on the floor in the front: Susan, Jenny, Caroline and me. I live with Jenny and Susan. Jenny is another EWB volunteer, and Susan is here on a Davis Foundation 100 Projects for Peace grant. Caroline just got here on 30 August; she is studying architecture in Berlin, but comes from France.

In the office whenever anyone has a birthday (there have been a few already this summer) we get a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Then Pratima gets to shove cake into the person’s mouth. It’s really funny to watch. Here they are on Maushi’s birthday (19 September); Pratima was nice this time and didn’t make a big mess because Maushi is the ‘youngest’ person in the office.

Today when I got to the office, all the ladies were wearing saris. They explained that it’s part of the festival on Monday (Dasara, a holy day that commemorates the triumph of good over evil) that women wear saris and men wear traditional kurtas. They asked if I want to wear a sari too, so I said yes. Leena lives close by, so she went home to get me one and they all dressed me up. I would like to get a sari, but I don’t think I would ever wear it again. It’s nice to borrow one for the day. Here I am with Shoba, Sandya, Pramila, Leena and Sandya (not in the top picture, she’s the accountant who only works part time). Also as part of the festival, we set up a little shrine to the tools of our trade: computers, software, slum surveys; they sang a song and we ate sweets.

Week 12, Cooking Lesson

2009-09-22T03:16:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, Susan, Jenny and I went to our boss, Pratima’s house for a cooking lesson. We learned how to make gulab jamun, khichadi and rava upma. Gulab jamun is a sweet; they are small dough balls that are deep fried (kind of like donut holes) and then soaked in sugar syrup. They absorb the syrup but don’t become soggy. They are really good. You make the dough from a mix, so I’m going to buy some and bring it back with me.

Next we made khichadi, which comes in many different varieties. The one we made is made out of sago and is spiced with fresh green chilies, fresh coriander, ground peanuts, salt, sugar and cumin seeds. I hope I can get sago in the UK. Here’s Susan eating the finished product.

Last we made rava upma. Rava is a kind of wheat flour that seems a bit coarser than the flour we get at home, and upma is a standard Indian breakfast dish. It ends up like a mush, similar to cream of wheat, and is spiced with fresh green chilies, mustard seeds, asadoeda powder, salt, and sugar, and is garnished with fresh coriander and grated coconut. Here in India they keep their spices in a ‘masala dabba’, which is a round container with lots of little compartments for the different spices. This one has (clockwise from top) mustard seeds, chili powder, cumin seeds, ground coriander, asafetida powder, turmeric, and a miscellaneous masala in the center.

Week 11, Slum Visit

2009-09-19T01:53:00.000-07:00

On Thursday we went on our first slum visit in Pune, to Dattawadi. Well, it isn’t really a slum; it was a slum before Shelter Associates was involved in the redevelopment in 1996-7. It seems to me like any of the poorer apartment blocks you see around India. One of the most interesting things here is the huge contrast between people living right next door to one another; you get redeveloped slums right next to upper/middle class apartment blocks.

In the courtyard of the complex, you can see people hanging out, clothes drying, and satellite dishes! It’s interesting what people spend their money on.

The people were very welcoming and showed us into their apartments. Each family of 4-6 people got an apartment that has a footprint of about 125ft2. Part of the Shelter Associates plan was to provide a good quality shell for the building and allow the people to decorate the inside themselves to make it their own. They were allowed to build a loft so that the apartments became two floors with almost double the living area, and as a result the layout of each apartment that we saw seemed to be slightly different.

The general layout was that the downstairs has a living room (where people probably also sleep), a kitchen and a washroom with running water, and the upstairs is the sleeping area; toilets are along the corridor and are shared between 4 families. The space is tiny and the toilets are not nice, but it’s better than a slum where you don’t have running water or toilets at all! Every day here I am reminded of what we take for granted in the US and the UK!

The people in Dattawadi have really turned the little apartments into homes. Many of the entrances are decorated, there are pictures hanging on the walls, the kitchens are fully equipped with pots, pans and gas hobs (I didn’t see any electrical appliances like fridges though), and most have tvs to go along with their satellite dishes.

Fifty Years of Math 1957 - 2007

2009-09-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

I just found this in an email from a while ago (haha 2007), and I thought I'd share it with the group because it's funny. And it's interesting because when I was in Belize in May, and now in India, every person I meet can do this kind of arithmetic (it's not math, by the way) in their head. Today, for example, the rickshaw to work cost 63 rupees. I handed him 103 and asked for 40 rupees change. Then he asked me for 10 more rupees and handed me a 50 rupee note. (I hope you can all follow that.) You would never experience a transaction like that in the UK or the US, and it's sad.

****

Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950's:

1. Teaching Math In 1950's: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

2. Teaching Math In 1960's: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1970's: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math In 1980's: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 1990's: A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut
down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok.)

6. Teaching Math In 2007? Un hachero vende una carretada de madera para $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho

Week 10, Food

2009-09-11T04:16:00.000-07:00

After the first two weeks when everything I ate gave me a stomach ache and made me ill, I have really started enjoying trying all the different food here. I’ve eaten at many Indian restaurants in the UK, but they all serve the same westernized Indian dishes, with little variety from one restaurant to the next. We’re trying to be more adventurous now and sometimes order things where we have no idea what they are.

One good way to try new things is to order a ‘thali’. A thali is a big plate served with lots of little pots containing different dishes. Here I am with Susan at my favorite thali restaurant; they come around and keep refilling the empty pots, so you can eat more of the stuff you like and leave the stuff you don’t like. The only problem with thalis is that you never know what the names of the dishes are in case you want to order them again in the future.

One new thing I have discovered here is a ‘dosa’. The first few weeks we were here, Jenny lived off dosas. A dosa is a kind of thin pancake or crepe made of rice flour, with a potato filling. It is always served with a white and a red sauce, neither of which I know what they really are. It’s a south Indian dish and there are about a million variations. The standard one is called masala dosa, which is what I just described. Here, Chris and Euan are eating paper dosas, which are super thin and really big. Then there’s rava dosas, which use wheat flour that makes it a bit crispier, and onion dosas which have onion in the batter.

My newest favorite food is a ‘sizzler’. It’s everything on one plate, which is basically like a hot frying pan so the food sizzles. It’s like how fajitas are served on a hot plate in the US. This one that I had at Bounty Sizzler Restaurant was spicy paneer and mushrooms with rice, fries, cabbage, carrots, beans and cauliflower.

For lunch everyday we pick up a ‘tiffin’ from a restaurant around the corner from our flat, the purple Royal Café. We just started this service; for the first month Jenny and Susan shared a different tiffin service that made my stomach hurt and I made my own food. We get rice, dhal (a weird yellow lentil stew; a staple in the Indian diet), two curries (often palak (spinach) and a mixed vegetable curry), chapatti (an Indian flat bread) and a papad (a.k.a. papadum in UK Indian restaurants); it’s kind of like a take-away thali. I really like our tiffin, except for now we don’t like eating dinner at that restaurant anymore because eating their food twice in the same day is a little much. Here’s a photo of our 4-tiffin that we use to transport our food.

Week 10, Work

2009-09-09T00:27:00.000-07:00

There’s no exciting trips or festivals this week, so I thought I’d write an update about what I’m doing at Shelter Associates. One of the main things that they do here is that the social workers go into slums and complete detailed questionnaires with the slum residents. What results is a lot of data about the people that live in each house. The data is input into a Microsoft Access database, and then also imported into GIS software for special querying. I was asked to make a web site that displays all the data for each slum in a nice way, because at the moment the data just sits on someone’s computer and is not very easy to use.

For the computer geeks among my readers, I converted the database to MySQL and am using PHP to make dynamic pages and graphs from the data. I like this kind of programming because you can see the website develop in front of your eyes.

You can select which city you want to look at (we work in Pune, Sangli and Solapur), and then which slum specifically. Mostly I’ve been working in Indira Gharkul Miraj, in Sangli. Here is an example of the kind of data I put on the website. First are the graphs of the data. On the left are the religion and caste category for each household in the slum, and on the right are some of the assets people own (click on the image to see it better, sorry the one on the right is cut off):

The caste categories are basically groups of castes. For example the Denotified Tribes (DT) are a group of castes that was identified by the government in 1871 as ‘criminal tribes’, and the Scheduled Caste (SC) is a group of castes explicitly recognized by the constitution (I think SC gets a kind of affirmative action or positive discrimination, and is also know as ‘untouchables’). Both of these groups contain lower castes that you often find in the slums. And the assets on the right really show you the level of poverty that we are talking about. Only one house out of the 319 slum structures (259 of which are occupied houses for which a survey was completed) has a refrigerator, and less that 20% own a fan to keep cool.

In addition to looking at the raw data, we can produce spatial queries using the GIS software, and a jpg will be put on the web with each of the graphs above. For example, here is the religion for each house in the slum (left), and just to show something different, the sex of the head of the household for each house on the right (click on the image to see it bigger):

Some of the structures where no survey was completed are shops, toilet blocks, temples, and empty/abandoned/locked houses. Together, the graphs and the GIS queries give a good visual impression of what is going on in a particular slum. Other data we collect includes electricity, water, waste disposal, sewage, income, occupation and education, all of which can be displayed as above.

Hopefully, once the data are available on a website, it will be easier for Shelter Associates and the local governments to analyze slums and make improvements to the living conditions there.

Week 9 German Bakery

2009-09-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

After the Ganesh Festival on 3 September, we didn’t have to go in to work until noon the next day. Jenny had to get up at 5am to go to Sangli with our boss Pratima, while Susan and I slept in. We decided to go for a relaxing brunch at the German Bakery, which was the subject of a guest blog post by Chris Taylor a couple weeks ago. To follow this up, I’ll start with a photo of Rama in his maroon Osho robe:

The story continues at brunch yesterday morning. Susan and I ordered food and sat down alone at the bench along the wall. Unfortunately, we sat down right across from creepy guy with the headphones and creepy guy with the trousers, who we found out are called John and Michael. They decided to talk to us and started of by laughing at us a bit, but we didn’t really understand what was going on. Then we found out that creepy guy with the trousers is from Iran and is here studying nuclear physics at Pune University. Sounds harmless enough until he told us that he was going to make nuclear bombs and find out where we live so that he can blow us up. At this point I wanted to run away, but our food had just arrived and we were hungry. Our conversation continued in a slightly more normal fashion; we talked about what we were doing here and what we studied back home. Then the news came out that I just finished my PhD and that I’m only 26, at which point creepy guy with the trousers said I was really smart and asked me to marry him! (He’s 29 and is finishing his Bachelors in a year, so I think he was impressed.) I said no thank you. He continued by saying we could have a lot of fun together, particularly in his bedroom. He plays in a band with the creepy guy with the headphones, and he invited us over to listen to his music in the evening with all the German girls who come over every night. I think we’re gonna pass on that proposition too.

Week 9 Ganesh Chaturthi

2009-09-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, 3 September, was the 11th day of Ganesh Chaturthi. After having a Gensha idol in your house for 11 days, it was time to submerge him in the river. I got a little one in our flat, and tried to offer him fruit and sweets during the whole festival:

Akshay and Mohit, two of our local Indian friends, came with us to the river. I am really glad that they helped us, because otherwise we wouldn’t have been sure about what to do. And they brought more sweets for our Ganesha. As soon as we left the flat it started to rain, so I think Ganesha was happy with us.

So we went to the river and found a guy who would take our Ganesha into the river and submerge him. First though, you have to pray for him with a candle, then you crack the coconut and pour the milk on him, and finally you eat the sweets (yum). Our Ganesha got prayed for together with a much bigger idol (the little one on the plate is mine):

Then it’s time to go swimming. The river is so dirty and cold, I feel bad for all the guys who do it; they get paid for each one they take out though, so hopefully they make a bit of money in the process. Ganesha gets submerged three times, and on the third time he is let go to sink to the bottom. The guy brings back some mud from the bottom of the river, which you have to keep until next year when Ganesha comes again. Here you can see our little Ganesha being held up by the guy with the white bandana on his head, just before being submerged; there are lots of other idols being submerged around him too.

One of the best parts of the Ganesh Festival is all the sweets. Everyone bring sweets, many of them home-made, like modak and shev bundi, and you pass them out to all the other people around you. I think maybe because we are white, everyone wanted to give us their sweets so we got to try so many good things. Another great part of the festival is all the music, dancing and throwing powder paint! We got completely covered. I felt like a pink smurf.

I’m really glad we participated in the Ganesh Festival. It’s one of the most fun things we’ve done in India so far.

Week 8, Trip to Aurangabad

2009-09-01T02:43:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Jenny, Susan and I went on a trip to Aurangabad. We left on Friday (28 Aug) afternoon, and the bus took about 5 hours to get there. We stayed at the Hotel Shree Maya, which was ok; there were quite a few bugs crawling around the place. My mom asked me if it was a Maharashtrian hotel or a Western hotel, and it was somewhere in between. This is exemplified by the toilet in our room, which was a little bit Western (left) and a little bit Indian (right):

On Saturday we went to Ajanta caves. These were another 3 hour bus ride from Aurangabad, but it was well worth the journey. There are about 30 Buddhist caves carved into the walls of a gorge. You can see them in the background here:

Each of the caves contains amazing carvings and paintings all around the walls and columns and the ceiling. It’s hard to describe how detailed and elaborate it all is. My favorite part was the large Buddha that is looking right at you from the very back of the cave when you walk in. Every cave I walked into left me in awe, and I wanted to take a million photos. The photos don’t show what it’s really like there.


Cave 2	Cave 19

Cave 26
After the caves we walked back through a row of shops to the bus. This experience ruined the day a little. The shop keepers were following us around yelling “Yes Madam”, “What do you want?”, “Come look in my shop”, “Looking is free”. At one point the three of us had a crowd of over 10 shop keepers following us and trying to get us to buy souvenirs from their shop. I understand that they are just trying to make a living, but I felt so crowded that I couldn’t look at the contents of the shops properly, and so annoyed that I didn’t want to give them any money! It really makes me miss the significantly less aggressive shop workers in the west.

On Sunday we hired a rickshaw driver, Nasir, for the day. First he helped us get bus tickets back to Pune for that evening, and got us each a 20 rupee discount. Then he took us to Ellora Caves, which are only about an hour from Aurangabad. We made a quick photo stop at Daulatabad Fort, which we didn’t have time to visit. I thought that overall these caves were not as impressive as Ajanta. The caves at Ellora are split into three groups: Jain, Buddhist and Hindu. The Jain caves had some beautiful carvings. Here, Susan and I are on one of the balconies:

The Buddhist caves were similar to, but not as nice as, the caves at Ajanta. The Hindu caves were a bit plain, except for cave 16, which is HUGE! It’s not even really a cave – it’s a full sized temple carved into the side of a mountain. When you go through some of the other caves you start to forget that they were all carved out of a solid piece of rock, but in this one you feel like you are in the bottom of a quarry that has been turned into a temple. Here you can see the rock cliff around the left side of the photo, and the multi-story temple in the middle:

We took the bus home again on Sunday night, and were exhausted from all the traveling and walking we had done over the weekend. We had a great time.

More photos are coming on facebook for those who are interested.

Week 8, Ganesh Chaturthi

2009-08-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

Today is the fifth day of the Hindu festival Ganesh Chaturthi. The festival started on Sunday 23 August, and we had Jack and John (our EWB friends from Phaltan) visiting, along with two of Jack’s friends from back home (the UK). We walked around Laxmi Road where there was a lot going on. There were loads of people, and drum music, and Ganesh idols being paraded around.

People were buying their Ganesh idols to take home and worship during the festival. You can keep him at home for 1, 5, 11 or 21 days, and then you submerge him in the river. Like I said, today is day 5 so I’m planning on going to the river to see this happen.

I bough a Ganesh idol for our flat too:

We are trying to follow the rules of the Ganesh festival; our friend Akshay is consulting us on what to do. We offer him fruit, flowers and sweets called moduk, and we burn a candle or incense for him. I’m planning on throwing him in the river on the 11th day, 3 September.

Week 7, Guest Entry from Chris

2009-08-25T04:37:00.001-07:00

This is an excerpt from Chris’s notes on facebook, which he wrote while he was here last week. It’s about out favorite local hang out, the German Bakery, and all the people that hang out there. I have appended it with a photo of some of our favorite ‘weirdos’ at the German Bakery:

The German Bakery is a bit of an institution in Pune, being the main hangout for backpackers, ageing hippies and devotees of the Osho ashram around the corner. I have no idea where it got it's name - there is nothing certifiably German about it. Maxi, Susan and Jenny had already primed us on a few of the weirdos who hang out there, so we spent a good morning drinking chai, reading our books and trying to match faces to descriptions ("Creepy Indian guy", "Creepy American guy with headphones", etc.)

That afternoon was the scene of my first encounter with Rama, an ex-devotee of the Osho ashram who became disillusioned with the recent excessive commercialisation, and now spends most of his time in Koragaon Park, imparting his wisdom and trying to find similarly open-minded girls with whom to explore the myriad mysteries that the universe lays before us - mainly via the medium of sex. Rama describes himself as the happiest man alive, and is only too happy to share his secrets of happiness, but he doesn't think of himself as a guru. If anything, he says, he is an anti-guru -- or perhaps a guru-fucker.

Life, you see, is an energy, and that energy originates in the mind (and can be replenished by eating food, but only the right kinds of food) and flows downwards, past your heart and stomach, and leaves your body in an explosive spurt that leaves you devoid of all energy, and in need of sustenance both physical and spiritual. This, as Rama describes is, is preceded by "the flower becoming the banana". There were accompanying hand gestures, in case the metaphor wasn't obvious to me at this point. When the energy has left the body the banana is crucified, like Jesus (accompanying throat-slitting motion). But, like Jesus, the banana is always able to rise again - though presumably it doesn't take the full three days. I'm really only paraphrasing here - our conversation was much longer and more convuluted, and made difficult by Rama's thick accent and the rain thudding against the tin roof of the German Bakery, so I wouldn't be surprised if I missed some aspects of his Buddhist-cum-hedonist-cum-Christian philosophy. But I think I got the thrust.

These are "Creepy guy with the beard and ponytail" and "Creepy american guy with headphones".

Week 6-7, Mumbai and Pune

2009-08-21T04:09:00.000-07:00

After the week in Goa with Euan, Charlotte and Ian, we spent the weekend in Mumbai where we were joined by another friend, Chris; I had an overlap of friends visiting. Chris arrived in Mumbai on Friday night, and Charlotte and Ian left on Saturday night. I had only spent one day in Mumbai before this, so it was nice to see a bit more of the city.

On Friday night before Chris arrived we walked around Marine Drive. You can see the skyline across the water, and we went at dusk so the sky was getting dark and the lights were coming on so it was really beautiful. I think it might have been the first time I was really impressed with something in India.

On Saturday we went on a boat trip to Elephanta Island. It is a bunch of Hindu cave temples on an island near Mumbai. There were lots of monkeys running around and it was really hot.

Then on Saturday night we had dinner at the Hard Rock Café. I used to collect Hard Rock Café t-shirts when I was in High School, and I decided to start again. Here we all are at dinner before Charlotte and Ian went back to the UK.

On Sunday Euan, Chris and I went back to Pune and spent a few days there. The boys did all the tourist activities in Pune: went to Shaniwar Wada, walked up Parvati hill and passed time at the German Bakery. I also brought them into work one day, and we went shopping around Laxmi Road. They left to go back to the UK yesterday, so now it’s back to work. It was nice to have a break, and have lots of visitors.

Week 6, Goa

2009-08-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

I think my week numbering has gone wrong, so I’ll start over with week 6, which was last week. I went to Goa with Euan, Charlotte and Ian. It started on 8 August when my flat-mate Susan got sick. Then on the 9th, Jenny and I got sick too. They spent the whole week in bed sleeping, and I went to Goa!

I met Euan at the airport in Mumbai on Sunday. We spent the afternoon at Juhu Beach trying to kill time before our overnight bus left at 8pm. I was not feeling well, so I slept all 14 hours to Mapusa. We took a taxi to Anjuna and stayed at Anjuna Villa. I spent most of Monday in bed, until Charlotte and Ian arrived from Delhi in the late afternoon. We walked around a bit to explore where we were staying and I went back to bed.

Tuesday, the three of them went on a day trip to Panjim, the capital of Goa, while I stayed in bed. Panjim has lots of buildings that were built by the Portuguese, and Euan, Charlotte and Ian found it more laid back than the other parts of Goa we went to. Wednesday, there was supposed to be a flea market so I dragged myself out of bed for it, but then it was cancelled because of the monsoon, so we had a drink in a café next to the beach and then I went back to bed. It was kind of weird being in Goa in the monsoon season; it was a bit like a ghost town. A lot of the hotels and restaurants were closed and dismantled and there was almost no one around.

Thursday was our last day in Goa; we got a taxi for the day and stopped in Old Goa on the way to Sahakari Spice Farm where we learned all about different spices and had a really good buffet lunch. They gave us flower necklaces and gave us red dots on our foreheads.

We got to Margao in the evening and went to the cinema to see the new film Kaminey before our overnight train at 1:45am. I again slept all 12 hours back to Mumbai. We were in the 3AC class; here’s a photo of Ian on the middle bunk from my top bunk.

Work

2009-08-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

I've been told that there are not enough posts about what I am doing at work. Last week I wrote a web page with embedded google earth. I've been waiting for the web designers to upload it onto the site before I wrote this post - they are soooooooo sloooooooow. It's not 100% finished, (I still have to wait for them to upload a few more files), but it still works so you can play with it now. You'll have to install a google earth plugin, and it only works on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox (sorry all you Opera users). There are instructions on the page.

So, go to the Shelter Associates web page. Click on the link on the right hand side that says 'GIS Mapping of Slums' and have fun.

Week 4.5, Raksha Bandhan

2009-08-05T04:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the Raksha Bandhan festival. It is a Hindu festival celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters. Raksha means to love and protect, and Bandhan means the bond. Today, girls buy a string bracelet called a rakhi and tie it on their brothers’ wrist. I bought some for me and my sister and brother.

Mine is red, Valerie’s is yellow and Julian’s is red and yellow. Most of the rachis for sale are much more decorated with beads and sparkles and fuzzy balls, but I chose simple ones. My sister likes pearls so I got beads that look like pearls, and the simplest one for my brother because I don’t think he would like to wear a big fuzzy puff ball on his wrist. I’m putting them in the mail tomorrow; they’ll arrive a little late since the festival is today. I put mine on already.

Week 4, Mosquitoes

2009-08-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Although it’s the monsoon season, I haven’t met too many mosquitoes yet. We’ve been using Avon Skin So Soft Replenishing Dry Oil Body Spray as a mosquito repellant, and it works wonders!

I’ve only had a few bites on my ankles, which seems to be where I stop applying the spray, and one on my hand and one on my elbow. The bites aren’t too bad for me. They flare up immediately, itch for about 30 minutes, and if I don’t scratch them then they just become a red dot for 24 hours and go away. Jenny on the other hand, has terrible bites.

The worst ones swell up in huge blisters. This one that she got on one of the first days has only just now gone away. We’re taking malaria tablets, so hopefully the annoying bites will be the worst of it.

Wireless Internet! :-D

2009-08-01T00:27:00.001-07:00

Today I set up a wireless internet connection in the office! I'm so excited! Up to now we have only had one connection in the office, and our boss has it as her private connection. We always went to internet cafes. Yesterday one of the trustees donated a second hand wireless router from her husbands work, and my task for today was to set it up.

So now I can be online at work and hopefully skype with people and make more blog posts and upload photos to facebook, oh yea, and work because we need the internet to work with google earth. No more paying for internet at the cafe.

Week 3.5, Meet Charlotte and Ian in Mumbai

2009-07-30T23:32:00.001-07:00

While I’m here in India, I have a few friends coming to visit me from home. First are Charlotte and Ian, who arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday 28 July. They’re going to spend almost 2 weeks traveling up to Delhi while I work, and then they’ll fly down to Goa on 10 August. I’ll take a week off work and meet them there, which I’m really looking forward to.

In the mean time, I left work early on Tuesday, and took Wednesday off, to meet them in Mumbai. I took the bus there, which was a bit of a disaster. I bought a ticket for the 11am bus to the airport that was supposed to get in at the same time as Charlotte and Ian, at about 3pm; when I showed up there was no 11am bus! I got on the 11:30 bus instead, and because of traffic in Mumbai we didn’t get to the airport till 4:45. While we were stuck in traffic, I had no idea where we were or how long it would take, so Charlotte and Ian went ahead and took a pre-paid taxi to the hotel. When I finally arrived, I took a rickshaw to the nearest train station, a train to Mumbai CST, and then a taxi to the hotel. I beat them there in the end because they got stuck in the same traffic that I was stuck in and their driver couldn’t find the hotel.

When we met up in the end we had a really nice evening together. In the morning we got them train tickets for the first leg of their journey to Udaipur, and had a little look around the Gateway of India.

We had lunch together and then they had to leave to get to their overnight train at 3:45. I had a little time to myself, so I walked around, got some post cards printed, took some photos, sat in a café, and still got to my train an hour early. The train back to Pune went without any problems. I bought a ticket online, my name was on the reservation list when I got on the train (in English and in Hindi!) and I showed my ticket and ID to the conductor without any troubles.

It was really nice to meet Charlotte and Ian when they arrived in India, and I learned some very useful information about traveling to Mumbai and to the airport. Trains to Mumbai are much more reliable than buses! I get to try the whole thing again a week from Sunday (9 Aug) when Euan arrives.

Week 3, Weekend in Phaltan

2009-07-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

This weekend Jenny and I went to visit two other EWB volunteers, Jack and John, who are working at ARTI in Phaltan. We took a government bus direct from Swargate Bus Stand; it takes 3 hours and costs only 70 rupees, that’s 1 pound! (Just to compare, the 3 hour bus ride from Cambridge to Heathrow Airport costs about 35 pounds.) It was really nice to get out of Pune and get some fresh air. Phaltan is quite a small town (only 50,000 people), and I think the guys are a bit bored there. But I really liked it. First we got a tour of ARTI and the project they are working on. They are converting a diesel generator to bio gas, which people in rural communities can generate themselves.

Then we somehow managed to get into the Palace, which is not open to the public. They said it belonged to one of Shivagi’s wives, which means it’s from the late 1600’s. It was kind of like a National Trust house in the UK that hasn’t been looked after. I guess they never get any tourists in Phaltan, so there is no motivation to keep it in good shape. They were filming a movie while we were there, so we met a famous Marathi film star. Here we are in one of the sitting rooms.

In the afternoon we went over to the house of one of the other guys who works at ARTI. We had tea and snacks (including boiled peanuts, like you can get in Florida! Yum!), and the guy’s wife did henna for us.

On Sunday there was a kite festival, kind of like in Kite Runner (which I haven’t seen or read). We were on the roof of someone’s house, and they had a bunch of kites with string that has glass glued to it. They would launch the kites, and battle with the other kites that seemed to be all over the sky. Most of the time we would cut down the other people’s kite and it would slowly float to the ground, but a few times we got cut down too. There was a drum band on our roof too, and everyone was dancing. It was really fun, but there were no girls except us and a few kids; it’s not fair that the girls don’t get to play with kites.

Week 2, Shelter Associates

2009-07-19T03:23:00.000-07:00

I've been working at Shelter for about 10 days now, so I thought I'd update everyone on what we're doing. They just started a new project in Solapur, which is about 4hrs south east of Pune. They want to get a city-wide view of the slums, so they can make improvements to the sewage systems that are in place at the moment. We started this past week by mapping all 220 slums in google earth. We are only missing about 10 of them, which we just couldn't find. We have outlined them, and labelled them, and entered them into a spreadsheet. This week, we are actually going to Solapur to check that what we mapped is correct. I'm not sure we will be able to cover all 220 in 5 days, but we should be able to make a good start on it. After that, the idea is for the social workers to go survey all the slums with fewer than 200 houses, to find out about the facilities there. We can then add this to the maps, along with information about the existing sewers from the government, to get a complete picture of the city and make recomendations about how to improve the situation.

Here are a few photos from the office. This is the outside. We are the building on the left, and the office is in one of the appartments at the back of the buildings so you can't see it. It's actually a residential block, and the flat we are in is just used as an office.

And here is where we work. They just remodeled the place in the last year, so it is quite nice. This is the desk where the volunteers work. You can see Jenny and Beran (a french architect who has been here for about 3 months) hard at work.

Day 7, A place to live

2009-07-12T03:10:00.000-07:00

Until now, we have been staying in a Ladies Hostel called Nikam House (see Day 2). It's very basic and only has hot water from 6-8am, but it never lasts till 8. So, this weekend we went house hunting. We got some phone numbers from people who were here in previous years, and also found a few on the web, but had no luck. Jenny called one, who said they would call back and then never did. Susan called one, who doesn't rent to foreigners. I called 4: 1) doesn't rent for only 3 months, 2) no answer, 3) doesn't rent to foreigners, 4) said they would call back and didn't.

So luckily we made an Indian friend in a cafe where we were hanging out. He knew some people, and went with us to negotiate with the rental people. His name is Akshay, and he has spent some time in Yorkshire playing cricket. Anyway he took me and Jenny and Susan (another volunteer, from America, at Shelter) around to see some places. First we just looked at rooms that were really bad - similar to the hostel, but a bit cheaper. They progressively showed us better and better rooms. Finally we convinced them to show us a 2BHK; that stands for 2 bedrooms, hallway, kitchen. And the kitchen has a bed in it too. So we took it! It costs 18,000 rup for the whole flat per month. What we were paying at the hostel works out to 15,000, and this is a lot better. And if Susan ends up moving into the kitchen, it will be even cheaper for each of us. Akshay said it was too much, but we couldn't have gotten anything else like that for only 3 months, especially since we are foreigners.

So I am very relived now that we are settling in.

Here are some photos:
Kitchen

Shower and toilet

My bedroom

Day 4, EWB from home

2009-07-10T05:09:00.000-07:00

There are about a million things I want to BLOG about, but I need to pace myself. I'm still learning about everything, so I'll wait for the moment.

In the mean time, here's a link with list of EWB placements. I'm not in the photo because I had to leave the pre-departure training course early.

Time to go get an Indian SIM card for my mobile phone.

Day 2 in India

2009-07-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

We made it to Pune! We left London on Monday (6 July) and our flight was 2hrs late, so we got into Mumbai later than expected on Tuesday (7 July). It was an overnight flight and I slept pretty much the whole way. We took a taxi to Pune, had dinner and went straight to bed.

We are staying at Nikam House Ladies Hostel. It's basic but clean. Still, I'm glad I brought a sheet and sleeping bag liner, cause the sheets they have are very old and stained. Jenny and I have a room to ourselves that locks with a padlock so no-one can get in when we are away. We also have our own bathroom; the toilet is just a hole in the floor, and there's a tap with a bucket for bathing. Here are some photos:
'Bathroom'

Beds and shelf

We have this place for a week so we can try to find a more long-term place to live.

Now it's Wednesday (8 July) morning. We got up and went to a shopping street but everything was closed. We were a bit confused until we learned that the shops don't open till 10:30. So we ate something (I had a vege roll, which was just a pastry roll with slightly spicy vege curry in it), and found the internet cafe when it opened. The plan for the rest of the day is just to look around, and maybe find the place where we are working. We still have a lot to figure out here.

Submitted

2009-07-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I finally submitted my PhD. I'm so glad that's done.

Now I'm hanging out in Bath for a few days. All of our stuff is in our new flat, and we are trying to make everything fit. I got some pretty flowers from my mom earlier in the week.

Not too much else to report. I got all my vaccinations, my visa, and I started the malaria tablets. We booked a hostel for the first week before we find a place to live. I think I have enerything I need (except a webcam, which I'm buying tomorrow). I'm just counting down the days till I leave. 3 more days...

Fundraising

2009-06-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

Starting in July, I will be spending 3 months working as a volunteer for Shelter Associates through an EWB placement. A natural question is: How is this placement funded? The answer is that EWB covers most of the cost with their bursaries scheme, but the volunteer has to contribute as well. In my case, I have to raise £600 towards the work I am doing in India.

So, I am asking all my friends and family to help contribute to this project. First I thought I'd let you know a little more about what Shelter Associates does. Shelter Associates is a non-governmental organisation that works with the urban poor on slum rehabilitation projects. Their mission statement is to bridge the gap between the slums and the local government. My project will involve developing more effective ways of using google earth and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to analyse slums. Shelter then uses this information to report to the local government to help with urban planning and development, with the aim of make the living situation better for some of the poorest people in India.

If you would like to contribute to this project, then please let me know (maxine.voneye@ewb-uk.org). Donations of any amount would be greatly appreciated; every little bit helps.

17 days and back from pre-departure training

2009-06-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

This week I had an EWB pre-departure training course. It was at Ringsfield Hall. It's a pretty cool house, and they have lots of animals in the garden including a peacock that walked around everywhere and made a lot of noise. It was a little bit hard to sit through all the talks at the course because I was stressed about finishing my PhD; the little voice in my head kept saying that I really should be working. But it was really great to meet all the other people involved with EWB and all the others going on placements this year. They are such a great group of people who really care about making this world a better place. I'm especially looking forward to meeting up with the other people who are going to India, while we are over there!

30 days to India and moving to Bath

2009-06-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

So from today I have 30 days till I go to India. Saying that I'm starting to get worried about getting my PhD done in time is an understatement, cause I've been worried for a long time. I've pretty much been worried about if I'm ever going to finish since shortly after I started. So really the fact that the end is (hopefully) in sight is an improvement. Trying to stay optimistic...

Also today Euan and I are moving to Bath, or at least starting to. He got the keys yesterday, I rented a van this morning, and now we've packed up and are on our way. The place is unfurnished, so we are starting by collecting furniture and putting it in to the flat. Then in a few weeks we'll move in the rest of our stuff. We have our flat in Cambridge till 6 July; I want to stay there as long as possible to work, work, work.

You Better Belize It!

2009-06-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

So, it's not India yet, but I just got back from an amazing holiday in Belize! My friend Hilary (from Colorado) and I go on vacation together every year. We missed last year (2008), but went in 2007 (Iceland), 2006 (Cambridge, Toulon), 2005 (Bath, London, Dublin) and 2004 (Fiji, Australia). So this year we decided that we wanted a beach holiday, and that we were bringing our boyfriends (Euan and Paul).

We got the idea of going to Belize from Erin, with whom I lived in my first year in Cambridge. Belize is just south of Mexico, on the Caribbean side. They have the second largest barrier reed system in the world, after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We stayed for 10 days in San Pedro (from the Madonna song La Isla Bonita) on the island of Ambergris Caye. Actually, we stayed at the Cloisters, which is about a 30min walk north of town. We had a two bedroom beach front unit with a kitchen and cable tv and wireless internet and our own personal beach cause we were the only ones there! That's the advantage of travelling in the off-season.

So this is what we spent our time doing:

Most of our days were spent hanging out at the hotel, exploring the wildlife (crabs, fish, birds) on our beach, and cooling off in the pool;

Walking into San Pedro town at the hottest time of day is not recommended (we did this a number of times before we learned our lesson);

We ate out about once a day (Fido's was my favourite), and usually had breakfast and lunch in the hotel. They don't have much fresh food at the stores, mostly long-life stuff like cans and pasta, so we ate things like spaghetti or mac and cheese. We did get a lot of fresh fruit (watermelon, bananas, pineapple) from the stalls on the street though;

We watched the NBA Western Conference Finals - Go Nuggets! Too bad they lost 4 games to 2 against the Lakers;

We felt the earthquake in Honduras early on Thursday morning. I guess they had another, smaller one today too;

One day we took the water taxi to Caye Caulker, the next island over, and went snorkelling on the reef. We saw loads of fish and corals, and got to swim with the stingrays!

Then we went on a day trip to Lamanai, one of the many Mayan ruins in Belize. This one was occupied from about 1500BC to 1500AD, so about 3000 years! On the way we saw loads of wildlife like crocodiles, manatees, dolphins, spider monkeys and howler monkeys;

We went on a fishing trip off our island one day. By 'we' I mean that Hilary and Paul went fishing (Paul caught 4 fish - 1 snapper and 3 barracudas!), then they came back to pick us up. Our guide cooked the fish for us for lunch, and then we went snorkelling at Mexico Rocks in the afternoon.

Then Euan, Hilary and Paul left me in Belize City for two days alone (again, not recommended). Belize is a really poor country (the guide book says that 1/3 of the people live in poverty), and this is really obvious in Belize City once you leave the more touristy islands. It's not un-safe, just not what we're used to, and there's not much to do in town all alone. So, what I did with my two days alone was:

I went to the Belize Zoo. All the animals there were orphaned, injured, given from other zoos, born there or confiscated because they were being kept illegally as pets. All are animals local to Belize and none could have survived if they were let back into the wild, so it's a great opportunity to see them up close. I took the bus there, which was cool cause all the buses there are old school buses from the US;

I went Cave Tubing and I was the only one on the tour! The owner admitted that he can't make a profit off every tour, an he does the job because he loves it, so he took me even though he lost money. It was funny cause his whole family came along too. They didn't do the tubing part - they just swam in the river;

I went to the casino. Just for an hour or so to play some jackpot party (mine and my mom's favourite game).

The night before I left, my host at Freddie's Guest House gave me 3 mangoes from the tree in her backyard and they were so yummy! Then I flew back to London via Houston. It's sunny and warm here today. Not as nice as Belize, but a nice welcome back. You can see some of my photos on facebook.

I bought a flight

2009-05-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

Today I bought my flight to Mumbai (aka Bombay). I met Jenny, the other placement volunteer who is going to Pune with me, yesterday. We went to STA Travel and reserved a BA flight direct there for only £344! We fly out on 6 July, and return on 2 October. The tickets are really flexible, so I can change my return date for only £35. Jenny has to come back in time for term to start again, cause she's not finished with her Engineering degree yet, so that's why we picked that return date. I'll probably change it later to say longer :-).

I'm going to India!

2009-05-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

Last Monday (May 4) I got a phone call saying that I had been accepted for an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) placement! I applied back in March and I was getting a bit nervous because at the interview they told me I should hear back by April 26; they said they were delayed because some of the placements we under-subscribed.

The first thing I did when I got the placement was buy an Eyewitness Guidebook for India. Those are my favorite guides, and I'm looking forward to exploring India as much as anything. I want to try to travel on weekends, and maybe at the end of the placement too cause that will be after the monsoon season.

Anyway, I'm going to work for Shelter Associates. The project is on mapping and analyzing slums in Pune, India using satellite images:
a link to my placement
I've done a lot of data analysis, and worked a bit with satellite images, so hopefully it won't be too hard to get used to the work. I'm not sure if it will be as mathematical as what I'm used to, but still a very interesting application of what I've learned in my 9 years at university.

I never though I would write a Blog, but recently I've started enjoying reading some of my friends' Blogs, so I though I would try it. This adventure in India seemed like the perfect opportunity!

I've decided it's going to be an adventure for 2 main reasons:

It's in India: I don't think much explaination is needed there. I've mostly lived in North America and Europe, so this should be a bit different.
It's an office job: After being a student for 9 years, some of you with office jobs might claim I've never worked an honest day in my life! I'm not sure if that's true, but it will certainly be a different life working from 9 to 5. We'll see how it goes.

I'll try to make weekly-ish updates, although it may be less often before I actually get there. Again, we'll see how this goes too...