A little something I like to call water.

You don’t think about how critical water is until you don’t have it. Apartment 4 Prafulla has not had running water for about four days. If I was living in chilly Ohio right now, not such a big deal, but I am not. Bathing is an essential part of my daily routine (or bi-daily). I had my language class on Tuesday night and due to some ridiculous traffic from a religious festival this week, I had to walk home. At about the 2 mile marker, I thought, “Showering will feel nice”. I mean, after my butt sweat post, there is no hiding my body’s efficiency in cooling itself, so let’s be honest. I needed a shower before the walk, but it was not meant to be…for another day and a half. But, you get creative. Anti-bacterial wipes can do wonders. Eventually, I showered at work and a friend’s house. Crazy, I know.

The most inconvenient aspects of not having water aren’t apparent at first. Initially, I would think, you can’t take a shower, but that is not all, my friend. That is not all. Dishes require water to be washed, and unwashed dishes are unpleasant after dinner, gross the next morning, and horrifying by 48 hours later. Toilets. Toilets require water. Now, I’ve lived in places where there wasn’t running water before, but they design toilets with that in mind. There are few things more repulsive than dirty western toilets. That smell that you can enjoy in the outhouses at soccer games doesn’t take as much time as you would expect to develop. Pretty much about 24 hours and you’ve got some good aromas festering.

All of these factors, body odor, rotting food, and human waste have combined to make life in our flat a treat. And yet, we’ve still managed to have two parties in the last 4 days. People just like us that much, and we have developed a system of saving flushes and locking the bathroom doors, plus saving some things for later. Oh yeah, and the water thing, completely inconsistent. It will come on for a few hours, during which we flush the toilets and do dishes quickly. I still haven’t managed to shower because, knowing my luck, I would just have lathered shampoo into my hair when the water would go out again. They say some pumps have broken in our area, so we don’t know when it will come back on, but you better believe that we will always keep a bucket of water filled from now on.

Butt Sweat

It has to be talked about eventually. It’s a fact of life…for some of us. Some more frequently than others.

I can’t remember ever really experiencing it before moving here. I mean, I understood the concept, but the reality…well, I don’t think you can really fully understand the reality until you seat check. You know what I’m talking about. The seat check. We’ve all done it, that is those of us with butt sweat. I ride auto rickshaws to work every day. It’s a long, hot, bumpy hour ride to work and, well, I sweat. When you’re the one in the right corner and everyone has to get out ahead of you, it’s about the closest thing to the walk of shame that I’ve known. The other passengers grumble as they climb out of the rickshaw, and then every eye is on you. On your seat, where they will be sitting, and, inevitably, on the back/butt sweat stains left behind. You can try lots of techniques to avoid embarrassment. Pray for shade (rarely works), the ole “slide and scooch”, or, old faithful, “turn and walk away quickly”. I usually do the latter.

The worst is in air conditioned, formal settings. I know. Even there? Even there. What is with the plastic covered cushions here? I have to say, though, like so many adversities in life, butt sweat is a blessing in disguise, and the blessing is gratefulness. There is nothing quite like seat checking and finding, to your profound relief, nothing. Nothing but sweat-free vinyl or plastic seating.

Fairies

I like how this city surprises me. Okay, sometimes I like how this city surprises me. I can live without the human feces on the side walk or the horrifying number of men I’ve seen urinating. But, I like how, walking down the streets, I can be in any number of worlds or centuries. Can see something that you can only, well, see here.

Peeking into a road side tea stall kitchen, you can see a voluptuous man, with his ‘vest’ (wife-beater) rolled up to his neck, slowly rubbing his expansive stomach. Next door, five men sit huddled around a coal fire with an anvil and hammer, beating metal by hand. One night, during a load shedding electricity outage, I saw people laying asphalt by hand, silouetted by the flames heating the asphalt.

I think most of all I like the little glimpses of beauty that catch me off guard (massive gut scratching not included) or the funny moments that make me smile. I ate pink cotton candy the other day. It was so hot it started to melt, so I had two choices. Let my cotton candy shrink before my eyes or inhale it. The choice was obvious. My tongue was hot pink.

The other day I saw a fat school kid scratching an even fatter street dog’s belly. There is a roll stand near where I work and a particular street dog lives by it. I remember taking my dog Chloe to the vet and having the vet direct our attention to a chart on the wall. The top left was a cartoon picture of a sad, emaciated dog with serious nutritional needs. The picture changed slightly from square to square as the dog’s weight improved until you reached the bottom right. Chloe’s square. The dog by the roll stand’s square. This square’s picture resembled a dog even less than the first. It looked like a sausage with toothpick legs that you would make on the 4th of July. I find the sausage dog by the roll stand to be fantastic advertising. Kind of like the pork shop that has pictures of piglets frolicking in a field of white flowers. Clip art is a beautiful thing.

So, I think I had some beautiful thoughts in mind when I titled this post “Fairies”, but what you get is fat belly scratching and sausage dogs, which is kind of like life here.

reading boxes

Instructions are such strange things, as are expiration dates. I noticed today that my vitamins are over 3 months expired, but what does that even mean? Best by…, so they’re still pretty good after. I throw the moldy ones out, but that happened even before expiry.

This afternoon, I decided to clean out the corner of the program room where chaos and frogs have taken over (seriously). I threw away trash, avoided stepping on frogs, and discovered some long lost purchases for the girls, including a 500 piece puzzle and animal shaped bracelets. I decided it would be fun for the girls to be able to work on the puzzle over the weekend, so I cut the box open.

Inside, there were four separate plastic bags with puzzle pieces. My only thought was, “This place is so funny about packaging”, which is true. I cut each bag with relish and dumped them back in the box. I brilliantly thought to put the top on the opposite way to straighten out the smashed corner, which is when I saw the picture on the front. Or should I say pictures. Four of them to be exact. My stomach dropped as I thought, “No, it’s not possible.” But there it was in English and French, “Four 500 piece puzzles”. Four 500 piece puzzles? One 500 piece puzzle would be a challenge for girls who have never completed a puzzle before, but 2,000 pieces from 4 similar puzzles mixed together? My only consolation is that they weren’t of winter scenes.

Some lines should never be crossed

The normal rules by which I am accustomed to humans and insects living don’t seem to apply here. Spiders stay in the corners of rooms. Ants come if there is food left out. Mosquitoes remain outdoors (for the most part). It’s just these little laws, these little structures around which I’ve built my perception of normal and my expectations of appropriate insect behavior. Spider on the neck=not appropriate. Cockroaches up the pant leg=nightmarish. Mosquitoes that live in toilets=unnatural and violating. I think most people would agree. There are just some places more convenient for discreet scratching than others. I remember discovering the toilet dwelling mosquitoes for the first time. I lost some piece of innocence that day which can never be restored. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but there’s a rage that rises up inside of me when insects behave outside of what I would consider appropriate boundaries. Cockroaches on my bed, mosquitoes in my toilet, centipedes in my bedroom. Not where they belong. It’s like those Highlights magazines in the dentist’s office. What doesn’t belong? I would pick these out in a line-up of spades and rakes any day.

culture shocking

(written awhile ago, but sort of still relevant…)

I did fairly well when I first came here. Nothing really bothered me about living here, besides the obvious things like the poverty. I actually genuinely enjoyed life, and pretty much from the beginning, I’ve wanted to extend my time here. Then June happened.

Apparently, culture shock is the worst at three months then again at around eleven months, and probably goes on from there. I couldn’t understand why I was struggling so much, why everything was bothering me when it never had before. It seemed if I was going to struggle with the culture, it would have happened early on. I guess not. Since everyday life is looking very different now, I’m also being exposed to a greater level of cultural differences, which probably isn’t helping the issue.

If you ever travel, use the following to help gauge your level of culture shock.

I have this crazy commute that seems to draw all hope for a brighter life right out of my soul. All that before 8:30 in the morning. Ok, to be honest, the morning commute really isn’t that bad. It’s long, but I enjoy the short naps I get in the back of the autos. It’s the ride home after a long day of cultural and lingual miscommunications that either crushes me or significantly depletes my emotional reserves.

The horns. I don’t even know where to start with them. Every variety of rhythm (you may not have known that they can be installed with programmed melodies…just for future reference), volume, and length. I thought I had fantasies about destroying them when I first moved here. Now, I have to actually restrain myself sometimes.

The number of men I’ve seen urinating is distressing. The median, really? I miss being ignorant about some things. Dead or dying animals, the horns, the exhaust in the auto, the halted traffic, the horns, the exhaust, the horns.

The good thing about culture shock is its normal. I felt really guilty for the first few weeks. It felt like somehow I was betraying my friends by struggling with life here. If I was meant to be here, if I was connected to God’s will for my life, then I should love everything all the time with a smile. Not so. Sometimes loving something, even a place, is a choice. Sometimes, I have to breathe deeply five or six times and remind myself that the man driving my auto is not trying to be the last person I ever see on this earth, he’s just trying to make a living, and quickly. The bus driver that jerks and halts suddenly is not hell bent on making me fall over, he just had his brakes replaced (okay, that one is a bit of a stretch). The horns are not directed at making my life miserable, but just something to be ignored, or drowned out. (there’s a challenge for Bose) I have to force myself at those crucial moments of near cracking to pry open my eyes and look at the world around me again. See the prayer flags. Notice the funny political graffiti. Watch the chubby children in school uniforms walk with their moms. Imagine all the different forms of hovering air crafts you could invent.

converted. completely.

I have never been a fan of the Lonely Planet. I’ve always sort of been repulsed by the tourists that walk around clutching it to their chests like a life line to sanity. I think it came to a point when we were sitting in a cute cafe on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi and there was a Lonely Planet on every single table. Every table.

I never understood the intrigue, what they offered, but now, now I know. They offer the world. I hugged my Lonely Planet like a child as we flew to Sikkim last week. After 3 horribly unproductive days in Delhi, I was finished. I wanted to know where to stay, where to eat, what to see, how much it should cost to get there, and all the other things I didn’t know to ask. Basically, I wanted a Lonely Planet and didn’t know it. That purchase was the best one I’ve made in months. (I swear I’m not getting paid to say that) We’re in Nepal at the moment and I feel lost. Where do we eat? Where do we stay? How do we get around? It’s really not that bad because it’s honestly much easier here, but I’m just saying. Consider taking a gander at a Lonely Planet before your next trip.

missing steps

I like how predictably unpredictable life is here. How every day could really go any number of different directions. How sitting down to get a SIM card would take maybe 5 minutes in other parts of the world but resembles the application process for a gun license here. How the guy working at the store offering to help set your phone up is really just taking your number and plans to text and call multiple times in the coming days. How somehow a proof of residency is mandatory for an internet connection, but for just Rs. 500, their lawyers can write one up for you. (sorry, how is that proof?) How no matter how many times I climb up the steps I can still miss one.

I was going to a coffee meeting with a colleague and good friend, Priyanka, (crazy how normal life can be here). I had switched up my foot gear because monsoon had started to settle in and my birks fall apart if they get soaked (you can only apply super glue so many times). Apparently, my chacos are noticeably heavier than my usual foot wear because as we climbed onto the bus to go to a nearby Barista, I simply sat on the step. It was less like falling and more like my body said, “Oops, sorry, we don’t feel like doing that right now.” Everyone on the bus sat up and cried out together, “Oh madam, madam, watch your step, go slowly, go slowly.” Priyanka and I walked on, sat down and then just started laughing. I think she felt bad, so she waited until I did and then couldn’t stop. Throughout the rest of the day one or both of us would start laughing just thinking about it. I don’t know how well I’m explaining it, but it was just odd. I sat on the bus step.

Adventurers

My siblings and I are epic planners of nothing successful. I guess that could be partly us and partly trying to get around in this country. We bought the necessary train and plane tickets to go to Ladakh (a northwestern region that has been tragically flooded recently) and ended up fiddling around in Delhi for a few days without even seeing the Taj Mahal. We bought the train tickets and then forgot to set our alarms. We are those people. Those people who are within reasonable distance of something incredible and famous and sleep in.

We did manage to get ourselves to Sikkim and even ventured out of our guest house a few different times. Caleb got a pretty bad cold in Delhi (could be the walk in the pouring rain), so we didn’t get very far. But honestly, even though traveling for a month with my siblings came with dreams of camel rides and mountain treks, it was fine with me that we sat with cup after cup of milk tea while playing Settlers of Catan with the owner’s son. I needed rest and just being fits us better than a bunch of crazy activities.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on talking them into bungee jumping and paragliding in Nepal. If you’re going to do something crazy, you might as well do something that if it goes wrong, it goes really, really wrong.

Sweaty White Guy

My family is here visiting. Colleen, my older sister by three years even though everyone that meets her thinks she is younger, and Caleb, my little brother that is at least a foot and half taller than I am, arrived a week and a half ago. I’m realizing that we aren’t planners. We also aren’t city people. We are sit in the quiet people. We are rural, the more space between you and the next person the better people. Over Christmas, the whole family met in London for two weeks. I think we successfully discovered every Starbucks in the city and played Scrabble in at least half of them. Life in my city here has been a treat. Optional side walks, loose interpretations of traffic lanes and signals, and crowded markets all mixed with monsoon weather.

On Wednesday, a week after they arrived, I decided it was time for a little greenery. A park near where I work has two beautiful tree-lined lakes. We went for a stroll after enjoying my daily ritual of a mango shake (I like to think of it as a smoothie). I could tell something was different as the park was conspicuously lacking the typical umbrella shielded couples which fill all the benches on an average morning, rain or shine. In their place were large professional grade lights and cameras. In short, my destiny was waiting for me.

We walked past the Bollywood crew, trying, with little success, to prevent our star quality from oozing out of our pores. We didn’t try hard enough. We (I use that term loosely, you can read “I”) were approached by the director to see if we’d be willing to star in the next big blockbuster Bollywood movie coming out next spring. Since we were leaving on Sunday, we had to say no. The man was heartbroken, but we managed to assuage his disappointment by volunteering  to walk through the background of several key scenes. Try to contain your jealousy. We were awesome. Look for us (two girls and a sweaty white guy) in the back of the lake scene of “Michael”. It’s going to be huge.