Nat and I took ourselves off in search of some temple action yesterday, with the services of an avuncular taxi driver whose name is probably somewhere in my subconscious but, for the life of me, I can't drag it into the vast empty cavity formerly known as my memory.
En route to the temple, we went elephant riding. I know, I know - I'm here to live in the real India, part of a proper community, a signed up member of the saree-wearing, chapatti baking, weaker sex that is Indian woman... but sometimes you just have to do the tourist thing. Once I'd got over the initial terror, it was fab, or soooo-pair, as the Indian girls say, usually followed by a fit of the giggles.
Oh, and we met the cutest baby elephant as well. As soon as my various bits of kit are re-charged, I'll post some pics.
On to the temple, where two hours of hanging around with a load of giggling women and excitable kids was followed by the spectacle of not one but three decorated elephants, a 20-strong troupe of Indian drummers, a brass band in white suits with fringed epaulettes AND a spectaclarly attired local girl as the incarnation of Saraswati, complete with peacock feathers and pore-defying make-up. Hindus definitely have the most fun.
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Beer, pizza and unrequited love
Namaskarum from Varkala. I’m sitting in a cliff top café, breakfasting on fresh fruit, curd and muesli with PROPER (ie not Nescafe) coffee.
Varkala is the nearest beach resort, a small community of locals, traders, travellers and ex-hippy types – utter bliss. I’ve had two days to re-charge my batteries after a full on week of teaching and noisy children (my own batteries, that is; my phone and camera both died on me yesterday and I’m fully expecting the laptop to do the same, given that I forgot to pack any of my chargers…)
It feels like sacrilege to say it, but it’s so-o-o-o-o great to be eating food that isn’t curry. And, although strictly speaking it’s illegal here, you can usually get the odd beer or cocktail. I’m sticking to the juices, though, and have managed to pack in about six different varieties since arriving on Friday. Watermelon and pomegranate is to die for.
My new friends from last weekend are still here. Oszi and Akhi are both jewellery designers from Jaipur. Oszi is a thinker and a dreamer, passionate about stones and their different properties. He told me that a lot of men wear pearls because they calm anger, while harder stones help women to be more confident. I knew there was a reason diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Akhi is very cool and Bollywood handsome but, more importantly,they both speak excellent English and we’ve had some great conversations over pizza (pizza!) and chai.
Natalie is here too, the volunteer from the other Kerala Link project. It didn’t work out for her, so she’s decamped to Varkala for her last three weeks and is busy learning Reiki and enjoying the beach life. It’s been good spending time with her – and excellent entertainment talking to her admirers.
Take last night. Nat, Paul (a trucker from Northampton) and I had gone to Blueberries for dinner. Juice, beer, fish caught fresh that day – and a lovesick waiter in a yellow T-shirt. After mooning around our table for some considerable time, yellow T-shirt decided to confide in me. “You are so lucky to have Nutella as a friend”, her would-be Romeo solemnly informed me. “She is so beautiful – her face, her heart, her mind. She is all three A1.” Needless to say, ‘Nutella’ was the subject of relentless abuse for the rest of the evening.
Varkala is the nearest beach resort, a small community of locals, traders, travellers and ex-hippy types – utter bliss. I’ve had two days to re-charge my batteries after a full on week of teaching and noisy children (my own batteries, that is; my phone and camera both died on me yesterday and I’m fully expecting the laptop to do the same, given that I forgot to pack any of my chargers…)
It feels like sacrilege to say it, but it’s so-o-o-o-o great to be eating food that isn’t curry. And, although strictly speaking it’s illegal here, you can usually get the odd beer or cocktail. I’m sticking to the juices, though, and have managed to pack in about six different varieties since arriving on Friday. Watermelon and pomegranate is to die for.
My new friends from last weekend are still here. Oszi and Akhi are both jewellery designers from Jaipur. Oszi is a thinker and a dreamer, passionate about stones and their different properties. He told me that a lot of men wear pearls because they calm anger, while harder stones help women to be more confident. I knew there was a reason diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Akhi is very cool and Bollywood handsome but, more importantly,they both speak excellent English and we’ve had some great conversations over pizza (pizza!) and chai.
Natalie is here too, the volunteer from the other Kerala Link project. It didn’t work out for her, so she’s decamped to Varkala for her last three weeks and is busy learning Reiki and enjoying the beach life. It’s been good spending time with her – and excellent entertainment talking to her admirers.
Take last night. Nat, Paul (a trucker from Northampton) and I had gone to Blueberries for dinner. Juice, beer, fish caught fresh that day – and a lovesick waiter in a yellow T-shirt. After mooning around our table for some considerable time, yellow T-shirt decided to confide in me. “You are so lucky to have Nutella as a friend”, her would-be Romeo solemnly informed me. “She is so beautiful – her face, her heart, her mind. She is all three A1.” Needless to say, ‘Nutella’ was the subject of relentless abuse for the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
John Sir, the Bill Gates of Mavelikara
In a land of colourful characters, John Sir has to be one of the biggest fish in the small pond that is Mavelikara.
John had a lucrative career in the Gulf for 20 odd years, but returned to his home town to set up B-GHUD (the excrutiatingly titled Bureau of Guidance and Human Development). It's pronounced 'Be Good' and everyone in the area, from small children to onion-peeling grandmas, seems to have heard of it - which is good, as I get lost a lot trying to find my way anywhere.
B-GHUD is an English language college for adult professionals wanting to gain a recognised qualification in English: essential for securing work in any English-speaking country. It seems that the aspiration of most educated Keralites is to get out as fast as they can and head to the milk and honey of the west.
John (addressed as 'John Sir' by most of the students and staff) is passionate about improving standards of English for these Mavelikarans and, when I first met him, I assumed he was making pots of money in the process. Now I know him a little better, I've realised that, for him, it's a vocation. Some of the students pay the going rate, some can't afford to pay at all. He's in work at the crack of dawn each day and doesn't leave until after dark. At weekends, he trains teachers and pupils in local English speaking schools to subsidise his - and B-GHUD's - income.
He's also quite shameless in exploiting every opportunity that comes his way, so I've been roped in as a volunteer teacher/coach, and have found myself addressing whole classrooms of students on topics ranging from relationships to the Iraq war. I spend a lot of time spouting complete nonsense, but the students diligently take down every word of it. In a question and answer session, the first thing they want to know is whether I'm married. The shock on their faces when I tell them 'no' is a picture. Apparently, I'm living an 'artificial life'. Honestly, it could make a girl quite paranoid.
In return for services to linguistic and cultural awareness, John Sir is generous with his help and advice. He called me today to offer the services of a chauffeur driven car whenever I want to go anywhere (!), and is arranging a full programme of sightseeing in the local area. I need to see elephants...
John had a lucrative career in the Gulf for 20 odd years, but returned to his home town to set up B-GHUD (the excrutiatingly titled Bureau of Guidance and Human Development). It's pronounced 'Be Good' and everyone in the area, from small children to onion-peeling grandmas, seems to have heard of it - which is good, as I get lost a lot trying to find my way anywhere.
B-GHUD is an English language college for adult professionals wanting to gain a recognised qualification in English: essential for securing work in any English-speaking country. It seems that the aspiration of most educated Keralites is to get out as fast as they can and head to the milk and honey of the west.
John (addressed as 'John Sir' by most of the students and staff) is passionate about improving standards of English for these Mavelikarans and, when I first met him, I assumed he was making pots of money in the process. Now I know him a little better, I've realised that, for him, it's a vocation. Some of the students pay the going rate, some can't afford to pay at all. He's in work at the crack of dawn each day and doesn't leave until after dark. At weekends, he trains teachers and pupils in local English speaking schools to subsidise his - and B-GHUD's - income.
He's also quite shameless in exploiting every opportunity that comes his way, so I've been roped in as a volunteer teacher/coach, and have found myself addressing whole classrooms of students on topics ranging from relationships to the Iraq war. I spend a lot of time spouting complete nonsense, but the students diligently take down every word of it. In a question and answer session, the first thing they want to know is whether I'm married. The shock on their faces when I tell them 'no' is a picture. Apparently, I'm living an 'artificial life'. Honestly, it could make a girl quite paranoid.
In return for services to linguistic and cultural awareness, John Sir is generous with his help and advice. He called me today to offer the services of a chauffeur driven car whenever I want to go anywhere (!), and is arranging a full programme of sightseeing in the local area. I need to see elephants...
100 kids who don't speak English and me
I've just finished my fifth session at Jyothis School, my volunteer placement. The school is one of two local institutions supported by Kerala Link (www.kerala-link.org.uk), a small charity started ten years ago by a British woman. Jyothis is a school for children with mild to moderate learning disabilities, age range around four to late teens.
The kids are lovely - and completely exhausting. They're all passionate about balloons and colouring, so I spend a lot of my time sharpening pencils. The two kids pictured are Jithis and Sutana, both very able and, like a lot of the kids here, would probably be in a mainstream school in the UK. Most of the children are keen to engage and join in, although others are quiet and withdrawn. It would be good to work with each of them over the next couple of months, but it's the ones who shout loudest (in Malayalam - they have no English) who are demanding my attention right now. Not sure how to get round that, as there's only one of me and around 100 children.
We attempted some simple stitching today, my idea being to work one-to-one with an older girl. Seconds after producing the canvas and threads from my bag, I could feel a dozen little hands tugging hard at my churidar (I've given up on the saree!) and demanding to join in. Chaos and a mess of tangled thread ensued, while I tried (with limited success) to distract them with the lure of colouring on another table.
The school has a headteacher, but the big cheese is Achen (the priest). Religion plays a huge part in Keralan life, with probably 100 percent of Mavelikarans signed up to either Hinduism or Christianity. Schools, colleges, universities and, for all I know, hospitals and supermarkets are all spearheaded by senior religious figures, who are hugely respected, revered even, by the kids and staff.
My particular Achen (real name Rama) seems an OK guy, and I like his wife Lindsay a lot (I was sold when I discovered she has two pet cats, allowed free run of the house - unheard of in most places here). The kids seem to be happy and well cared for, and I've been made very welcome and allowed free rein. NB any ideas for very simple projects would be gratefully received.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Saree seems to be the hardest word
Ah yes - the joys of the saree. Mavelikara is a very conservative town and expects its women, domestic and foreign, to be modest and respectable at all times. Unmarried girls wear the Salwar Kameez, or Churidar as they call it here; a long, loose top complete with shawl and interesting trousering. Married or older women wear the Saree: six metres of fabric worn with a short, tight blouse and long petticoat.
My attempts to dress myself in the Saree have so far failed dismally. Luckily, I have Saju on hand to put me together. Saju lives downstairs and used to work as a beautician until she developed a skin disease. She speaks a bit of English and has endless patience with my attempts to fit in with Indian culture. She is the mistress of the safety pin, many of which are employed in Saree wearing. By the end of the procedure, my face is dripping with sweat (Saju turns off the ceiling fan to stop the Saree blowing all over the place), and I feel like a trussed up chicken. Saju and her sister are too shy to have the photos taken yet, but Mama was happy to pose for one, so here we are together.
While the womenfolk take hours over their hair and dress, and are the models of feminine respectability, most men just sling on a dhoti. If you want to get a picture of what the dhoti looks like, imagine a large white tea towel wrapped around the waist and falling to the ankles. Now imagine said white tea towel pulled up, nappy-like, between the legs. Not a pretty sight, and it makes me wonder why the women go to so much trouble when that's all they get in return.
Life in an Indian town
Mavelikara, where I'm based, is the same size as Gloucester (100,000 residents), although it feels smaller, more 'village-y'. The town centre is full of small shops, mainly selling sarees, electrical goods and groceries. I haven't been to the Praise the Lord chicken shack yet, but I'm sure it's marvellous.
Visiting any given 'supermarket', you find shelf upon shelf of pan-puri, which can be loosely translated as deep fried brown stuff. The remainder of the store will be piled high with sugar, sugary cakes and white bread with added sugar.
The fruit and veg stalls, however, are fantastic: small round aubergines with purple and white striped skin; the juiciest, sweetest oranges; watermelons twice the size of footballs (and HEAVY!); and a whole range of yams, chicoos and much more that I've yet to try.
Fish is sold by the side of the road, spread out on big sheets of cardboard. I'm quite tempted, given that my staple diet of veg curry and dhal could do with livening up a little, but haven't risked it yet. Not sure what I'd do with a pink fish bigger than my face and of unknown parentage.
Away from the town centre, the byways and back roads are cooler and quieter, with a lot less chance of being temporarily deafened by a lorry's illegal air horn. The picture shows my route to school. The walk takes around 20 minutes and is one of the nicest parts of my day. I pass large, brightly coloured houses under shady trees, and enjoy the time to myself for walking and reflecting.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
The princess and the pea
Everything in India takes a long, long time, but you generally get there in the end. Yesterday was the day of the great mattress expedition, and it's quite possible that I am now the only person in the city of Mavelikkara in possession of a pink European pocket sprung mattress - 'family' sized. I should say at this point that any family thinking of moving in on my glorious new bed ware should think again.
I'd spent the first three nights lying on the usual India coir mattress. It's a bit like horsehair, only thinner, hotter and lumpier. Probably complete with whole colonies of interesting insect life. I itched in places I'd never itched before, so something had to give. In this case, 6,900 rupees (around £90). And worth every penny. I bought a rocking chair as well, so that I can sit on the roof outside my apartment and watch the world go by in comfort. Bliss.
I'd spent the first three nights lying on the usual India coir mattress. It's a bit like horsehair, only thinner, hotter and lumpier. Probably complete with whole colonies of interesting insect life. I itched in places I'd never itched before, so something had to give. In this case, 6,900 rupees (around £90). And worth every penny. I bought a rocking chair as well, so that I can sit on the roof outside my apartment and watch the world go by in comfort. Bliss.
I've arrived!
Namaskarum (Greetings) from Kerala, on day 5 of my Indian adventure.
It was a long old journey, about 30 hours door to door. Having set off at 9 am last Thursday, I touched down, bleary eyed, in Bangalore just before 5 am to the usual military presence and a choice of sitting for six hours on a sweaty plastic chair in the very small departure lounge or decamping with my luggage (handbag, laptop case, 50 kg of clothes, materials, suncream and mosquito repellent) to the great unknown beyond the airport doors. Tricky, but I thought I'd take my chances.
What I'd forgotten (not being one for early rising) was that the mozzies are out and active at dawn as well as dusk, so the repellent stayed in the suitcase while they made a meal of my knees and ankles. Meanwhile, I arranged myself with my legs on the main luggage and the strap of my laptop case securely arranged under my bottom, handbag clutched firmly to my side, and travel alarm set for noon, for the remote possibility that I might fall asleep. (I didn't)
13 hours, one plane ride and a long car journey later, I arrived at the apartment in Mavelikkara that will be home for the next three months.
It was a long old journey, about 30 hours door to door. Having set off at 9 am last Thursday, I touched down, bleary eyed, in Bangalore just before 5 am to the usual military presence and a choice of sitting for six hours on a sweaty plastic chair in the very small departure lounge or decamping with my luggage (handbag, laptop case, 50 kg of clothes, materials, suncream and mosquito repellent) to the great unknown beyond the airport doors. Tricky, but I thought I'd take my chances.
What I'd forgotten (not being one for early rising) was that the mozzies are out and active at dawn as well as dusk, so the repellent stayed in the suitcase while they made a meal of my knees and ankles. Meanwhile, I arranged myself with my legs on the main luggage and the strap of my laptop case securely arranged under my bottom, handbag clutched firmly to my side, and travel alarm set for noon, for the remote possibility that I might fall asleep. (I didn't)
13 hours, one plane ride and a long car journey later, I arrived at the apartment in Mavelikkara that will be home for the next three months.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Well, after postponements, delays and cancellations, it looks as though the big India adventure will finally start on Thursday- BA and weather permitting.
As I still haven't finished my packing (three months into 23 kilos does not go), the extra four days' reprieve means I can spend today, or what's left of it, recovering from last night's party.
Thanks to everyone who braved the weather to come along and give me such a great send off. Thanks especially for the cards and gifts, to everyone who contributed delicious food. And message to the front room boys (you know who you are): I'll be treating you to my playlist at any future parties you might invite me to. You have been warned! .
As I still haven't finished my packing (three months into 23 kilos does not go), the extra four days' reprieve means I can spend today, or what's left of it, recovering from last night's party.
Thanks to everyone who braved the weather to come along and give me such a great send off. Thanks especially for the cards and gifts, to everyone who contributed delicious food. And message to the front room boys (you know who you are): I'll be treating you to my playlist at any future parties you might invite me to. You have been warned! .
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