Blood Donation

This morning I woke up to this:

I counted over 100 bites on my left foot alone! I think it must have slipped out of the mosquito net at sometime during the night. Luckily the bites don't itch (yet...). There is a prize for best connect the dot scheme.

The Pune Class

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my main purpose for coming to Pune was to teach a week-long course about making documentary videos on cultural perceptions of climate change. The course was taught in conjunction with a group at Penn State, and both groups had twelve girls in the twelfth grade. Over the course of the week we attempted to create a dialog about climate change between the girls through blog entries and then they also broke into groups to create short documentary videos about local conceptions of climate change.

Before I discuss the class, I want to reiterate that my experiences are not representative of anything more than my experience and I'm not trying to draw broad generalizations about education in India. Ok, now that I've given my disclaimer.

The week started pretty awkwardly to be honest. Even walking into school, a lot of the students stared when they thought I wasn't looking, some even would say something quietly to their friends and laugh. I had returned to high school, but this time I was an outsider not just personality-wise but also because of the color of my skin. The girls in the class were quite shy at first. Our first exercise was called the “name game” in which they each interview each other on camera. Their answers in to the questions seemed a bit scripted and I suspected that I was getting more recitation of their coursework than their actual opinions about climate change. After we had a “discussion” that featured me talking until Rasika (my previously mentioned assistant) thankfully stepped in and acted as intermediary between me and the students.

Over the course of the week, we began to understand each other better, and we were able to even crack some jokes with each other. One student even gave me a diet pepsi during break one day! All in all, I was really impressed with how quickly they learned how to do everything from conduct interviews to edit the footage.

On Friday we had our screening. Maybe 100 people showed up, mostly other students, but also parents, the principal and board of trustees, and reporters from three newspapers (sidenote: I didn't arrange this, my liaison, who shall heretofore be known as “Mr. P.” arranged all of it. More on him in a moment). I even got a bouquet of flowers! About 10 people gave speeches about how great this project was.

So Mr. P is a bit difficult to explain without really going into character depth, but let's just say he is a bit of an eager beaver but isn't really aware of that fact. He was extremely helpful and the project wouldn't have happened without him, but by the end of the week he was promising to learn “cultural geography methodologies” so that he could travel to Bhutan with me next year. Also he had excessive ear hair that needed trimming and I couldn't help but stare at it when he talked to me. I felt horrible about it but it was really fascinating.

At any rate. I arrived in Kathmandu today, and I'll write about it soon. I have one more entry on Pune I'd like to write, and hopefully I should have more time here in the valley since I'm not technically working.

Here is a link to one of the newspaper reports on the class (its on page 3 if it doesn’t take you there directly) and apparently another newspaper in Marathi reported my name as Matthew Brank.
http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=42&username=&useremailid=&parenteditioncode=40&eddate=6%2f28%2f2009

Here's one of the group's videos. the other three can be found on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U69b9-gK_gk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-gWq0mhAVE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGC_7ZNQjN4

Five Women and the Gora Sahib

My trip thus far has, on average, been great. It began a bit inauspiciously as I got scammed coming out of the airport. I didn’t see the driver for the hotel that I was going to stay at, and suddenly at my side an “airport employee” came to help. He took me to a phone booth where we called the hotel (but I think it was actually another number) and they claimed that my reservation was for the next day. So the kindly man helped me arrange a trip to a different hotel which charged me about 4x the going rate. I knew it was happening but wasn’t about to wander Mumbai with about 100 lbs of luggage at midnight. As a compromise, he included a beer and breakfast to assuage my anger.

For the trip, my friend Sameer arranged for me to have an assistant to help teach the class named Rasika. She was nice enough to come down to Mumbai to save me from the hotel people and serve as my guide for my time here. She’s proved invaluable for helping me get around and at the same time has cheerfully put up with my endless questions and shoddy attempts at Marathi (the regional language).

I’ve been staying with Sameer’s family out here and it makes all the difference. Not only am I not getting ripped off, but I feel like I’ve met half of Pune (the city I’m in) and its been a really cool way of getting to know this place. Actually for me its been a fantastic reminder of why I love and value ethnography as a method of learning and researching, as my experience here would be entirely different if I had been less flexible about our daily schedule.

On Sunday I went on a short trip with my friend’s mom (Hema), Rasika, three of their friends, and one of their grandchildren who was about 3 and was really cute but would speak to me in Marathi and didn’t understand my English replies. I don’t really know what he thought of me actually. We traveled to a nearby dam and spent the day walking around. It wasn’t long before Hema started using the term Gora Sahib for me, which means something like “white boss.” I’m hopeful that this means she is fond of me.

The trip was really great, we found some wild berries that were delicious but the insides were like glue if they touched anything but the insides of your mouth. I also got to experience my first sacred grove. Everyone was really nice, but they would often speak in Marathi, and while I sometimes got a translation later, I spent a lot of times making up conversations for them. They had a debate over whether a unicorn or a pegasus would win in battle (with one of them reminding them that they never would fight in real life). And one time we stopped for directions on where to find a snickers bar but then we forgot to stop and get one. They also told a lot of jokes, but timing the punchline was really difficult, apparently they aren’t very funny in Marathi.

All in all, Pune has been great thus far. I’m eating absolutely delicious food, my stomach is holding up, and the class is going swimmingly.

Stay tuned for the next episode of “The Gora Sahib.”

Itinerary

(Pre-script: Due to being in India, the posting of this blog was delayed. I apologize for breaking my initial teaser, and will explain the reasons in the next posting)

Yesterday morning (I think it was still technically yesterday) I got up at the first hints of dawn (although in reality I think I had gotten up about every half hour since going to bed) and caught a plane to New York City. I had a 1.5 day layover there, which saved me about $100 in arifare for some reason and gave me the chance to visit my dear old friends Eric and Katie.

Last night, I caught a direct flight from NYC to Mumbai, and tomorrow I'll be in Pune, India for a week. Pune is the first substantive leg of my trip, and my reason for being there is that I am teaching a short course on cultural perceptions of climate change to some grade 12 students. Its run in conjunction with a camp in State College, and the students will be blogging (yes, more blogs!) about their views of climate change and then going out and interviewing people in the community about their perceptions as well. Should be really fascinating. I'm also fortunate that my good friend Sameer's parents will be hosting me during this portion of the trip, and his friend Rasika will co-teach the class with me.

Following Pune, I'll be heading up to Nepal for a couple weeks. As many of you know, returning to Nepal is a bit of a homecoming for me, as I studied abroad there. I'm looking forward to visiting my old host family and some other friends there. My activities in Nepal are somewhat open still, I'm hoping to regain quite a bit of my Nepali language skills, perhaps go on a short trek, and work on the next stage of my trip, Bhutan.

Bhutan is the reason that I'm on this side of the world (and indeed, I'm now on that side, or rather, 10,000 meters above it, as this post got delayed by trip preparations). I'm hoping to conduct my PhD dissertation work there, you may have heard of Gross National Happiness, an alternative quality of life metric developed by the old king of Bhutan. Bhutan has also adopted a sustainable development paradigm that they have labeled “The Middle Path.” Tentatively, I'm hoping to gain a better understanding of the people who interact with these concepts on a regular basis (government officials as well as local NGO activists) to better understand how the concepts evolved and impact environmental interactions.

But to do this, I need to figure out a way to get invited into the country for an extended period of time (hopefully an academic year to start), and so while I'm in Bhutan I'm hoping to meet with as many government and NGO staff as possible to make that happen (wish me luck). I have ten days in Bhutan to achieve this goal.

Following Bhutan, I return to Nepal briefly before heading back to India. This time I'll be on the east coast, just outside Vishakhapatnam. I'm co-leading a group of 6 undergraduate honors students and we will be volunteering at an orphanage there for three weeks. I'll fill you in on more details on that later.

And then I'll be returning. Two months, just like that. Each day filled with new sights, sounds, lessons, joys and miseries, and all of it will pass in memories before I can say "kuzu zhangpo la."

That's right, I've figured out a way to make this blog multimedia! Here are some good times from a going away party that we had last night.

Also, I should note that these past entries have been a sort of prelude/running experiment for me to get a feel for what "blogging" is all about. Tomorrow morning I begin my journey to India, Nepal and Bhutan, and its this trip that is serving as the inspiration for the blog. Some of you have read trip notes of mine from previous trips, this time since the trip is lengthy and I don't know how often I'll be able to be in contact, I figured that this might be a good way to stay in touch. So please do feel free to comment, it'd be great to hear from ya.

Reunions

I’ve come to the realization that there is absolutely no way that I could be in grad school and in Portland at the same time. And I mean this not only physically (I attend the real PSU, not Portland State) but also that I am blessed with a wealth of incredible friends who all do really fun things. There has been at least one fun event to attend each night that I’m here. It’s been silly fun, and I couldn’t think of a better Summer vacation.

Seeing people who I know but haven’t talked to in about a year has been an interesting experience. On some levels it seems like nothing has changed, catching up with folks after a year’s separation leads to not much news but the big stuff. But at other times when I listen to them talk there are all these new people and events that I realize I’ve missed out on. It made me a bit sad at first, but I realized that I’ve also met a bunch of great people in the past year and now I just talk about them in a louder voice than anyone else around me.

There also seems to be a broad consensus that my dog, Hanu looks older and fatter than he used to. This also made me sad, until I decided to say he is skinny in a much louder voice. I’ve found that this new method of constructing reality is really effective for me.

At any rate. I leave Portland in like 4 days and I’m ridiculously unprepared for my trip. The best part is that I’m typing this on my way out to the coast for an overnight trip, and I’m definitely not going to make any progress on trip preparation while there. Such a rough life.

The road west

Hello friend!

This is my virginal blog-post, so stick with me, and excuse me if I repeatedly try to fit the square blog (err block) in the triangle-shaped hole.

Yesterday I drove back into Portland. On the way I saw a bumper sticker that said "I'm so f***ing happy I could sh*t rainbows." But it didn't have stars. I knew I was back in a good place when I saw this sticker. Any town that allows that kind of statement to remain in public purview is alright in my book, despite my own reservations about pooping rainbows (and as many of you know, I love poopin).

But I digress. As many of you know, I drove cross country yet again this summer. Departing State College, PA with Hanu crammed in the back amongst two months of possessions for two people in a dog, which doesn't sound like much but it is in an Acura Integra. We left May 10th. The first pitstop was in Wisconsin, where I got to visit my parents, sister and a bunch of organic dairy farmers. It was great to visit with all of them, and far too short. Then it was up to Minneapolis for a couple days to pick up Rachel and visit with her family. Then down to Denver to visit Stacey, Jeff and Kate (my sister's family) which was nothing but giggles (apparently now my niece repeatedly asks for group hugs) until she gave each of us a stomach virus that seemed to have a specialization on moustachioed men. It was reminiscent of the last time I was in S. Asia, and was probably good prep for my trip (this blog has SIGNIFICANT potential to discuss bowel movements pretty often: you are now forewarned). But the GI issues did not prevent a night of camping and a brief visit with my relatives Penny & Joel outside Redmond, which was, as always beautiful and joyful.

And now I'm in Portland. I'll hopefully drop a few blogs about PDX and the haps here before I head to S. Asia, but as you might have guessed the big reason for the blog is to maintain lines of communication with the folks back home. I hope that you are one of them, and I hope that we both are able to stick with this.

So that's it, this is my first blog post. I hope it went over alright.

Also, there is a special prize to the person who guesses the inspiration for the blog title. The hint: Its from a musician who my brother Greg introduced to me as a kid.