true life planet

I’ve just gotten off the phone with the Sisters at Daya Dan in Calcutta…I had called tonight with the intention of wishing a certain little boy, Mongol, Happy Birthday.

But before Mongol got on the phone, I spoke to one of the sisters and found out that the little boy I would like to adopt has run away. Not from the Sisters, but to them.

You see , he’s at a special school run by brothers and he’s several hours from Calcutta. There was apparently a problem with another boy, who is also deaf/mute, who is about to be adopted. He is Mitune’s age, or a bit older. He was taunting Mitune with this information and Mitune got upset.

He apparently ran away last week, but returned the same day. Now he’s done it a second time, and he’s been missing for several days.

Mitune is a smart boy, and I think he has some street smarts–or can gain them pretty quickly. Still, If he decides to stay out on the street, he’s in for a very difficult life.

The sisters think he is lost, afraid , alone.

We hope he can find his way back to his school. We hope he is safe.

Please light a candle for this boy, please say a prayer for him.

After hearing the news about Mitune, I had to switch to singing “Happy birthday to you” to Mongol, who giggled and laughed and was happy. Mongol has a form of degenerative muscular dystrophy (as does his sister) and when I left the orphanage several  months ago he was quite ill with a respiratory infection. He sounded so much better and I felt really blessed to talk with him. You never know how long these kids have.

He asked Binoy, the mischevious austistic boy I worked with to come over to the phone and Binoy did! And he giggled and said, “Amy, I love you. I miss you. ” Binoy doesn’t say stuff like that. It was a really nice moment.

I promised them I’d call back in a month. And I swore up and down that yes, I really will be there in December. Of course I will. These boys have my heart.

I would do anything for them.

Please light a candle for Mitune or send him some positive encouragement. He is a lost boy in a big world.

gigi 

Part two of a series, from my journals during my time in India..

It’s midnight. I’ve just come back, by taxi, to my hotel room.

I went to work this mornng, then returned to the hospital afterwards, and just spent 7 hours there.

Seven hours that absolutely nothing was accomplished in.

I am beyond frustrated. I am beyond understanding what kind of system is in place here, where a man can not get even simple care or tests.

I am wanting to leave this place. I hate it here. It makes no sense.

But I’ll start at the beginning:

I was supposed to meet a few of the Indian men that took our sick man to the hospital with me last night at the hospital.

They never showed up.

One man, the clothing designer, sent one of his workers in his place. So it was just this one guy, who spoke terrible English and excellent Hindi..and me, who spoke excellent English and little Hindi..trying to make sense of it all.

Our patient, when we arrived, was still in his spot on the floor. He looked about the same, except his hand and arm that were attached to his IV drip were extremely swollen and no one seemed to care. His bedpan was full to the brim, and some one had placed the remains of their lunch in it as well. Cockroaches ran across his legs and he had defecated in his pants.

There were still no beds. Maybe one has to wait for another person to die around here to get a bed.

It’s late afternoon when we arrive. I’ve brought gloves and masks, but the Indian man I’m with refuses them. He says it will make the other patients–and ours–feel like they are sick. They are! You can hear the tuberculosis cough here…I’m here to help, but I really feel the mask is important for me and my health(as are the gloves) so I put them on.

There are two nurses walking around with a rusty cart wth plastic cups and IV bags, wearing white just past the knee uniforms and little caps. They look out of place next to all of the women wearing saris and veils and headscarfs. They aren’t wearing gloves. I offer up mine, since it looks like they need them.

They shake their heads. They don’t want them. Suddenly, a burly fat man shows up, and says in perfect English, “I’ll take them.” Thinking he is an orderly, I hand them over. He looks like he needs them, as his gloves are worn out and full of holes.

A few minutes later, he shows up (without the gloves I’ve just given him..perhaps he has to save them? Or maybe he has sold them?) and a ladder, a can of paint, and a request..he’s apparently a painter and they are painting the hospital. Actually, they are painting the area exactly where our patient is lying on the ground in the hallway.

I protest, but it’s not heard and they dragour guy a little away from the wall, sloshing nto his bedpan and spilling it on his bloated arm. They slap some paint on the wall, white paint, getting drips and flecks onto not only our patient and his meager bedding , but on to us.

I guess they are painting the walls because they don’t clean them–the walls are covered with stains and grease marks and brownish red flecks and bodily fluids.

We try to find a bed, but there isn’t one.

We are desperate for a bed because not only is he on the floor, by our patient is either having seizures or fighting any treatment–and they have him tightly tied with bits of rag to whatever they can tie him to. It’s all above him, so his hands and legs are tied up into the air. He’s so tightly tied that it’s caused severe edema in his legs and arms. They are bloated up like little water balloons. He must be in so much pain.

We manage to pay someone to empty the bedpan. I don’t even know where to empty it, anyway. Someone comes with hot water and I give him another sponge bath. He seems to delight in the simple task and he attempts to communicate with me but it’s all a jumble of words.

I’ve got the problem of taking off his pants, to clean him. Women–even foriegners, visiting a sick patient, in the hospital, well… they don’t do that here.

I’ve got an audience as well–this time, more than 25 people surround me as I try to delicately bathe him and talk to him, trying to sooth him. He’s very agitated at times and is upset to be tied up, so we untie him. Poor man.

It’s finally decided that the Indian man with me will change his pants. People continueto stare at this process, like it’s a circus sideshow, until my friend gets so upset that they scurry away. They still peer over to survey the scene, but they do manage to give the man enough time to change his pants before returning to their old spots, only a fe wfeet away from us.

It seems everything we are doing is fascinating. People have left the bedsides of their family memebers to come over and gawk, although mostly they are pretty nice. Alot of the “namaste” greeting is going back and forth  between me and all of them. As soon as one person leaves the crowd, they return with another at their side, pointing, looking, whispering. But most are smiling, the women in particular.

We are waiting for the doctor. They say he will be here in a few more hours. We’ve got three hours to go. Meanwhile, all our patient has had are two aspirin and a drip IV.

We try to pay for a bed–a little bakeesh, but no one’s buying it. He may be stuck on the floor for another night.

There’s hardly any room to even sit and crouch, Indian-style, on the floor. Someone finds a dirty white plastic chair for me and I sit in that, waiting.

A man comes out of one of the large rooms, speaking perfect English, walking with a tank of oxygen. He knows me, he says. From Sudder street. (That’s where I live.)

He sells bamboo flutes on the street to the tourists.

I remember him , now..he walks around with a tall tree like tower of flutes, playing different ones.

“Why are you here? ” , I ask him, pointing to the oxygen tank.

It’s the pollution, he says. Plus he has TB, he says, coughing.

Note to self: Do not buy bamboo flutes from street vendors as souvenirs.

But he’s got something else to tell me. “Your friend needs a bed.”, he says, gesturing at the sick man on the floor next to me. And he proceeds to tell me a strange solution to our problem…

First, I find someone who is doing badly, in a bed, maybe with family.

I offer money to them. To help pay for expenses, I should say.

Then, when the patient dies, our man gets the bed. The family will come over and tell us and we quickly switch the patients. The other family is happy, because funerals are very expensive, he says. You are happy because your man is in a bed and he’s comfortable.

The man leaves, and with an interpreter I talk it over with my Indian friend. We agree to do it. His boss has given him plenty of money for bakeesh paying–why not give it to a family instead of a bunch of corrupt doctors, orderlies, and officials? Makes sense.

He comes back, smiling. Errand accomplished. It’s only a matter of time, he says.

I feel strange, waiting for one man to die so we can take his bed. But India is like that, it’s always strange. Whatever ethical code I have at home doesn’t really apply here. It doesn’t work.

About a half hour or hour goes by…we’re just sitting there, with our man. He stares at us, we put a cool rag on his forehead. He’s still delirious.

I’m struggling with this when a young girl comes out. She talks to my friend. Apparently, it’s her father in that other bed. (Her father? How can that be? She looks to be no more than 10 years old, and that man in the bad looks 80.) He’s gone, she says.

We do a quick switch, placing the dead man on the floor and putting our man in his bed. There’s no sheet changing here.

The bed is dirty and the rickety side table has little brown roaches all over it. A cat is under the bed, eating something brownish.

Our man seems happier, lying on a bed.

We sit and wait for the doctor. And wait. And wait. One never comes.

Meanwhile, I survey the scene around us.

Directly to the right is a young man with a lump on his head and very thin. Someone says he’s had a head injury. He never speaks and hardly moves. His father lies on the bed with him, lying the opposite direction, occasionally trying to get the man to sit up and use the bedpan.

On the other side is a very old man. He looks greyish yellow. They say he’s got malaria andgoodness knows what else. He looks at least 70 but I discover that he is 31. His pregnant wife and small children sit on the bed for hours, doing nothing, just sitting there. The smallest boy has  a bloated stomach and plays with scraps of a potato chip package and bits of other trash on the floor. They look hungry and all the kids have enormous head for their bodies. The tiniest one, a young baby..has baby fat but it’s not the good kind, it’s the kind very poor people’s children have from a bad diet. The mother looks absolutely exhausted.

Across from us, a woman lies on a bed, staring dully towards us but seeing nothing. I’ve no idea what’s wrong with her, except that occasionally she shrieks and yells, and they’ve tied her to the bed. I think she’s gone mad. I don’t blame her.

There’s another man, he’s the worst off of any person in the room. He’s near the top half of his bed, small, dark brown, his skin stretched over his bones..You can see every bone. It’s like he’s been dried or something and he’s in the fetal position. Every once in awhile he makes a small cry. No one is with him –he is alone, brought in here to die. He has no IV, it’s gone past that. It is difficult for me to see him as a human being, because he doesn’t look like any human being I have ever seen. Yet he is.

I feel my humanity so much right now. I feel overwhelmed by it. I feel the effect of what our actions have on one another. My God. It is almost too much to feel, to see, to know this.

I consider what responsibility I have in the situation all these people find themselves in. Are we not all connected? Are we not all brothers?

I want to help every single person in this room. There are hundreds of them. Every single person looks at me with dull eyes and I feel for all of them. I feel broken into a million pieces.

But there is little I can do. ..if I walk around, holding hands or showing care, they will think I am a doctor or a nurse. And I am not. And they will not understand. They will think since I am from America that I have special skills, special knowledge. Besides, if I leave my patient, and the doctor comes, we miss our chance for him to get help.

I end up helping a few patients near our man’s bed. They have edema so badly and they are in terrible pain, so I suggest they elevate their limbs. Their families know nothing of basic medical care, and are surprised when awhile later,  their patients edema improves.

A food cart comes around, with two big pots and some tin plates. They look like pie tins, they are the kind of plates that the orphanage uses and people on the street. A dirty, unkempt man with hennaed reddish hair and a greasy beard slops some rice and dal onto a plate, hands to the person sitting next to the patient…the family members don’t use spoons, they just feed them with their hands.

Our man isn’t hungry. In fact, he’s worse than he was awhile ago.

There’s a woman who is on a bed alone, and the man serving the food has set it down next to her. Her plate sits untouched.

She’s so weak, she can’t move. She plaintively asks for help. She uses her eyes. No one helps her. She seems to have TB.

Finally, after about 15 minutes go by, a woman feeding a man near her reaches over and gives her a few handfuls of food. The woman alternates between the man shes feeding and the woman, using the same hand, pushing the food into their mouths with her fingers. She takes a few bits  for herself, stuffing them intoher mouth in between feeding the other two. She’s not wearing gloves.

It’s 11 pm. The doctor isn’t coming. They say try tomorrow. Meanwhile, they won’t order a test or give us anything to help him–not even aspirin.

I go home by taxi, having to argue with the taxi man because he won’t use a meter.

What’s wrong with people here? If everyone is only thinking about themselves, no one gets anything.

But I guess it’s no different than at home. There is just alot more on the line here. At home every one is only thinking of themselves, too. It’s unusual to meet someone who isn’t.

I’m so tired. I feel so bleak.

I’ve got to get some sleep. If I can sleep that is. The images of that place are all that is in my mind.

gigi

Journal entry from India. This one about trying to save a life. PART ONE

This entry, and the ones that will directly follow it may not be appropriate for kids.

I’ve been walking by this guy now for everyday over a week. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel drawn to him. I find myself looking for him everyday, going out of my way to walk down the street that he’s always lying on, searching for him on whatever piece of sidewalk he’s decided to be on that day.

In Calcutta, things  aren’t normal. My normal. Meaning, if there’s a person on the sidewalk, you don’t ask them how they are. You don’t buy them a bottle of water or hand them a wad of wrinkled dollar bills from the bottom of your purse. You don’t hand them gift certificates to Mac Donald’s. That’s the kind of stuff we do at home.

Sometimes at home we even stop and offer to share a cup of coffee. I do, anyway.

Maybe though most of the time at home–we just drive by. We just turn our car radio on louder, we just avert our eyes, we just think about how hard our life is so we avoid seeing some else as a human being.

I think here, in Calcutta, it’s a lot like that last scenario. People are keeping busy, just surviving themselves–and sometimes even when they’re doing  really well, they don’t help either.

There are so many people on the street here–sick, dying, coughing, drunk, high, half naked, lying on a piece of cardboard, a torn blanket or bit of sari pulled over their face–that you almost have to tune it out. You’d never  get down the sidewalk, you’d never leave the street you were walking on, you’d never eat. Maybe thats the point, that all of us should stop all ths moving and scurrying and so on . But we don’t.

It feels impossible.

The sisters have advised us to not help anyone that is on the street, because it’s very complicated to do that. I’m about to find out just how complicated it is.

So I’ve been walking down this street everyday, twice a day, for a week, and I find myself searching for this one man everytime. Looking at him makes me so sad that I don’t think I can put the image of him out of my mind.

He’s small. He looks like a tiny boy, but he’s a man, with greying hair at his temples and a grizzled beard. His face is completely sunken and his eyes are wide, open, windows to something I don’t know anything about and I’m scared to death of. He’s got the expression of a child but the eyes of something else.

His clothes–what there are of them–are worn out. Just rags really, A very threadbare pair of trousers, like dress pants, tied with a bit of rope. A plaid shirt, at one time it had buttons. No shoes, and gnarled feet and hands.

He’s very dark, almost black, and this makes his eyes stand out even more.

He’s on the sidewalk everyday. Every time I walk by him and I see him curled up in the fetal position, dying.

People tell me that there is nothing I can do. I don’t know if that is true, but I do that he is one of thousands in this city. I do know that it’s getting cold at night soon here, and that the people like him are going to start dying like flies. I walk by at least a dozen people like him a day. Sometimes a hundred. Sometimes even children, little starving babies, skinny limbed and big headed, giving me blank glassy stares from their cardboard beds on the sidewalk.

Every person I see in need, oh my God. How it bothers me, overwhelms me, dismays me, challenges me, softens me….

But for some reason, this particular man, his situation, it just really bothers me.

I can’t stop thinking about him, and I have trouble eating meals of late because my mind is on him.

I keep thinking to myself, “How come I was born where I was, with the advantages I have had, and he got this life?” It just seems so strange, impossible really. I can’t think of any particular aspect of myself or my character that allows me to have deserved more than someone else. I think in alot of ways, I’m pretty average. Why is it I’ve got the life I’ve got and he’s got the life he’s got? I can’t make sense of it.

I wonder  what his life would have been like, if he’d had a chance.

Two days later….

The man I’ve been looking a everyday was suddenly on the other side of the street this morning. His shirt is gone, and someone’s put a ratty blanket on him.

My friend Serena and I walk by the guy on the sidewalk tonight. He’s still there, but he looks worse. Alot worse. I wonder if he’s dead or if he’s breathing. I’m afraid to get too close, so we’re sort of leaning in towards him and he is breathing, but  one can’t hear it–you have to look really close at his body to see it gently rise up and down with his breaths.

We wonder if he’s alright, and we talk about it aloud, when an Indian man walks by and says, “He’s fine. Don’t concern yourself with him.” So we keep walking.

I come back down the street on my own. It’s hours later, it’s very late and its quite dark. it’s about 10 pm, and see a crowd of people near the man on the sidewalk.

I venture closer.

The man has lost all of his clothes at this point, and he’s feverish, he’s stiff, like in a ball.

His eyes are wide, frightened, and the white part stares out at us but he doesn’t seem to see anything at all. He seems glazed over.

Everyone seems to be of the opinion that he is about to die. No one knows what to do about it.

Everyone is wondering how long he’s been there. I offer up that I’ve been walking by him for over a week. This upsets some of the crowd, who ask me why I have not done anything to help him.

“What could I do? “, I ask. They’ve all been walking by him everyday, too. Why didn’t they do anything?

They are all Indian. I am the only tourist, the only white person.

“You have money. You can travel. You should have taken him to the hospital.”, says one man, standing next to his wife who is dripping in gold and diamonds and an expensive sari. (It turns out the sick man on the sidewalk is laying in their driveway so they cannot open the gate to back out their car.)

Eventually the crowd disappears, leaving 4 men and myself. It’s about midnight now.

It’s two hours for them all to decide what to do. The whole time they are arguing and trying to decide, the man lays dying. I’m standing there, wondering if I should leave, but they keep insisting I should stay. So I do. I don’t know how I can help. I don’t know if I should go anywhere with four men I don’t know in the middle of the night. But all of these fears seems ridiculous and insane and I set them aside.

When they finally decide to take the man to a hospital, they then have the problem of finding a taxi that will agree to take the man there. The sick man is very ill, covered in feces and crawling with vermin.

We finally find a taxi, put him inside the back seat with 3 of the men who want to help–while I get in the front with the driver and another 4th man, who speaks some English.

3 hours later, we haven’t been able to find a place for him. No one will take him.

This is the opposite of what I had been told–that all healthcare is public and free and available to those who are in need. (West Bengal is Communist, after all–isn’t that supposed to mean everybody gets a share of the pot? Guess what..It doesn’t. Far from it.). Yet every place we go to has some excuse why they can’t take him.

I’d like to stop for a moment and explain that there are fine private hospitals in the city. It is only the public ones that are horrific balls of red tape and inefficiency.

We end up taking him to the police station. They tell us that they will take him, but that as soon as we leave, they’ll just put him back out on the street. They literally will just take him and dump him somewhere.

We get back into the taxi. We’ve got the taxi guy on own side now. He doesn’t even want to charge us for the fare at this point, he just wants to help us find a place for this guy so he can go home to his wife and kids and go to sleep.

The sick man stinks-of feces, of vomit, of dirtiness, of general ill health. That smell death has before it actually happens. The man has a fever, he’s delirious, he’s mumbling but none of it can be understood. He has no idea where he is or what’s going on. He’s pooped all over  the dirty blanket, his pants..it’s run down his legs into the cab floor onto the other guy’s shoes.

I feel like all of me is crying out that no one should be treated this way. He is a human being.

And then I remember where I am. There are so many people living here that some people don’t get treated like human beings. Actually, alot of people don’t get treated like human beings.

Or maybe, this is how human beings treat each other..just here, it’s more apparent, because it’s life and death every moment, while back in the States we kill each other off little by little by only thinking about ourselves.

We don’t know what to do. The guy that speaks some English is talking to me, he’s sitting in the front seat and he’s almost crying. He’s saying that he doesn’t know what to do. He’s never tried to help anyone off the street before. Everyone says not to do it. It’s just not done, he says.

I’m trying to understand that. I guess it’s all relative. If there are that many people dying on your front door, and you go out and feed them all, clothe them all, clean them all, house them all..you won’t have anything for your own family.

I see the logic, but it’s different when you’re sitting next to a dying person, who you ust want to give a little dignity to.

We all end up praying. There’s nothing else we can do on our own. Everyone’s a different faith, so everyone takes a turn..the Muslim taxi driver, the Jainist lawyer, the Hindu shopkeeper, the Christian clothes designer..and me.

What a weird moment. But it was good, just different.

We decide to try one more hospital. It’s not the worst public hospital in the city, but it’s second worst.

We go in and explain the situation. After much bakeesh-paying, they agree to take him.

We go out and find the taxi. We’ve brought a rotting rusty metal gurney that looks like it came out a trash heap (it probably did) and we load our patient on to it. In India, if you go to a public hospital, you have to put your patient on a gurney. There’s no staff standing around waiting to help you  do anything.

The gurney is missing a wheel, so one of the guys carries that side, while the rest of us wheel it into the admitting room.

There’s no paperwork on the guy, we don’t know his name or his history or what’s wrong with him. For everything we don’t know, we pay money to them. Getting him to be seen costs money, getting him a space to lie costs money, getting anything costs money.

They don’t have  bed. They are all full.

They tell us to take him to another building. He can lie on the floor in the hallway, they say.

On our way out, we walk by a young man on a makeshift pallet, his arm dangling and blood all over him and he’s screaming and then he just goes limp, like a dishrag, suddenly. He’s dead.

Am I breathing?

I’m reeling from that when a woman is carried in by her family. She’s not alive but maybe her baby is–she’s died during childbirth. It’s a gory, messy scene and the child she was carrying is not alive. They figure all this out right in the hallway, it’s done right there, right in front of us, there is no time, the family has gotten her here after a long time through Calcutta traffic, the staff… they have only the most basic of equipment…there’s no one to save.

Her family is all there and they look dark, ashen, confused. No one makes a sound, no one cries, it’s just nothing. Nothing.

This is not real, I tell myself. Not real.

A man is brought in with a huge wound a gash on his side, and he stares at us glassy eyed and bleak.

All of this happens in ten  or fifteen minutes, while we are making our way down the hallway. But it’s in slow motion, like a movie.

I’m white as a sheet says one of the men I’m with. I feel like I’m floating, like I’m going to faint. But then I remember why I am here and what needs to get done, and tell myself, pull it together. This moment is not about me, it’s about everyone else.

I’m fine, I say. Let’s do this.

We take him there, on the unwieldy gurney, dodging huge groups of people in all of the walkways outside. It seems like people are permanently camped out here. Whole families are sleeping, eating, and even cooking. (It turns out that they basically are living there. The entire family comes with the patient, lives there on the grounds or in the same area as the patients hospital bed.)

We go into the building they tell us to. Every one is staring at me as I am white and a giantess. And I am in a totally Indian hospital. There are no tourists here. Tourists do not bring patients here. It isn’t done.

The only space for him is in a hallway. Every single scrap of space has a person in it. there is not a single bed empty, some even have two patients in them.

We find a space for him in the hall. He’s next to a man who suddenly dies, with a final rasping sound, a death rattle from hs throat, and who lies there, dead, until one of the guys I’m with takes off his scarf and places it over the man’s face. The man who died is the skinniest man I have ever seen.

A woman comes in to the hall, wailing over the man. She’s equally skinny. It seems impossible to me that such a skinny woman could make so much noise…I don’t know how she has the energy for all of her sadness. She looks like she will just slip away any moment. She’s taken away by an equally skinny daughter, who consoles her as they take away the dead man’s body.

As soon as his body is gone, another patient is brought in to fill that spot. They don’t clean it or mop it or anything, just place the man on his bedsheet and place his meager bundle next to him and his family settles in, setting up housekeeping.

It’s filthy. Cockroaches are everywhere, already crawling on us, up my legs , under my pants. I try not to think about it. I don’t really think of anything actually. The whole scene is so shocking that I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s kind of what I imagine hell to be like.

I am on automatic.

There are four people in each part of the hallway, each one alloted about 5.5 feet by less than 2 feet. There’s no room to stretch out, as they use the  hallway to bring patients in and out of the actual rooms with the beds, and sometimes even dead people are brought down the hall, on a gurney if there is one, or dragged on a blanket, wrapped in a sheet if there isn’t one.

There are rats, brownish big ones, with long tails, not even trying to hide or scurry but, instead, slowing eating their way thru the piles of garbage that are on the floors, around the patients, the beds. The bedpans serve as both urninals and places for food leftovers, and a few cats are eating from them.

I go into the room with the beds and it’s pretty horrible, too. It’s the dirtiest place I’ve ever seen. All of the patients stare at me. Some think I am a doctor, and motion me to their beds, others turn away from me if they can. I am followed by a large crowd.

The smell is overwhelming, horrifying.

Men and women are all mixed together in the room, there are no dividing curtains. It’s just a big room, packed with beds not more than a few feet apart, IV drip stands everywhere, litter on the floor, cockraches runing across the sheets. People with every ailment are thrown together..TB …broken legs … old age ..head injuries.. those who need kidney transplants.. new amputees … HIV ..typhoid…malaria…with you name it. All in one room. Room after room, hallway after hallway, all filled over with needy people and dirtiness and such squalidness that I can’t believe this is happening on the same planet that I inhabit.

It is a reality check of the most extreme.

I think of all the people at home, wondering if I will tell them about this place. I decide not to–at least for awhile, I’ll wait until it’s not so fresh, so real, so startling.

But back to the problem of our sick man and getting his immendiate needs met..

The only helpers are ones the sick and dying have brought with them–you bring  a family member to take care of you in the hospital! (Even the private hospitals do this!)

We don’t have  a helper, we don’t know what to do. There’s only one choice: we hire one of the “unofficial” helper guys that loiter around the hospital to help us, make sure our guy is taken care of. These guys are corrupt beyond belief, and I don’t know we are going to bother as he’ll just disappear the moment we are gone. But we have no choice.

It’s 4:30 am now. I sit on the floor next to out patient. There’s no where else to sit. I touch our patient, stroking his forehead. Whatever part of me that was repulsed by his dirtiness and the smell has melted away, and I almost feel like I am out of my body, really.

I ask for a clean bed pan and give him a sponge bath.  I’ve tied my scarf over my face, but I haven’t any gloves. It’s probably the first bath he’s had in a long time. He’s still glassy looking and feverish and we fight to get him a few pills to bring his fever down. It takes one hour to have those pills brought over to us. One hour.

I spend the hour hand picking lice out of his hair, with a crowd watching me in amazement and smiling at me. I’m smiling, too, but I have no idea why.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I stop thinking about my reaction to everything and just start being who I need to be for this moment. It’s moment by moment.

Someone finds a clean shirt and we put it on him. He gets an IV drip and already seems to have improved slightly. But maybe I just want him to improve.

We make arrangements to all meet back there in the afternoon and check on him and see if we can help him further.

I’m so tired, I can’t think. But I need to go home and take a cold water bucket shower, change out of these clothes…before heading to the orphanage in a few hours…

What a long night. I’ve had a whole glimpse of a reality that I’ve heard about, seen at a distance, but never was really inside. I feel turned inside out and upside down and my whole world just changed, in one night, forever.

I don’t know what will happen next.

gigi

end of PART ONE

It’s been three days since I finally set some boundaries with the ex, and I’m proud and happy to say, I’ve still got them.

It’s  not my style to get angry. But, I can see that is something that I needed to change.

A new friend of mine said the other day, “There is how the we want the situation to be. And then, there’s how it actually is.” He made a good point, and I took it to heart.

There is how I wish things could be, and then there’s how things are–and they are opposite of one another.

A good lesson for me to learn.

So three days later, I’m sleeping well for the first time since I returned home. I’m eating healthy meals. I’m feeling more cheerful and in high spirits.

It’s amazing to me how my saying, “That is enough.” has made such a tremendous impact on my day to day life.

When I find myself worrying or fretting about the other person, I just say a prayer for them and move on.

Meanwhile, I realized that during my trip I became a very goal-oriented person. I do well with BIG goals and I love trying to meet my own expectations. So I’ve spent some time thinking about some big goals I can accomplish.

One thing abut coming home is that I gained 10 pounds in the last month. I think I was pretty sedentary, lying around, resting, recovering from travel -related illnesses..and let’s face it, eating every kind of food I had missed on my trip..they don’t have Ruffles potato chips in India!

So I decided to sign up for a walking marathon. When I was walking the Camino de Santiago, I met alot of people who had done these to preare for the Camino. (I, on the other hand, had done nothing!). There are walking marathons all over the country, and they are generally about 26.2 miles.

In order to prepare for one, you have to train.

So that’s what I’ll be spending alot of time doing!

One thing I really missed in India, was that, as a woman, I couldn’t really walk anywhere. Women didn’t do that. (The one time I did, I got a dose of air pollution that was so bad that I lost my voice.)

So something I’ve been missing is the level of strength I had after finishing the Camino. My goal will be to regain that strength.

The training schedule for waling a marathon is pretty grueling..especialy if you haven’t done any exercise for awhile. But I’m starting out at the “beginner” level, so I’ll take it slow.

There are a few walking marathons near where I live in California this year-there are also a few in other places I’d like to go to, like Hawaii and international locations. There are so many that I can choose something which won’t be too hard. I hope!

I’ve also begun a few paintings, and decided to build a silkscreening table to see if I can make some silksceens that are inspired by my travels to decorate my house.

I’ve got to refresh my Spanish, and I’ve promised the boys at the orphanage that I will speak basic Hindi by the time I return in December. !!!!!! (I’d better get started!)

I started working on my resume…how do I describe the last few years? I think it will take me some time to describe the skills I have learned!

I started going through the photos of Panama, to see if there really was enough material for a book, and if I was inspired enough to do the project. And I decided that there are eough photos, and that I am inspired enough, too.

An friend of mine told me the other day that although he was inspired by all the things I had done on my trip, but that he thought he would end up being more surprised by what I would end up accomplishing in the next five years. He thought the trip was just a stepping stone. I think he was right.

Here’s hoping that everything that has come to pass in the last month and a half motivates me further and further..towards all of my goals.

I know that if I could make the trip a reality, I can make other big things..that seem impossible sometimes!..a reality, too!

I feel soooo much better. And it’s only been three days!

love to all, gigi

A lemon revolution……… 

Oh boy. Where to begin.

Well, I’ll tell you all something. Of late, my life has had alot of lemons.

There were so many that I was trying to put on a happy face, be industrious, and make as much lemonade as possible.

Suddenly I found myself in a scene similiar to that famous ” I Love Lucy” show where Ethel and Lucy are in a candy factory on the assembly line…the candy keeps coming, faster and faster. They can’t pack the boxes anymore, it’s coming so fast, so they are stuffing it wherever they can. It ends in disaster, of course.

Life is kind of like that too. Sometimes so much is coming at you that you can’t do much and you end up buried under what ever is coming your direction.

Of course, Lucy and Ethel got buried under a pile of chocolates. I got buried under alot of other things.

I have been doing well, trying to deal with each day one day at a time. That’s the best way to manage everything right now. And life’s been good. …I’ve got great friends, a wonderful place to live, and wonderful projects to work on, as well as a strong spiritual life.

Then suddenly, I lost it all. A downpour of lemons, in form of love gone wrong.

Such grief, such sadness. There are no words to describe that feeling.

Even though I have moved on in alot of places in my life, it’s still fresh, and I kept getting pulled back into that pit. Not often, mind you, but often enough.   I knew it was in the way –almost a physical roadblock–to the rest of my life and goals coming into fruition.

I was sitting there, overwhelmed by gloom and sadness, when I thought to myself, “Why do this yourself?”

I had no answer. No really good one anyway.

And it occurred to me that compassion begins with yourself.And I fully realized, probably for the very first time in my entire life, that I need to come first.And I need to be compassionate to myself before I give that compassion away to anyone else.

And I realized just what I’d been giving away, to the wrong person, and I thought of all the people in world that could have benefited from that love and care and compassion and they didn’t.

And here’s an obvious epiphany: one actually gets to choose how to deal with all those lemons coming one’s direction.

This is obvious to the rest of you but..it wasn’t to me. I actually was letting other people decide that for me, under the general umbrella that I was less important. I did not think I deserved to express how angry I was. I was so busy being caught up in trying to be compassionate for others that I was not compassionate towards myself.

I know. It’s incredible to me that I thought that. I really believed that, that I did that.

And the thought of what I had been doing and not doing so moved me that I leapt up out of my chair, ended my gloom, and got, for the first time, angry.

I mean the kind of anger that comes on like a tsunami. The kind of anger that causes revolutions.

And I thought, “Well, it’s time to become a revolutionary.”

Because if the things that I say are important to me are really that important, then I’m not going to give them up for anyone else. I’m going to need every ounce of compassion and energy that I have for those goals and ideas and people. I’ve got many people through out the world counting on me to make a real difference int heir lives and in my own, and I’m not about to let them or myself down.

So I went off and had a bit of a revolution…said what I needed to say…

And it felt really good actually. It felt FABULOUS. I was surprised how right it felt. I was motivated by the fact that I had neglected my own self care, and my care for others, because I was putting all this energy into wrong things and people. When you do that, it keeps you in the past, which is perhaps where some might like you to be. But I prefer the future, which is vast, unknown, exciting.

That anger, it was overwhelming. It was powerful. It was cathartic.

And when I finished expressing that anger, I resolved to be free of that old hurt and love, to completely free of it…to allow it to disappear. And I’m sure this will take time, but I’ll be ready.

Somewhere along the line..I’m not sure where..when this relationship ended, I “bought into” the idea that it was my responsibility to be there for him,  to help him.  It sounds crazy, I know! I bought it hook, line, and sinker..and I sank pretty low. Not every day, but every time I had to interact, it was exhausting, draining, terrible. It was over, yet I felt pressure to be friends, or pressure to be in contact. Well, I realized, that’s all it was.. –pressure– that was not coming from me..and it didn’t have to be honored or accepted.

And when I saw, really saw, what was true–that it wasn’t my responsibility…it was like the light in the room turned on and I could see everything much more clearly.

And now, it’s finished. The book is closed, put away in some dusty corner of my mind, and I don’t think I will take it out again for a long time. I can finally breathe. I can enjoy life again.

It takes courage to begin something: but sometimes, we must summon the courage to finish something before we can really begin to live the life we are capable of living. 

 The only person who can help someone is themselves. Me included.

And life..just suddenly got bigger, and brighter, and alot more JOYFUL. It has become..dare I say…Pleasant and calm.

I relaxed. I made of a list of the next places to travel (Morocco! Columbia! Peru!) and took out a pile of guidebooks and read them.

 I planned the trip to India in December.

I called my friends in a little village in India, and talked to most of the village!

I bought myself two bouquets of flowers.

I made cupcakes, and ate them all.

I agreed to speak at a series of talks on World Peace and Social Justice.

I joined a gym (this new perspective requires much cupcake making and therefore cupcake eating and therefore gym!)

I decided to buy a bicycle.

I decided to docent at an art museum and signed up.

I unpacked my cookbooks and planned out some beautiful meals.

I looked at photos from my trip and worked on putting together a slide show and presentation for my friends.

And since there are loads of lemon trees near my little house…I made several gallons of lemonade.

Life goes on. And life is good.

gigi

And ended up coming to some mighty big life decisions because of it!

But, first things first… 

Life back in the States is at it’s most colorful and interesting. Just when you think it’s getting dull and predictable, it changes it’s mind.

I spent all of Holy Week in one religious service after another, a seemingly endless procession of sermons and communions and prayers; some in candlelight; some with Hispanic parishioners on their knees with enormous crosses, some with day-glo pictures of Jesus and their relatives; some with palm fronds and pictures of the Virgin Mary, carried under plastic and surrounded with ruffled red satin and lace.

I’m not complaining. One thing I love about the Catholic church in America is it’s so much like being in Central America somewhere. It’s just beautiful.

Still, by the time Easter Sunday actually rolled around, I was quite tired and wondering if I would make it through the sunrise service that morning.

The sunrise service is a little thing that they do in my small town–kind of a group service, put on by all the churches and they sing and preach and eat donuts out under a white gazebo in the middle of the town’s park. It’s lovely, but it’s at 6:30 am.

I woke up exhausted, as I’d only gotten home the night before at 11 pm, due to the Holy Saturday service ending quite late. I put some clothes on, put on Mahalia Jackson to keep the dog company, and went downtown.

I made it through it, and it was nice. So small town. That’s why I like living here, I guess.

Afterwards went out to breakfast with my friend Shirley, who was, due to it’s being Easter, wearing a very stylish leopard outfit from head to toe. Shirley is the sort of person that you wish you had the guts to be, but since you aren’t, you’re glad someone else is. She is full of stories about her life and she is witty, colorful, and irreverent–but at the same time, she’s wise and practical and spiritual. She is the sort of person who invites a slightly depressed woman (me) out for eggs and bacon on Easter morning.

After breakfast, I get in my car and drive home. I’ve got Mahalia Jackson playing in the car, too. Mahalia is the queen of gospel music. One listen to her take of , “How I Got Over” will either have you on your knees or have you calling of “Thank you Jesus!” because you can’t, you simply can’t, help yourself. Listening to her always has me wish I was black gospel msic singer, could sing, had soul, had soulfulness, and knew how to clap my hands properly. But I don’t and I’m not, so I listen to her and find myself at the very least, extremely cheered up.

I’m listening to her when I pull into the drive.

My neighbors have houseguests, who turn out to be peace activists of some sort and we have a long chat about war and social justice and the time I almost was arrested for protesting the production of missles outside of London.  And how..all of those things tie into my religious commitment. The conversation then turns to my cheerful optimism, which, seemingly to everyone else, is perhaps unjustifed. Where does it comes from?

Who knows. For, in spite of my current circumstances, I’m pretty optimistic about life in general and humanity to boot. I happen to think there are many, many wonderful people out there really committed to living out lives that make a difference to the happiness of all on the planet. I’ve met them on my travels, and what’s more, I think I am one of them. At least, I hope so.

Maybe it’s all of the Mahalia Jackson I’ve been listening to. Mahalia always talks about her trials and tribulations, and does it in such a way you look forward to having those of your own, because it makes you spiritually richer and more defined.

One thing that I’ve noticed, coming home, is that people don’t seem to be all that committed to what they say they believe. I’ve been in that boat myself, altogether too recently, saying I believed one thing but doing something else entirely different. It seems to be easy here, in this culture, to get away with it.

Like people just show up for church on a Sunday, once a year. Or people talk about loving one another, helping one’s fellow man, but they don’t. Or people talk about “justifiable war”, or the death penalty as being grim realities that have to exist, when they don’t.

After I talked to the activists for awhile, I left for the Easter service, the big one at the Catholic church. I thought alot during the service about Easter and what it means. It’s a such a huge thing, and it’s impact seems to fall away from people on all the other days of the year.

It’s a time for renewal. It’s a time for hope and new beginnings. People make it about alot of other things (they really like to do that!)– but that’s really the jist of it. Starting over, starting new, starting fresh, renewed.

I go home and take a nap with the dog.

I fall asleep and dream that I’ve invited Jesus, Oscar Romero, and Mohamed to dinner and am panicking as to whether it’s appropriate to serve them rice and beans (!), and wake up to a buzzing sound. It’s a bee, seemingly trapped in the kitchen.

I rescue it, fall back asleep, and wake up to another bee. I rescue it. Then another, then another, then another, then another…twenty two bees later, I’ve come to realize that I have a situation. A bee situation.

Investigating the building, I discover a swarm of bees has somehow made it’s new home inside the wall of my shower.

I should explain that I live in the country, kind of on the edge of town, in a funky cottage that is, well, funky.

My cottage is exactly the sort of place a swarm of bees would see and collectively agree to make their new home.

After taping up the bathroom door and sealing all points of possible entry to keep bees out of the rest of the house (and… rescuing the few straggler bees hitting themselves, suicide-style, against my kitchen window!)..it occurs to me that I had not seen or heard a bee, an actual, real, live, bee for a long time. Third world countries don’t have bees. Or if they do, the bees are smart enough to stay far, far away from hungry people who will eat them and their honey. Here, in America, the bees are so confident that they don’t see any problem with occupying my shower.

The second thing that occurs to me is that I have no bathroom. No shower, no toilet, until the bee problem is solved.

I take the bee problem to my landlords, who promptly begin making phone calls to find someone to move the bees. But, it would seem all bee handlers are on vacation, due to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead today. Good enough reason. But still, no shower, no toilet.

My landlord hands me a chamber-pot. A real, honest-to-God chamberpot, made of white enamel and slightly chipped with a black-painted handle.

You’d think I would be grossed out at the thought of using  a chamberpot, but actually all I’m thinking is, “Well, that makes sense! Boy, it will be really fun to use that in the middle of the night!”, and I’m wondering if it’s possible to make a packable, portable one for traveling…how may times on the road I wished I had had something so expertly designed as a chamberpot, I cannot begin to count.

Chamberpots are very well designed, by the way. There is no spillage. There is no peeing on one’s clothing, like there is when attempting to use a squat toilet in a village outhouse. It is clean and tidy and surprisingly worry free.

I should know. It’s Tuesday and I still have no toilet or shower. It may take all week to move the bees, and I’ve been finding that chamberpot extremely useful!

One thing I’ve been noticing is how easy going I am about stuff like this now. I’m just happy to have  a roof over my head and running water–so if I don’t have a toilet for a few days, well, that’s ok. At least I know I’ll get one eventually.!

Ok, here’s a big leap from topic to topic, but I’ll do it anyway:

The whole chamberpot thing got me thinking about my own flexibility–not just with physical realities (like toilet/no toilet; or what to eat for dinner) but my own flexibility in terms of my future.

Travel seems to have –kind of–refined my soul. It’s like things are much, much clearer than they were before I left. As a matter of fact, it seems like a long time ago that I left “home”. Maybe that’s because what I came back to was so much different than what I pictured it to be.

I just feel like I’m in a new place of sorts, with some familiar people and some not familiar.

Many of the things I was striving for in the past–and I mean, the past, like five/six years ago–have resurfaced, bubbled to the top, and made themselves known again. Many of the desires I had, the things I wanted to accomplish back then–well, I thought they’d disappeared forever, never to be seen again–but instead, they’re back. All those ideas and ways of being are back.

One of the things that was really important to me five, six years ago was my spiritual life. I wanted to live deeply, live reverently, live differently than other ways of living I saw around me. I don’t mean individuals, I mean the culture in general.

And somehow, I find myself revisiting those wants and desires. Six years ago, I had gone thru a period where I seriously considered being a nun. I changed my mind, mostly due to what other people thought about it and my own fears about it. And thru alot of thinking and life experiences and prayer, I realized that a nun’s life was not for me.

Then somehow I found myself in a relationship and a life. A big life, a full life, a good life–but not exactly the life dedicated to the things that were most important to me in the end.

The trip somehow changed this, altered it, reshaped it, and made my dream of committing my life to prayer, social justice and helping those less fortunate a reality. It made me see that it was possible to do it, to have that life.

I guess I thought I could do it and have other more worldly things–but, what I discovered, is that, for me, that doesn’t work. I really actually do feel sad that the relationship didn’t work; but, on the other hand, I feel freed to devote myself and my life, and all of my energy, to creating as much good as possible in the world and alleviating what suffering I can. It’s like I’m free to do that now.

I remember at first when I was dealing with the breakup, I was thinking, “Will I ever meet a man again who…..” and so forth. Blah blah blah. Now I’m thinking, “Well, now that last experience was interesting, but probably not worth repeating! What makes you feel good? Well, do that then.”

What makes me feel fantastic is helping other people. Just totally being of service is what makes me happy. Really happy. It is the thing I want to spend all of my time doing.

At 40, such freedom is an astonishing thing. 40 is when BIG things happen, everyone keeps telling me. At 40, that’s when you’re life really gets going, they tell me.

So here’s what I’m thinking about. I’ll have to explain it a little to you non-Catholics.:

You’ve heard of nuns, right? Well, nuns are in something called a “second order”. And below them is something called, “third order”. Third orders are made up of people, laypeople, who generally live in the world–in their house, their apartment, whatever–go to work, and have “normal lives”.  They look like normal people, they don’t wear a habit (generally) . With a few grand exceptions:

They commit to the order they decide to belong to. There are all kinds of orders, some who work with AIDS hospice, some who work with disabled people, some who work with immigrants and immigrants rights… So let’s say it’s the Vincentian order, well then they’d  commit to the goals of the Vincentians, which are centered around helping the very poor and needy. Or countless other orders who have other missions: contemplative prayer, social justice, peace, reform, etc.

Part of those missions are also rules for living, such as chastity, charity, prayer and so forth.

People in third orders are in a community–they live outside of the religious order, but they participate fully in religious life. A person who is single can be a third order, but so can a married person, or a person with children. It’s kind of like what religion probably was like hundreds of years ago. This is not a commitment to be taken lightly–it’s not for the only show up on a Sunday person; nor is it for the person that doesn’t have a firm belief in taking action towards social injustices.

Some people get confused about what it is to be third order. While there are third order monks and nuns, there are also third order laypeople.

The people I know who are third order laypeople are Franciscans. They have a commitment to living a prayerful life, a God centered life, but they also (surprise!) have a big commitment to  fair labor practices, human rights, creating  a  healthy environment, ecology, protecting the animals and their habitiat, clothing the needy and housing the homeless, etc…. I have three friends who are all third orders and they are amongst the most amazing and kind people I know, and part of this is that they are simply not concerned with the same things the rest of us are.

Six years ago I was very interested in joining a third order. I thought it fit well with who I was and what I felt was my purpose in life. I always have felt this altruistic streak in me and found it very hard to balance this with the expectations of “real life”. It was not until my trip that I discovered that I could both be me and give everything I had to give.

I find myself heading down this road again. It’s a well-worn path at this point. So many times I have been on it and I was always distracted by my own problems, my own worries, my own sense of inadequacy about this or that. But this time, it’s different.

It’s like coming home.

Who would have thought a swarm of bees and a chamberpot would have led to such a decision! But then, miracles happen in most unusual ways.

So, I’ll be spending the next few months visiting numerous orders in area and deciding which one best suits me. Then the process of discernment begins, and then the actual process of becoming third order takes about three years.

Life is really taking shape. It isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t come the way I expect to, but it does gently move forward. And sometimes it’s not so gentle–like it taking me not having a toilet for three days and alot of gospel music to be ready to be open to what is next for me!

Anyway, for all of you still reading (all of you folks from the Voluntary simplicity movement, etc!) I want to say thank-you.Whoever you are, wherever are, however you are, I hope you know how much I appreciate you all, and know that each and every one of you is perfect.

The other thing I’m thinking about right now is..gasp!..a new blog. It’s time. The travel blog has died off and a new one is in the making. I’ll still be putting up the more adventurous parts of my trip to Bihar (someday!) , but I’m also creating a new blog with a new theme.

I’ll keep you posted. Peace be with you.

gigi

I’ve been back in the States, back at “home” for over a month, now–and I think the exhaustion of both the trip and dealing with being here has finally taken hold of me.

In fact, it’s taken over.

Yesterday, I managed to do  almost nothing at all. Everytime I begin to do something, I’m tired soon afterwards.

Part of this is physical–just having to recognize that I am exhausted from what has been a long, ardous journey and dealing with how that fact impacts how much of day to day life I can deal with.

Part of it’s emotional–it’s a BIG difference to be out in the world, feeling like you can do anything, and then coming home, and realizing the rules are alot different at home. Everyone talks about that “depression” that hits one after returning from travel…I’m not sure I’ve hit that wall (yet!), but I’ve had some glimpses of what over travelers are talking about.

And part of it is cultural–American life is so tiring. There’s so much pressure–to drive here or there, see this person or that one, be on time. In India, things were overwhelming for different reasons: the sheer number of people, for example, made it difficult to get from point A to point B.

There were so many people in India that there was very little privacy or personal space–at least by American standards. So one thing I am enjoying is just being alone, spending time alone, eating alone, reading alone, thinking alone, walking alone. It’s precious and a bit surreal to take a walk by myself or to cook dinner for one–but it’s lovely. I find being with other people all day still a bit too tiring(even though I enjoy it!) and everytime I do plan an all day activity with others, it takes me a day to recover.

Yesterday I was  so tired that I only managed to go to the local food coop and buy some groceries. That’s it. I did nothing else. The trip to the store was so exhausting! So many choices, aisles of food and fruit and vegetables and organic and not organic and 20 brands of milk. It took me two hours to buy a tiny basket of groceries. By the time I got home, I realized I had not bought the things that I had actually needed–but it was too late to go back.

All the choices here–for example: where to get a cup of coffee, what kind of milk to have in that coffee, sugar?, for here or to go? where to sit, who to talk to..it’s just too much sensory overload for me sometimes. It’s just coffee! It’s hard to go from no choice or one choice to unlimitless choice.

So I find that keeping things simple really helps my state of mind. Less choice, less worry.

I’ve got some very big plans for the future. But I think it’s wise to look at this particular period of time as a well deserved rest period. However, I should mention that it’s a real struggle for me to truly “rest”. I always like to be busy!

At any rate, my body and mind are so tired of me pushing them around to do whatever had to be done that they are now ganging up against me and refusing to budge.

I am completely exhausted. If I make it through a day without a significant portion of the day devoted to napping I am very surprised.

So, my goal for the next few weeks is to..nap..daydream..relax..get well/healthy.. read trashy novels….spend lots of time alone…not think too much…

Less choice, less worry. More time for naps with the dog. Simple things make life better.

gigi

” I read and walked for miles at  night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. I never imagined that that person could be me.”

–Anna Quindlin 

You know, over the past two years or so I’ve worn a million different hats, trying to be whoever I needed to be to manage life on the road.

Now, back at home, I fnd myself trying to do the same thing: juggling  a million different versions of myself, depending on what’s going on at the moment and who I need to be to make it work for me.

But, somehow, traveling, the act of travel itself, made me realize that I am the person I was looking for my whole life. And that I can be a lot of different people all at once.

I’ve got lots of different versions of myself: caregiver; earth shaker ; sweet homemaker;  animal lover ; powerful amazon! ; reality breaker ; glamorous do gooder ; mother ; friend ; lover; sister; and so many more.

Lately I’ve been pondering how to make that all work together to accomplish all the things I want to do.

In the past, pre-trip, I would have felt like I couldn’t be me, because I didn’t think I could take all of those different versions or parts of myself and look at them as a whole.

Now, I can. I realize that I can do every single thing I set out to do, and that somewhere in me is the right person for getting it done right. Gone are the identity crisies, the wondering if/when/why/how/and why me?

Everyday, I look back on the trip with complete gratefulness that I did it and with awe at the woman I’ve become because of it… It’s given me alot of stength to..stand up for what I believe in; to see, with clarity and vision, what is to come.

I live in a small town. Sometimes this can feel restricting, like everyone knows your business and everyone has kind of preconcieved notions about who you are.

Interestingly, this used to really hold me back from being myself (whoever that was at the moment), but now it kind of invigorates me. It doesn’t make as much difference to me what people think as it used to. In fact, I find it to be an interesting challenge to be whoever I need to be despite the impression that it makes.

It’s just time to be real.

When I first went on my trip, I remember crying alot. I didn’t think I could do it, I’m not even sure I wanted to do it. All I knew is: I had to do it, or I felt like I would be one of those people  who went through the rest of life, broken and blaming and sad that they didn’t follow their dream.

I was afraid of what I would lose, and apprehensive about what I would gain.

Well, I did lose the man I loved.

Which was, of course, a fear I had. But the good news about it is that I’m moving on, and opening myself up to whatever is next. And so something that was difficult is now turning into something that represents possibility and new people in my life.

Going on the trip also meant that I gained a sense of myself–that, quite frankly, I feel could have only been gained by the severe trials on my journey. The confidence with which I am able to approach life right now–in spite of my emotional life being somewhat confusing at times–the confidence I have: it is real, it’s alive, and it’s presence puts me at ease in every situation: whether good or bad.

I’m going to use that sense of self the coming months alot. I’m relying on it to clear the way for me so that I can do all the things I have decided are important.

Here are a few:

1.)  I’ll be involved again with the indigenous organization in Panama, MEDO, that I was working with before. Not only will I be the active secretary and world wide volunteer coordinator, I’ll be working with them this summerfor two weeks in July to build a women’s center in Western Panama. I’ll also be developing a way to continously give them aid financially and otherwise, to fund various other public projects, particularly those that benefit women and children. More on this later..it’s it’s own entry.

2. ) I’ll be working with developmentally disabled adults for the next two years, with the end goal being to start a sustainable cooperative garden/farm that teaches and works with developmentally disabled adults exclusively. The goals will be to teach basic skills, to provide jobs, to boost confidence, and to encourage conservation, water wise gardening, recycling, and organice methods of green living. This idea came out of my work in India, and the beautiful experiences I had with the kids at the orphanage.

3. ) Hey, why not go ahead and do the impossible? Or, at the ery least, what most people consider impossible: Adopt a child. An older child, with special needs.

For you naysayers (oh, my goodness, so many people in this category that it would be depressing if I didn’t know that you all don’t have the benefit of the motivation I do: Those boys smiling, shining faces back in India–and how I felt when I let go and  loved them. I’m the lucky one, and that’s something that you might not understand unles syou experienced it yourself. ) Anyway, I’ll say this to you all:

” All I ask of you, is to consider the question, ‘Why Not?’, for twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than the things that you did. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbors. Catch the trade winds in your sails.”

–Mark Twain

I’ll be working towards my goal of adopting a child, preferably Mitun (whom I’ve mentioned before) from India. The goal is to have him here in about 3-3 1/2 years. To do this will require the patience of a saint; a deep spiritual life (because it’s not to going to happen all on my own!); funding; savvy about the system; and a working knowledge of Hindi and sign language. If he doesn’t end up having enough paperwork to come here, then it’s all about being open to whatever child does. Either way, one thing that’s clear is that a child will be coming, and that that child will proabably be deaf/mute (as these are a group of kids that would clearly benefit from US adoption.)

4. ) Be a person in my community that represents what is possible. So many casual conversations I have had these last few weeks have been ones where someone told me that they couldn’t do something or other. I guess.. I’m treating it all like an adventure. I mean, after you’ve done some of the things I’ve done around the world, why not tackle some of those things you thought you  thought you couldn’t back at home?

Like giving a speech. Planting a garden. Buying a canoe. Going hang gliding. Salsa dancing. Talking to people you never have before. Joining clubs and taking part in community life.

Building an outdoor shower. Taking an auto repair class. Building  a radio. Learning a few more languages. Painting a mural (yes, I’m actually going to be painting  a large mural!).

One thing I’ve been doing alot is hiking, which is something I was always afraid to do by myself before, and now I find that I actually enjoy it. For some reason, those nutty stories about some guy hacking a lone hiking woman into pieces always got in the way of me having a good time before…and now, I go by myself and really enjoy that I can go by myself.

Saying goodbye to my exboyfriend, now that was hard. Wow, I still think it’s hard everyday. But for my own self worth and my own growth, I recognize that goodbye is the right choice for me. Yet, I know I couldn’t have tackled that without having traveled and been in situations that were uncomfortable, but in the end helped me to grow in the direction I needed to at that time.

5. )  Inspire myself, don’t wait for others to inspire me. Live the life I’ve imagined could be lived. I think..before I went on the trip, I was..let’s face it..kind of the victim type. Things happened to me, I didn’t make things happen. Now I’ve got another take, which is, live life powerfully. Own it, it’s yours. Live a life that inspires you. Other people may hear about what I’m doing and think what I’m tackling the impossible, or it may inspire them, who knows? But the important thing is to make the most of it and to inspire myself.

“One of my motivating forces has been to recreate the world  I know into a world I wish I could be in. hence my optimism and happy endings…”

–Kristen Hunter

6. ) Keep travel a part of my life–always and forever. A month or so ago I told myself, “Well, never again! No more trips! I just want to sit on my front porch and relax. No more peeing on the side of the road in front of a bus load of Guatemalans, no more showering with a bucket!”

 But a month later, I find myself already fantasizing about the next trip!  (While sitting on my front porch, of course! The best of both worlds!)

I’ll be heading to Panama this summer..maybe I’ll get a stopover in Nicaragua or El Salvador..

Then I’ll be going back to the orphanage in India in December to meet Mitun and the other boys, and I know I’ll be heading back to Bihar, even if it means a sleepless night on an uncomfortable train again or wearing full purdah. And maybe..just maybe, I’ll get a nice stopover, like Korea or China or the Philippines.

So who am I? Do gooder, community leader (someday!), decorator, designer, entrepreneur, volunteer, adventuress? Writer, artist, silly friend, person to go in times of trouble, Organizer, manager, leader?

I’m all of those things and more. It amazes me to know that I wouldn’t be any of these things, if I hadn’t had the guts to go out and be in the world. I could have just as well kept living my tiny life.

Instead, I’ve had to grow into the woman that fits the life I now have.

Some days, I wake up and I can’t believe I’m me, that this is my life.

It’s strange, but it’s good.

So I can’t exactly say who I am at this moment, who is writing the blog, who is deciding what is next…truthfully, I’m being so many different people at once that no one characteristic stands out. But I know that whoever I am being, I’m making sure that whatever I am doing I am doing it well.

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

–Abraham Lincoln

gigi

Well, I’ve been living out of a backpack for such a long time now, that it feels a little weird to finally be making the big change of setting up housekeeping.

But that’s exactly what I’ll be doing for the next week or so–I had found only a very temporary solution to my homeless problem, and today a small house up opened up, so it’s time to get down to business and move in.

Part of me has really been jonesing for a place to hang my clothes up, cook up some pasta, invite people over–maybe even have a little get together. At least have a place to stuff the backpack and sleep in a proper bed!

The other part of me is at a loss of where to begin. Stuff doesn’t seem that important anymore. However, I’m sure that it will all come together.

So what this all adds up to is that everything I just stuck in storage I now have to unpack. And everything I left with friends has to be unpacked too. Thats if I can remember who has what.(each box is like recieving brand new stuff–I literally have no idea what I packed in each one!)

I’ll have just made the current digs perfect and comfy when it will be time to pack it all up again in the winter and move yet again–this time into what I hope will be a long term home, a cozy sweet rental I picked out awhile ago.

In the meantime, it’s time to..finally have a home. I’m very happy and content tonight, knowing that tonight me, my dog, and my cat will all pile into bed together and wake up in the morning together. I’m happy I’ll be somewhere where I can leave the lights on. I’m happy that I’ll be somewhere where I can leave the dishes in the sink.

And I’m most happy that I can surround myself with things, photographs, and postcards from my trip.

It’s just so wonderful to finally have a place to call my own. Such a relief. I think all the travel I did made me really appreciate the idea of home so much more than I ever would have otherwise; and coming home and being in a transitory situation has just only added to that appreciation.

Let the nesting begin!

gigi

This is from a journal entry.

I took two trips to the state of Bihar in India–both served as “breaks” from the hustle and bustle of living and working in the city of Calcuta(or Kolkata, depending on who you talk to!).

The first trip was just after Christmas and New Years’, and it was in time for the Muslim celebration of their New Year. The entire week was spent in a dinky village in the middle of nowhere–no tourists had ever been there, nor probably will they ever go there. It was fascinating, a bit rash, and completely different than any other adventure I had been on to date or could have imagined.

To make it a little bit more comfortable, I was accompanied by a male friend of mine, Josef,  who needed some r and r just like me. We hired my friend Kalim to be our guide and it was his village that we went to.

This is a journal entry written on the train, on the way to Bihar for the first time.

Why am I doing this? Why am I on this disgusting train? Maybe I should have just stayed in the city.

Problem is, I can’t breathe there. I’ve lost my voice, I can’t stop coughing at night. No, it’s not TB–it’s the air quality.

So I find myself on this dirty train, going to a place I know nothing about, because I’ve just gotten to the point that I need to get the hell out of the city for awhile and breathe some cleaner air. I’ve made friends with one of the market men–”touts”–is the negative word tourists use–and he’s agreed to take me and my friend Josef to his small village in Bihar.

I don’t know much about the place-in fact, I’ve basically chosen to stay in the dark about it–because otherwise, I’d probably discover it was dangerous and never get up enough nerve to go there. Sometimes it’s just better not to know.

Kalim, Josef, and I met at the market and took at taxi to the Howrah train station. In order to get to the station, you have to cross what is the longest bridge in the world, with the smoke of ghats coming up on either side of the river; swarms of people walking, driving, biking, honking, selling food and vegetables, urinating, smiling, laughing, living.

Howrah station was the most chaotic place I have ever seen in my life. I clutched my bag against my clothes, Josef is holding is backpack tightly, Kalim plows on ahead of us carrying everything else and only glancing back every once in awhile to see if we’re still following him.

Everyone is looking at us–especially me, at 6 ft 3, I’m not blending in. People openly stare and gawk, mouths open, talking, pointing. Oh, God, it’s so tiring.

I’d heard there had been a big “clean up” of homeless people in and around the station, and that certainly rings true–there are almost no beggars and no raggedy childen to speak of.It’s actually cleaner in here than it is out in the street…although I find the word “clean up” offensive to describe kicking people out of the only home they have, it’s the phrase used in India, so I’ll stick to it. Still, I wonder where they all went?

And the noise. The din, the sound of thousands of people eating, talking, laughing, shouting, snoring–it’s unlike any noise I’ve ever heard before.

We get to our platform, and Kalim wanders off in search of oranges for the journey, leaving Josef and I sitting on a scrap of cardboard and and towel I brought along, our feet and legs wrapped around the bags in case someone walks by and decides to take one. We’re so tired, and looking forward to sleep–we’ve paid for a sleeper car.

Kalim wanders back looking morose. The train will be several hours late. Welcome to India. Everything is late. Sometimes stuff doesn’t show up until the next day. People don’t complain, they just bear it. I feel silly being grumpy about it and decide to get more comfortable.

Waiting for a train in a train station is a very uncomfortable experience, but if you go with it and do it Indian-style it’s more of an adventure.

Everyone spreads out a bit of cloth or toweling or maybe some bits of newspapers, and the entire family somehow manages to squish themselves into their alloted space on the platform. Then they bring out snacks–like oranges, like some sweets made with milk, like some chapati and so forth brought from home–and dig in. Chai-wallahs walk by every few minutes offering up chai or “coffee” which probably does have some coffee in it, but it’s not like at home. Babies are brought out and nursed, children play dangerously along the edge of the tracks, pie dogs run around trying to get a scrap of something or other, people chat and stare off into space…

The weirdest thing about waiting..the Indian way of waiting..is that they seem to be the most patient people on Earth, able to wait through anything. They can sleep through anything too–the classic train station platform is filled with people covering their faces with a scrap of sari, a scarf, or a newspaper, sleeping through it all. This in an environment that is not only loud and crowded, but stinks of urine and has tiny mosquitos that bite whatever part of you is uncovered.

I’m not sleeping–the thought of sleeping on the hard, cold cement is enough to keep me awake. Instead, I’m looking around at the station and at the people.

Well, one thing I notice right away is that there are alot of sadhus–these are supposedly holy guys (only guys can do it, supposedly) wearing bright day glo orange robes and head dresses and they are all asking for money. They are very pushy about it, actually.

The only beggar I see is a man with leprosy, his hands and feet stumps, his face rotting off, his nose and lips gone. It occurs to me that what I once looked at with shock and amazement now seems like part of everyday life to me, and the man’s features soften to me as I realize this. He’s got a special can with a lid you put your donation in, so you don’t touch him–Kalim puts some food in it.

The strangest man we see is walking along the train tracks, dressed in a uniform of sorts and acting very oddly. It’s hard to say what he is doing exactly, I can’t put my finger on it. We’re watching him for a few minutes before we realize he’s killing rats. 

He walks along the tracks until he sees a rat( it doesn’t take long, as they are everywhere you look.) and he stops for a brief second, takes out a sling shot, and calmly and precisely aims, killing the rat.

Then he goes and retrieves the pebble he used–and the dead rat–putting the dead rat in ths funky shoulder bag he’s carrying.

The guy is fantastic–he catches six rats while I watch him in utter fascination.

Other people watch him too. I say to an Indian man, “Is he paid to do that?!”

Everyone’s wondering. In India, anything is possible. But even if the man caught one rat every five minutes, he wouldn’t make much of a dent in the rat population.

We finally decide he is insane.

I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Always, always, a bad idea in India. India is the only country I have ever traveled in where apparently women do not pee. Ever. No matter what. They have bladders of steel.

Men, on the other hand pee everywhere. Everywhere. Any direction you look in India, it is very likely that there will be a man peeing there.

Train stations are especially disgusting. Men jump down onto the tracks to pee before the trains arrive. They pee against buildings, in doorways, by posts. And, because they are men, they get to squat and defecate wherever they want, and at the train station, that’s usually right on the tracks too. It’s a stinking mess.

Women have to pay to pee. I make my way to the bathroom, and pay a ridiculous 2 ruppees for the privelege of peeing in what is one of the filthiest bathroms of my life. It is so dirty that you cannot touch anything, nothing. It’s an Indian-style squat toilet and I, in spite of having been here for months, can’t get the squatting thing down. It’s either painful or I feel like I’m going to fall in.

I make it back to the platform and our train is here. It’s old and in a more romantic mood, I would say it has “character”. In my current mood, I’ll just say it’s really, really old and loud and beat up looking.

Kalim says, “Go!”, and we scurry to follow him–he’s already drilled us that we must make sure we stick to him like glue, that we must get on the train and we must fight for our seats, other wise others will take them. I feel like I am at odds with this, but this is not the moment to stop and say politely, “No, really, you go first.” to the man digging his arm into my bag or the woman who just hit me in the face with her suitcase as she shoved past. No, this is first things first, and that needs to be me and my bags.

It’s surprisingly uncomfortable, being that pushy.

We get to out compartment with is the size of a tiny bedroom, or possibly slightly smaller than my bathroom at home. It has 9 beds in it–if you could call them beds. I’d call them hard, uncomfortable platforms hanging from precarious chains or so close to the ceiling that you can’t sit up.

Which gets me to my next point. The three beds we’ve been assigned are:one very top bunk which I can’t even contort my frame to climb up the ladder, let alone try to squeeze into it–(or get out again!); a middle bunk, which apparently can’t be opened until the person under it has decided to go to sleep; and a bottom bunk, which is half the length of the others, and which is impossible to stretch out on because a group of drunk obnoxious men have spread out a smelly meal of some kind and it doesn’t look like they are going to vacate any time soon.

Instead of calling them drunk obnoxious men, I’ll give them names:

Let’s call one “Long Pinky “, because , for whatever reason, he’s got a long pinky nail. It’s like an inch and a half long. Is it to do drugs? Is it a status thing? It’s a mystery.

The second man, let’s call him “Obvious Toupe “. He’s wearing one of the worst wigs I’ve ever seen, and in India you see alot of wigs, falls, toupes..because people don’t like to walk around bald, and it’s the usual solution here. But what’s really weird is he’s dyed his wig with henna, so it’s bright orange, while his real hair he has left is gray. Must be some weird cultural thing, some different idea of beauty, because I’m not getting it. He’s probably looking at me and thinking the same thing.

Long Pinky and Obvious Toupe have spread out a feast on two entire seats, and they stretch their legs lazily across the cabin, not caring that they are taking up the entire space. They refuse to share their seats with anyone else, eaing the rest of us squished together on the remaining bottom bunk or doubled up on the ones by the roof.

The food they are eating smells awful–some kind of curry and it looks like goat meat(not my favorite, by far) and it’s oilyness leaves dribbles on the floor and the seat.

I feel sick. The bathroom was so gross in the train station that I was hoping the one on the train would be better, but it’s not. It’s worse.

My friend Josef crawls up to a top bunk and falls asleep. I decide to stick it out on the bottom bunk.

Kalim, my Indian friend/guide/amazing superhero (he will prove to have superpowers later on) sits near me. He’s exhausted, just like me: we’ve both been working all day. But we’re both equally stubborn, and I’m refusing to sleep tonight. So is he, because he’s worried men will bother me if I am asleep.

I’m worried about that too. Long Pinky and Obvious Toupe are glancing at me alot and seem, well, kind of sleazy.

It’s not just them–there is a constant parade of men coming through our compartment. Well, some are actually coming through our compartment, on their way to the “bathroom” (read:hole in floor); but most are just coming into our compartment, standing in the way, staring open mouthed, at the white woman (me) . I am trying to read a book and daintily cross my legs in the tiny space alloted to me, which is impossible as my legs are almost as long as the tiny Indian people that are sharing the compartment with me. And I am not dainty. I am an Amazon.

I’ve prepared for this journey, by the way, and I’m wearing a shapeless sack of a salwaar kamez in bland black, complete with headscarf..but it’s to no avail, because the black material makes me look even whiter. I am white, white, white. Day glo white, even. I am a breathtaking sight, apparently. I am the center of attention at the moment, but I’m thinking that perhaps when they’ve all looked enough and gotten enough photos of me with their cell phones they will go away.

Kalim insists that I take a nap. He insists he can stay awake. And he may be right: he’s got a secret weapon, a sticky ball of what seems to be tobacco and white powder, which gets rolled up together in his palm before he pushes into his mouth, where it stays for a good fifteen minutes before he needs to spit out what remains of it and make another one. I don’t know what it contains exactly, but whatever is in it, it keeps one awake, suppresses appetite, and is terribly addictive.

Fine. He chews, I nap. Napping proves awkward and he’s perched on the end of my bed, obviously uncomfortable but unmoving in his idea that if he moves, I will be molested.

I finally convince him to move and take the berth above. He somehow falls asleep, and I consider that in spite of my exhaustion, I am in for one of the most uncomfortable and sleepless nights of my entire life.

People talk all the the time about taking the trains in India, about how it’s a experience worth having(and one you won’t forget!) but I definitely, 100%, believe I could live without it.

It’s cramped. Nine people to nine berths? Oh, if only we were so lucky. No, not only do we have  nine people, we also have the mother /daughter who insist on sleeping in the same berth; we also havethe man sleeping on the floor; we also have all of the latecomers who don’t even have proper tickets and just squeeze in wherever. There are, in fact 17 people in a space for 9.

It’s bright. They don’t turn off the lights. Ever. It’s brightly lit, with flourescent bulbs, the kind of lighting that makes people look bad and pallid and bruised. The only way to not see the lights is to cover your head with your scarf.

It’s loud. The train is loud, but the people on it are louder. There is no such thing as whispering nicely to one another on an Indian train, oh no. People holler out as if it’s the middle of the day, they talk long into the night–well, basically all nightlong–even playing cards, arguing and eating. Food is provided by the constant tea wallahs that hop on the trains at every stop, calling out loudly, peering down into your sleeping face ,”Chai, chai, chai”.

It’s really, really uncomfortable. Whoever designed these trains was not thinking of comfort, they were thinking of Hell. Really, this is what I think the seats would be like on the train ride to Hell–hard plastic, only a foot and a half wide, too short for any one but  a midget to stretch out on, windows that don’t open..and it’s freezing cold. Really cold. Kalim did not prepare me for that ahead of time, so I’ve bundled myself in what I’ve got with me, with is nothing. So I’m cold and uncomfortable as hell.

It smells bad. It smells like a cross between a latrine and something–or someone–that has never(or rarely) been washed. Actually, I’m not sure the car I’m in has ever been washed, at least not well. It’s littered with trash and there are those little cockroaches crawling around on the floor.

It’s busy. There’s hustle and bustle all night long–our car is by the bathroom and the end of the train, which means men have to walk through our train all night to spit out red betel nut juice or whatever that stuff is Kalim is chewing. All night long, these guys do it every half an hour.

It’s dangerous. Leave your bag unwatched..and don’t be surprised if it disappears. Or your pockets are emptied. Even leaving your bag by a slightly open window, and watch and child’s hand nimbly reach in during the stop, searching for your wallet.

What’s really bothering me right now, though, is that Long Pinky hasn’t stop staring at me. I’ve tried everything: ignore him; stare back at him; read a book (reading a book by V S Paul on Islam at the moment); cover my entire face; stare out the window at some speck in the darkness with rapt attention; and, now I’m going to try falling asleep. I’ll just lie down and face the wall, that should do the trick and he’ll leave me alone…

Ok, I’m back. That last method failed miserably. Or rather, Long Pinky stopped staring at me, that is true. But them he got up out of his bed and fondled my behind! He did it just quickly enough that I had no time to do a thing (being half asleep and all) and then he got back into his bed and laughed silently with Obvious Toupe.

Well, there’s no choice, I’ve got to wake Kalim. He’s had a rest and so have I, but I don’t want to risk another fondle session with the creepy men on this train, so Kalim can stay awake and stand guard.

Kalim wakes up. I tell him everything. This is not easy as he is Muslim and he is a man and I am a woman and I’m pretty sure behind-fondling is not something he normally discusses with women. Or anyone. He spends the next hour or so glowering angrily at Long Pinky.

The train stops and loads of armed soldiers get on. And I mean, armed. These guys have everything from AK-47’s to grenades. They sit on my bunk. They don’t even ask to sit, they just do.

I sit there for the next few hours, pretending to read my book on Islam and being stared at by the soldiers under florescent lighting, with Long Pinky and Obvious Toupe snoring loudly and being entirely unable to stretch my legs. I can’t move them because (a) they fell asleep long ago; (b) there is a man lying on all of the floor space, sound asleep; and (c) I sense that if I did actually stretch my legs it would cause chaos. Women do not move here. They get into one spot, and they stay there, unmoving, until the following day. They dont get up to use the bathroom, or wiggle their toes, and they certainly don’t stretch their legs.

I feel annoyed. Actually, I am more than annoyed. I am the most uncomfortable I can imagine being, and we’ve hours to go.

On top of all of this, I have to pee. Badly. But if you’ve never peed into a hole that serves as the toilet on a moving train in India, it’s hard to explain why it’s not something I really wanted to do. All I can tell you is, it isn’t fun. It takes all of your concentration to keep your balance(since you’re not going to touch anything) and forget about managing to not pee on yourself. Then there’s the germ factor, which is ..ah..pretty high. We’re talking every microbe known to man is living in that small space, and they’d love, just love, to go home with you.

So I’m going to hold it. Yep. After weighing the risks, I actually figure out that it is healthier to hold it than to use the toilet.

Kalim decides that the only cure to my misery is chai. Cup after cup of it. I try to explain the state of my poor bladder, but perhaps he doesn’t understand my desperation or perhaps sees this as normal. Who knows?  It doesn’t slow him down–if anything, he becomes more intent on his task, which seems to be insuring that I always have a hot cup of chai in hand. He orders one from every single chai guy that comes past, which is about one every 15 or 20 minutes. His theory is that chai gives you energy. My theory is that if it’s not boiled, it can give you something alot worse than energy. It can make you as sick as dog. Besides, my bladder can’t take much more.

But it’s mind over matter.

I carry on, smiling crazily, and drinking chai after chai, agreeably throwing the cup out the window when I’m finished. (Yes, even the plastic cups. Not just the nice pottery ones, but the plastic ones. I threw them out the window. At first I was just handing them to Kalim who apparently was quietly taking them to the window out of my sight and throwing them out onto the moonlit landscape. Then I figured it out and decided to go with the program, much to Kalim’s relief. The let’s litter the Earth program. In my defense, all I can say is, there were no trash cans or trash pick up or recycling, and unless I was going to bring all those chai cups back to the USA for a fun and PC DIY project, I made the best choice in the moment..)

My bladder numb, my legs asleep, my behind sore from sitting on hard plastic, my brain swirling with what disease I might be getting, being stared at by 6 heavily armed men who are fascinated by the size of my feet..I suddenly realize that I’m actually having a very good time. I love adventure, I say to myself. I’m not a boring person and I never will be. It’s moments like these that make travel worthwhile.

The light’s coming up, the sun is rising, and I am getting my first taste of the landscape of Bihar. Hmmm..looks a bit like some parts of Panama with palm trees and green marshy bits ….now looks ashen and dusty, with not a green field in sight…skinny cows and water buffalo dot the landscape, and tiny sheds and shacks line dirt roads.

Kalim’s just pulled out some of his wife’s homecooked chapati, and fills it with some yellowish potato mixture–I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s my favorite, and his wife made it especially for our journey. He hands it to me, smiling, wiping his hand on his shirt, then gesturing grandly at the landscape out the window.

“Well”, he says, smiling broadly, “what do you think?”

I look out the window. I’ve forgotten all of my discomforts, the daydream I was having for the last few hours of a pristine white toilet; the random thought I had for a while about whether or not I could disguise myself as a man so travel could be easier; the guilt over littering plastic chai cups out the window;even the soldier who stares at me unblinkingly as I write this.

I take a bite of warm chapati and potato. I look out the window.

“It’s perfect, Kalim. It’s really, really perfect.”, I say to my friend.

I look out the window, sit back, relax, and allow myself to melt into the landscape.

gigi