3rd Week

I have been in India a total of 3 weeks. Today it rained for the first time since I've been here and it only lasted about ten minutes. Now it's sunny again and hot. I enjoyed the cool air and wind while it lasted though.
Last Friday Tanja, Habib and I accompanied Anil Henry to Raipur for the day. He had a meeting to go to so the three of us walked around the city, saw the market, went to a mall there. We ate at a very nice restaurant, which Anil later told us was famous. I ate Chicken Tikka Masala and nan bread. It was so delicious! While we were there a Muslim festival and parade were taking place to celebrate Muhammed's birth. The main streets in the town were closed off for several hours.
One young man came up to talk to us and asked where we were from. When I said America, he replied, "You know Muslims hate America." I was a little intimidated by his forwardness, but he was trying to give us a warning because of the festival going on. He asked what I thought of Muslims and I told him I had nothing against Muslims and I didn't know anyone who didn't like Muslims.
The parade consisted of some trucks driving through the streets blasting music. Following the trucks were people with green flags and blue cloths dancing in the street. It was amazing to see just masses of people in every direction. It was so refreshing to see so many young people there who were so enthusiastic about their religion.
The market in Raipur was very large and colorful, of course. Tanja and Habib and I stopped in a bakery ad got a box ful of all sorts of Indian sweets and cakes to try. They don't really have chocolate here so the treats were made of almonds, cashews, coconut and mango.
Yesterday Tanja and I walked to the market in Mungeli. There is a woman there who we always buy peanuts from because she shells them and roasts them and most other vendors don't. She introduced us to her nephew who had a fruit stand beside her. I looked over at the other side of the fruit stand and there was a cow eating a very large amount of grapes right off the table. I was kind of shocked at first and didn't know if I was allowed to shoo it off (because they're holy here) so I just pointed and exclaimed "That cow is eating your fruit!". The boy ran him off, but not before the cow had grabbed another bunch to take with him! Anil says that the cows here are so used to be treated with respect that they act different than cows in any other country. They're always walking in front of fast-moving vehicles at the most leisurely pace. We even saw them in the street in Raipur, which is a lot larger than Mungeli.
Today at school I taught grammar as usual and read some to the kids from the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I've played hangman with them so that they could guess some difficult English words, but am currently trying to find other educational games to play with them. I'm thinking about Heads Up Seven Up or Simon Says, but if anyone has more suitable suggestions I would love to hear them! Email me or write a comment on this blog with any suggestions. I need games for any age group, but especially 7 to 13 year olds.
The day before yesterday a car pulled up to the hospital just before rounds began. The patient was an old woman who had very advanced Tetanus. She was immediately taken to the Operation Theatre where they performed a tracheotomy so that she could breathe because her body and airway were seizing. They then administered a shot in her spine with some type of antidote. Her whole family (about 8 people) had accompanied her there. The sad thing is, that after all the doctors did to save her, her family took her away the next day when she was supposed to stay at the hospital for 10-12 days to be monitored and treated further. The odds are that she won't survive at home. Maybe the family didn't have enough money to keep her at the hospital though.
There are lots of successful stories at the hospital, but there are also lots of failures. Lots of times, a patient can't receive all the treatment they need in Mungeli, but the family don't have enough funds to transfer them to a bigger city.
I'm hoping to go on a long weekend soon with Tanja and Habib, perhaps to a waterfall nearby here. I'll write more soon,
Lauryn