Diwali

Hello all,
first of all, I just discovered that the comments on this blog were set to allow blogger members only. I've fixed that, so anyone should be able to comment. Second, I now have some photos online! I'll post a few in to my blog entries, but for a wider selection, look at my flickr page:
emily's flickr

Diwali weekend is drawing to a close. Diwali is a festival of lights, symbolizes the triumph of good over evil, has a variety of mythological tie-ins (the only one of which i understand has to do with the return of Ram and Sita from exile, when lights were lit to welcome them back to their kingdom) and is also considered by some to mark the beginning of a new year. It seems to have a variety of ceremonial, mythological and symbolic significances which i don't know enough about to explain properly, but i have now experienced how it's celebrated in Varanasi, and it's pretty wild!

Diwali itself was on Saturday. On Friday, Andria, Prashant and i braved the madness that is pre-Diwali shopping in order to get some nice Indian outfits for Andria and i to wear on Diwali. I think we had reasonable success:





On Friday, in the early evening, some of the staff organized a Diwali celebration for the kids at Tulsi Kunj, which was wild but really fun. I hadn't realized that Diwali was a fireworks celebration. It is. Once most of the Tulsi kids had gathered, a few kids were encouraged to sing songs, tell jokes, or recount the stories behind Diwali for the assembled audience, and then the pyromania began. Tulsi Kunj is a building with mostly marble interiors, and a courtyard in the middle surrounded by balconies. The fireworks were lit off in the middle of the courtyard inside the building, with at least 100 kids crowding around. It was a little scary, but turned out to be safe enough and the kids were pretty gleeful, clapping and shrieking with delight at the showers of glittering sparks. They each got a box of sparklers, too, and went nuts with them. It was a crazy, joyful start to a beautiful Diwali weekend.










On Saturday we had lunch at one colleague's house, but other than that it was a slow day, broken by the comical interlude of trying to rescue Prashant's swim trunks, which had fallen from the balcony to a platform far below the balcony, but still far off the ground using only a frying pan on a long piece of string.



There was also a beautiful heavy afternoon rain which left the air and earth feeling clean and fresh. In the early evening, two of the WLC staff who live across the lane from the office came over to lead us in a pooja at the Ganga Mahal, involving a simple ceremony before the statues of Ganesh and Laxmi, and the lighting of candles and oil lamps in the courtyard and in every room in the building. The Ganga Mahal lit by candlelight was a beautiful thing, but we had to rush away to the home of another colleague who had invited us to dinner at his family's house on the University campus. We spent a lovely evening with his family, who welcomed us warmly and allowed us to join in their own pooja, delicious family dinner, and lighting of beautiful fireworks in front of the house. Diwali celebrations seem to place an emphasis on the home and family, so having the opportunity to be part of a family celebration was wonderful.

From dusk til the wee hours of the morning, the air was filled with the constant bangs, flashes and sparkles of fireworks all over the city. Riding home in a rickshaw late in the evening, we watched the sky light up with red and green and blue and silver stars, as our rickshaw dodged children lighting off small but deafeningly loud firecrackers in the streets. When we got home, we discovered the swedish students who live upstairs from us, but whom we had yet to befriend, were holding a fireworks party on the roof of the Ganga Mahal. We were invited up to join them, and saw for the first time the breathtaking view of the river and city that this building's roof commands. There were still constant fireworks in every direction, and we watched them for a while as we talked with our new acquaintances, before going in for late night chai and conversation.

Tonight, again, there are fireworks all over the city -- leftovers from yesterday, i suppose. it sounds like the city is under siege, but by now they've become background noise to me, and I'm sure I'll sleep soundly tonight.

I'll finish this with two photos: one of the Assi Ghat and river bank in front of our house in the early morning light:



and the next of a message painted on one of the Ghats downriver from here:



Fortunate indeed.

kids and field visits and diwali and style!

The last three days have been packed and fascinating and overwhelming. I spent Monday and much of Tuesday at Tulsi Kunj where the kids program is, sitting in on the various classes and tuturoials, getting to know the kids,helping out where I could and learning some new Hindi words on the fly. All of the kids greet me with an enthusiastic "Didi namaste!" ("Hello, big sister!"), which I love. The littlest ones are absolutely adorable 4 and 5-year-olds non-schoolgoers who all match in their pale orange and chocolate brown Tulsi Kunj uniforms (produced by the organization's income generation project that teaches impoverished women to sew). These kids are working to learn the Hindi and English alphabets, and the basics of counting, before being admitted to a formal school. On Tuesday morning, the teacher asked me to work one on one with a tiny little girl, younger than the others and somewhat behind them. I went through some letters and numbers with her, getting her to copy them and repeat their names, which she did in a soft little voice, with a big grin when i praised her work. Throughout the whole hour she kept her eyes fixed on me almost continuously in a wide-eyed soul-searching gaze to the point that i could barely get her to glance at the alphabet book we were "reading" together, but she definitely stared her way into my heart.

Some of the older school-going kids, who come for tutoring in the afternoon, are learning English. I spent some time helping a couple aged around 10 or 11 with reading from their primers, but the lessons must be frustrating for them, as English seems to be taught fairly unsystematically, using old books that are obviously intended for kids who speak English as a first language, and are filled with bits about rosy cheeks and weathercocks and other irrelevant vocabulary. Many of the kids can sound out more than they can understand, which certainly sucks any joy out of reading. Some of the kids who attend "English Medium" schools also struggle with math problems written in English terms that have never been explained -- although they grasp the math itself, they have never been told what "the product of 3 and 8" means.

The kids involved in our program come from pretty poor families. Over the last few days I've had the chance to accompany a colleague on a couple of home visits, and to listen to stories about some of the difficult home environments, histories and financial situations of the kids I'm getting to know, and some of them are truly heartrending. But the other evening, as I sat with Andria and Prashant drinking chai on the ghat, and some of the kids from our program greeted us, chattered to us and skipped up and down the stone steps around us, I was reminded of how fully these children still know how to be kids, full of life and eagerness and humour. Working with them promises to be an absolute delight.

Wednesday was a crazy and exhausting day. Andria and i boarded our organization's little auto-rickshaw to accompany the driver on a visit to some fo the communities on the other side of the river. WLC has a series of program sites there, to assist women and their children. Each site is focussed around a Mahila Mandel (Women's association). Women who participate in these groups are also welcomed into a Social Enterprise Program (SEP) which currently consists of instruction on dressmaking. They are also invited to adult literacy classes, where they learn reading, writing and simple math (which is especially important if they are to run profitable small businesses), as many have never been to school. Balwadi (nursery school/kindergarten) programs are also provided for their young children, providing a daily hour of respite for mothers, and preparing the kids to attend school.

The WLC driver was due to visit all the Balwadis across the river yesterday, to distribute bananas (as they have a once-weekly fruit distribution day). It was fun to spend a little time seeing how the classes are taught, meeting the kids (many frantic cries of "Didi namaste!" followed us all day) and helping to pass out the two bananas apiece in to their eager little hands. At the first site we visited, we picked up the area's literacy supervisor who co-ordinates her supervisory visits with the banana rounds, and with her we also had the opportunity to visit a couple of adult literacy classes (ALCs).

The women in the ALCs range from their mid teens to the quite elderly. Beginning students are first taught to write their names, and then begin to work through fourlevels of readers, each containing stories meant to be of particular interest to women. I was shown one about a female freedom fighter (with a clear message of feminine capability and empowerment) and another that discussed the challenges of a large family and the basics of family planning. The women in the program seem very determined and proud of their new literacy skills, and many have learned to read remarkably well in a relatively short time.

The women we met were very kind and welcoming to us, and our colleagues gave them the opportunity, thorugh their translation, to grill us with questions about Canada in general, the landscape, public transportation, our jobs, families, houses, our ages, whether or not we were married, what kinds of food we like to eat, and so on. It often feels like as the Canadian visitors we get to ask all the questions, and the program beneficiaries are stuck in the role of being passive and questioned. So it was great (and fun) to have that reversed. Andria and i were even pressured in to singing a Canadian song(we chose O Canada out of sheer desperation)which was fairly ammusing to them, but was no match for the improvised welcome songs a few of them sang to us.

Yesterday's field visit turned into an almost nine-hour excursion, and we were exhausted by the end of it. Today has been a bit more manageable -- we went out with the driver again, but this time just for a couple of hours, to run similar errands to the project sites in and around some slum neighbourhoods within Varanasi itself. In the afternoon, while we were at Tulsi Kunj, the deadly heat was broken by a sudden strong wind which stirred up a cool, gritty dust storm. I went outside to investigate,and ended up dancing and "flying" ecstatically in the cool wind for a good ten minutes with one of the Tulsi kids, before my eyes just got too gritty to handle it any more. The dust storm was follwed by a light rain, and the air cooled off dramatically, and has been cool all evening. I'm hoping rather desperately that this means that the varanasi "winter" (which isn't as cold as ours, but actually gets positively chilly at night, i'm told) is almost here.

This weekend is Diwali, the festival of lights. Everyone in the city is in a frenzy of prepariation -- we see houses being panstakingly cleaned and repainted wherever we go -- and yet I haven't bought a single nice Indian outfit yet to wear for the occasion. I'm planning a slightly frantic shopping trip for tomorrow morning. Wish me luck...

Oh wait, one last afterthought of an anecdote: At one of the ALCs, one of the women asked why Canadian women took less care with making themselves looked nice (by this point in the day i was dripping with sweat, my hair stood out in all directions and my not-very-fancy clothes were wrinkled and dirty, while the women in the village we were visiting were neatly coiffed, beautifully dressed and looked mysteriously cool and collected). Our young female colleague fielded the question for us, and explained to them that we looked so tousled because in Canada we are always so busy with work that we just throw on our clothes and go -- no time for makeup or careful hair styling! I'm not sure how i feel about the accuracy of that explanation, though in this heat it's certainly the attitude i've adopted. I tried to tell the women that i actually do know how to make myself look nice but a straightening iron and foundation just don't work in a million degree heat, but i'm not sure the message got through. I'm afraid I'm not representing Canadian women at their lovliest!

Emily

temples and scrabble

It's been a pretty cool weekend. We're starting to settle in and feel more and more comfortable here, and are exploring further and further each day. Saturday morning Andria and i caught a cycle rickshaw to BHU (Benares Hindu University), which has a huge, beautiful, lush green campus which was a delight after the dust and haze and smoke of the city. We visited the huge hindu temple there, which is a magnificent buildling with marble columns and marble floors, people doing devotions at the central shiva shrine and other smaller ones to ganesh, hanuman, and various other deities, and students studying in various nooks and archways. Andria and i found a stone gazebo in the gardens next to the temple, with cool marble benches, pulled out the all-important game of travel scrabble she brought, and played scrabble and talked in the shade. This is our new way of exploring the city -- searching for bearably cool places to play scrabble.

On sunday morning, while out on our hunt for breakfast, Andria decided she was craving cucumber and bought one. at least she thought she did. While we were sitting having our yogurt at the yogurt and sweet shop, she cut into it and discovered it was some other kind of spongy long dark-green vegetable that may have been vaguely akin to a zucchini. We didn't know what to do with it -- we used a piece of the spongy end she'd cut off to mop up the yogurt i spilled on the table, but then we ran out of uses for it, and Andria was stuck carrying around a mystery vegetable and feeling a bit silly, especially when a rickshaw-wallah called out to us "madam! madam!" as they always do, and then paused in confusion and said questioningly "sabji?" ("vegetable?"). Shortly thereafter, Andria gave it to a little beggar girl, who seemed reasonably happy to take it off our hands, and may actually have some idea of what to do with it. We think that we've since figured out what an actual cucumber looks like here.

By 9 on Sunday the two of us set out on a day trip to Sarnath, the town just outside Varanasi where the Buddha preached his first sermon. Because of its importance to Buddhism, most of the major buddhist countries have set up temples there, including India, Japan, China, Korea, Burma, 2 from Tibet, and probably some more. It was pretty interesting to visit a bunch of the different temples -- we went to the Chinese, Japanese, Indian and both Tibetan temples -- and see the differences between them. Some were huge and ornate, and others were really quite simple, but all carried a similar feeling of reverence and holiness. There are quite a lot of east asian tourists around Sarnath, and buddhist monks (who also mostly seem east or south east asian)everywhere. Another one of the major attractions in Sarnath are a deer park (big open grassy park. with deer.) which is there because buddha preached his first sermon in a deer park, so at some point it was recreated to mark the spot. We saw some deer and lay in the grass there for a bit, but it was kind of itchy and not as exciting as we thought it might be. Sarnath also has a museum, with various ancient buddhist stone carvings excavated there. Many of the carvings were very beautiful, but most importantly the museum was air conditioned! we definitely basked in that for a little longer than we absolutely needed to. it is hot as hell here.

We had yummy tibetan food for lunch at a tiny little hole in the wall restaurant -- tasty dumplings and noodles and vegetables and things, and played scrabble over lunch as we hid from the noonday sun. In the early afternoon we caught another auto-rickshaw (tiny little three-wheeled car thing, open on the sides and not so different from a motorcycle) back through the heat and pollution and crazy crazy traffic and random cows and buffalo, lazed about in the afternoon, and were asleep by 9.

This morning i've been up since 5. it's almost 7 now, and i'm going to head out to the Ghat soon to get some chai from our favourite chai wallah, and sit on the steps and watch the life on the riverbank for a while. Today is our first work day, but I think this week will mostly be spent in visiting project sites for orientation purposes before any real work starts. i still have over two and a half hours until the office day begins, though. I'm really enjoying this new rhythm of early mornings and early bed times, though i doubt i'll keep it up in Toronto!
Emily

day 3

Today was another day off work to explore and find our bearings. Andria and i started it this morning with a boat ride down the ganga at sunrise, leaving just before 6 a.m. The river was dotted with other boats carrying other tourists, but in spite of that it was a beautiful and peaceful experience. We rowed past Ghat after ghat, past people bathing and praying and fishing and selling, past laundry wallahs washing clothes in the river on flat stones, past the strange old buildings and high flights of stone steps leading down to the river. the sunrise itself was stunning -- I hope to start sharing some photos on here in the next couple of days. Then we went wandering in some of the streets just around Assi Ghat (our neighbourhood) to find some fresh yoghurt and sweets for breakfast, which we ate out of little clay pots in the quiet, dark back corner of a local sweet shop.

after a slow morning, we spent the afternoon on a crazy Prashant-guided exploration of two of the most famous gullies. The gullies are the narrow lanes that run between the streets all over the city, and the ones we walked through today were little markets, with vendors selling bangles and bindis and statues and saris and antiques and sweets. Andria and i were both on a bit of a clothes shopping mission, and i bought the most comfortable turquoise light cotton kurta pajama (trousers and a matching long tunic). We walked for a couple of hours in the midday heat, which was exhausting in spite of the shade of the narrow gullies. Finally we took a cycle rickshaw home along one of the major roads, all three of us crammed in together on the one narrow seat. That was another somewhat hairy traffic experience, and i frequently had to remind myself about my philosophy of passivity when using public transportation in third world countries -- scary as it is i probably won't die, and there's not really much i can do in that situation to prevent an accident, except to live in fear and never use public transportation, which would just be silly.
On the way home we stopped by Tulsi Kunj to visit the childrens' tutoring sessions, where we saw kids from 5 to their mid-teens being tutored in everything from the alphabet to algebra. The amount of individual attention our programming is able to give to each child, and the engagement and interest they seem to have with their lessons is remarkable -- plus they're all really charming kids. I'm excited to get to know them better during my internship, when i'm supposed to be doing some direct work with them (among various other responsibilities).

I can't believe how tired the heat makes me. It's just before 8 here, i had a long nap from 5 til 6:30, and i think i'm about to head back to bed. I hope to get some photos up in the next couple of days, but i also want to plug my co-intern's blog,
www.prashart.blogspot.com
he's a very talented watercolour artist, and already has some really beautiful paintings up from the last few days since we arrived (plus one of andria andi playing scrabble in the delhi airport at 4:30 in the morning!)

Love Emily

Day 2

I've arrived! I'm posting a couple of entries from yesterday and earlier today.

Oct. 12, morning
I awoke at 5:06 this morning to the Ding! Ding! Ding! Of a bell being rung for a morning pooja (prayer) on the riverbank below us. The sky was light and rainbow-hued in the east across the river, and people and animals were moving about. Prashant was still sleeping, so Andria and I ventured out for the first time without his guidance, climbing down the stone steps to the area near the river, and heading to a chai shop for tea. We passed several groups of women gathered in circles chanting and doing something with flowers and holy water in the middle of the circle – some kind of pooja. At the chai shop, a little stall right on one of the sets of steps, a young boy of about 10 intruduced himself to us as Bablo, and started to talk with us in remarkably good English. He was the nephew of the chai-wallah, and talked to us about his family, Varanasi, and other foreigners he has met, and asked us a lot about ourselves and Canada. When we were done our tea and ready to go for an exploratory walk, he offered to be our guide. We wandered along the river, passing people bathing in the river up to their necks at some of the Ghats. Several boys and girls, no older than 7 or 8, followed us for a while trying to convince us to buy the candles they were selling, to launch them on the river and “bring good karma”. As they walked with us they chattered to us about various subjects in hindi and English, and one little girl named Nandini pointed out a troupe of monkeys leaping across the balconies above us, and told me their hindi name. After a while we left the river, and Bablo led us through some of the narrow, winding streets between the houses and shops and high walls, dodging the odd motercycle or child or cow. It was good to start to see what the city looks like as you move away from the waterfront.

Afternoon:
The morning at the office started at 9:30 with the ataff I’d met yesterday, a few new ones, and six of the kids from the morning’s childrens’ programming gathering for morning prayer, and then the morning was spent in getting to know the staff, and a visit to Tulsi Kunj, the new building around the corner that was just acquired, to see it and visit the childrens’ program which has now been moved there. The building is beautiful – two stories of marble floors and white archways around a courtyard – and the spaces where we plan to have the new library Andria’s working on, and the gallery/boutique for the items sewn by the womens’ income generation projects are perfect sizes and well laid out. The ground floor, where the childrens’ program is located, has a number of lovely small classrooms. The childrens’ program serves 2 groups of kids – those who are in school but need extra help with homework, tutoring etc (from poor families, and often with illiterate parents), and those kids who are not in school but are hoping that, with some extra help, they can catch up and pass school entrance exams. Ths morning the group at Tulsi Kunsj were non-schoolgoers, mostly little girls of about six or seven. It was fun to visit their classroom, make weak attempts to greet them in Hindi, and check out some of the classroom’s beautiful Varanasi handmade wooden toys, one of which Andria and I used to practice our shaky hindi counting on in front of a classroom full of children, to general amusement.
After the Tulsi visit, Pravin took us to visit a very ancient holy place – a kind of very deep well, with rough stone steps leading down to it on three sides, perhaps a100 feet down. Near the bottom of the steps is a shrine to the sun, and apparently during the monsoon season, when the water level rises to cover the shrine, it is believed that the combined power of the holy river Ganga and the sun make the site even more powerful. This is a site of pilgrimage and bathing for women hoping for fertility. There was no-one else there, and we were able to sit in silence for a few minutes. It was breathtaking – I wish I had a photo to share, but photography there wasn’t ok.
We’ve had another yummy Indian lunch, and are now hanging about and dozing for a bit. This afternoon we meet with the managers to discuss our work plans for the next six months. This place is wild, and I love it.

upon arrival

Oct. 11

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. It’s hard to believe. The voyage here was a draining ordeal – a 7-hour flight to Amsterdam, a 4 hour stopover, an 8 hour flight to Delhi, almost 12 hours in the Delhi airport, then an hour’s flight to Varanasi. By the end of the journey (39 hours door to door) we were barely dragging our weary bodies through the airport chaos. We’d slept briefly in all kinds of odd ways and places – on the plane, twisted in the seat, curled up on top of our suitcases in the Delhi airport. The relief of stepping off the last plane and discovering that all of our luggage had actually arrived, and then seeing one of our organizatoin’s managers beaming and waving at us was a wonderful moment of relief.
We were greeted warmly, and driven in to Delhi in a jeep with the luxury of A/C – much appreciated in the 30something degree heat. The drive in to town from the airport, which is on the edge of town, took close to an hour, and Andria (the other Canadian-born intern) and I satred transfixedly out of the window. At first, the streets were tree-lined, and the cars and people were relatively few, but soon the trees petered out, the dusty haze grew thicker, and there were cars and trucks and men and women and children and cattle and sheep and goats all fighting ffor a spot on the narrow road between the jumbled shops and ramshackle stalls selling everything imaginable. The car was hardly moving quickly, but it was still passing things too quickly for me to process and comprehend what I was seeing. Finally, we turned down a narrow alleyway between decrepit buildings, forcing pedestrians to flatten themselves against the wall to let us past, and stopped just behind our new office and home, the Ganga Mahal, giving us our first view of the sacred river Ganga.
We were greeted by several of the WLC managers, and by Meeraji, the housekeeper of the Ganga Mahal, and the woman who will be cooking us two yummy Indian meals each day. Meeraji performed the traditional welcoming ceremony of placing garlands of marigolds around our necks and streaking our foreheads with orange. The garland is hanging by my bedside now, and I inhale its sweetness every time the stench of open sewers and other interesting things wafts overwhelmingly through the window.
We stood on the balcony overlooking the river for a little while, drinking sweet milky chai and talking with our new colleagues, until fatigue overwhelmed me and Andria, and we excused ourselves to pass out for a couple hours in the clean, pleasant little room we’ll be sharing. When I woke at six, to the sound of a bell being rung as part of an evening prayer,I was disoriented and unsure for a few moments where I was. The sun had set, and the Ghat (stone steps to the river) was lit with candles and lamps. The third intern, Prashant, had been out for a few hours. He was here for three months last winter to volunteer, and knew exactly how he wanted to spend his first few hours here – he took a boat out to the middle of the river, where it’s cleanest, and dove in, and then made his rounds greeting old friends around the neighbourhood. He returned just as we woke up, and we sat down to the superb meal of an eggplant and potato dish, daal and chapattis that meeraji had prepared. In the evening we went for a short walk on the ghants, with prashant guiding us, and stopping to greet his acquaintances at the chai stalls. He speaks pretty good Hindi, and so is able to communicate with everyone and do a little translating for us. Though it was early in the evening it was completely dark out, and lamps hung from posts near the river – a part of the lead-up to the Diwali, the coming festival of light, these are lit for the ancestors. We bought little candles nestled among marigolds in a bowl made from a pressed leaf, and lanunched them amongst the others on the Ganga, as a little prayer as thanksgiving. After a quick email-check (we have high speed here in the Ganga Mahal, which is a nice comfort) we collapsed wearily in to bed.

By Way of Introduction

The title up there makes basics pretty obvious, but by way of formal introduction, here they are:
I'm a Canadian girl, born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Monday i board a plane to Varanasi, India, and I'm pretty excited about it. That pretty much covers the premise of this blog.

After graduating from McGill in the spring i started applying for CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) internships in various parts of the world, especially South Asia. CIDA internships are government funded placements with various NGOs -- basically a free trip, a few months of living and meaningful work overseas, and fantastic professional experience. I was lucky enough to get a pretty cool one -- I have been placed with a tiny Canadian organization which works almost entirely in India, focussing on adult and child literacy and the empowerment of women. Their Indian branch office is located in Varanasi, in northern India, and after a month of getting to know the Canadian office and the basic workings of the organization, I leave on Monday to spend the next six months living and working in Varanasi!

Varanasi sounds like a pretty amazing place. It's located on the bank of the Ganges, and is considered one of the holiest places in Hindu religion -- it is believed t hat those who die and are cremated there ascend directly to heaven. It's a 3000 year old city, and a major place of pilgrimage. It is also located in one of the very poorest states of India.

During my internship, i will be attached to World Literacy's childrens' projects, helping to administer some of their programs,
conducting some research on the health of children in their programs, and even doing a bit of work directly with the kids. I am travelling with two other very cool Canadian interns, and the three of us will be working separately but living together in the organization's headquarters, a former palace (although smallish and run down as palaces go) overlooking the river.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy with full time work at the Toronto office and the stress of preparing for departure, but as the stress of preparation winds down I'm growing more and more excited. I think this is going to be a pretty weird/wonderful six months.

Love Emily