Stories and Anecdotes

Time for more stories or things that I’ve noticed:

• Power and water here are consistent for the most part, but that doesn’t mean that they are impeccable. Twice since I’ve been here all of the lights and computers have shut off, eliciting a groan from the Indians. At first this was a strange moment for me. The concept of power not being available whenever anyone wants it is taken for granted in the US. Arjun, one of the people that I’m staying with was explaining that because Baroda is surrounded by so many industrial plants and manufacturing belts, power is often devoted to these places instead of the residential areas, because they factories are more important. On the same note, last night I had to take an expedited shower because the Indian government had diverted the water away from the area in which I’m living.
• Monkeys, who would have thought that they would be all over the place? I’m sitting at my favorite shop serving sugar cane juice (I need to learn what this is called), and a family of monkeys comes and sits down 6 feet from me just watching me and Rachel drink our juice. I was terrified, those things are scary. They are all around the office that I frequent, so I had better watch out. (The cows scare me too)
• Picture the begging children in Slumdog Millionaire. This is exactly like how it is in real life. Little boys and girls, sometimes no older than 3 years old, will come up to you and tap you on the elbow and hold out their hands at you. These kids are dirty, disheveled and obviously very poor. All of the Indians here shoo them away like animals or something. It’s one of the hardest things to see this happen. The white girls like Rachel get it the worst in our group.
• Rachel and I were talking with Sarah, our friend from home, on Skype and talking about the cheapness and heat of India; just general observations. Afterwards Dinesh, our friend in AIESEC, was telling us that it was hard for him not to laugh as he heard us. He said “hearing white people talk about India is so funny”. Then he said I should get on a white cow and take a picture, haha.
• When I visited one of the slums, I think I met a mob boss. My boss was taking me to kids houses that would be my translators within the slums and then we randomly stopped at this 50 year old’s house, named Rameshbhai. This was fairly strange to me, as we had only been stopping to see kids so far. My boss explained that the man, who spoke no English, was an “Important (pause) member of the community” and that he would be good to know. We were talking for a while, and then a grown man stopped by and gave the suspected mob boss a coke and walked out. There were several women in the back cooking and people seemed to gravitate around the disproportionally nice slum house. I have his cell number so if I run into trouble here, I know who I’m going to call.

That’s all for now. Im having fun and meeting a bunch of new people