Fever

When I was in Melaka I met a backpacking doctor who told me not to worry about malaria, the kind you get in Thailand and Malaysia isn't very harmful... it's the kind you get in India and Africa that you have to watch out for.  Fantastic!

I haven't heard anything about malaria in Nilakottai but I did read something in the paper about a few cases of dengue in Puducherry and somewhere on the West coast.  There's some kind of fever going around the illam, 11 of the 28 girls are sick, five went to stay with family, one spent the weekend in the hospital, and another half dozen have been too sick to go to school.  It's horrible to watch them crying and in pain and not being able to do anything.  Madam has been making daily trips to the doctor where the girls get some mystery injection and tablets.  I managed to get something too of course and have spent the last three days in bed tossing turning and having strange dreams about tight rope walking.  

The mosquitoes are incredible here.  There are swarms of them, and some are so fat I think at first that they are flies... well fed I guess.  I've been wearing long sleeves and pants and putting repellant on everywhere else but they don't care.  They bite me through my clothing or bite the soles of my feet, my fingers, even my face!  The girls say call it 'mosquito kissing'.  The only place I feel safe is under my mosquito net at night.  The 5th standard students were learning about the three types of mosquitoes and the diseases that they carry in school.  I wonder if they ever spray here like the do at home.  It probably doesn't help that with the drought everyone is saving water so there are plenty of places for them to lay eggs.  

Tirukarttika

It seems like there's a festival every other day here, perhaps that's why they go to school six days a week, so that they can have more days off.

I'm not exactly sure what this holiday represents but it's definitely one of the more beautiful ones.  Apparently it's the beginning of a month on another calendar.  People light lamps for three days, all over their houses.





I wasn't sure what to expect on Sunday, the first night, the girls had spent the day cleaning small clay bowls (oil lamps) and the candle sticks, as well as the rest of the building (the cow manure from Jean's birthday was finally washed away).  I had promised to visit the garden and set off some fire crackers with the boys.  I rushed back to the illam where the girls were filling the little lanterns with oil and then taking them all over the building.  We went up to the roof where we could look out over the village and see lanterns decorating each house.  It was even more beautiful because one of the (many) daily power shutdowns just happens to be the couple hours around sundown.  The sky was cloudy too so the town was almost black except for the lanterns.

Ants

I've been using Aesop's Fables in my English classes the last few days and coincidentally I learned my own lesson today.

I've developed a taste for cookies, and sometimes pick them up at the shop when I have to buy something else.  I wanted a snack this afternoon so I opened the Ziploc bag where I keep them and without looking pulled out a cookie and popped it in my mouth.  I didn't realize it was covered in stinging ants until they stung me dozens of times.  Apparently there was a hole in the bag.  This was even worse than the ants in my water jug.  The moral of the story?  Don't eat junk food... and watch what you put in your mouth.  Fortunately I don't have to worry about that right now since I'm not really interested in cookies anymore and my lips are still a bit swollen too.

A Dinner Party

Yikes, time is just rushing by!  I'd blame my silence on the power outages (which have been frequent, water as well) but to be honest I've just been busy, and not with anything really worth writing about.  

Today was the trial run of Children's Day at the school and it went off quite well.  The teachers all came and pretended to be the parents, watching the students' presentations and then we had a (long) critique afterwards... mostly in Tamil.  I now know how Jean must feel during her meetings about the new building.  I found it hard not to zone out as everyone was talking incomprehensibly around me.  

This evening we were invited to the house of one of the team leaders at DHAN who has been working with the film crew for the last few months.  He lives in a new housing development (many buildings are still under construction) near Madurai, which is about an hour away.  It turns out middle class India isn't so much different from middle class America.  The development was quite large, with row homes along treelined streets.  Every house had a car or motorbikes beside it and there were people out walking and chatting with their neighbors.  The house was large compared to the other houses I've been in here, two bedrooms, with three beds, a large dining room / living room space, a decent sized kitchen and a semi enclosed patio on the roof.  The bathroom looked similar to ones I've seen in restaurants, a squat with faucets sticking out in unusual places.  (Although since the building is new I'm sure they purposefully put them there, I just don't know why)

He lives with his wife and mother and two children, a very sweet 14 year old girl and a 19 year old son who had been called out on a mechanical engineering project.  His mother is a retired school teacher and her husband was a follower of Gandhi and through her son was telling us about some of the protests he was involved in.  She met Gandhi when she was a young girl and said that she walked in some of the marches as well.  

They seem to be a pretty modern family.  His daughter was wearing jeans and no shawl and he spoke to her in English.  There's a girl staying at the illam for a few days who used to live here and is now in engineering school.  We brought her and it was interesting to see the two girls talking to each other. 

Another affluent couple from the neighborhood stopped by while we were there to invite them to some function tomorrow.  And as seems to be universal custom, bearing a gift of food for the family.  Dinner was preceded by these crunchy sticks that we've had before, and cake.  I couldn't decide if the cake is a normal thing or just for our benefit.  Also, the icing here tastes like bubblegum.  

We also talked about some of the social support provided by the government.  He showed us their 'ration card', which is given to each family.  They come in different colors depending on income level and certain groups are eligible for certain support.  The only thing that is across the board, I think, is gas which is partially subsidized.  People below the poverty line are eligible for much more.  There's a shop right by the illam's land where the village residents can purchase government subsidized food and the government also gives out grinders, fans, TVs and even houses to those who are eligible.  Students get bikes during their 11h standard year and computers for college. 

It was a lovely evening and really interesting to see their home and have the chance to talk more about Indian life.  

Kanyakumari

When Jean first came to India in 1983 she went to Kanyakumari, the Southern tip of India, where the three seas meet (Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Lakshadweep Sea) and a spiritually important place.  She met her future business partner who was collecting donations for another illam at the time. 

The film crew wanted to film Jean there and after reading her book I wanted to see the place as well.   

It was a short trip, which was probably good because tensions were high and it wasn’t really until right before we left that everyone seemed to relax.  Jean was stressed, long story but she'd been avoiding Kanyakumari for many years, and the film crew felt rushed, especially when we almost missed the sunset.  

We watched the sunset surrounded by pilgrims bathing in the three seas, and spent the night in a large complex meant for pilgrims, and people attending yoga and meditation retreats.  In the morning we woke up early to see the sunrise and then were able to spend a couple hours sans video seeing the Ghandi museum with a hilarious guide and Jan and I made a quick visit to the Devi Kanyakumari temple before we headed back to Nilakottai.

Kalanjiam

I went to a Kalanjiam meeting last week and it was really great to see.  The kalanjiams are something like a credit union or club and run by women.  They're relatively new, started by DHAN and over half a million families are involved all over India.  

Since many people in India are very poor the Kalanjiams allow them to borrow small amounts of money for things like purchasing a cow, even though they wouldn't normally be able to take out a bank loan.  They also are active in community development, they had a few speakers at the meeting who were talking about trying to increase accessibility to water and toilets, and offer services like insurance.  It's really a great idea and wonderful to see how well the women are doing with it.

There are several levels, from small local areas to large federations.  The meeting I went to was one of the larger ones and there were hundreds of women packed into the building.

The meeting was organized partially for the film crew so they ended up having students from the school dancing as well. 

Many of the women had brought children with them.  I was surprised that the meeting was in the middle of the day because it would seem to exclude anyone with a job but perhaps they're normally in the evening.  Or I guess if Nilakottai is any example, maybe most of the women don't have full time jobs.

Indian Wedding

I had the opportunity to go to an Indian wedding last weekend and it was wonderful.  The bride is a former illam child.  It's nice to see how the children turn out after they leave.

The illam was buzzing about the wedding all weekend.  Dhivya left several years ago so only some of the older children knew her.  The day before a few of the girls spent hours tying flowers together to put in everyone's hair.  And I got a lovely mehndi (henna) design.

About a 15 of us packed into a van that's meant for far less people, and we headed to another city for the wedding.  When we arrived we were greeted by several billboards announcing the nuptials.

All of the women were so beautiful in their fancy and colorful saris and there were several musicians playing typical Tamil songs, with huge amplifiers of course.  There were thousands of people and Nagarathana thinks it cost about $15-20,000.  Ceremonies are incredibly important here and Poor families will sometimes take out large bank loans just to be able to put on a wedding.  Dhivya's family had just sold a piece of land and so was able to cover the cost and pay the dowry, which is supposed to be illegal but is apparently still done.  Just the idea of dowries seems ridiculous to me, not to mention a huge burden on the bride's family.  Dowry's were made illegal because no one wanted to have daughters.  When we were at the hospital the other day they even had a sign stating they wouldn't tell expecting parents the gender of the fetus.

It was an arranged marriage, as are most marriages in small villages and towns around here.  Divyha met her husband for the first time when they took engagement photos and all of the wedding preparation was conducted through Dhivya's family. Apparently everyone is very satisfied with the match.  He has no family but is well educated with a good job.

The main hall had a stage at the front which was crowded with people giving gifts to the couple, putting flowers around their necks and taking pictures.  A lot of people give money as gifts and the amounts are all meticulously noted down because if in the future, Dhivya goes to the wedding of one of the guests, she is expected to give them at least as much as they gave her.  Complicated!

Upstairs was a large dining hall where people sat at long tables, each with a banana leaf, and servers came around with buckets full of rice, vegetable curries and other delicious foods.

On the way home we stopped at a nursery where the girls were excited to each pick a flower to bring home.