Merry Christmas!

MERRY

CHRISTMAS!

My Grand Goan Adventure!

I never got a chance to post about my fabulous trip to Goa (late Nov). Goa is a state on India’s West Coast, and is known for its beautiful beaches and delicious seafood. Our excuse for going was to celebrate my birthday and another fellow’s birthday, but we all definitely needed some time away from Hubli-Dharwad.

We spent the weekend in cute little beachside huts, swimming in the unbelievably warm salty water, eating as much fish as possible, and dancing the night away at a ‘silent noise’ party (everyone gets their own headphones, there are three different DJs playing, and everyone dances their heart out to their DJ of choice).

Some photos to capture the trip:

Travel

This post was written for Deshpande Foundation. To check out what other fellows have written, visit the Global Exchange-Innovative Impact blog.

When traveling in Hubli-Dharwad, I swear by local buses and the heel-toe express. Together, these marvelous forms of transportation get me to and from work, my friends’ houses, the market, and almost anywhere else I want to go with very little hassle.

Sure you’re standing, sandwiched between too many people (three little kids you’re trying not to step on, a woman carrying a baby [why will nobody let her sit?], and the conductor who weaves through the bus doling out tickets with remarkable efficiency), holding on to the handles for dear life, and trying to avoid hitting everyone in the head with your elbows…

But all of this is worth it, because the bus has everything I’m looking for in local transportation. Buses are:

· Cheap and haggle-free (although sometimes you have to make sure the conductors aren’t pocketing your money);

· Frequent;

· Relatively safe (the drivers are experienced, and if you get in an accident you’re in the biggest vehicle on the road, except for maybe the trucks);

· Relatively eco-friendly;

· And occasionally a great adventure!

While the bus can occasionally be an adventure, the heel-toe express almost always provides some form of external amusement—cute little puppies, kids screaming your name, pigs chasing each other and squealing bloody murder, vehicles honking at you to get out of their way, the occasional neighbor (or random stranger) that invites you into her home, and local shop-owners with whom you’ve developed some sort of unidentifiable yet super-fantastic relationship.

Given my year and a half in India, and several experiences serving as a tour guide for friends and family, I’ve come up with the following essential travel rules:

1. The largest structures/bodies have the right of way; the pedestrian NEVER does.

2. ALWAYS look both ways—several times—before crossing the street, even if it’s one way. People always drive on the wrong side of the road.

3. Don’t let rickshaw drivers rip you off; if you don’t like the price, walk away.

4. If you’re getting on a bus, ask at least three different people, plus the driver or conductor, if the bus is going where you want to go.

5. Always get a receipt from bus conductors.

And last but not least: always be on your toes, expect delays, and plan accordingly. You have to be relaxed and flexible when handling transportation in India.

Auntie Sussy's Salsa... IN INDIA!!!

Was it as good as Auntie Sussy's?
Nope.

Was is as fantastic as it would have been if Auntie Sussy was there to share it with?
Nope.

Was it still pretty darn tasty?
You bet!!!

I Am on a Marathi Billboard

Way back when I first arrived in India many of you will remember that I was (un)lucky enough to star as the "other woman" in the music video for a Marathi film. I regaled my experiences in my post, "I am a Marathi Film Star." Now, over a year later I am (un)lucky enough to have my face plastered all over a billboard for the film. Credit to this find goes to Sumedh, a Mann Deshi volunteer in Mhaswad.


I'm thinking I should start demanding royalties :-)

Common Ground

Those of you who have been keeping up with my blog might remember my post, “Day One,” which touched a bit on organizing and demonstrating in India. The latest struggle in Bangalore is to make public parks available to the public rather than just an elite few.

Recent demonstrations are in response to Karnataka Horticulture Minster Umesh Katti’s proposal to restrict access to public parks to only those with ID cards, excluding huge pockets of the population (mainly marginalized groups).

What really impresses me is that this rights violation and terrible exclusionary tactic has brought together so many diverse groups to protest in solidarity—street and working children, Dalits (a re-appropriated political term for those formerly known as ‘untouchables’), GLBT activists, civic societies, sex workers and those who support their rights, environmental groups, law firms, migrant workers, etc.

If these groups—many of whom have never before worked together—can find common ground on this issue, who knows what else they are capable of ?!?

In this dark cloud of an issue, they give me hope :-)

Small Wins

Every other Wednesday us fellows get together to discuss a reading we’ve all done on development, interact with some sort of development expert, or talk about our work in a solution-oriented manner, and then have a delicious DF-funded dinner. Although this is a compulsory activity, it’s something I always look forward to.

A while ago, my friend Mari led a discussion on Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and introduced the idea of ‘small wins’ as a way of achieving much larger goals. In the context of CLTS, a small win is a community recognizing the danger of poor sanitation; designing, building, and funding their own latrines; and eliminating open defecation. In the process, the community forges strong relationships and develops a sense of empowerment that helps the community solve other problems that it faces.

Earlier this week at Bhageerath I experienced my own small win, and it felt amazing! One of my colleagues, Jabshetti, is particularly energetic and opinionated. He’s a blast to work with, but often we have very different opinions. Jabshetti just launched the first part of his project, School, Domestic, and Community Sanitation (the title is something we don’t agree on), and we decided that it will be one of the projects I monitor and evaluate (M&E).

To effectively M&E the project, I need to fully understand it. The basis of this is understanding the project goals and project plan. Unfortunately, Jabshetti hadn’t thought about either of these things until I asked him about them. As a result, the goals he came up with were both all over the place (there was no clear focus) and way too ambitious (getting 100% of Karnataka to do a zillion different things).

As he was listing out the project goals, I continually asked him questions about them: Do you think this is realistic? How is this goal related to that goal? How do these goals fit into your vision for the project (the vision is something else we have to tackle)? What do you plan to do to help you achieve this goal? I told him I would look through the goals that night and see what I could synthesize; I asked him to do the same.

My overall approach while working at NGOs is not to tell them what to do, but to make suggestions and help them realize what to do themselves. Apparently it worked, because the next morning Jabshetti came in, dropped a book on my desk, and told me that the two of us needed to look through it, sit down, and seriously think about the future of his project.

Now, I know that thinking about the future of his project will involve some disagreements, a few crazy ideas, and delusions of grandeur, but knowing that I helped him to think more critically about his work made me really REALLY happy! Wahoo!

"Uganda proposes death penalty for hiv positive gays"

This is seriously NOT COOL, Uganda.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6935558.ece


Britain and Canada protested yesterday over a proposed law that would result in gays in Uganda being imprisoned for life or even executed.

Gordon Brown followed Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, in telling Uganda that the legislation was unacceptable.

Mr Brown made his views plain in a breakfast conversation with President Museveni of Uganda on the margins of the Commonwealth summit.

Homosexuality remains criminalised in many Commonwealth countries, but the more liberal countries have been horrified by the new legislation.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 is going through Uganda’s Parliament after receiving its first reading last month.

According to Clause 2 of the Bill, a person who is convicted of gay sex is liable to life imprisonment. But if that person is also HIV positive the penalty — under the heading “aggravated homosexuality” — is death.

The Bill has not been endorsed by the Ugandan government but it has allowed it to proceed, and some top officials are said to have praised it.

A Canadian government spokesman said: “If adopted, a Bill further criminalising homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda.”

The Bill proposes a three-year prison sentence for anyone who is aware of evidence of homosexuality and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. And it would impose a sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians.

Addressing the Commonwealth People’s Forum, Stephen Lewis, the former UN envoy on Aids in Africa, said that the Bill made a mockery of Commonwealth principles. “Nothing is as stark, punitive and redolent of hate as the Bill in Uganda.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

My roommate and I just hosted a wonderful Thanksgiving at our house for 7 of our friends, complete with mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, turkey, gravy, apple crisp, and much more!


A few photos of our celebration:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Is Star Wars a Walking Contradiction, Even in a Galaxy Far Far Away?

I’ve been sick with a nasty sinus infection the past few days, and have therefore had the opportunity to catch up on my Star Wars. By catch up, I mean watch them for the zillionth time. I watched them in order of release: IV, V, VI, I, II, III, and while watching The Empire Strikes Back (my favorite) it suddenly dawned on me.

Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader starts when he can’t forego his love of Padme. He’s terrified of losing her. According to Yoda, this kind of love is a path to the dark side. When Darth Vader throws the emperor down the huge shaft in Return of the Jedi, is he doing it because his son is being killed or because it’s the right thing to do? To me, all evidence points to the fact that he’s trying to save his son because of the same kind of familial love that got him into trouble in the first place.

Now, obviously Star Wars’ good-evil binary doesn’t reflect the real world where everything is in colors and shades of gray; it just reflects the political situation of the time when it was made.

Okay, I’ll stop babbling. I just thought I’d offer you my loopy ponderings.

Thoughts (Nads)?

Work Culture

This post is another written for Deshpande Foundation's blog. To read what others have written on the same topic, click here.

I arrive at the office every day at anytime between 9:30 and 11 am. Sometimes my coworkers are already at their desks and other times they stroll in an hour behind me. As much as I like to try to convince myself that I’m a morning person and that I can get much more done early in the day, the truth is that India’s work schedule is much better suited to my body’s time clock.

After I enter the office I am offered a hot cup of sugary milky chai (what I have affectionately come to call a hot cup of diabetes- it really has that much sugar in it!), a staple in the Indian workday. I’ve never needed a caffeine jolt and never liked coffee, but that cup of chai seems to pick me up, calm me down, and keep me going all at once.

At present, my work day largely consists of research—sitting at my desk meticulously planning with occasional meetings and trips to the field. After spending a year and a half in India, though, I have come to learn several things key to surviving in a local non-profit work environment:

1. Meticulous planning may be a great exercise, excellent in theory, and is certainly a worthwhile skill to pass on to your colleagues, but most people don’t plan, and even when they do, the plan is often ignored.

2. Meetings never start on time, most participants don’t actually participate, and meetings often run late because people’s mobiles repeatedly interrupt meetings.

3. Your superiors are “sir” and “madam” or “ma’am”, unless otherwise instructed. Those thought of as your inferiors will call you “madam” no matter how many times you tell them not to.

4. Your personal life and professional life will not be separate.

I think Giselle and Mari have described a great deal about the importance of personal life in a professional environment. I’d like to hit a little bit more on point 2, more specifically the idea that a meeting will have 8 attendees but only two of them will be making any sort of verbal contribution. Aside from the lack of personal-professional divide, this is the most important difference between my work life here and in the US.

Most people don’t participate in meetings because aside from senior officers, staff are not encouraged to voice their ideas, inside or outside of meetings. Even when they are, they often don’t speak up. At the risk of making broad generalizations and not offering much complexity where complexity is due, I see this as a broader product of India’s educational system and hierarchical society, where creativity, critical thinking, and confidence are not inculcated in the system and encouraged as much as they should be.

I see this as one of my greatest upcoming challenges as I pursue my work at Bhageerath. My top priority is evaluating Bhageerath’s programs, but I also want to leave knowing that the staff can work together to carry out evaluations in the future. This means forming a committee to oversee the evaluation, and training them in evaluation by doing evaluation. I will be using new and unfamiliar training techniques and require constant feedback and ideas.

What makes me confident that we can succeed at this is the personal relationship that I have built, and will continue to build, with my colleagues. Their acceptance of me as a person has made them more open to my professional ideas, and vice versa. Now we just have to wait and see how it works!

Flooding

I'm sure many of you heard about the somewhat recent terrible flooding in India. One of the most affected areas was the villages surrounding Hubli and Dharwad. Today I had the opportunity to go out into the field to see some of Bhageerath's work and the village that we visited was affected by the flood. Throughout the ride I saw fields and fields of crops (maize, millet, cotton, onions, etc.) that had been flattened by the flooding, and areas where the water still had not dried up. What's worse is that the soil is completely cracked and ruined.


Unfortunately, the Indian government is doing very little in the way of assistance (i.e. providing farmers INR 2,000 for ruined crops that would normally produce INR 60,000). Much of this has led to the aforementioned onion farmer strike (see post "Day One"). Still, there are many non-profits attempting to alleviate the impact. What I wonder is what happens a few years from now when farmers are producing low quality crops because their soil is so poor.


But there's nothing else for them to do besides move on. Many of them were clearing out their ruined crops, removing waste from the fields, and re-plowing the soil with their bullocks. It's sowing season now and all the farmers are picking up the pieces and looking towards the future. I wish I had brought a camera so that you see what they're up against.

"a tale of two indias"

Sometimes other people say it best. I found this article on BBC and although my opinions on India are constantly changing, feel that it very succinctly explains a lot of what has been going through my mind. To see the piece with photos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8342664.stm


India is often described as the land of extremes, rich and poor, hot and cold, forward and backward. Chris Morris reflects on what it is like to live in a country which has 'two faces'.

In the fading light of a Himalayan sunset, men strip down to their underwear and plunge headlong into the icy waters of Mother Ganga.


It is late October, winter is coming, and this is Gangotri - the place where millions of devout Hindus believe the River Ganges descends to earth from heaven. It is a place of pilgrimage high in the mountains, just a few miles from the source of the river.


The Gangotri temple is dedicated to the goddess of the Ganges.


People believe that by washing in this freezing holy water, they are purifying their sins. But this is extreme devotion.


The last afterglow of the sun is reflecting off the snow-capped peak of Sudarshan - a perfect cone-shaped mountain.


Bells are ringing in the temple, incense drifts through the chilly air, and prayers to the goddess are being chanted.


A visitor takes a photograph of a temple shrine from the wrong place and is sworn at enthusiastically in earthy Hindi. Offence is taken and curses mingle with the incense.


India is always an interesting mix of the sacred and the profane.


Cheap souvenirs
Just outside the temple gates groups of men are crouched around small fires, trying to keep warm.


And from a long line of makeshift shacks, locals are selling plastic bottles in which to collect holy water, along with cheap souvenirs and other bits of plastic tat.


I am offered a postcard with a photograph of a mountain which is so out of focus that it is hard to tell whether it really is a mountain or just a white blob.
"Very nice picture," the man says. "No it is not," I think to myself, "it is rubbish."


So what sticks more firmly in my mind? The devotion of the devout, or the tattiness of the tat? It is honestly hard to tell because India's always a bit like that - as an outsider it does not give you much middle ground, on anything.


There is so much here that is wrong, that is cruel, and that is unjust. Poverty, caste violence… and for many millions a chronic lack of opportunity.


There is shocking treatment of women, who are killed for providing insufficient dowry, or for making the fatal mistake of falling in love with the wrong man.


There is shocking treatment of children, who are trafficked, abused or forced to work 16 hours a day in sweatshop factories.


Optimism
But for many millions of other Indians, there is also something else - a sense of looking upwards, a sense that things are getting better, that the horizon is widening, that in this young society, with the oldest of cultures, this is their time.


Wherever I travel in the world, I tend to keep a mental barometer in my head - an optimism index if you will.


In India, certainly in urban India, it just feels like the mercury is rising. Compare that to parts of Europe, my previous posting, where many people have plenty of everything. They are not pre-occupied with the hope of moving up, but with the fear of losing what they already have.


India, of course, could get it all wrong. The have-nots could remain stuck in their rut, increasingly angry and marginalised.


Hundreds of millions of people still survive on very little in this country and as they watch the new buoyant India flourish around them, there is bound to be a reaction.


A peasant-based rebellion, taking inspiration from the revolutionary teachings of Chairman Mao, is fermenting dangerously across a vast swathe of Indian territory. Unchecked, it could well spread fast. "That," a senior security official once told me, "is what really keeps me awake at night."


Commonwealth Games
But middle class urban India will party on - Mumbai obsessed with Bollywood, Delhi increasingly obsessed with traffic jams, flyovers and next year's Commonwealth Games.


The Games are supposed to showcase the new India, and announce Delhi as a 'world city'. But there has been mounting concern that it will not be ready in time.


I suspect the event will end up being a triumph. A combination of last minute panic, natural charm, and maybe a few prayers to whichever god or goddess is most appropriate to a major sporting event will see the city through.


The runners will run, and the drummers will drum. And the slums will be screened off behind bamboo fencing. People will see what they want to see.


So back down in Delhi, I wonder whether I too should not have broken the ice by the bank and plunged into the freezing currents of the River Ganges. It might have given me a sense of perspective, which India's assault on the senses often does not allow.
Love it or hate it? I feel like I am being battered from both sides.

Day One

I have officially left Mann Deshi—for reasons I will discuss later—and joined a new NGO. During my interim 2 ½ weeks I worked at the Deshpande Foundation revising web content for one of their programs. Yesterday, I began working at my new NGO, Bhageerath, which works in public health, livelihoods, and agriculture, on issues of sanitation, water, and irrigation in rural villages.


On my way to work I was reminded of something I love about India. I was stuck on a bus in two hours of traffic that didn’t move more than 10 feet during that time period. At first we all assumed there must have been an accident, but later came to learn that farmers were on a strike because the price of onions had fallen so low. Everyone on the bus was patient and nobody showed any visible sign of irritation.


People in India organize unlike anywhere else I’ve seen. On any given day you’ll find dozens of demonstrations or strikes throughout the country. People organize around political issues, lack of infrastructure, something they don’t like about their job (usually pay), and whatever else you can think of. Strikes and demonstrations are sometimes not very effective, and half the time I have no idea what they’re about, but the mere fact that people feel like their organizing will make a difference is inspiring.


(This is, of course, in stark contrast to the complacency that most people exhibit towards government corruption).


So how was the rest of my day? Excellent! I’m working with a very small team of people on TONS of work that they requested and therefore wholeheartedly support. The staff treated me like it was my first day in India (something I found very endearing) and the project support started right away! I’m not getting my hopes up yet, but so far I feel very positive about this change!

Two New Friends

Friend One
Last night there was a very loud pooja. Our landlord and her large family set up shop on our porch, set off crazy firecrackers, fireworks, and noisemakers, and then invited us outside for celebration. This, sadly, was our first interaction with our landlord as we had miraculously never seen her and nobody introduced us. Now we have an open invitation for lunch or dinner, or to learn Kannada (the local language). I love how you can go from not knowing someone to fast friends in an instant. It's great!


Friend Two
This one's for Dad. I walked out of a store the other day to a beautiful beagle tied up to a railing. He was clean, adorable, extremely friendly, and made me unbelievably happy. My plan for the evening was to go straight home and get to bed (I was exhausted), but as soon as I saw those soft perky ears and eager eyes, I had to stop and play with him for 1/2 hour (until his owner came out and took him home). People were walking by and looking at me like I was totally nuts, but that sweet little beagle made my week.


Next time I'm going to follow the owner home and ask for some QT with the playful pup :)

Diwali II

For some reason, blogger isn't working properly so my post winds up looking like this:


This year Diwali was amazing. Lena (my roommate) and I spent about a month mentally preparing and a few days navigating the streets of Hubli to buy presents. Durgamba, the wonderful woman who cleans our house, told us we had to buy her presents. When I said, "Yes, and your family too," she very frankly responded, "No! Just me." It is customary for people to buy gifts for those they employ, but last year's fellows set a very high precedent.



Lena and I decided to uphold that precedent, plus we both enjoy gift-giving, so we went all out. Our gifts included a camera phone, three saris, a purse, bangles, shoes, and money. We also bought chocolate and some local sweets for the kids. On the night we were supposed to join her at her house, Lena and I ran around like crazy. We had about fifteen minutes to assemble all of our gifts and I had to dress Lena in her first sari (always a complicated process).


We arrived at Durgamba's on India time (45 minutes late) and everyone was very excited to greet us. Lena had already been there, but it was my first time meeting her family. We gave her the gifts we purchased, participated in their pooja (prayer/prayer offering), ate her delicious dinner, looked through her photos, and somehow chatted away despite our intense language barrier. Nothing about it was unique or out of the ordinary, but I left her house that night completely giddy. I was so happy! To me, the night was very special, and was probably the most fun I've had in Hubli so far.



What consistently amazes me about India is the extent of its hospitality regardless of the family's wealth. I know that much of what I experience of Indian hospitality stems from my race an nationality, but it also stems from the simple fact that I'm a guest and people are unbelievably kind. This is one of my favorite aspects of Indian culture. When it comes time for me and Lena to prepare a meal for Durgamba and her family at Christmas, I can only hope that we are able to reciprocate.

HAPPY DEEPAVALI!

Cultural Adaptation

This post started as something written for the DF Sandbox Fellow's blog as a monthly requirement. I have edited it for my personal blog so that I can be more honest. To see the original: http://globalexchangeprogram.wordpress.com/. It might not be up until tomorrow or the day after.

One of the most challenging aspects of adapting to Hubli's culture (a word that often oversimplifies the complexities of what I experience) is the fact that locals will never let me forget that I look different. When I first arrived in India (for my second time) over a year ago, I thought I would never get used to the constant staring. Yet here I am, a year later, and not only am I used to the staring, but I also realize that I have license to stare back. I don't blame anyone and it's not always bad; sometimes it's advantageous. It's just the way it is.

There are many aspects of local culture that I have adopted into my daily life: I usually address my superiors as sir or madam, take the local bus to work every day, dress in salwar suits or saris, bathe with a bucket instead of a shower, cook Indian food and then eat it with my right hand, haggle over just a few rupees with a fruit vendor or rickshaw driver, use water instead of toilet paper when I use the bathroom, take my shoes off when I enter the house, don't say hello to people I pass on my street, use Kannada or Hindi when I actually know the appropriate words, bobble my head as an affirmative, and sometimes segregate myself from men whenever I see local women doing the same.

It's not always easy. There are certain things about my culture that I am willing to give up and certain things about Indian/Hubli culture that I am unwilling to adopt: I almost always eat a western breakfast (except when idli-sambar is available); I try to befriend street dogs; I refuse not to talk to certain people because of their caste, class, or professional designations; I find Indian corruption, whether at the national, local, or NGO level, abhorrent (yet complicated); and I won't drink water out of the tap.

There's a certain freedom about my foreignness that allows me to reject certain aspects of local culture and maintain certain aspects of my own. Yet the one thing I struggle with the most is how to maintain my independence, how to slip into anonymity when that's what I want and how to go wherever I want whenever I want to go there. I've learned over the past 13 months that many locals consider this kind of thinking "un-Indian," especially for a woman. But in my mind, it's still a constant battle.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I recently walked along the coastline and beach in Mumbai fairly late at night (11 pm). To contextualize this, walking along the coastline is a popular activity, women are rarely (if ever) alone, and India has the largest concentration of young guys in groups (according to my good friend Rama- I swear he's right).

Now, I am very aware that walking along as a white woman is a rare sight, but I refuse to prevent myself from enjoying my late night walk. Of course there was the "bad" kind of starting, sexual harassment, propositioning, and numerous men who walked up to me to talk to me... one even dared to touch me. Here's a snippet from a conversation I had with Danish, one of the men who tried to approach me:

Danish: Why are you out so late? You should be walking in the morning.

Me: Why are you out so late?

Danish: I like coming here at night, but you should only walk here in the morning.

Me: I should be able to walk here whenever I want to.

He laughed, and then the conversation turned to him getting my phone number (he didn't) and ofering me a ride home (which would defeat the purpose of my walk, plus I'm not getting on some stranger's bike). I'm very aware that the sight of me out that late by myself really disturbs the gender dynamic, but I've gotten to the point where knocking down every man's BS sense of entitlement is worth it (I'm also doing much more than that when I think about it--good and bad--but I won't get into that here.

(No worries. I didn't compromise my safety.)

Sick

I know it has been far too long since I last posted here. I’ve been very busy over the past few months and will certainly update you in the coming weeks on my work and travels. For now I’ll focus on where I am and my most recent newsworthy experience (which people have asked me to post about).

My fellowship with AIF has ended but I’m still in India. I have relocated to Hubli, a city in the southern state of Karnataka, to be a Deshpande Foundation Sandbox Fellow for the next year. I will be working with Mann Deshi’s Hubli location on a few different projects (to be discussed in a future post).

Deshpande Foundation (www.deshpandefoundation.org) is based on Boston and does development work mainly in the Hubli area. DF’s claim to fame is its “sandbox approach” to development. This means that the organization focuses very intensively on developing a very small region, “the sandbox.” They’re hoping that if they are successful then the approach can be replicated throughout India and possibly the rest of the world.

To stay in India and work for another year, though, I needed to obtain a new visa. DF decided to send me to Nepal, and thus my story begins…

I woke up on a Sunday morning with a puffy face, dizziness, joint pain, diarrhea (not terribly unusual), and a horrible headache. Joost was there and very sweetly took care of me- went out to buy food to cook me breakfast and make me a rehydration drink. A few hours later I started having the chills and decided I had a fever. MY FIRST FEVER IN OVER 15 YEARS!

Since I was due to leave that evening for Nepal I thought I should go to the doctor. Joost and I set out for the hospital where they took a wrist x-ray (joint pain) and sent me home with some anti-inflammatory medication. They didn’t think I was sick, they didn’t listen to any of my other symptoms, and they didn’t take me seriously.

I figured I would get better so I took a paracetamol and Joost and I hopped on the overnight bus to Bombay. I arrived in Mumbai and still had the same symptoms but wasn’t feeling too terrible. Joost and I had some food and spent the day wandering around. In the late afternoon we boarded an overnight train to Delhi. By then I was feeling terrible again and developing new symptoms- my fever was 102 and I had a nice rash all over my body. I woke up in the middle of the night and started vomiting. At that point my fever was just over 104 and I couldn’t hold down any water.

Joost set out to find a doctor on the train. I couldn’t even open my eyes or talk to her and she didn’t take me seriously either. When Joost and I got to the train station we hopped in a taxi to a hospital that my good friend Rama recommended. At the hospital, the doctor in the ER refused to see me (apparently he didn’t think I was sick enough), shooed me away with his hand, and then I was wheeled off to a different doctor on the other side of the hospital.

Finally… someone who took me seriously! He immediately hospitalized me but unfortunately there were no beds available in that hospital, and there was only one bed left in their partner hospital. So they took me in an ambulance (lights and sirens- the whole shenanigans) and brought me to a private suite, the nicest hospital room I’ve ever seen in my life.

I stayed there for four days getting tons of tests done, receiving unbelievably painful antibiotic injections, and ultimately being diagnosed with nothing. I have diagnosed myself with chikungunya, even though my test results came back negative. While I was in Nepal I had a few relapses and I currently can’t really walk because of my joint pain, but I am feeling infinitely better!

Joost is sadly home in the Netherlands. It was amazing to have him with me the entire time. I don’t know what I would have done without him- he poured sips of water into my mouth on the train, carried all of my stuff for me, helped me walk from point A to point B, registered me, pushed my wheelchair, ran around Delhi changing my travel plans, brought me juice and mints, woke up early to talk to the nurses so they wouldn’t have to wake me, made sure he was with me for all of my painful antibiotic injections, offered to change his travel plans so that he could continue to care for me in Hubli, and I could go on and on and on.

The bottom line is that he was absolutely wonderful and, although a serious damper on his holiday plans, I’m really happy he was there with me (even if he insisted on taking photos like this).