Mamallapuram

Greetings from Mamallapuram (formerly mahaballapuram, for those having difficulty pronouncing the first one). I've spent the week down here in Tamil Nadu. The first two days I spent working in Chennai on our condom activities - reworking an activity that teaches how to properly use a condom. It was actually quite fun to work on on-the-ground activities as I usually work on mass media stuff. It was really inspiring to see that not one of the promoters was just coming to work - they were all truely trying to do the best job possible.

The next two days were spent in a company training on social marketing for senior leadership, led by me previous boss and something I helped her plan. It was a huge success. We stayed at the Green Coconut Resort which sounds just lovely but was a disaster. I called them for a mosquito coil three times on Thursday and they probably still haven't brought it. And it was unbelievably hot. 115F easily and muggy!!! Anyways, despite that - the training was great. The people I work with are so unbelievably smart and fun. Where else can someone yell for the group to "stop", put on a dance remix of "life in a northern town", and everyone in the room dances??

And then I and a colleague took the weekend to come a little further up the coast to Mamallapuram, a little beach town that is famous for its stone sculptures. It's pretty impressive - and equally hot! The first night we went down to the beach and the shore temple - everything here is from the Pallava era (7th century AD). It was great to see all the indian families enjoying the beach. Very strange that the women go in fully dressed though. And it meant I haven't yet gone in the ocean - as I feel a bathing suit would be inappropriate. But dinner at a beach shack is always a good time. Then Saturday (today) we spent touring the stone sculptures. There are the 5 rathas (ratha means "looking like a chariot" or something) - so there are these temples that are meant to look like the chariots of the gods. Lifesized elephants, lions, and a larger than life cow. They were buried under the sand until 200 years ago. Then we toured some temples that are mostly carved out of huge boulders and have relief sculptures that are nothing like I've seen in India. They remind me more of Cambodia or something. There is this ancient lighthouse (oddly like 500 meters from the shore) that you can walk to the top of and from there you can see how far the tsunami came inland. Only 12 people died in this town which is surprising considering how far it came and how much damage it did. All the boats are new and donated from international aid groups (mostly Catholic Relief Services).

1st Photo - Women at the Sea Breeze Hotel in Mamallapuram working to build more rooms.

2nd Photo - The fishermen bringing in their boat in front of the Shore Temple.

3rd Photo - Two of the Five Rathas.

4th Photo - Relief carving in a stone cave of Durga (woman on lion on left) fighting the buffalo demon. If you click on the picture to see it bigger, check out the little woman in the center bottom with incredibly cut abs but a belly:)

5th Photo - A view from the top of the lighthouse to the ocean (Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean). The big rock is how far the tsunami came up - it's an unfinished Ratha.

Rafting the Ganges

Yup, it's officially summer here. Over 100F every day, I think the high so far is 106. Last weekend some friends and I spent an afternoon sitting by the pool at the American club and then this week there were two holidays (Id and Good Friday) and my friend Liz had her sister and brother-in-law in town so a bunch of us went up near Rishikesh to go rafting. I had done a similar trip a few years ago and it's just wonderful. You camp on the beach, in really comfortable tents with cots. On the last night it was a full moon so three of us slept outside the tents, underneath the stars. Very cool. We saw many monkies, barking deer, the eyes of some strange sounding owl and of course cows. We went rafting both days. The first day we also went kayaking - which I love despite not being very good at it. And went for a short hike. The second day we went for a tougher rafting trip and a much better hike. That hike took us through the local hill villages, it is truely amazing how many people and animals live up in the hills - with no roads or stores or anything.

Then on Friday, the third day we left camp and went into the town of Rishikesh which is a Hindu pilgramage site. But really it's become a hippy, yoga site for westerners. It's packed with crazy looking tourists - they are more interesting even then the Sadhus (holy men dressed in saffron orange with crazy beards). We tried to go to the yoga ashram that the Beatles stayed at but its been closed and locked up. The whole of the Ganges (Ganga) river is considered holy and if you bath in it it wipes away your sins. However certain towns/places are more special than others. A town near Rishikesh called Haridwar is one of the seven holy places for Hindus (not all on the Ganges) as Vishnu was said to leave a footprint there. Haridwar literally means Gateway to God. When people die this is one of the places they go to cremate the bodies and put them in the river for good fortune in the next life. At night they sent aarti down the river (palm leaves filled with marigolds and essentially an oil lamp).

All the pictures here are of the hike (or the camp site) since I didn't have my camera when I was in the water.

Photo 1) The Ganges, at our camp site.
Photo 2) Our group - From left to right, Dana - a colleague, me, Scott, Alison(from the US) and Liz.
Photo 3) Some kids that were playing at the end of our hike.
Photo 4) Women doing laundry in a creek (not the Ganga).
Photo 5) A woman in the fields - the whole area is really dry right now but they have wonderful irrigation so we saw them growing bananas, onions, peas and all sorts of things.
Photo 6) We took the train in from Delhi to Haridwar and then drove the 2 hours to camp. These are windy twisty hill roads and if you're not used to the Indian driving, it is very frightening. A lot of close calls. The whole way are the cutesy signs in English (so I assume they are more for the people in the backs of the cars than the drivers) that say things like "Speed thrills but kills". This sign was my favorite.
Photo 7) An old man we passed on our hike. The men seem to like to have their pictures taken, the women not so much.

First Day of School

So after months of looking at schools, being treated badly by some of them and generally being given the run around, "Come back in March" - In March: "Oh, come back on the 27th".... Tenzing (my maid) and I finally found a school for her son. Tenzing's son, Tenzing (it's actually their last name), is 7 and he started school April 1st for the first time:) It was really an interesting process for me. There are three types of schools; government (which are not free but very cheap), public (which are private but mid-range cost) and private (which tend to be boarding schools). I was told by everyone here that Government schools are to be avoided, it is possible to get a good education but not always and that they are especially not good for boys (although I suspect that's just because people value boys' education more). Also though, since they are Tibetans in exile they don't have the proper papers to enroll in a government school so it would be quite difficult.

The initial fees (which they call a donation) run from $20 to $300 (most that we looked at were about $100 - which is one month of Tenzing's salary). The more expensive schools don't include books and uniforms in those fees, the cheaper ones do. And then monthly fees range from $10 to $30. Busses are extra in all cases. I was very torn as to which type of school to agree to. I want Tenzing to be able to continue sending her son there after I leave so I don't want the fees to be too much and our agreement was that I would pay the initial fees and she would pay the monthly ones, so she needed to be able to afford those. We (she) finally found a school in the lower end that seems okay.

I was also torn as to what to pay for - obviously these costs are not high, for me. So why not just pay it all? In the end, I wanted her to be investing in the education as well (it's the reason PSI doesn't give its products away for free - people value things they pay for). I also didn't want to just pay for all the fun stuff (backpacks and lunch boxes). But I agreed to pay for her son to continue with a private tutor as well, as I suspect that it will be a struggle to start school all of a sudden, and I paid for uniforms and books (which at $40 seemed very expensive for India - I think the school is profiting). But you have to love his uniform, right?

It makes me very happy to know he's in school.