Just to be sure

This working experience, in a developing country, presents a new host of limitations on not only your ability to work, but the manner in which you know who you are. You may notice that throughout this journal I often use humor or sarcasm as a way of expressing to you the experiences to which I’m having. Be not confused, though, that this is my way of criticizing or finding fault in the manners or customs of a people or nation. More so, it’s a way of coping and processing with (at least for me) the constant state of confrontation of your own views on how “things work”, your own cultural beliefs, your own values and ideals, your own stereotypes and prejudices, the character of how you define yourself.

Almost everyday involves a confrontation of some sort, whether through trying to get home on the bus or trying to write a grant by the submission date; of being held up and delayed of the lack of power which greatly affects the ability of which we do our work, especially with dependency that we know have on computers; the confrontation of language barriers in trying to express your needs, thoughts or ideas or trying to decipher into readable form sentences like “And the coconut front will be defeated for crashing to separate fiber and coconut pith” or “the effects achieving through the haughty and broad activities will be reflected by the marginalized plantation working class in the High range area.”; of being in the top 10% of educated and wealthy people in the world; of rude vs polite; of mostly, with this particular trip my own gender.

Of the traveling I have done, this is the first time that I have been confronted to such an extent of my gender. For the first time in my life, I am feeling that my primary descriptive quality is “female”. While for India, Kerala is one of the most liberal states for women, the area in which we live is rather rural and as a result less profressive. And in fact, for India, this is one of the most progressive areas. Muslim women are not required to be in shroud, women hold jobs and in Kerala women have the highest literacy rates and the lowest fertility rates. Yet, for my own personal experience, while the limitations for women exist in the US, this is my first real confrontation on my own gender.

In review

I figured that I might as well as recap for you my life of the past week or so.

July 15th, 2006- Kim and I travel back from Kovalam to Rajakadd. This trip entails a 30 minute rickshaw ride, a 4 hour train ride and a five hour bus ride up the mountain. In all this is a 220 km trip, or about 136 miles for those of pondering the speed of Indian travel. As you should all remember from my last post at this time I am also high point of my affliction of unidentifiable spots. When we board the train we book the general class seats since it’s a “short” trip. Mistakenly we think that there is no general class car and only reserved seating, where we find a comfortable place for the first two hours. Then the conductor comes and herds us to the rear of the train, with all the other class jumpers to the two general cars. Here we are lucky because the Nationals got charged the fine, and we we’re let go on our ignorance. The general car, or two cars are obviously the most cramped, filled with daily commuters and luggage. The only space we can find is a crawl up space, mostly used for luggage, but when the train becomes full people cram in then as well. Well, mostly men, but in our quest for seating this was certainly the best option. So traveling in true Indian style we arrive…4 hours later.

We have a little lunch and by this time it is about 3 in the afternoon and we need to catch the bus up to Rajakadd. Kim and I have traveled down by bus a few times, but this is our first attempt at trying to go up. At one bus stand in one town, there was a sign that posted bus destinations and times. At three towns there is a “bus conductor” of sorts. Yet of course, Enarkalum is not one of those towns. So to figure out how to take the bus you have to first figure out where the bust stand is. The bus stands I have been to comes in two formats: 3-4 blocks where the buses pull up at the curb or a huge dusty parking lot with a ton of buses. Once you figure out where the bus station is, the real game is to figure out what and when the bus that you need to be on. Since this bus system works without fail (and very punctual l might add) for 1 billion Indians a day, I have no room to complain. Figuring out which bus then means that you have to rely on the kindness of strangers to take pity on you, and be able to understand what city you’re trying to say. It involves wandering around the huge lots, and/or city streets stating your destination over and over again, and following the directions of hand points with the small hope that by the grace of God you will figure out your bus. Of course this process is also facilitated by carrying too much luggage.

On this trip a bus stand was right next to the train station, so we immediately felt our good fortune, because we recognized it was getting late if we’re to make it up today. At this bus stop, which we’ll call Point 1, we we’re directed to the end where some kindly people took us in, and asked me to use English, informed us that we needed to me at the High Court Bus Stand and put us on a bus across town. High Court Bus Stand is very large and consists of both the road pick up points and the parking lot. We got of at the road side, and after some time were told to go to parking lot side. At the parking lot side, after wandering around shouting and asking the various drivers, “Rajakadd?”, we we’re informed that we needed to be a the Kuchinany bus stand and placed on a bus that took as past Point 1, to this much, much smaller bus stop, at which maybe or may there was a bus, but since no one showed any kindness towards us, we we’re forced to ask each and every bus that pulled up the destination, since we don’t read Mayalamam. (Which is interesting in itself, considering that in our remote are, where barely a percentage of the population speaks English, the buses are marked in English, but here a major metro area with many English speakers they’re not, but that’s a point to ponder another time.) Anyway after about 30 minutes a kindly man took pity on us and informed us that we should get on this bus to go a different bus stand that would get us on a bus home. So we got on the bus, went past Point 1 and ended up in the lot at the High Court Bus Stand. Frustrated, we finally figured out that we had to go to the road side.

The other complication, is that no matter what way we pronounce Rajakadd, no one seems to understand us. So all though the buses in the region, almost all travel from Rajakadd to Enarkalum, we had to give us trying to find a bus going directly to Rajakadd because apparently we are often incomprehensible, and instead have to ask for a larger city near on the way to Rajakadd, called Adimaly. Since at this point, even switching our destination to Adimaly seemed like it wasn’t going to work, we wrote on a piece of paper where we trying to go. Then, like a beacon, at the last minute the bus to Adimaly pulled up and we were on our way home.

When we arrived in Adimaly it was dark, cold and pouring sheets of rain. When we pulled in, the bus conductor on our bus pointed out the bus to Munnar and I didn’t correct him because of course to him that’s the logical place I should be going. Kim and I gathered our things and headed out in the down pour to circle the buses for the bus to Rajakadd. Imagine our surprise when we directed back on the bus we just got off, just a tad more wet. Imagine more, the conductors surprise when he got on and found us back in original seats. Anyway, the good thing is that the bus from Adimaly goes right past our front door, so we almost got door to door service.

July 21st The week in Rajakadd passed as normal and my spots had also cleared up. Everyone was happy to have us back. On the day before we had gone back to Adimaly (which is only 1 ½ hours) to use the internet for some research on the grants we are writing, and Kim had left her flash drive there. On this particular Friday, we were supposed to head to the office, so while Kim headed off to get her flash drive I went off to work.

When we first arrived, before the rains, we had taken a path that cuts through the rice paddy fields and along a creek side. This short cut saves about 1-2 km of the walk, but since the rains and the high water and mud we have avoided the path, mostly taking rickshaws to the office and walking the long way home. Well, on this morning it was bright and sunny and warm. It hadn’t rained in 24 hours, and as it turns out Kim is the more intelligent of the two of us. I decided to give the short cut a try and headed off. The first half was fine, the path was dry and wide. About halfway through I ran into a man we know, out in the rice paddy with an electric tiller. I was surprised to see this man here because Kim and I have been pondering what his role is. We remember his as being a jeep driver for us at one point, then he showed up at a the workshop for NGO workers we held, then one day he showed up with the landlord in our house to measure the floors, and now he was in the middle of the rice paddy. He’s a nice man and speaks a little English so we said our greetings and our headed on my way.

Then I came to the little place where you need to cross the stream by balancing maybe one or two steps on the little log. Well, my sandals were muddy. You all can guess what happened. I fell right off that log and wound up thigh deep in the creak. Embarrassed, I climbed out the bank which was about chest level and quickly stood to my feet, and turned around to see if he’d seen me, which of course he had. Indignant, I was not a weakling who could not handle a simple walk through the rice paddies, I put my head up high and walked on. Well, I was wet and muddy and the little muddy walk area between the paddies got less and less and less until at one point I slipped off a little again and broke my sandal. At least this time no one say me though. I removed my sandals, laughed out loud to myself the entire way and made it out, where I was able to fix my sandal, make to work on time and arrived dry but filthy. My little adventure provided much needed delight to the office staff.

That night was going to be a special night for Kim and I. My mother (Thanks Mom!!) had sent Kim and I two movies, and tonight we were going to make a special dinner, some popcorn we’d found in Adimaly and watch one of the movies. Kim made a delicious meal, and we watched the movie. Later that night, I tossed and turned in my bed feeling nauseous. About 4 in the morning I woke up and headed to the bathroom, where I felt maybe I’d feel a little better. The next thing I knew I woke up on the floor covered in my own vomit and drenched in sweat. I crawled up in a panic and began to get out of the bathroom to begin what is now my first adventure with food poisoning. Kim helped me back to bed, where I laid with the bucket. About an hour later, Kim came down as well, but without the vomiting, but the other unpleasantries. It was too bad for her, but better that it was both of us because at least we were assured of the cause. With in an hour I had felt better, but both Kim and I both had come down with a slight fever and spent the entire day in bed.

July 22nd Around 7 that night, the neighbor stopped by to see if we would be up for a visit from the Doctor of whom had been by last week for social reasons. I explained to the neighbor that we were sick and wouldn’t be able to take any callers that night. This caused among our neighbors great concern. At this point Kim and I were mostly feel tired and weak from lack of food and the like, but knew that at this point we would probably be fine by morning. The neighbors offered us the doctor, tea, food and we declined preferring to crawl back in bed instead.

Well, about 9 that night, it seems that the neighbor women had conferred and overrode our decision. The four neighbors knocked on the door with tea and informed us that they had called our boss from the office who was on the way. So there Kim and I sat, uncombed hair, sweat ridden pajamas, sitting on the floor on the living room which only consists of one desk and two plastic lawn chairs anyway, just wanting to crawl into bed or at least lay down, knowing that it was too late to protest. Ten minutes later, our boss showed up, with a co-worker and the driver. He insisted that the doctor come now, to which we didn’t bother to protest. By this time the crowd at the door had grown to include the children, another driver, and the bus stand guy from town who it turns out is also our neighbor and his wife. Kim and I weakly sat smiling and trying to make pleasantries while they discussed how much vomiting and loose motions has been passed.

The doctor came, gave us a couple of pills to ease the fever and at long last the Saturday night excitement was over and everyone wandered home. Kim and I woke up Sunday feeling like our old selves. We’ve decided that this is the most care and concern we’ve gotten while sick since our mothers homes, and that truthfully despite the comedy and hassle of it all, it felt a little good. What would of made it little better though was the old comfort food of dry toast, 7 up and jello. Of course we’ve now learned to Indian versions of plain rice in water, mango pickle and hot tea.

Half Way

For those of you that were worried about me, I don’t think there is any need. My spots seem to be going away slowly but surely. It seems since I’ve left Kovalam they’ve stopped multiplying. Perhaps I was just having an allergic reaction to something after all. I’ve never been prone to allegories but I do hear that you can develop them later in life.

We have four weeks left in Rajakadd to complete our work, and we’re starting to feel the time crunch. I wish that I had more to write about my work here, but I’m afraid it’s rather boring to the reader. Since our area is organizational development, it’s a lot less exciting than being an activist or organizer for the rights of people, or even a peace protector. Basically we are working on four different tasks to help increase the strength of the organization: implementing evaluation systems, grant writing, web site development and making brochures. There’s not much excitement in that, except for when people confuse us for organizers or activists here to rile up the people. Mostly the first month here was spent just understanding what the organization did. Working through language barriers made it very difficult for us to clarify those activities that they had done in the past, those currently being run and those that they would like to do. The last few weeks were spent doing research of potential funders and web site hosts and activities. For this we went to Bangalore because we needed good internet connection, a basic tool that at least for my generation. I know little on how to survive without it, especially when it comes to research and communications. We’re now to the phase where we are writing funding proposals and have helped them work on using participatory methods to identify impact indicators for evaluation and monitoring purposes.

Even though our work is less exciting than other human rights activities, it’s just as beneficial and I feel that on some levels we have the opportunity to make a more lasting impact. The people here are learning a lot about ways in ways to make their organization more stable and by doing so have the capacity to serve more people with higher quality and greater lasting impact. So although it’s less exciting to talk about, I like to think that we’re the sly ones who fly under the radar most of the time.

We had to finally start saying no to meeting with people, which I know is disappointing to others, but necessary if we are to be able to complete our tasks. In the last few days alone we have been invited to visit more Self Help Groups of women, three schools, the hospital and a few other NGO’s in the area. Our presence here is greatly welcomed by the community and everyone wants to spend time with us, or get our ideas on what they could do to better their endeavors. That is the precisely the conundrum we often find ourselves our in. As you all know, we are not experts in the many fields that we can asked for advice. We’ve had to tell people that if we have additional time at the end of our stay here them maybe we can visit, but until then it’s just not possible.

Life at home is pretty much the same, we were gone the last two weeks so it was a nice break from the routine. The children were very happy to see us return. Tonight we got our first cooking lesson from our landlord. We make a jackfruit curry dish that we love. Tomorrow night she will teach us how to cook Chapatti’s and vegetable curry. They are very kind and generous to us, always bringing us fresh fruit and sharing food. It’s a very nice experience, and I hope to have neighbors like this in the future.

It’s been raining for one month straight now. Everyday there is rain. It’s very spotty peaks of sun followed by a sudden down pour, then dry then a light drizzle all through the day and the night. Everything in the house is molding. The pillows, clothing, bags, mats all of it. It’s the hazard of the monsoon or so we’re told.

That’s all for now.

Blessed be you and yours,
Jessica

Not Mites

The good news is I don't have mites, the bad news is I don't know what I have and it's getting progressively worse. After acquiring more red dots yesterday, and seeing a few on my face I decided to go to the Doctor. I've been in Kovalam the last week working with my professor and some other students. Kovalam is a beach town, and huge destination for tourists.

Anyway the Doctor did not think that it was mites, as I only had them on the arms and legs of my body. He thought that perhaps I'm having an allergic reaction to something, so he prescribed some cream and antihistamines.

Today I woke up and they are worse, there are over 40 on my left arm alone. My face is horrid right now. I'm on my way back to Rajakadd right now so if I am allergic to something then I'm leaving what ever it is. I figure I'll give it a couple of more days to see if it clears up. They very well could be a reaction to something as I'm neither sick nor do they itch.

Wish me well!!

Suggestions?

Well, I'm fortunate enough to have my beloved Mike coming to visit for a couple of weeks in August. Kim and I thought it would be nice to have him bring some small, easily transportable gifts from Minnesota to give to the people who have been so generous to us.

The best, wait no, only idea we have so far are key chains...any other ideas??

Karma

A few weeks ago, as I observed Kim scratching the head of one of the dogs, I said, "You're going to get fleas." I then proceeded to make fun of her the next few days about getting fleas.

When I was in Mexico, I got a bad case of mites from a great dane puppy so I knew better then to touch the dogs, not matter how cute they are.

Well, against my own good advice, I pet a cute litttle shaggy dog, with a huge smile on it's face. And of course, after chiding Kim so much, I got the mites.

*Sigh*

More pictures for you!!

Just for good measure, the sunset going down at Varkala.













Here is me meeting with a group of the Cardoman plantation workers. They are presenting me with a necklance of threaded cardaomon together.











Here is the tea plantations, the plant up close is the tea bush, and the houses in the background are the platnation community rpovided by the company.









This picture is better larger, unfortuntatly on the web here it doesnt capture either the bueaty of the region, nor the detail well. The light green on the bottom are the tea plantations, and if you can't see them but the workers are down to right. That white dot in the bottom corner is the supervisor. This area is magnifecently gorsouse, but when I mde the picture smaller it seems to have been lost a little bit.








This one of the women in the SHG home. It is made out of mudbricks, which is not a good housing solution, but better then leaves and tarps. You can see those steps there, that used to be the other part of the home, but in the last monsoon the storms wrecked the house, and they have no money to rebuild. In that little room lives her, her husband and two teenage daughers.








This is our office, about a 4k walk from home. They have one really old computer, and one of the staff members also lives here. Now I understand how work was done before the advent of computers, craziness.








This is the neighbors house taken from our front porch area. Our house is substaintially better constructed, as it is only a year old. We have these neighbors, with their two small children, a teacher and a farmer. We have our landlords which live up stairs, and another apartment down stairs where another teacher and a health worker live with their parents and small son. In the yard here grows pepper, guava, cardamom and mango.

This is the picture of the street to town from our house. We live 1km from town. The little car you see there is an auto richshaw which is the main form of public transit. As you can see this picture was taken before the monsoon, when it was sunny and warm.

Pictures

This is a picture of a street in Rajakadd. This road goes to the office.
I wanted to post more for you, but it's painfully slow. Sorry. I should have picked a better picture but this is all I have for now.

Love,
Jessica

How nice life is becoming.

In spite of the heaviness of the situation, I was thinking today about how in many ways my life should seem limiting here to me, or how reliant we’ve become on things we don’t always need in the US. We have no hot water. Warm water bathing means heating up buckets of water. We have to wash our clothing by hand. We have no transportation, no modern connivances. The power goes out at least once a day and was out for the longest period now is 36 hours. We have little furniture and buy our food daily. There is no “entertainment.” Hell we can’t even leave the house after dark. And you want to know something I’m happy. I mean I’m really content with my life.

We hang out with the neighbor kids everyday. We stop say Hi to the shopkeepers we know. We get invited in for tea. This morning we had a long breakfast with the landlords. People give us fruit and teach us the names of trees and what tree grows what fruit. The days go surprisingly fast and I have not gotten in all the things I’ve wanted to.
The truth that I find in the situation, is that for all our modern conveniences and secure lifestyle of creature comforts we’ve traded something for it, something that makes life a little less pleasant. Try explaining that

Meetin with SHG Groups

The main form of organization, that’s taken over the developing world, are called Self Help Groups. In these groups, women and/or men come together to work collectively on personal and community issues. HPDWS currently has helped to formation and livihood of aover 100 of these groups which each meet weekly. Kim and I have met with about 8 of these groups in our data collection processes.

The other day we went to one of the neighboring towns to meet with the workers there. These two groups really illustrate for me the contrast in reception we often get.

The first group we met were obviously the poorer of the two. I’ve never felt more like a queen in my life. The women of the house came and held our hands into the home. The husband took a million pictures of Kim and I sitting there. We were honored with plates full of food. Like most meetings they opened with a prayer. Their prayers are always songs, so you get to be in this tiny room filled with the praise of song. These women, who were by far the poorest women we had met, had already done amazing things. They had managed to create a savings larger than any other group (and they’ve only been together 1 and half years) start a joint business endeavor and were all happy and generous. They made us take a dozen photos, and all held our hands when we left. One of the little girls had prepared a song in English for which she sang to us. It was insane.

The next house we went was completely different. The women obviously had more money. They had a TV a better house and paid more in dues. Yet, they were more quiet and reserved, seemed less happy and their first question for us what we could give them, like money to send their kids to school. The all sat at the far end of the room. They complained about their inability to do anything and all and all it was a really uncomfortable experience.

Each SHG is different, but this one day really highlights the extremes of what our experience is here and the reactions we receive from people. We’re either treated like royalty or with skepticism.

In many ways this is a huge challenge for foreigners trying to do development or human rights work in developing countries. We are not miracle workers, but are looked at as having all the answers, all the connections and resources to make life better. Unfortunately, we don’t have the knowledge, money or influence to do all of the things necessary to combat all the barriers in a community. So, in the end many local people become distrustful and resentful of the results.

It’s a personal battle with which I myself personally struggle. How much capacity do I have to make these peoples lives better? And how much could I possibly be making it worse? After all at the end of the summer I return to my comfortable, secure and safe lifestyle and they’ll be left with the same struggles they’ve had for years.

These are a few of my favorite things

Today’s entry is all about the intricacies of India that I find either oddly fascinating or entirely irritating but nevertheless thoroughly entertaining.

The Head Bob
The head bob was a gesture that was entirely unknown to me before I arrived to India. It is a very loose swaying of the head, in fact, it is 100% a bobble. The bobble is used similar to the head nod, except to make it entirely confusing it may mean “Yes”, “I don’t know”, “I don’t understand”, or “Maybe.” Ask a question, nine times out of ten your response is the head bob. It also used by most people when they are talking, like talking with your hands, and when listening. Now, I’m starting to head bob myself.

Rajakadd?
As Western women, it must be clear that Kim and I have no idea where we might want to be going. On our recent return trip by bus from Kumily, we boarded the bus. The conductor came to collect our money. This was our conversation:
Kim: Rajadakk
Busman: Munar (Which is the big tourist town at the end of the line.)
Kim: No, Rajakadd.
Busman: No, Munar
Kim: Ra-ja-kadd.
Busman: Rajakadd?
Kim: Rajakadd
Busman: Rajakadd.
Where we finally were handed our tickets. Oddly enough we have a lot of conversations of this nature.

What day is it?
Indians love calendars. A good home has at least one in every room, preferably more, like 2 or 6. Our house came with hardly any furniture and no kitchen items, but we did get two calendars in the living room. I suppose this is to be aware of the auspicious days. We tried to ask the meaning of this and the answer we got was painfully obvious. “So we don’t have to go into another room if we want to know the day of course.”

Time, though is completely irrelevant. Why know what time it is, if you know what day it is? If you’re lucky the house might have one clock. Don’t bother showing up anywhere on time. Today Kim and I had planned a workshop similar to the ones I do at home. No one showed up until 1 ½ hours after the agreed upon time. I’ve learned to bring a book along where ever I go, because we wait…a lot.


The beating of the clothes
There is a process of the clothes washing process that requires the heavy beating of the clothes. I’m taking about the trashing of the article against the rock. Kim and I have yet to figure out at what point in the process this is, and for what articles. It’s clear from our observations that it’s not all articles. Is it in the pre-wash, the scrubbing or the rinsing and wringing? My best spying on the neighbor woman, reveals that it’s defiantly in the scrubbing portion, as in literally beating the dirt out of the clothes I think. I’ve been trying but have yet to yield any positive results; although it does help get rid of some angst.

The bathroom
The physics of the squat toilet elude me. If you’re unaware Eastern toilets are holes in the ground with little food pedestals next to them. All it requires is squatting, not hard. For cleansing, there is no toilet paper, just a small bucket of water provided. Apparently there’s supposed to be some rapid splashing movements with the left hand? I’m to busy trying to brace myself so I don’t fall over. Unfortunately how will we ever learn what’s supposed to be done here? No ones going to let us watch. On the plus side we have a western toilet in our home. These women get bonus points for managing this task in a Sari.

Saved by the Bell
How many people does it take to work the bus? Here, four. The driver, the money collector, the doorman and the man who rings the bell to let the driver know he’s just a little to close to teetering over the edge. We’re in a mountainous region so the roads are windy, with often hairpin turns and are at most a lane and a half wide. Because of the region half of the roads are built on the cliffside and a looking out the window might have you staring straight down sheer drop offs to the land below.

On our recent trip to Kumily, the bus driver met a large cement trucks at precisely one of these junctions. One of the drivers was clearly going to have back up. First we sat for five minutes while they fought over who should have to back-up. Meanwhile, I’m sitting next the window, where a quick peak out the window shows a straight drop of hundreds of feet. I’m busy trying not to have a mini panic attack a la my mother, while Kim’s reassuring me not to worry because there’s a six inch high wall between us and my looming death. We get chosen to back up, not to worry though we have about 12 inches play room. We slowly back up with the little ringer boy ringing, ringing away. Don’t worry I obviously made it. And who am I to worry. The ringer boy is obviously a tried and true method.

Attack of the Wild Pigs
Our recent trip to Kumily was the result of a few days off. Next to Kumily is the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. This is one of the few Tiger sanctuaries in India. Sadly there is only about 35 who live in the park and it’s very unlikely that you might see them. There are many birds, over 2000 elephants, wild pigs, deer, wild oxen, 3 types of monkeys, 250 varieties of butterflies and the like. Kim and I did a day hike, and you know what, we didn’t see one elephant. No tigers, fine but come on there are 200 elephants! We did see the deer and oxen running though, the black monkey and some other little ones.

In town there is another variety of monkey that are viewed somewhat like rats, but I thought they were cute anyway. The first night though, in the street we did see a whole family of wild pigs. There were like three adults and 4 -5 babies. Even the locals were out looking so we knew it was unusual.

Our lodge was set off from the road, and to get it you walked down this narrow fenced in path behind the other houses. A couple of nights later, in the pitch black Kim and I are returning from dinner down our little path with the flash light, when we notice the pigs right next to our little path behind the stick fence. Kim’s in front of me and I hear the pigs charging. I turn around and run, as we’re in a narrow little alley and only one route of escape. Turns out the pigs ran through the fence, across the path and through the fence on the other side. Kim wants me to put in here that I abandoned her to the pigs. In my defense, I just ran turn around and ran, it’s not like I pushed her out of the way to make my escape. It’s not my fault she didn’t have the sense to run, besides she could clearly see the path of the pigs, I could not.

The Fooloda
Mmmmm...three types of ice cream, fruit syrups, fresh berries, mango and vermacelli. Yep, that's right ladies and gents, pasta in your ice cream sunday. And its suprisenly good, if you get over the texture part. Supposedly it's an old Islam treat. Why? I don't know
For all it’s joys and pains, I can certainly say that for on the surface might seem like routine and mundane days, there’s never lack of excitement and entertainment. I’m loving it.

Trucking Along

Hello All,

Sorry I haven't updated more, but with one place in town to access the internet, which is often not open because of power outages, and the limited time that Kim and I have to be out and about, my access to the internet has been spotty at best.

It's hard to believe that we've already been here a month and only have two more months to go. Kim and I are currenlty in the big city of Bangalore as we needed to work on web site development and grant research. And with the internet siutation as it is in Rajakadd, we decided to head up to the world of broadband, wireless and internet cafes galore. One of biggest tasks is to help stabablize their organization through attempting to get more stabalized fundings.

Their current mode of operation is to chase the fudning, which is a typical dilima of many small un-professionalized NGOs. The end result becomes an orgainzation with a large heart, but without much credibility or expereince to get the big funding because the programs that they have run have been spotty with no coherence or direction.

So far we've helped them to strengthen their mission and vision and are trying to help them establish a strategic direction to move towards. We have helped them to conmduct two stakholder ananlysis meetings, with over 50 people present, to discuss the issues facing the community. The two that we did included local polititions, teachers, drivers and other NGO workers from neighboring communities. It was highly successfull, and many people commented on how great it was to get together with others to discuss these issues. While we're gone the organization will be conducting 3 more of these meeting with the people they serve. This infomation will be used for strategic decision making and for us to help them implement a participatory evaluation system.

So we're making progress, but it's also frustrating because things do not happen at the speed and manner to which I'm accustmed to in the US. All in all it's a learnign process for both them and us.

In other news, the monsoon has come. It not as bad as I thought, it rains everyday, spotty and not hard and stormy. Of course the many of the things in the house are becoming permantatly moldym, which is not fun.

Well, that's all the time I have right now, but will try to add more when I get the opportunity to this week.

Hope all is well with you,
Jessica