Ultimate Frisbee Tournament

Well, I really never thought I'd play in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament but that's exactly what i did this weekend. Through some vague connections we came to know that Ahmedabad (a city in Gujarat) had a team started by some Indians from the US who had come to volunteer and that a bunch of indians who had gone to school in the US had started a chennai team. So the idea of a tournament was started and we headed to Ahmedabad for the weekend.

We named our team Stray Dogs in Sweaters in honor of the mysterious hand-knitted sweaters that appear on street dogs in Delhi during the winter (no actual children get sweaters, just the dogs). I got credit for coming up with the name, but I'm not sure I actually did. Anyways, 14 of use from Delhi played. The Ahmedabad team is supported by a local NGO that works with street kids. Most of the players were ex-street kids that now worked/volunteered with the organization. The Chennai team was mostly young executives for BMW and IT firms. The NGO played host, they are based out of the Ghandi ashram (where he lived for 14 years or something) and housed most of the players (several people, including Doug and I stayed at a nearby hotel instead), fed us and organized a tour of the textile museum and arranged for us to coach/play with the young street kids. They were really cute. And way better at frisbee than I am (which is not hard). It was funny to spend time at one of these smaller, grassroots NGOs again, it reminded me a lot of my work in Jamaica or even Oakland. The volunteers from the US were recent college grads that came for a few months and were so hopeful and optimistic. I feel like that was a long time ago for me, the idea that working for 3 months teaching some kid has a long-term impact no longer resonates with me. Anyways, they were all very spiritual (again, like Jamaica) and genuinely nice.

We beat both teams (no thanks to my fairly pathetic outing) and it was really fun. The Ahmedabad team had several players without shoes and most of us were in cleats - I'm just glad we didn't step on their feet. My highlight was the young kid I was guarding (who constantly burned me) telling me how fast I was. The little kids we had played with the previous day also came to watch and took sides in our game against Chennai (chanting for Chennai or Delhi). We also got covered twice in the local edition of the Times of India - The Sunday one had a picture of me and announced the games that day and the other created an entire quote for me (I didn't say a word of it)! It also made up a title for me! Ah, Indian journalism.

Overall - I don't have many comments on Ahmedabad - really similar to other smallish cities; except many more sidecars on the motorcycles (which remind me of a toy I used to have, didn't know they still existed) and a very cool Langur running down the street which are the monkeys used to scare off other monkeys. I can see why - they are much bigger and very fast!

Quick captions: 1) me, 2) doug, 3) blair in a kilt, 4) cleats versus bare feet and 5) ghandi team shirts

The other India

This has been a clear few weeks of contrasts. I've been working on a new project in Delhi and rural parts of Rajasthan to communicate to the poor about the government's new health insurance for the poor. This is very different from my normal work for several reasons - but mostly I've never worked in Delhi or in rural north India. Last week I toured some slums in Delhi to talk to people and see how they reacted to the offer, when to find them at home, who would make the decision, etc. One thing that struck me is how different each neighborhood is. In one the men came home from lunch and trusted the government, the other the men were out from 8-6 and didn't trust the government. The people are also incredible (first picture was a girl who showed us around her neighborhood with it's overflowing sewage and tiny passageways). We asked a woman in the area if she'd prefer a person from the government or a person from the insurance agency telling her about this she thought about it and said, "send me who ever you'd like to talk to". We're not that different sometimes.

Then I had a weekend escape to Goa (long exhale). AAAAAAHHHHHH.

Then this week I headed to rural Rajasthan, to Tonk district. Spent yesterday doing a lot of traveling and then talking to villagers. Time has not hit this part of India. Big gold rings in the women's noses, bright turbans on the guys, camels camels everywhere. We ended up meeting a lot of the people who were employed by the government Rural Employment Scheme (oddly mostly women in really bright saris) which guarantees 100 days work on public works projects every year. Most reviewers think it's a disaster but some big holes were getting dug! The village leader who seemed to have polio and had only one working leg and four teeth that protruded over his lower lip showed us around the work sites to find qualified Below the Poverty Line families to talk to. I could barely climb the sand dunes and here he is navigating with ease.

And I saw a huge variety of animals, besides the gazillion of camels, there were cows, water buffalo (did you know the females have horns? Either that or males have started nursing), furry pigs (even piglets), goats (including kids dragging a dead one into the open drain and many females who had their utters tied up in a fabric bag that I can't for the life of me figure out!), dogs, cats, a tree full of gorgeously singing green parakeets, donkeys, horses, black camels, ... in fact I starting thinking that towards the end of the day the only normal indian animals I hadn't seen were elephants, peacocks and monkeys but shortly thereafter I saw a peacock and then later a monkey the size of a 6 year old child. I don't want to romanticize rural poverty, as certainly they are poor and from the stories we heard, suffering but the space they have to live in compared to urban areas. All the huts in the village were made from clay but they had courtyards and each family (i.e., parents versus adult son and his family) had their own room on a side of the courtyard. In Delhi 15 people live in a 2x2 space. The last picture of a family is the ideal family for this insurance. The father had kidney surgery last year which cost $1250 (even on the rural employment scheme they make $2 a day), included three different hospitals in two states and had to mortgage his land. His middle son is mentally retarded. He has an elder daughter who was in school but the scheme only covers three children and he said he'd pick these three as they were younger. Tough choice!

Today we spent the day in Tonk again but in this meeting (in a tent on plastic chairs) for government workers about the plan which was endless and in a language I don't understand.

And after I get back to Delhi tonight, I leave tomorrow night to play in an ultimate frisbee tournament in Ahmedabad where they've strictly forbidden us girls from wearing shorts (which I wouldn't have done but isn't sitting well with me regardless).

Weekend getaway to Goa

Doug and I took a long weekend in Goa - y'know, to celebrate President's Day. Can't recall ever celebrating President's Day before... definitely should do it more often. Anyways, we decided to head south as all three previous times I've gone to the north. People and guide books talked about Palolem being beautiful but my friend Alison had been the week before and described it as chaotic, which is not at all my dream beach vacation. So instead we went to a smaller one within walking distance - Patnam - which isn't even mentioned in the guidebook from a few years ago. It's startling how fast things change. It's probably today exactly how Palolem was 3 years ago. Just perfect. There's restaurants/huts lining the beach, which is this wonderful size and sand consistency (sand's way too hot with bare feet but really, that's just not enough to complain about). Enough people for good people watching but not enough to get annoying.

The first nights we stayed at this Rs. 250 ($6) hut which was quite nice (good shower, real toilet) but uncomfortable bed so we upgraded to a Rs. 700 ($15) place which was really great. (pictured). Both were mostly made of plywood. The second one was on the actual beach, instead of 6 steps back. It had a little porch thing overlooking the beach. Aahh. And then we pretty much did nothing. Went to Palolem one night for dinner, were happy we hadn't stayed there. Watched the hippies and backpackers and topless sunbathers do their things. Nothing is nice:)