Cow of the Week: Socially Progressive Edition

I wasn't sure how to delicately transition from my last post back to the general tone of the blog as a whole; so I decided to screw it and post these photos of bull on bull action instead.

bow chicka wow wow...

Kisses... It kind of looks like they're fighting in the photos; but I assure you it was a very tender moment.

I thought of some puns for this title, but they all seemed inappropriate.

This week in my slum a funeral was held; the ceremony went on several days and involved the whole community.

We were told the funeral was for an elderly woman who died of 'head problems'- we thought this meant a stroke or an aneurism. We thought wrong.

One of the older women in my class confided in me today, via a translator, that the dead woman had been a widow who lived with her son and daughter in law. She was too old to do any work and her son was very frustrated at having to care for her and bear the stigma associated with having a widow in the house- he and his wife gave her very little food and beat her often.

Last week, the old woman woke them up early because she was so hungry she was weeping. Her son and his wife were angry at having been woken and they beat her harder than usual- she sustained severe head injuries and died later that day.

Although everyone in the slum knows what happened, the police were not called (apparently they don't ever go to the slums) and the funeral service went as normal; with the son presiding at the funeral as is traditional.

So, essentially, there was a murder several doors down from my classroom last week, and everyones cool with it. I'm more than a little confused.

Coco the Hutt

Thank you so much to everyone who sent me lovely messages!
I have taken your collective advice and manned up. I don't know if it was the change in attitude or the copious amounts of antibiotics that made me feel better; but I do. Today was a really good day at work- we finally managed to get the morning class to understand lowercase vs upper case alphabets; and the afternoon class has truly mastered the intricacies of MS Paint*
Also, my dad sent me these amazing pictures of my cat, Coco Chanel. Coco is something of a local celebrity here in Jaipur because often animals starve in the dry season; so the concept of people cultivating something as bizarre and wasteful as this enormous cat is straight up trippin' to them.

Han my boy, you disappoint me. Why haven't you paid me?

And why did you fry poor Greebo?

*Ok, I know it's dumb for anyone to be using Paint in this day and age; but the younger ones like it and it helps their mouse coordination a lot, since a lot of them have never been near a computer before and handle it worse than your mom.**

** You know who handles your mom well? Me. Boom. Frances out.

Where my girls at?

Just to show you I haven’t just been running around having violent diarrhea and playing with elephants*; I thought I should post some pictures from my work area.

The women I’ve been empowering on a daily basis all live in the Kathputli Nagar slum; and range in ages from 11-65. The girls above are left to right- Pooja, Sapna and Deepa. Sapna is hilarious- her name is Hindi for dream; but we call her Bura Sapna; which means nightmare. She's best friends with Deepa; and always bosses her around but in a kind of sweet, protective way. Deepa is very bright and her English reading is amazingly good; although she's so quiet you have to lean in to hear her. I'm trying to get her to read out loud more to make her more confident.

This is Janki. She has three kids and sometimes they come to class with her. She's awesome- whenever the younger girls are getting fidgety and acting up she goes into this tirade of virulent sounding hindi and I don't know what it is she says; but whatever it is; it works She gave me a Rakhi bracelet for sisterhood and now her kids call me Aunty Ji; which I love. She's only just learning to type but her average has gone up from 1wpm to 7 which may not seem like a lot; but it's an improvement of 700%; so go Janki!

This is one of the boys that always hangs around outside the classroom peeping in the windows. He really wanted his photo taken; I'm going to give him a copy as soon as I find somewhere to print it.

* Upon re-reading that I realized it could be interpreted wrong. Just to be clear; the diarrhea and elephants were subsequent; not concurrent. 

White Whine.

I couldn't find a relevant picture so we're going with this one of 90's Gwen looking mournful in a Bindi. It works.

I’m lying on the floor of my room; just outside the bathroom door; because it’s just too much effort to drag myself from the bed to the toilet every time I need to be sick; and also because my sheets are soaked through with fever sweat and I don’t have the strength to change them.

My breasts and legs are covered in rainbow bruises from being groped on the train; my feet are blistered and dirty; I’m both pallid from illness and sunburnt at the same time; I’ve lost weight, and I only have one mouthful of bottled water left.

I don’t know how I’m going to get more since I’m too weak to walk to the shop; and too embarrassed to ask someone to do it for me since that would mean admitting I can’t stand the taste of the filtered water and seeming like a snob.

I miss my parents and my boyfriend and my friends and my cats. I miss feeling cold; I miss the wind; I miss going outside without being sexually assaulted or having money demanded of me because I’m white.

I feel guilty because I’m not at work and since I’m the only volunteer at my project area; that means there’s no class- and guilty because I should be handling these problems better; instead of just crumbling into a heap on the bathroom floor. I feel guilty because my parents will read this and worry; but I also feel guilty posting more hilariously captioned pictures of livestock when in reality, I feel awful

Even on days when I’m not as sick as I feel today I’m still not 100%- I don’t think I’m going to feel well till I’m home, in November, and it’s hard to imagine going that long feeling like this. I came here to focus on work but all I can think about is parasites and bacteria and fecal contaminants and people staring at me and touching me and taking photos.

I just feel so exhausted and I want to be home.

Udaipur

Udaipur is famous for being the setting of the James Bond film Octopussy; and for just generally looking like a magical little eastern fairy tale kingdom. I had an amazing time there but because I’m in the midst of yet another bout of violent food poisoning I’m having trouble writing about it in a coherent and entertaining manner; so I’m taking the easy way out and doing a Cracked style numeric rundown. So here we go... My Top Five Most Favoritest Things About Udaipur (Largely Livestock Based)

5. Squirtle Squad

I loved our hotel because it had a view of the lake, hot showers, and best of all- free range tortoises.

I loved the tortoises so much that I spent 40 minutes photographing the painstaking process that this specific tortoise went through to have a bath in one of the decorative marble flower petal bowls.

Awww yeah

4. WHAT. THE HELL. IS THAT.

I was exploring the old city and I noticed a little roadside shrine. Nothing unusual there, they have those all over the place.

But then I got closer.

And a little closer…

THE HORROR.

What the hell is this??? It’s like some kind of evil mountain with terrifying bloody eyes; staring into your very soul. Hindu gods in general tend to be pretty cool looking; so I don’t know what dark corner of theology this tinfoil nightmare crawled out of.

3. Holy Cows

In Jaipur, everyone’s all like ‘Oh yeah I totally love cows so much, they’re so awesome and sacred and whatnot’ but at the end of the day the poor little furry babies are wandering about the streets eating garbage and getting their insides all twisted up by plastic bags.

Not so in Udaipur.

Women on the street sell cow feed; and every day people buy it and feed the cows delicious fresh greenery. It of often said that a state can be judged by how it treats the lowest members of it’s society; so I’m pretty sure Udaipur deserves a solid high five for how nice it is to its holy livestock.

2. We’re On a Boat

You can’t visit Udaipur without doing the classic boat ride. The whole city is wrapped around a beautiful lake studded with water lilies and floating hotels; all framed by holy ghats and monkey infested trees- the whole thing is very picturesque and romantic.

For 200r we were hustled into a leaky little unit and given a round of the lake in the pouring rain. It was super fun. 

Check me out, I'm so ethnic.

1. Long Live Mother India

Monday was Independence Day and I decided to skip the parade in town and go for a ride out in the countryside instead.  Jamie wasn't feeling too well, so I went alone. When I got out there; I found out it was just me and the guide. She asked me if I could ride- I said yes. Bad move. 

"Great!" She replied, "We can take the new stallions out. They're practically broken in."

With that the groom leads out two enormous, rearing Marwari stallions. I could see straight away mine has the Crazy Eyes and I was more likely than not going to die at his hands. Hooves. Whatever.

However, embarrassing myself by admitting I'd never rode a horse with balls before seemed an even worse fate so I just got on, pulled the stirrups up as high as I could, and prayed. 

Five minutes into the ride it started monsooning and so we went galloping; like, hardcore galloping; across the hills, in the pouring rain, on these psycho horses. It was the most intense experience I've ever had sober.

 About an hour in we heard music and we followed the sound to this little hillside school in the middle of nowhere. All the students were lined up singing the national anthem, for Independence Day, and when they saw us they pulled us in, tied up the horses, gave us bindis and marigold garlands and informed us we were now their guests of honor at the celebration.

In conclusion, Udaipur is magical and I'm almost considering it instead of Disneyland Japan for my future elopement destination.

Cow of the Week: Udaipur Edition

Mordor cow says "YOU SHALL NOT PASS"

"Srsly don't even try it"

Ornithological Discovery of the Week

I know I'm supposed to be over here empowering women and saving orphans and whatnot, but all that came to a crashing halt this morning when Sarah found a baby bird that needed rescuing.

This little guy somehow ended up sitting in a bucket in the yard shivering. Our theory is she flew into the window, fell in a bucket of water and then had a little baby birdy concussion/panic attack. So we built her a little house and gave her water and cookies.

I may well have to cancel my trip to Udaipur this weekend in favor of keeping an eye on my little buddy here.

Little Bean, all grown up!

I've always had a soft spot for grunge rock royalty baby Frances Bean Cobain, both because her mom is such a classic hot mess and because she's the only celebrity to share my name (Except for Frances Farmer, but she got lobotomized decades ago so she's a bit of a non-event, really)

So I'm thrilled to see how hot and incredibly cool she's turned out to be. Check it out...

Sandwich wrangling excursion.

As a white female, going out of the house in India is kind of scary- people stare at you, take photos, follow you around, ask you for money, constantly try to start conversations with you. You can try and reduce the problem by dressing in Indian clothing and not making eye contact, ever, but nothing can completely stop it. In my first week, I found the whole thing so intimidating that I would never go out alone, and even if I had been in a group, after a full day of this treatment I usually had to lock myself in the bathroom and cry for a while because it made me so anxious.

My girl Lilo knows how it is.

I was the same way when i first started working at the Big Kumara- I just wasn't used to that level of people aggressively hitting on me; and I had to run off and cry a few times a night  to handle it. But after about a week of working there, I adjusted and managed to deal with it, and I'm kind of getting to the same point here.

I've slowly been trying to increase my comfort zone of going places alone- first the corner store to buy bottled water, then the supermarket, then the post office, and today- a mall on the other side of town for Subway!* Yay me!

I don't really like going places alone, I have no sense of direction**- when my dad tells me to take the compost out at night I tend to stare at him blankly and say, "But... it's dark." So I feel very grown up and self actualized that I'm kind of managing to find my way around here. Here's hoping I can keep it up, because I somehow need to get from here to Kathmandu in October, and I have a feeling it's going to be a little more challenging than today's sandwich wrangling excursion.

This is a photo I took of some Indian guys taking photos of me. I'm pretty much like Megan Fox over here.

* I am officially sick of Indian food, and since I've been ill I've decided that gives me the right to coddle my digestive system with western food for a few days. Delicious, non lentil-based, western food.
**The real winner for no sense of direction in my family is my mom, though. She frequently gets trapped in shopping malls and on a recent camping holiday in Australia refused to go to the bathroom by herself for fear of never returning.

Would you like AIDS with that?

13 year old boy getting a tattoo on the sidewalk.

?!?!?!?

Cow of the Week: Festival Edition

These cows were all like, "wtf I'm a cow why I am in a parade, I should be eating grass or something"

"srsly someone get me some grass"

I managed to make it to one Teej parade before I succumbed to illness; and here are the very cool pictures.

The reason these elephant photos are so bad is because I was standing RIGHT NEXT TO THE ELEPHANTS. You try taking a nice, non blurry, artistic photo of a giant painted behemoth when it's four inches from your face. They were so sweet and friendly, whenever we reached out to touch them they would wrap their trunks round our arms and waists and give us lovely interspecies hugs. Fuck yeah, hugs!

So that's what my hair looks like from behind. WOOO.

I didn't stay too long at the parade because the man standing behind me was, um, very 'excited' to be standing behind me; and was not shy about showing it. So I kicked him in the shins, ran away and started taking photos of all the other cool stuff going on.

Best hat a baby has ever worn.

Really pretty rajasthani twin sisters.

GIVE ME MONEY FOR MY BRASS INSTRUMENT SKILLZ

I don't know what these creepy baby things were but they were selling like crazy. 

Worst. Friendship day. EVER. (Alt title: Told you I was going to die of dysentery over here, Nigel)

Today was the Indian holiday ‘friendship day’; which means their were street parades, gift giving, happiness…. And I spent 36 hours in a foreign hospital crying and begging people not to stick things in me.

On Friday night I went out with a very nice Irish girl and we had a really crappy dinner. One day later, she was vomiting violently and I was… doing the other thing. Violently. So violently that I realized I needed to get some antibiotics in me asap if I ever hoped to see another Friendship Day.

Some things I learnt about hospitals in India:

1.          1. There is a woman whose only job seemed to be to wash my face and French braid my hair every 12 hours. It was kind of nice but also kind of awkward.

2.         2. All the staff refer to each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’; like some kind of creepy communist nightmare.

3.         3. They are very into enemas and want you to have them all the time. I had to physically fight off several people brandishing pipes while saying “NAHI. NAHI!!” in a loud voice.

4.         4. No one would let me go to the bathroom. They kept giving me dirty (literally, dirty and stinking) metal pots and patiently waiting for me to get on with it. I had to grab my IV bag stand and make a run for the staff toilets.

5.         5. People speak other languages in foreign countries. This is a problem because when you’re trying to say, “I am in a lot of pain”, or “I want to leave. Please take these needles out.” Or “No, I won’t drink that water because I suspect is has fecal contaminants in it” they don’t understand you and just smile and nod then do mean things to you anyway. 

      After a day in the hospital the hand they had put the IV in started burning and throbbing like someone had held it in a pot of boiling water. It went bright red, swelled up, and every time my finger twitched it hurt so much I screamed. Nobody would take it out or give me any painkillers because only the doctor was allowed to and he wasn’t coming until midday; so I decided the best strategy was to scream blue murder* until they couldn’t ignore me anymore.

      Eventually they got the hint and someone took it out and I started trying to escape before they did worse- the whole process was slowed down because someone had stolen my shoes in the night and apparently it’s a rule that you can’t leave the hospital without shoes. So I borrowed hospital shoes to walk to the taxi and once my feet were no longer touching the ground a staff member reclaimed the shoes. Mission accomplished. Now I'm home feeling sick and miserable in the comfort of my own bunk bed. Yay.

*Literally, I screamed and sobbed. For about an hour and a half. It was an impressive performance. My throat still hurts, almost as much as my maimed hand.

Pushkar

On Sunday we rode camels into the hills at dawn to see the wild peacocks.

Pushkar, my rickshaw driver informed me, "is full of the Israelis who do the drugs."

We didn't see any Israelis and only a reasonable amount of drugs, but there were some pretty epic temples, very romantic ghats, and a whole lot of snake charmers.

xx