I'm Still Alive...!!

So it may have seen like I have fallen off the face of the earth. Not true. I am still here. Just in a very different location since I last posted. It is deceptively hard to keep up a blog while travelling to a country where your blog is blocked (ehem, China) and now I am living in a township 2 hours outside of Cape Town called Zwelethemba where many houses have no electricity, let alone computers or internet. I am currently in the town called Worchester (pronounced Wooster) where there is an internet cafe and I am FINALLY able to update my blog. Apologies!

So to recap China:
It was really awesome.
It was pretty cold.
There were a ton of people.
I climbed the Zhangjiajie mountains (the mountains in Avatar).
I ate, and helped to make, delicious food (pics of me making dumplings to come) and even ate stinky tofu, snake (not a common delicacy) and sea cucumber while in Beijing and Changsha. I also ate at the cheapest Michelin starred restaurant in the world during my one day trip to Hong Kong.

All in all I was surprised to find that I loved China. My homestay family was incredibly welcoming, even though they couldn't speak any English. I also learned a lot more Chinese than I first anticipated learning, probably because it was literally the only way to communicate with people when I was on my own. I now know how to say, "I like to eat apples, walnuts, oranges, dumplings, fruits, pork", etc. and I can say that I am American, among other things. I can also ask, "How much does that cost?" And if I hear a price I don't like, I can respond, "That is way too expensive!" I dare you to quiz me when I return.

As I mentioned, I am currently living with a family in Zwelethemba for a total of two weeks. The family I am living with consists of a mother, stepfather, daughter and the daughter's 2 year old son. I have only been living here for 5 days but in that time I have been overcome with the incredible severity of Zweletehmba's health issues. Zwelethemba was first created in the 1950s as a result of the Group Areas Act during the apartheid. This act legally allowed the government of South Africa to relocate all of the blacks and coloreds to areas designated as black only and restrict the movement of blacks and colored to white-only areas. Now, Zwelethemba is still incredibly poor and is inhabited by exclusively black and colored families. Zwelethemba is one of the areas hit hardest by the HIV epidemic in South Africa, as are most of the township areas around the country. The HIV rate here is as high as 1 in every 3 or 4 people. This has had a devastating impact on the community and it means that every single person here has someone close to them who is either currently infected or who has already succumbed to the disease. The stories of loss here are heartbreaking and all too common.

The other huge issue that I see affecting the community here is obesity and diabetes. My homestay mother is very overweight and has diabetes and my sister is also severely overweight and seems to be going down the same path towards diabetes. She continually asks me and the other two students staying in the home with me for help on how to lose weight but none of us seem equipped to adequately help her. She insists on putting copious amounts of sugar in her cereal and coffee and eats huge portions at every meal, despite our warnings and advice. We just hope that she listens to us before it's too late and she gets diabetes.

On a brighter note, we celebrated thanksgiving here in Zwelethema, which definitely kept my homesickness at bay. We made my real family's recipe for macaroni and cheese, sauteed string beans with nuts and cranberries, pan seared chicken (we couldn't find any turkey), cranberry sauce and a homemade apple pie! It was incredibly delicious and I felt a little bit less sad about having to miss Thanksgiving at home in the States!

South Africa is known for its white wine so today a big group of us are going on a vineyard tour around the area. I am looking forward to tasting the famed South African wine!

Back in business and hitting the road once again!

Well, vacation time is officially over and I am back in Trivandrum for my last day in India. My vacation was great. I stayed in Kochi for the majority of my trip but the visit to the ashram was definitely the most adventurous part of my entire vacation.

We travelled to this tiny, rural fishing in a town called Amritapuri. I don't think we quite knew what to expect other than doing a lot of yoga and meditation. It turns out that even our limited expectations proved to be fairly wrong. When we got there, we were quickly informed that Amma was not there (and continued to be informed of this fact by every person that we encountered thence forth). Not really knowing who this "Amma" person was other than the fact that the word Amma in Malayalam means "mother" we attempted to just go on with our lives and enjoy meeting the people that were there. People at the ashram, however, seemed distraught, even lost, on account of Amma's absence. Every conversation began and ended with some mention of Amma and how it was such a shame that we have never met her and how we were such good people for visiting the ashram despite this fact. Amma, it turns out, is a jolly Indian woman who hugs thousands of people a day and once sat in place for 20 hours straight, hugging people. People at this ashram worship her and claimed she was God in human form. In fact the ashram was covered with stickers and posters of her feet resting on a silver plate. Needless to say we were slightly concerned for our wellbeing and the wellbeing of her followers at the ashram. The ashram itself was essentially a small city surrounded by a rural village (actually it was the village that Amma grew up in). It has three huge high rise apartment buildings, each with 15 floors and at its peak, the ashram can accommodate up to 10,000 visitors. The sheer size of the ashram, especially considering it's humble surroundings, was impressive. Even more impressive were the views from our room on the 15th floor of our apartment complex. The complex is sandwiched between the backwaters and the Indian Ocean. It looks like a tropical paradise with palm trees stretching into the horizon and colorful fishing boats lining the waters below. With surroundings like this, it was difficult to be too disturbed by the ashram itself.

Each morning for the few days we were there, we would wake up at 4am and go to the main temple for the morning chanting session. The chanting session, which lasted about an hour and a half, consisted of a woman continually chanting the one thousand names of Shiva, a Hindu god. Being up that early and attending these chanting sessions was an amazing experience. I had never been up that early yet felt so refreshed. Aft the session, they served us chai and then we would head to the beach for morning meditation. This was definitely my favorite part of the day. We would sit there for about an hour in peaceful contemplation as the sun rose over the Indian Ocean. It was spectacular. For the rest of the day we would do a number of different chores around the ashram (including transporting large chunks of termite infested wood across the complex, yum) and meditate. I also tried to sneak in some photography, even though photography was illegal because they said it would ruin the sanctity of the ashram. My bad. But I took some pretty awesome pictures. Sanctity restoring even.

I leave for Beijing in a few hours. I may or may not have access to my blog account once I get there because apparently Blogspot is blocked by the Chinese government. As is Facebook. So if I don't update for a while you'll know what happened. Uh oh....

Location:Pattom Kumarapuram Rd,Trivandrum,India

Last night in Ulloor?!?!

Well, as the title suggests, tonight will be my final night at my home stay here in India. It's been a crazy few weeks for me in Ulloor (the neighborhood my family lives in) but ultimately I think living with this family has been such a wonderful and formative experience. They have shared their home, their food and their wacky Indian soap operas with me and for that I will be eternally grateful. These past 4 weeks have gone by so quickly! I cannot believe that in less than two weeks I will be on a plane flying to Beijing. This is crazy.

This week's highlight has to be when the program set up an awesome scavenger hunt for the group on Wednesday. They gave us a list of challenges we needed to complete and we dispersed around the city in groups of five attempting to finish the tasks. Let's just say that by the end of the day I had driven a rickshaw, asked a man to show me how to wrap a sari (they are traditionally worn by women FYI), and sent a haphazardly written letter to South Africa (don't ask.) All in all I would say it was a pretty successful day.

Right now, most of us are feverishly working on our country papers that are due today. The topic of my paper is on waste disposal in Trivandrum and its implications on health and the community at large. The pollution here struck me as being one of this city's most potent health indicators and I knew I needed to pursue this topic further. Wish me luck!

Tonight is our final farewell dinner here in Trivandrum. Our home stay families will join us as we say goodbye to them and all of the country coordinators. We are then free for our 10 day vacation. I leave for the ashram on Sunday and I am a little nervous because I have never meditated for more than 10 minutes, let alone the multiple hour long sessions I am expected to do everyday starting Sunday. Maybe I should start practicing...ohmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

A Social Misfit?

I have given a pretty good description of the physical landscape of Trivandrum and where I have been living thus far, but I would also like to take the opportunity to talk about the social landscape as well. From day one I have been on the receiving end of some pretty intense staring. Initially, since I was with the group everywhere I went, I thought it was natural because we must have looked pretty weird and out of place as a group of 35 westerners. I soon realized, however, that I was getting the majority of these stares, even though I thought I was well hidden within the larger group. As I have begun to travel on my own around the city, it is clear that I attract a lot of attention.I don't know if it is on account of my race, my braids, my height, or the combination of all of these factors, but I constantly feel myself being watched whenever I leave my house. The first time the realization that I was being stared at constantly dawned on me, I'm not going to lie, I was very upset. I think it upset me so much because I felt completely singled out. Here I was, in a group of other foreign looking people, and I  was the one people were staring at. I honestly felt like a freak. I wanted to hide - disappear. I want to yell at these people. Tell them how rude and ignorant they were being by staring and pointing. Rationally, I understood why I was garnering this sort of attention and knew that I could not do any of those things, but emotionally, no matter how much you rationalize it, it is still humiliating. I think I am finally in a position where I can brave the stares every time I walk outside but there is still a little part of me that wants to educate the people who are staring. I want them to know the sort of person I am, despite their notion of me when I walk down the street.

I think the incident that humiliated me the most is the doctors visit that I has last week. Right before I arrived in India, I started on a regimen of Doxycyclin as a malarial prophylaxis. Doxy, as some of you may know, is an antibiotic that kills the natural flora in your body as well as on your skin. I unfortunately began having a bad skin reaction to the Doxy and went to the doctor to hopefully receive some steroid cream to treat the severe rash that developed on my face. When I went in to see the doctor, the doctor began to question me about my braids. She asked me if I wash them and I told her that I wash them regularly. She then goes on to tell me that she believed that I was having a skin reaction because my braids were dirty. This is after I already explained to her that I had been on Doxy, which is known to cause such a reaction, and also after I told her that my braids are not dirty and that I had had them for more than a month with no problems. She continues to insist that it's my braids causing the reaction, at which point I almost turned and walked out of the room because I was so offended and frustrated. Finally she just wrote me a prescription for more antibiotics (just what I did not need) and sent me on my way. Needless to say, I did not take the antibiotics she prescribed me and instead stopped taking the Doxy. Lo and behold my rash went away. I think this experience was so disheartening because I expected a doctor, of all people, to be educated and not prejudiced. It was clear that she was treating me this way because I looked different. If my hair were straight, or if I looked more "normal," I do not believe I would have been treated in this manner.

This taught me a very valuable lesson about the pervasiveness of culture and upbringing. Even the most "educated" in an academic sense, can still be ignorant to the world around them. I think that these experiences are ironically making me more confident than I ever was before. I can no longer care what people here think of me and I need to maintain a sense of self-worth despite the adversity surrounding me currently. It will be interesting to see how I am treated in China because I have already been warned that the racism and ignorance there is even more widespread. To be continued....

On another note, I was unable to attend the wedding last week and was therefore unable to wear my sari. BUT I have decided to rock the sari at our final program dinner this Friday so I will definitely upload a ton of pics!

Our vacation in India begins this Friday and we have until October 17th, which is very exciting. Right now, I plan on traveling to central-northern Kerela and spending 2 nights at an ashram there and then 5 days at a beautiful resort on the backwaters of Kochi. I am so pumped!

Drained....

It has been a busy week thus far and  I think that I am getting a little bit worn down on account of a number of factors.

I share a small bed with my roommate in a room on the second floor of our home stay family's house. It has a little bathroom that contains a faucet, two buckets for showering and a squat toilet. Our room is over run with ants and I have just gotten used to sleeping with them all over my bed every night (thank God for my sleepsack!) Our room does not have any real place to put our belonging so we ended up unpacking some of our clothing on the lone table in the room. This means that we also don't really have a space to read or do work, so most of our work is done from our bed.

After living here for over two weeks, I sincerely appreciate everything I have left behind at home and at Swarthmore. Simple things like a hot shower or even having a sink are not available to me here. I had never previously imagined my life without these things that I had always labeled as "basic". While I have mostly gotten used to living without these relative luxuries by now, it is still exceedingly difficult to live without a place to study. That is something that I had definitely always taken as an absolute given, especially within any academic context. I don't really have access to any defined study spaces, either at home or in the city. I will definitely appreciate "McCage"- as Swarthmore's library is affectionately known - when I get back in the spring.

One more thing that I didn't realize how much I would appreciate is alone time. I probably get about one hour of alone time, of any sort, per WEEK. I am constantly forced to be around people all the time which is getting old quickly. This is sort of a revelation for me because I would normally consider myself to be a very social person. I love being around and interacting with people most of the time. However, I usually also have the option of being alone if need be and without this escape route, I feel trapped.

Luckily, this week, we began our case studies which may help to give me some more time alone.For our case studies, all the students were divided into groups of five and given a topic that they will examine for the entirety of the trip. I was placed in the Occupational and Environmental Health case study group and we have spent today and most of yesterday conducting interviews and going on site visits in order to give us enough data to write a case study report. Our report will investigate the health implications of working in the waste collection sector in Trivandrum. We have gotten great data thus far and we will conduct our last site visit tomorrow, hopefully at the trash processing plant in the suburbs of Trivandrum. Because we only have interviews and visits for part of the day, I have been able to be on my own for much of the day which has been a god-send.

Another thing that has been lightening my mood is the fact that I am going to an Indian wedding tomorrow evening. I am so excited!! I already bought and got fitted for my sari and I will be able to pick it up from the tailor today! I will post photos as soon as I can.

Speaking of photos - I got some of my photos onto my Tumblr and Flickr accounts! You can reach both by going to http://mnnyc.tumblr.com/. When you click on any of the photos, you will be redirected to my Flickr account where you will be able to see all of the photos that I have uploaded so far. Uploading photos here has been a really long and difficult process so the photos will continue to roll in whenever I can access a reliable WI-FI connection, which will hopefully be later on this week so stay tuned

Also in case anyone wants to send me a letter or two (hint, hint), my address is:

Marjani Nairne
IHP c/o Dr. K Vijayakumar
Health Action by People, TC 1/ 1706, 'Chemmanam'
Opp.3rd Men's Hostel, Navarangam Lane
Medical College PO, Trivandrum, 695011
India

Pollution and Protest

A lot has happened since I last posted. My roommate, Lais, and I decided to stay with our homestay family despite the lack of language. I don't think I realized, until I was thinking about leaving, how quickly I had bonded with them. I honestly couldn't see myself being as close with any other family. I really do care about them and they care about me and Lais just as much, if not more. I think we made the right decision to stay, even if it will take some time to get used to the squat toilet and cold bucket showers.

Yesterday, Lais, three guys from our program and their host brother, Amal, visted the famous Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum. It was recently discovered that this temple is the richest in the world, after they discovered almost $27 million worth of gold and other assets this past June. We were not permitted to enter the temple because we are not Hindu, but the temple is absolutely stunning from the outside. The entire thing is intricately carved and painted so that it looks like carved ivory.

After the trip to the temple, Amal and his friend brought us to a crumbling bridge at the shore of the Indian Ocean. He told us that the bridge was built by the British about a hundred years ago. When we visited yesterday, there were people lining the edge of the bridge with fishing lines and nets, trying to catch a couple tr fish for dinner. Amal told me that these were not commercial fisherman and pointed to the colorful wooden boats that were out on the ocean, catching fish to sell at the market. The view from on top of the bridge was spectacular and revealed the colorful huts that lined the shore as far as the eye could see. Amal then took us on a walk along the shore. While he insisted the walk would be short, it felt to me that it took an eternity. I think it was all made worse after I saw a disemboweled cat, followed by the largest dead rat I have ever witnessed in my life. The shore was incredibly polluted to say the least, with dead fish and feces scattered about everwhere. The people who lived along the shore resided in houses with thatched, palm leaf roofs. Considering how much it rains here, they must have constant flooding. The entire sight was incredibly dismaying.

The pollution and litter here is pretty severe. I think this really hit home when, after that long walk, I needed to throw out my coke can and Amal told me to throw it on the ground. I asked him if there was a garbage can anywhere and he simply pointed at the ground. I refused to throw my can on the ground, not convinced that there was no way I could properly dispose of the can. Eventually Amal snatached the can out of my hand and just tossed away on the ground. This made me realize one of two things: the first is that I no longer wanted to consume items here that are non-reusable because I would just be adding to the pollution. The second is that this place is in desperate need of a proper recycling system. I was just told that in the Malaylam news a few days ago was a report that the dumps here are officially at capacity and there is no place to put all the trash. I don't know what the ultimate solution will be but I did watch something really awesome on BBC International today. Its called "Litre of Light" and its the coolest idea ever. It's a sustainable lightbulb that uses only a discarded plastic bottle filled with water and a little piece of tin. Check it out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14967535?asid=27e38aba


We also didn't have class today because there have been gas strikes because the cost of fuel here is too high and people are demanding that the government subsidize it further. This was the second strike in three days so hopefully they will reach some sort of an agreement soon.

That's all for now because I have to get home! Namaskaram.

Namaskaram

This place has quickly gotten overwhelming. I've officially just ended my first week of classes in India and I am worn out, both physically and emotionally. We moved into our home stays on Friday and unfortunately I ran into some issues. My home stay family has been absolutely lovely and accommodating but there is just one issue - they don't really speak any English. While I know that language problems come with the territory of this sort of trip, the problem is that we are supposed to be using our home stay families as an extension of our investigation into the cultural and political issues that effect health in the countries we are visiting. While I must say my Malaylam has gotten pretty sharp since being here, my communication with my family wasn't enough to allow for any real interactions (let alone instructions on how to get to the bus stop, or even what the word "bus stop" means.) For that reason, I am being switched to a different home stay. This has caused a ton of stress and anxiety because my current home stay was notified before they even found a place for me to live. Let's just say that last night there were a lot of tears and sadness but hopefully I will move forward from this positively. We also get 3 yoga lessons a week which have been a god-send thus far and have probably gotten me through this situation a little more sanely.

On another note, the food here is BOMB and you eat everything with your bare hands which is tricky at first but you quickly adjust to it. I'm scared I'm going to forget to use silverware when I return home! I will list out some of my favorite dishes that I have sampled thus far:

• Appam - this is like a fluffy rice pancake with a thick middle and a thin crispy ring going around it. This is used to dip in sauces.
• Papperdam - This is a fried, crispy, puffy bread that is also used to dip in sauces. Probably my favorite bread.
• Iddly - This is similar to the appam, except that it doesn't have the crispy edges and it is slightly fermented.
• A bunch of curries that I don't know that names of but most are made with coconut (probably the most popular food here) and are really spicy and delicious.

I have to cut this post short because apparently my home stay family is on a hunt to find me (I am in an internet cafe and they get really nervous if you are out past 7pm.) But I will update more as soon as I can!

Welcome to Thiruvananthapuram! (Say that 10 times fast)

I would first just like to apologize for not updating more frequently. The internet in the hostel in Basel was terrible and I only had an iPad and I figured that people really wanted to hear about the other countries I am visiting anyway. The rest of Basel was good. We ate a lot of cheese, a lot of chocolate and a lot of bread. We also learned a lot about a field of alternative medicine called Anthroposophy. We first visited an anthroposophic hospital which was actually really nice and interesting. People would go to this hospital to be treated for everything from depression to heart trouble and would even go there to give birth. It was shocking that something so nice actually was paid for by the public Swiss health insurance. The second anthroposophic place, called the Goetheanum, was built by Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s. It is a massive building, built in such a way that it does not have corners (similar to Gaudi but more imposing and less attractive.) The whole experience was bizarre. There were clearly Christian religious idols scattered about the building, yet our tour guide kept insisting that nothing was religious. After I saw a painting of Jesus surrounded by the seven disciples painted on the ceiling and the tour guide proceeded to claim that it was a Native American man surround by some of his followers, I had had enough. It was an interesting experience but probably not one I will repeat anytime soon.

I am currently sitting in Kovalam Beach which is one of the most famous beaches in India, about 35 minutes from where we are staying in Trivandrum (or as it is traditionally known in India, Thiruvananthapuram.) I seriously cannot believe I am sitting in a tiny internet cafe in INDIA right now! This is all so surreal.

All of us had the great fortune to arrive in Trivandrum at the beginning of one of the biggest festivals here, called Onam. The festival is ten days long and began on Friday, the day before we arrived. Yesterday, despite the rain (we are also here in the middle of monsoon season), we went to the center of all the festivities. There were huge masses of people there, some going on rides, some staring at the beautiful elephants adorned with gold head plates, and some staring at us because we stuck out like sore thumbs. The staring might be a little hard to get used to since people are staring at us constantly and shamelessly. But I guess I would stare at a huge group of weird looking foreigners too, so who can blame them. Right before the end of the festival, some of us watched a group of dancers with incredibly elaborate and large headdresses dance to some drums in a little area sheltered from the rain. It was amazing that they could stand up straight with such big head pieces on!

Right now, we are all staying a Christian center, kind of far from the main part of the city but we move into our homestays on Tuesday and I am really looking forward to that! I seriously love it here and I will put my pictures up ASAP so everyone can share in some of the sites of the festival and the city!

So it begins!

I apologize if this post is a little disjointed and messy. I'm writing this all on an iPad and i am very sleep deprived at the moment.

We arrived in Zurich this morning at around 9am local time (3am est) after taking a connecting flight from Frankfurt. The Frankfurt airport was distinctly German with its numerous pretzel and sausage stands. I tried a German pretzel and would say that it is basically on par with the American soft pretzels that we know and love with the only difference being the mustard, which was amazingly delicious. We then took a 1 hour drive from Zurich to our hostel in Basel. Basel is a very small city that, as I learned today, is the biomedical industrial center of Switzerland. The city (I would almost considerY it a town because it is so small) is covered with cute European houses and old churches. We were forced to drag our jet lagged bodies through the town since our rooms were not ready until 3pm. I was really surprised to see stored like Hermes intermingled with the tiny, local Swiss shops. I would consider Basel an old, classic European city with some modern sensibilities.

A few of us then took a walk along the Rhine where locals were gathered on the banks as well as in the river itself. It seems like the locals really take advantage of their public bodies of water as we also saw a group of Swiss children jumping and frolicking about in one of the town fountains (don't worry, pictures to are to come!)

It started raining later in the evening so we weren't able to go the the town festival that took place tonight but we are going on a walking tour of Basel tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to.

Anyway, this was a very short overview but I need to get some sleep because I have not slept for more than a day but I will update a bit more after I get some rest! Widerluege!

9 days? Crap.

The title to this post says it all. I leave in a nine days and I seriously do not feel ready at all. Most (if not all) of my anxiety is stemming from the fact that I am a really bad packer and I don't want to be embarrassed by either A) having the largest bag in the group, or B) having a bag so large that it is over the 50 pound airplane limit. Both are real possibilities and B has already happened to me before on a group trip. If I can get on the plane without having to open my suitcase and frantically switch things from my suitcase to my carry on, in the process spilling all of my unmentionables on the airport floor and thus further mortifying myself, I will be happy. Indeed, it's the little things in life.

I also really hope I don't leave anything critical at home. Like my cellphone. Or my passport. That would suck.


But really, I'm so excited. Let the countdown begin.*


*Disclaimer: Don't worry, I am not blogging everyday until I leave, lowering the number of days I have left in each subsequent blog post title. I don't have the time and frankly, that would be pretty annoying.

Kicking Things Off!

Over the next couple months, I will be preparing for my semester-long trip to Switzerland, India, China and South Africa. I am so excited to take this journey and I hope to keep everyone updated as much as possible while I am away. As a heads up - I will not be permitted to have a computer on the trip so my updates will be contingent on my access to internet cafes. As a result, I probably will not update as often as I would like, but I will definitely make and effort to do so as often as my resources permit!

I hope that everyone will feel free to leave comments on anything and everything that I post. I will begin to update this blog more as my departure draws nearer.