I spent the last two weeks of my journey teaching the Tilda nursing students and it seemed as if India wanted to throw me a grand going away party. In my last two weeks it felt like a lot happened. They were small things, but when added up they caused the end of my trip to fly by very eventfully. I'm grateful I kept such a detailed journal so I can recall the events clearly.
A day after my last post, I attended the graduation of several of our nurses from Tilda Nursing School. It was a long night but it was nice to compare it to an American graduation. Everything was so colorful and open (as is everything else in India). It wasn't what I expected at all, but I realized that nothing else about my trip had been what I expected so why should this be any different?
The last weeks of my trip, the heat swelled to about 110-120 degrees Fahrenheit. My body had adjusted so it wasn't as bad as if I'd experienced that in America. I was used to not having an air conditioning at that point. At least we had cold water thanks to our mini-fridge.
One of my triumphs in the last week was the fact that I memorized all of my nursing students' names. I can't pretend that I still remember them all, but I think there were 22 students total and I knew them all! At first I was discouraged with teaching, but when I realized the type of teaching they responded to best and gave them lots of time to practice on the computer it turned out very well.
During the two weeks I helped our maid/cook/surrogate mother cook dinner a few times and wrote down the recipe to my favorite dish she made (chili chicken). It started out with me rolling out chapati (tortilla-like bread) with her. I was just watching and then she asked if I wanted to help. At first I was horrible at it, but there's just a specific rhythm to it that you have to get used to and practice. I really enjoyed cooking with her. It felt like we kind of bonded. Her English isn't very good so we didn't say much, but it meant a lot to me to get to know her a little better.
I took lots of pictures the last two weeks, more than I did in the first 6 weeks. We got to travel to some villages even smaller than Mungeli when we accompanied the school teachers to recruit new students for Rambo Memorial English School.
We lived in the doctor's apartments and we were used to seeing cows break into our garden looking for grass and vegetables, but one afternoon we looked outside to see 5 or 6 cows in our tiny yard. We've never seen that many there and had to chase them all out. They were like a small herd. We continued to see cows in the village and we took notice of two in particular. One day we noticed a cow with a broken leg who had taken to hobbling around on three legs. Tanja and Habib and I had considered trying to fix it but weren't sure if it belonged to somone or if it was our place to try and help or not. We saw this same cow many times in worsening states and then one day we saw a companion with him, another cow with a broken leg it could no longer use. Everytime we saw them in the field on our way back from the market we fed them some vegetables or bread. The first time it was cucumbers.
The same day we saw the second cow we attended a local wedding. It was, like the graduation, very colorful and open. They had a huge buffet of traditional indian food and live entertainment, dancers. I couldn't believe how many people were there for the event! We had our picture taken with the bride and groom. The bride wore a bright red sari with gold trim. On our way home we drove through a small village and saw a fairly large group of people gathered around a television set outside, I guess it was movie night. It reminded me of the end of the movie Slumdog Millinaire where everyone was gathered around whatever TV they could find.
A couple of days before I left, Tanja and Habib and I got to take a tour of a rice factory in Mungeli. They had met the owner's son at the hospital eye camp before I arrived. The factory has two machines, both fairly old looking, one that produces/sorts 5 tons a day and the other which produces 10 tons a day. Only the smaller one was active when we visited. I've never seen so much rice in my life! There were huge mounds and bags of it everywhere. Afterwards we went to visit his house and meet his family. It was interesting to see the large gap between the rich and poor which exists even in a small village like Mungeli. The rice factory owner had a marble staircase in his house. We saw the son's "Bio-Data" sheet, which is pretty much his resume for finding a suitable bride for an arranged mariage. He said he will probably be married within a year; he's 23 years old.
I finally got to wear a sari for our going away party. We picked them up from the tailor in the afternoon and then helped with party preparations. Kavita and Chico helped cook. Kavita and Akibala helped Tanja and I put on our saris. It's so complicated I doubt I'll be able to recreate it effectively. It was a relaxed night. We all just ate and talked. Of course people brought us gifts even though we hadn't wanted any. The hospital staff was so kind to us duirng our whole stay. We got small gifts for them as well.
Tanja and Habib left the next morning and I hadn't expected to feel as lonely as I did. I was really glad to be leaving the next day. I'd hoped to get a good night's sleep for my trip home, but of course I encountered second near-monkey attack and first poisonous centipede encounter the night before I left. But I also got to see 20 or more monkeys on the wall outside our building migrate to a large tree at sunset and I got some great pictures. I hardly remember the trip home. I slept a lot and talked to lots of nice people on my plane rides. And when I got back I felt energized. I wanted to talk about everything and I was grateful to be eating beef for the first time in awhile, not to mention the fact that it was my mom's cooking!
I hadn't expected to feel so sad when I left Mungeli. I was certainly ready to come home, but as I was loading my bags into the jeep I got very nostalgic. I nearly cried when I said goodbye to Dr. Sonal. As I looked out at the vast dry plains around me I nearly wanted to stay there. I knew I'd miss the painted tree trunks and wandering, stubborn cows. And I do.
It's so hard to answer that simple question "How was India?" It's difficult to answer almost any question about my trip because nothing about India can be summed up. If I try to put a label on it or squeeze it into a few short stories, it'll just burst out of the mold I've pushed it into. If it weren't for my plethora of photos, I might think it was all a dream. Here in America, I'm comfortable and happy, but I miss never knowing what the new day will bring. It feels like maybe I got it all mixed up - my life at home is the dream, and India is the reality of life.
India is a largely undeveloped country, but it has potential. Mostly because of the kindness and resilience of its people. I saw that in my two weeks of travelling, but I saw it the most at Christian Hospital Mungeli. The people there truly accepted me and made me feel welcome. I saw it in the fact that children from 7 different religions can learn together in a classroom peacefully, can be friends. I never felt threatened in my time there, and even when I did, I later realized I was mistaken.
I can't wait to go back and see everything I didn't get a chance to see while I was there. I've been uploading pictures, slowly, of my time in India. So far, I've put up the photos of my first 6 weeks on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurynstravels
Enjoy!
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