Dharmsala Week Three

As mentioned earlier, the months of June, July, and August are India's monsoon season so, as such, every day has been riddled with bouts of rain followed by bouts of beautiful sunshine. The clouds roll in by the morning, rain their hearts out, and then the sun immediately follows by afternoon with clear skies and crisp views of the Himalayan mountains surrounding us. I am currently in an internet cafe on the third floor of a building along one of the streets that breaks off from the central market place and winds itself down the side of the mountain through a series of shops and specialty stores. It has been raining for the last half hour and I am hoping that the sun will magically come out when I finish writing this entry so that I can walk back up the mountain to my flat and pack my things up for the train I will be taking in a few hours to Delhi for the program debriefing.

These last two weeks have gone by faster than I could have ever imagined. I was sick and the end of the first week and the beginning of the second week ( I am blaming it on a mango that didn't sit well with my stomach) and everyone in my group from UCSD seemed to be sick at that time as well. There was a lot of stress and a lot of frustration with the differences in the health care available to us up here on the mountain. An Indian-born student in my group from UCSD actually had to leave Dharmsala to receive better medical attention at the beginning of our trip and we were ll in low spirits when she left our volunteer project after a years worth of planning to be here with us. However, we all know that the altitude and the steep hills were not conducive to her recovery and are grateful that she has recovered a lot already from her respiratory infection since she went to stay with her family here in India.

Volunteer Work with the NGO
I have been kept busy with the housewives in my women's group and have had a very rewarding experience working with them. Sabbu and Vindra composed wonderful stories and improved on their typing skills. Prakshi and Meena improved on their addition skills and are on their way to being able to regulate their expenditures in the market. They also gained a lot of knowledge about phonetics and sounding out words spelled with the Roman alphabet (for both Hindi, Punjabi, and English words). Vindra has been sick with a liver problem lately and unable to attend the group and Sabbu went to visit her family in a neighboring town for a few days so they could not attend our group this last week. Before Sabbu left, she has my co-worker Fernanda and I over to her house for Chai and appetizers. We were able to meet all of the women on her husband's side of the family (because she lives on her in-law's property with her husband and daughter Khanti.) Her family is Sikh, which was founded as a religion that borrows from both Hinduism and Islam and is very pacifist. The women carry daggers underneath their shirts which are tied to ropes that wrap around their necks and hang at their sides (I believe it symbolizes strength of character and is a non-violent tool). Sikh men can be spotted out of a crowed because they all wear turbans and never cut their hair. Meena and Prakashi were also busy with new jobs and tending to children who are on vacation from school so they were not able to make our meetings this past week either. However, one of the house maids for the CCS volunteer flats brought her granddaughter with her to work on the computer which perfectly overlapped with the days where none of the regular women in our group could attend. Shrivani has spent the last couple of days with the undivided, two-to-one attention from two well-educated tutors and it has also been very rewarding to have been able to have helped her with her typing skills and her cognitive skills through many games that we played that involved strategies. I don't think that 11 year old Indian girls get private tutors very often in this region, and I am glad that she was able to have not only ONE tutor but TWO tutors. Today I left Shrivani with Fernanda mid-way through the tutoring session and went to the newly opened Special School in lower Dharmsala. It has been up and running for a total of 2 weeks, we were actually here for the grand opening!!--except I was sick during the actual ceremony--and the community is making a lot of progress in addressing the needs of the handicapped community. Today there were 6 special needs children at the school, two teachers, one aide, and three CCS volunteers (including myself). There was also a visiting psychology student who is specializing in "education with the mentally retarded." Given my lifetime of experience with the special needs community, I fit right in to the classroom and felt very helpful and useful. It was a treat to be able to both observe the work that has been done in this community to rehabilitate and educate the often mistreated special needs Indian people.

Traveling
Last weekend my friends and I traveled to Amritsar to see the Sikh Golden Temple and to attend the Pakistani/Indian border ceremony. Both of these were breath-taking, and I will always be grateful that I was able to go to both. We went to the temple on the evening when there was a full moon and on a morning where we were able to see the sunrise over the temple. I was able to enter it twice to see their devotional prayers and readings of Sikh religious texts. It is a site of pilgrimage to all of the Sikhs and and average of40,000 daily visit it. It is the holiest of places for the Sikh religion.

After the Sikh temple, we went to the Indian/Pakistani border ceremony. I walked up to 100 yards of Pakistan and sat down in a stadium where I watched the Indian military enact the ceremonial dances, chanting, marching, and interactions with the Pakistani military. Pakistan also had a stadium on their side of the border, but India's was filled with many more people and many more travelers. Females were separated from males and tourists were separated from the Indians. At the beginning of the ceremony the Indian women and children dance in the center of the stadium to nationalistic Indian music. Naturally, my UCSD friends and I went down and danced with them. The women were more than happy to teach us their dances and many people took pictures of us with their cell phones. We were quite the spectacle, but they were very appreciative of our openness to participate in their ceremonial dancing and all of the women thanked us for coming down from the bleachers to dance in front of the entire stadium. Even after the ceremony many elder Indian women grabbed me by the arm while I was walking to stop me, look in my eyes and tell me that I am a great dancer.

End Notes
I am now running out of time here at the internet cafe so I must end this update. I will be taking an 11 hour train ride back to Delhi in 5 hours and from there my UCSD friends and I will be going to the Taj Mahal and then separating to go our different ways before we return back to the States. Oh, and Anju, one of the CCS staff workers, designed the most beautifully, intricate henna pattern on my left arm yesterday. It starts a few inches down from my elbow and extends to my fingertips. It is such an honor to have it on my arm and I will pridefully carry it with me until it fades away.