I'm Back

Hi Everyone,
For those of you who haven't heard, I am heading to Tanzania for the summer and have opted to keep the same blog rather than start a new one. So be on the look out for new postings. My departure date is still unknown, but it is most likely going to be early next week. I have gotten all my immunizations so I am set to go, other than the lackc of visa, plane ticket, I'm not packed, and I have to move into my new apartment before them. Yikes...

Lots of Love,
Jenna

Photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenna.golan/IfIDieTellEveryoneIWasEatenByATiger?authkey=Fa8m0g7KKuo&feat=directlink

I feel that I have drastically misled my audience. I was going on and on about driving in Delhi and how they are the worst drivers and so on. But I have recently determined this to not be true at all. The fact of the matter is that Bangali drivers would be significantly worse, but development has not allowed them to reach their full potential. And trust me, I know this for a fact, I easily spend a third to half my day in a car. Dhaka, is the most densely populate place in the world. I don't really care what statistics say, there is no way people can live in any closer quarters than this. I often like to spend my time (any time, not just here) thinking of ways to improve things regardless of it is cities, food, or people. I have been trying to figure out a way to improve Dhaka. The major problem here is traffic. It is impossible to get any where because there is always traffic. It takes over an hour to go 10 km. I would just walk places except there are no side walks. I considered public transport for a while but subways would flood and I don't think a monorail would just collapse. I thought about buses then realized that they have them everywhere and they are always full. There are just too many people in Dhaka and a gross lack of city planning. Then I thought about moving people out to the countryside or establishing another megacity. But there is no place for them to go. Most of Bangaldesh floods. Thus, people have built up the land for roads, buildings, and villages by digging out space for the water to go and is used for farming in between time. Basically, all of Bangladesh looks like rice fields (look at the pics if you don't believe me). There is a single lane road that winds through the country and ditches on either side. For the most part, driving in Bangladesh is a continuous game of chicken. There is barely enough space for one car to drive on the road. Yet some how I see massive tour buses regularly pass each other. I think that 32 people die a day in traffic accidents and I honestly believe that must be an underestimation. After much pondering, I finally concluded that 150 million people is just too much to fit in the state of Wisconsin and that there is no real solution.


I forgot to mention that they don't know how to read maps here and that the streets are not in order and occasionally change. Thus the main form of navigation is rolling down the window and asking the nearest passerby if they know where random location is. They inevidably say yes and start directing you there. The catch is that they really don't and are making things up. So you end up in the middle of no where. We pulled out a map once and asked our driver if he knew where we lived and he said yes (he's been going there every day for a month). We asked if he knew where we lived on the map and pointing to the competely wrong location. I think cartography/ geography should be added to the primary school curriculum.

USA! USA!

Apparently the unpopularity of America and Bush's administration failed to impact Bangladesh's opinion of us. It appears that everyone loves America, everyone loves me because I am Americas, and everyone wants to move to America and work low paying jobs because they still believe in the America is the land of opportunity. It is quite distrubing. Without a doubt foreigners get special treatment in Bangladesh. Our driver was telling us that if he ever gets in trouble while driving, he just tells them that he is driving foreigners and its all ok. I found this hard to believe because there doesn't seem to be any traffic laws here so if you were to get in trouble it would have to be something pretty severe. But I was proven wrong. The other night we were reversing down a main road because we had missed our destination and a cop standing on the street starting approaching looking very mad. He then starting tapping the rear passanger window in order to get Saiful's attention. However, when he peeked in and saw me, he saluted, and then cleared the way so that we could continue on our mission of risking life and life to create traffic jams. I have never been saluted more in my life, security guards, police, and sometimes in the military personal salute me. Though this general attitude of servitude to foreigners does not just stop there. I often feel like the Bangali's that work for us will stop at nothing to accomodate us. As soon as we arrive in a village, chair magically appear for us to be more comfortable. Robbie (the cook) almost always does what we ask, I have no idea if we are putting him out and asking him to do more than necessary because he just nods his heads and smiles, even when Bala gave him his dirty underwear to wash. Saiful happily works until 16 hour days despite having a baby at home to care for. We were wandering around Matlab hospital the other day, (where everyone saluted us and let us do whatever we want) and I was beginning to get concerned that they would let us walk into a den of tigers if thats what they thought we wanted. This fear was immediately confirmed as we were walking around the pouds. There was a narrow trail around some of the ponds that we were walking along, there was a guard at the start who just saluted us and let us walk on by. About halfway around, one of our hosts calls out to us to be careful because there are giant snakes in the ponds! I would think this information would be valuable prior to starting on out little journey. But I guess they assumed we knew/ didn't want to bother us with important details that could inconvinience us or put us out in any way.

Damn you KFC

Today we ventured over to BIRDEM which is the diabetes hospital. Its kind of difficult to have sympathy for the few overweight Bengali's when we have spent so much time looking at malnourished mothers and children and old men and young men and basically everyone looks emaciated. It gets especially annoying when there is a very large man standing in front of the room telling us to look around us and look at how many people are not overweight by the western bmi standards yet have still developed diabetes. From where I am sitting in the doctor's office, all the people around me are quite fat and not in that compared to their patients way but in that compared to me and my friends way. I mostly find it annoying and this comes across when I am asking questions. I tried to demand to see some statistics and stratification of the population but they don't know these things. I guess being at hsph has left me with too high of standards. But I still maintain that I need an over view of the disease prevalence before I can fully appreciate, understand, and criticize the programs they are telling us about. My irritation subsides when they say that many malnourished people are presenting with diabetes and so it appears that in addition to obesity being underweight also causes it. But then my irritation returns when it comes out they have not attempted to establish any sort of biological reasons as to why this happens nor do they have any statistics regarding the percentage of the patients that are this way.

Now, I know that Bengali's love their fried chicken. There is KFC, BFC, and even a California Friend Chicken which I did not try and understand or explain to people why this was horribly inaccurate. There is a McDonald's in Old Dhaka and people keep saying how good pizza hut is. But regardless what data comes out about globalization and America ruining culture, I will maintain that Bata is really the epitome of that. It is absolutely everywhere. I have never been in a country and not seen a Bata, except in the US. For those of you not familiar, it is a shoe store that came out of Czechoslovakia. They claim to have a presence 5,000 stores in 50 countries. But unless a thousand of them are in Bangladesh, I would think that is an underestimation. It is truly ridiculous how ubiquitious this place is. Even in the most rural areas, there will be at least one Bata in town.

Ok, maybe it wasn't a tiger

Back on my feet some what. And back to ICDDR,B. And looking at nutrition supplemention to treat diarrhea. Once again very happy.

And I got to meet a harvard grad that I am going to force into mentoring me. Life is good.

Hungry Children Everywhere!

One of the things that struck me most about India was how many people are begging for money. There are fewer in Bangladesh and they are less aggressive (well other than that little Scrimangal girl) but they are still present. Now, I have a pity/ hate relationship with these kids. First of all, we don't give them money because they always stop you at traffic lights and then if you give them money others flock and you will never be able to leave until they have taken all you have on you. This is has been my experience. It starts out as heart breaking, you really feel sorry for the kids and want to help but usually don't. I can't feed millions of people even in Bangladesh. Then slowly you start getting annoyed because they are everywhere and always bothering me for money. Then you feel guilty for getting annoyed. Then you get annoyed for feeling guilty about just wanting to go about my day. But then you feel even guiltier because its not really their fault that their mothers can't feed them. And it just continues to spiral downwards between guilty and annoyance and anger until you can't take it and hip check a child into oncoming traffic because all you really want to do is get a bite to eat before you have to get to a meeting and there is a little boy running under foot getting in your way. Then you feel guilty and can't eat lunch which then you feel guilty about because there are starving kids outside that would love to eat that food. Then you begin to feel hopeless and BRAC makes you feel better with demonstration of their Ultra-poor grant program.


Addition: It two three weeks, a million begging children, and six blocks but they finally wore me down. I gave two taka each to two boys yesterday. Thats about a quarter of a penny each.

Uh oh

Just remember, tell everyone I was eaten by a tiger.

ICIDBRDDC, b

So, following our time with BRAC we headed over to ICDDR, B. I was able to get the letters right by the time we were leaving, but that doesn't mean that I can use it easily in conversation. It stands for something about diarheal disease research but what it translates to is a hospital full of malnourished infants on cholera beds lined up in a row. I think there were about 500 beds, though only half of them were full since it is winter. Apparently in epidemic season they see up to 1,000 patients a day and extend the hospital to courtyard where there are more cholera beds. Seeing as how nutrition, child health, and breastfeeding are some of my major interests I loved this part. Well, other than the five year old boy that weighed 6.3 kilos and all the other none responsive gravely ill infants. But alas, if the world was a cheery place where everyone was healthy and happy and well fed, I would have to find another line of work. So we will move on from the depressing stuff and on to the interesting parts. I got to go around and interview women about themselves and their children including age of both them and the child, breastfeeding practices, complimentary feeding, and the reasons that they didn't breastfeed. It seems that despite major effort to get mothers to breastfeed, most believe that their milk isn't sufficient so they stop or gave them contaminated food. I got really pumped and started developing my new life plan.

I am so behind on my posting. But then I assume that none of you spending your waking moments counting down to my new post or dream about all the wonderful adventures I am having in Bangladesh. Sunday was our last hectic day with BRAC. We went into the rural villages and viewed their Ultra-Poor Grant program. As opposed to microfinance loans, the grant programs gives the villagers enough money to buy a few chickens, goats, or a cow. Which they can then make money off of. Its pretty impressive to see how drastically it is able to change these women's lives. We started out at a meeting, then went around to houses. The first house was a women that has been in the program for a few months. She used her grant to get two goats and a chicken. She sells the goat milk and the eggs for profit and now has babies goats that she will evntually sell, yes I got to play with the baby goats. They are sooooooooooooo cute. I want one, except it will eat my shoes and that would make me sad. But up until that point I really really want one. Then we met with a women that had been in the program for a few years. She started out with one baby cow, which she raise and sold. With the profits she bought two cows and some land. And has continued on until she was able to buy her son a rickshaw for him to work. She has six children and believes that she is in her 20s, but seems closer to 70. There is no national registry so most people have no idea how old they actually are. Its even more abiguious in the rural areas. I also think that I am blending stories here, but you get the general idea which is good enough. I am fairly certain BRAC controls the world. Or at least Bangladesh. They have programs in dairy, handicrafts, microfinance, health. I don't think there is anything they can't do. I feel like they enable the government to continue being ineffective and corrupt, but I assume that they will eventually take that over as well. Then it will just be one unified body running everything in an efficient manner. For the most part, BRAC seems to be a fairly clean organization that truly looks out for the people of Bangladesh, but I could easily see them getting carried away and becoming completely corrupt and self serving. I'm sure interesting things happened today as well, but too much time has really passed to remember right now.

I'm pretty sure that BRAC controls all of Bangladesh.

To be honest, everything that we have seen through BRAC is starting to blend together into one big blur. I think we spent Saturday touring the handicrafts workshop, silk twisting factory, and sanitary napkin factory. And my factory, I mean under aged girls spending hours on the floor laboring over minute bead work, silk yarn, or super absorbant cotton. The handicraft work was incredible. They sell all the products are Aarong, which we had previously been to. I had been reluctant to purchase the printed fabrics until I saw them being created. All the print blocks are hand carved and the printing itself is done by hand not by some stamp machine. It was slightly heart breaking considering how much these girls get paid. But I consoled myself by observing that they were cleaner and better dressed than anyone else that we encoutnered. Meaning that their standard of living is probably substantially higher than those around them. But when you buy items made in Bangladesh, remember that it is all hand work and they probably got paid $50 a month for the $500 dress you just purchased (Steph- CLDD). Also, all the girls swore they were over 18, but I seriously doubt it. However, since Bangladesh doesn't have a national registry there really is no way to prove it. If they need the money, they need the money.
I had my first encounter with any sort of safety measures at the sanitary napkin factory. The girls were wearing masks and there was a fire extinguisher (sort of). Thinking back about it, there weren't even safety measure at the limbs and prosthetic factory were they were working with electric sanders. And were are allowed to walk around where ever we wanted to. Prior to leaving the factory, they asked us if we wanted to see the orchids in their nursery. They turned out not to be in bloom. But nonetheless they were extremely proud of them.

So basically, this was the best day I have had in Bangaldesh. But there is so much going on that I won't go into that much detail. To start out with, the guide arrived for us promptly at 8:50 in an autorickshaw. With the driver, there were six people that needed to squeeze into this thing, which was surprisingly not difficult. Then we went to the national park to watch the Hoolock gibbons, hoo (haha) were apparently no in the mood to play since we saw none after and hour and a half of wandering around a small forest. Then we ventured to a Kashia village were I got to the start of a new tobacco industry. See, the Kashia, while a tribal village, spend their days farming Betel Leaves which are very addictive, popular, and cancer causing. They also turn your mouth red. It is their major cash crop. We literally saw hundreds of dollars worth of product in heaps laying around the village. We also saw lots of tv antennas and solar power panels. This was not at all what I pictured when the said, "tribal villages." Then we were off to a Manipuri village. Where I saw child labor at its finest (at least I thought I did until we visited the handicraft shop, but that will come in tomorrow's post). We stumbled across a rice ceremony, which was very interesting. For those of you unfamiliar, on his or her first birthday, a Hindu baby has a rice ceremony where they lay out a variety of of objects for the child to grab. Now, this child was crabby and would only grab the leaf that the items were placed on. So the family proceeded to shove items into the child hand, for the most part, it was money. My guess would be that it invalidates the meaning, but what do I know? Then we went to a pineapple plantation, a banana plantation, a gorgeous lake in the hills, a tea estate, a rubber plantation, and finally a tea house where they served us five color tea. Somehow, this man discovered a way to layer the tea so that it has five distinct colors and flavors. http://deepinthedesh.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/five-colours-tea/
Very very weird. We were headed back to Dhaka on the midnight train, so we got a cheap and crappy hotel room in the city, made friends with some other foreigners, and went to a Bangali movie. It was amazing. It was a combination of romance, comedy, thriller, kung-fu flick, and musical bound up in one gloriously sex free two hour extravaganza. Seriously sex free, we couldn't tell which one was the mother and which one was the love interest for half the movie. And there was audience participation. Lots of cheering, jeering, and clapping. It was awesome. The train was not so awesome. It arrived an hour and a half late and I couldn't use the toilet for the whole six hours. I was fairly certain that I was going to be sent back to the US with a kidney infection or something.

Two key additions:
1. We met some people that work for Grameen Bank which is a microcredit bank in Bangladesh. They were German, Australian, Thai, etc. We killed time before our train playing cards and drinking local rice wine that arrived in our recently emptied water bottle. It smelled like kerosene and was too diluted by 7 up to really taste.
2. I encountered the most aggresive beggar child to date. She ran up to me, threw her arms around my waist and gave me a huge hug. I immediately grabbed my purse for safety but she didn't seem interested in it and followed me for several blocks in this position.

Rest at last

For those of you not aware, Dhaka is not a pleasant place. Basically if you were to take all the negative parts of a city (traffic, noise, crowds, filth) and magnify it while at the same time getting rid of the positive aspects of a city (culture, night life). You would have Dhaka, except for the food. That is delicious, I had the best italian meal the other day. So we decided to take the long weekend and head to Chittagong. The weekend here is Friday and Saturday (Friday is a holy day) and then Thursday was Ashura. Unfortunately, we were double booked with BRAC and ICDDRB on Monday, so BRAC moved their Monday program to Saturday and we had to scramble to put together another trip. We decided upon Scrimangal, which is the tea region. We left with our driver first thing in the morning on Thursday. And arrived four hours later without a plan. I was immediately overwhelmed and wanted to turn around. We went to the train station to arrange our return tickets for the next night and quickly discovered that no one spoke English. Or at least that is what I thought. I was panicking the first few minutes, but there was no reason. Within a few minutes, a well dressed Bengali swaggered in and asked us if we needed a guide in English! I immediately said yes. And best part was it was only going to cost 500 taka a person including transportation for the whole day.
Then came the hard pat, finding a hotel. There was a problem with our guidebook (as in we only used it to look at potential hotels and not to actually contact them). So we ended up driving around from tea estate to tea estate trying to find an available guest house. We were about to give up and drive back into town, when I suggest that we try and locate the vaguely referenced Nishoro Eco-Lodge. It was perfect, meaning that we called and they had availablity and it was functioning on Bangali prices as opposed to the Tea Resort which had bumped itself up to Thai prices. But really, the place was amazing, it consisted of two huts made out of sustainable material and had real plumbing. And was in the middle of now where and they had mosquito nets. We spent the rest of the day hanging around the lemon grove and talking with the Swiss women whose room we were going to take over. She is taking a leave of absence from work and spending a year traveling. Her children are all grown up and have moved away so she is using her savings to see the world. She flew to Istabul and has been traveling via bus or train ever since. It sounds amazing. She said the highlight of her trip was some place in North Kerala. I am going to track down the name and add it to list of places to go. Then we ate dinner and fell asleep listening to the nearby waterfall as opposed to honking horns.

Rural Villages

Due to my busy schedule, I am only going to give vague details and will hopefully have time to fill them in later.

Today we went to the rural villages in Bhawal National Park. We went to more microcredit meetings, interviewed the health worker, went to another primary school, and probably some more stuff. I found it all very interesting, most of you would not.

It makes me rethink the phrase slumming it

Today I learned that an NGO run slum is not really a bad place to be. In fact, if I lived in Dhaka, I think I would prefer to live there then other parts of the city. It was more like a community full of working people rather than a ghetto where the rich have confined the drug addicts and desperate women that eventually turn to prositution. We visited a microfinance meeting and heard how small loans have helped out people, a birthing center where my fears of child birth were reinforced yet again, and a primary school. Details to follow.

First Full Day in Dhaka

For the most part it was uneventful. We went to IUB and BRAC. Dhaka has the worst traffic I have ever seen. I had sweet lassi. It was delcious. I had salted lassi. It tasted like eggs.

Free at last

I woke up very excited Sunday morning. I was finally going to meet up with my friends. Well soon to be friends, there are four of us in Dhaka. I knew one of the guys, Bala, before. I had met Mike a few times but I had never met June. Unfortunately, I the cover story of the Sunday times was how flights were getting canceled due to the excessive fog. I was very concerned that I wasn't going to make it out. Under the recommendatin of the hotel mangager, I left the hotel at 8:30am so that I could get to the airport by 9:30 so that I would have plenty of time to check in and get through security for my 12:30 flight. If it hadn't been for the three hour delay, this timing would have been correct. Not surprisingly, the airport makes no sense. There is just a giant crowd of people trying to get to the desk to check in and check their bags. It took me an hour to get through a line where I was the tenth person in line. This is supposed to be a large international airport!!! The security seemed mystified by my flashlight and considered confiscating it. India drove me to drank and I was happy to see that duty free had bottles of Stoli for $14. Bala is very relieved that we have this to tide us over until we figure out where they sell beer in Dhaka.

As I was saying, three hour layover. Extremely unpleasant. But I had the first season of the Wire which is an amazing show. I highly recommend that everyone watch it. My favorite character is the one that makes furniture (I haven't bothered to learn their names yet). I am fascinated by the character development of the bad guy's nephew. I can't quite decide what direction he is going to go in. And it makes me sad to know that the heroin addict will most likely die in an alley behind a dumpster.

So once again, my lack of any useful knowledge of India showed through when I was attempting to go to the Taj Mahal. Apparently, getting there by train is not as easy as one would suspect it would be for a major tourist site. So after the manager of my hotel gave me a quick run down of the journey and told me that I would have had to purchase my tickets many days in advance I opted to hire a car and a guide to take me there. Yes, this seems ridiculously luxurious, but this is India, where as one of the venders told me later that day, "life is cheap so you can buy anything for next to nothing." And following my less than steller experience seeing Delhi by myself the previous day, was not exactly amped about the prospect of visiting a major tourist site alone. A car and guide were necessary and relatively cheap.

If I thought Delhi was bad, outside the city was worse. Driving in India would definitely be the most terrifying experience of my life, if I wasn't already on sensory overload and immune to pretty much everything around me.

A comparison to the US: Let's say that you were headed East on a four lane highway with a median and you wanted to get to something that was on the West side of the highway. In the US, standard procedure would be to pass it, wait until an appropriate moment make a U-turn, then back track your desire location. When leaving, you would head West on the highway, until the appropriate moment then make a U-turn and continue your journey East. Well in India, prior to reaching your location, you cross over the median and drive on the shoulder in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic dodging rickshaws, pedestrians, and camels and honking your horn to make people aware that you are coming. When you wish to continue you on your journey, you cross two lanes of traffic heading in the opposite direction then cross the median and go on your way. I have no idea how I spent six hours in a car traveling to and from Agra without dying. And camels was not a typo, there are cattle, horse, and camels transporting goods on the same high way as cars and trucks. Prior to this, my only experience with camels was at fairs where you could pay money to ride on its back in a tiny little circle. I would also have to say that there are more Indians then the enormous country can reasonably hold. People were aimlessly wandering around everywhere. Even through the busy intersections. You know in movies, sometimes people spontaneously become clarivoyant and then go insane because there are just so many racing thoughts. Despite there being people everywhere, I don't think that would happen. From what I could tell people don't do anything there but stand by the roadside. I couldn't imagine what a single person there could possibly be thinking. It seemed as though they had nothing to do with their time. Maybe this is just me being an ignorant foreigner, but shouldn't people have jobs or hobbies or at least be talking to one another? It was truly odd.

Ok, first off, the Taj Mahal was a mausaleum that Shah Jahan built for his most favorite wife when she passed away giving birth to her 14th child. I don't know about you, but I did not know this prior to deciding to visit it. Of course I had heard of it and seen pictures, but I just never inquired further into it. I think once upon a time someone told me that no one really knew what the Taj Mahal was because it was so old. That is completely wrong, thanks public school eduation.

Now, I am sure all of you are wondering what the Taj Mahal was like. In one word foggy. Apparently in the winter, Delhi and the surrounding area is foggy. Usually, the fog all burns off by 9 in the morning, but for my visit, it decided to hang around. Sadly, I missed all the beautiful long views that you usually see in magazines and post cards. And the lack of light meant that I couldn't appreciate the true beauty of the white marble.

But I would still say that it was very impressive. The attention to detail and work that went into it was unbelievable. And don't worry, my guide got to make sure that I had the opportunity to witness this work first hand and get trapped in another show room with people trying to sell me stuff. I did get to try carving marble by myself and only ended up with a very pretty jewelry box. I managed to get the price down by half, but I guess in touristy spots like this even that was not enough. My complete lack of bargaining skills really showed through here. Even the vender was encouraging me to lower the price. He was taking off five to ten buck everytime I said I wasn't interested. Then he suggested that I name a price that was 50% lower which I did and he quickly accepted. Then he through in a tiny marble elephant for free. I fail at bargaining. The second showroom I was led into I would say I did much better. I had a panick attack and demanded that they show me out. I say that tactic was the only successful one I found for dealing with Indians.

Other major sites in Agra are the Agra Fort and Akbar's Mousoleum. Most of the fort is occupied by the Indian army so you can't see the pearl mosque or the gem mosque. According to my guide the only really great part is that you can view the Taj Mahal as Shah Jahan did when he was imprisoned there by his son. But due to the fog you couldn't see this, thus I skipped the fort all together. I was pretty tired at this part. I did see Akbar's Mousoleum. I would say the most interesting part of this was the monkey's chilling in the courtyard.

This ended my time in India. Overall I enjoyed India, just as long as I didn't have to actually interact with Indians. Everyone kept touching me and trying to get my money, not my idea of an ideal vacation. But I am still fascinated by the culture and history of the country. I would love to back and see it again, but I do not think that I would go alone. It was just too stressful of a place not to have someone to joke around with and cheer you up when the starving man on the street looked like he was about to freeze to death.

I haven't fully edited this post, but I am a few days behind and anxious to move forward. If I have time I will make corrections. Otherwsie just deal with it. And don't expect post cards. I was too scared to step inside a tourist shop so no one will be getting anything for India.

I am the latest reincarnation of the god Vishnu

After a delightful breakfast of something Indian and spicy, I headed to the Red Fort to do some sight seeing. For some reason, everytime I think of India, I think of it being oppressively hot with the exception of the mountain region. This is not true. In the winter, Delhi gets cold. Not Chicago or Boston cold, but not exactly light weight wind jacket warm. I think my attire was the first hint that I was completely new to Delhi and thus an easy mark.


I should have taken it as a bad omen that I saw a Tuktuk, very similar to the one that I was riding in ablaze on the side of the road, but I opted to ignore it. (And when I say ablaze I mean like in the movies where the entire thing engulfed in flames and every minute or so, there was an tiny explosion.) I arrived at the Red Fort where I was quickly greeted by a man that offered to drive me around the city on his rickshaw for free but attempted to ignore him and head into the fort.

The Red Fort was a nice change of pace from the area surrounding it. It was a little bit dishelveled and dirty, and there were a lot of stray dogs procreating on the grounds. But overall, I found the area to be peaceful. Well, other than the Indians that were fascinated by me. I posed for pictures with 6 different groups of children, was hit on by three different men, and followed for forty minutes by a very confused young man that apparently thought I wanted to marry him (maternal Indian women decided to take it upon herself protect me and tell him off). I guess a tall white girl alone is not a common sight in Delhi. People seemed truely fascinated by my every move like I knew the meaning of life and was going to reveal it to them at any moment. This was all in the span of approximately two hours (the Red Fort does not take that long to see but I was unwilling to leave the fortified walls and head back out into the city).

I eventually did where I was quickly greeted by the man from before once again offering me a ride on his rickshaw. Now, pop up spam alerts were going off in my brain telling me that this was a scam, but he promised me that he wouldn't charge me anything and I could pay him whatever I felt like at the end. I was curious just to see how he was going to try and get my money, and I was completely overwhelmed by the city. I figured giving this a try would be better than heading back to my hotel to cry (which was plan b). So I jumped on the back of the rickshaw, and I would say overall that it was worth it. I am sure most of you are concerned about this decision, but I didn't think that I could be kidnapped and held for ransom by a rickshaw that barely went faster than I walked. It was nice going through the markets with someone that actually new what was going on and where things were, since I had no idea. The research I had done in preparation for this trip was severely lacking practical knowledge. I saw a Jain temple that I would never have been able to find on my own, the spice market, silk market, saree market, and wedding market which are places that I would most likely would have taken one look at and run away in fear if I was on my own. I would say that overall I didn't get scammed too badly. We would be going through the market and all of a sudden I would be in a shop looking at twelve pashminas or a dozen ruby bracelets. They are very aggressive when it comes to hocking merchandise. I would stop for a second and out of no where three or four people would emerge teaming up against you to get you to buy something. And the rickshaw driver kept taking me to store to go shopping which was not something that I was really interested it. But I managed to walk away with buying very little. I got a "ruby" ring that is very pretty and very blair and cost about as much as I would pay for it if it was a very good imitation in the US, so I don't feel too awful.



I am not good at haggling, do you know how I know this? Because twice when I bought things the shop keepers felt the need to give me a present as I was leaving. :( I would like to think its because I am cute and sweet and they wanted to buy my affection. But I don't think that is how things work over here.

Reunited at last

Finally, access to a computer.

Here is a brief summation of my flight:

I was seated across the aisle from a monk, who was quickly recieved a complimentary upgrade to first class. Thats karma for you.

I was surprised at how quickly 16hrs passed. They seemed to evaporate into thin air. I left Chicago at 7:30 pm on Wednesday and arrived in Delhi at 9:30 pm on Thursday meaning that I've lost approximately a day of my life.

Well, I guess lost is not quite the correct word, I spent my time enjoying educational movies. I learned from Eagle Eye that my cell phone is trying to kill me (sorry for spoiling the plot twist) and Michael Scott taught me about Di-Wali, the Hindu festival of lights. From the man next to me I learned that not all stereotypes are false. Someone once told me that growing up Indian men have their mothers do everything for them, then they work very hard for a few years, then they marry and lose the ability to do anything from themselves once again. If I were to guess, I would say that my neighbor was on his way to India to be reunited with his mother and get married. Despite living in Milwaukee for twenty years and owning his own business (I doubt that this is completely true, unless owning your own taxi or hot dog stand counts), he was illiterate. And as such could not work the touch screen tv that we were all blessed with. I understand that illiteracy is an issue in the United States, and that it is probably much more difficult when the alphabet is completely different but there were pictures! How could you have spent so much time in the US and not learn that the film reels mean movie? When it came time to fill out the disembarkation card, he simply handed me his passport and had me fill out the whole thing. I don't mind helping out, but I felt that waking me up so that he could watch Bollywood films was a bit much.

Despite the 11.5 hr time difference (I don't quite get the need of the extra half), adjusting to my new schedule was not too bad. It was as though the time simply vanished. I only napped on the plane so I was quickly able to fall asleep with the help of an ambien and get ready for a day full of getting scammed.