December 10, 2011. I lie on a fuzzy brown blanket on the hard Indian grass, birds crowing and chirping and flying and singing, darting in foggy sky from flowered tree to bushes dancing in the breeze. Tombs stand over us, centuries of sunlight and tourists gazing and taking, and we talk of past volunteers and brassy lovers sitting near. Is this India, I ask myself, and I feel opened by the trees.
Nick and Sally stretch out, hands occasionally finding each other, he writes and she reads and I sit up, the third wheel that watches the old and young men that walk in pairs on the snaking paths, and they stare at me too, at my blonde hair illuminated in a world of black and brown, but gold means more. I am wealth, I am beauty, I am valued, but not like the women courted lying strides away. She is veiled in black, and he looks at me and at her and back at me, and I wonder how to love someone without seeing their face. Children run and fall in long-sleeved shirts and sweaters because it's winter to them, and white kids roller-skate in small shorts and straggled hair. I watch them all, and hold in my mind the beautiful and the serene and I remember all else too.
I rode a motorcycle yesterday, for the first time,in the chaos of Delhi roads where rickshaws honked at the swervings of my unexperienced driver and the shouts of men who shout at girls like me and the approach of small children carrying fake roses, and Nick dismisses them, but I'm still new enough to care.
I felt free and scared and I held onto his shoulders and waist and loosened my hold as time went on, and I know we all chase that feeling, the myriad of ecstasy, the setting Indian sun burning orange through smog and domes of temples.
We passed under the Bridge of Despair, fires cooking meals for whole families, and I wondered where the children slept, do they have blankets for the chilly nights to barrier from the cold concrete, and part of me said, it's just India, that's the way it is.
My mom says angst comes through, tucked in between words and in the gaps and holes of letters, but I feel calm now, but not as simple as before.
I miss home, especially when voices of my friends come through my iPad in crackled jumbled phrases, the connections lost somewhere.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Not my words, but I feel them too
The chrysanthemums are late this year, as are my cold quilt covered winter nights. Moonless, still hazy after a fire-crackered diwali, frenzied wedding season. My city of elegance, refinement, grace, sitting silent on the ruins of many who thought they owned it, seems to be giving away again, to the crass, mundane, political bureaucratic businessman morass. Where new money, noise, glitter seem to be the only way to herald an arrival. Bollywood babies clogging headlines. Feudal. Headless. Lost in my first city. Nothing less than an Audi will do. A table for two, rooftop, fine-dining chic. Please.
Dilhi. Where my heart finally rests. My body, restless, will find no peace here it seems. Jamuna reti, my loose grey sand, upon which my city stands. Sand in which nothing will hold. Slipping through my fingers with every grasp. This is the city too, of djinns, of the Sufi, where a grasping, clutching, will only choke. Suffocating the many dynasties that moved here to rule.
Dilhi, my city of the heart. Of a fine-ness of being. Elegance. Generosity of spirit. Grace. To let the moonlight play with the silver of my reti, of my waters. My first city of the night, of much more than that which my eyes call real.
In this issue, through food, music, we explore the night. To lead us too from our stomachs to our heart. To be in flow, as it were, with my river divine.
--editorial from First City magazine
Dilhi. Where my heart finally rests. My body, restless, will find no peace here it seems. Jamuna reti, my loose grey sand, upon which my city stands. Sand in which nothing will hold. Slipping through my fingers with every grasp. This is the city too, of djinns, of the Sufi, where a grasping, clutching, will only choke. Suffocating the many dynasties that moved here to rule.
Dilhi, my city of the heart. Of a fine-ness of being. Elegance. Generosity of spirit. Grace. To let the moonlight play with the silver of my reti, of my waters. My first city of the night, of much more than that which my eyes call real.
In this issue, through food, music, we explore the night. To lead us too from our stomachs to our heart. To be in flow, as it were, with my river divine.
--editorial from First City magazine
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Flies land on dry arms and no one notices
Colder here. December 6, 2011. Day three in India, first day at placement. We drove thirty minutes away from our flats, passed laborers in colorful silks and cottons waiting to be picked up from work, past bony cows eating trash and past torn posters and billboards on dimpled tin walls. We turned into a large tract of land in the middle of Delhi, where the smog still seeps in but flowers of gold and pink and orange line the road, vines hanging between columns and fields of vegetables in parallel and perpendicular lines. We walked into Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying and Destitute, anxious and excited and scared and wishful and all the other adjectives fluttering around in heart and stomach. A large walkway goes straight through the nearly all outdoor center, men on the left, women on the right, Lalet, one of the staff members for CCS, told us. We hear crying, screaming and sobbing and little laughter, and we scuff across the tiles, and meet the mother nun, patients coming us to us and talking grunts or Hindi or babble, indiscernible to me, and all around there are women and men in various states of mental chaos and I don't think I can do this, but I must, I say to myself, I must.
And so in my new Indian dress that we are required to wear, a pale green silky tunic, I sit with the women for hours, and hold their hands, and rub their backs when they cry and almost cry myself.
Mother Teresa's center in New Delhi is a recent institution that takes men and women with either physical or mental disabilities and gives them a place to stay, food to eat, comfort, and maybe even love, until they die.
Most do not have family. I would be surprised to see you not shocked, Bella said.
The light streams down allies at steep angles, hitting the garbage and curbs through refractions of smog. Birds chirp all night, and fly overhead from palm to tree to wire to paint chipped balcony. I sit in our living room, peering out through barred windows and cracked screens and I watch from the backseat of our compact car at the fruit stands and cloth shops and toothless men crossing the road, motorbikes tearing past and automated rickshaws scurrying in cracks of fast moving exhaust.
I miss Tanzania, my children, my coffee shop and laundry buckets. Here is foreign, still, unknown. I cough and I miss the clean air and I miss the sweat and the oppressive heat and the classrooms with no textbooks and part of me wonders why I'm here.
I can't imagine being anywhere else, but here, on this wide golden couch, legs perched on a glass coffee table.
"In this life, we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."-Mother Teresa
And so in my new Indian dress that we are required to wear, a pale green silky tunic, I sit with the women for hours, and hold their hands, and rub their backs when they cry and almost cry myself.
Mother Teresa's center in New Delhi is a recent institution that takes men and women with either physical or mental disabilities and gives them a place to stay, food to eat, comfort, and maybe even love, until they die.
Most do not have family. I would be surprised to see you not shocked, Bella said.
The light streams down allies at steep angles, hitting the garbage and curbs through refractions of smog. Birds chirp all night, and fly overhead from palm to tree to wire to paint chipped balcony. I sit in our living room, peering out through barred windows and cracked screens and I watch from the backseat of our compact car at the fruit stands and cloth shops and toothless men crossing the road, motorbikes tearing past and automated rickshaws scurrying in cracks of fast moving exhaust.
I miss Tanzania, my children, my coffee shop and laundry buckets. Here is foreign, still, unknown. I cough and I miss the clean air and I miss the sweat and the oppressive heat and the classrooms with no textbooks and part of me wonders why I'm here.
I can't imagine being anywhere else, but here, on this wide golden couch, legs perched on a glass coffee table.
"In this life, we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."-Mother Teresa
We played Taboo last night
December 3rd, 2011. I have stopped writing for myself, to remember.
Yesterday, as I stared crying in front of the bitchy counterwoman who was, ironically, also named Grace, wishing only to get on the flight to India, I measured my breaths. I started to hyperventilate, standing in front of a smudged mirror, the door partly open and cleaning lady peering in worried, and counted. I sat in a taxi, standing in the middle of a crowded highway, men selling opened water and American girl dolls, lollipops and clinking coins and kissing the air, and I stopped crying.
I missed my flight because I did not have a yellow card. I stayed in Josh and Jessica's house, he a connection through my mom in a convoluted direction, both strangers. The house was beautiful and white and airy with the fans on, clammy and dark otherwise. The beach blew salty air, the bagagi driver friendly and young, talked of tacking and sailing and Somali pirates.
The ferry was hot, sweat glowed on necks and sunk through clothes of men carting food and crates of glass bottled soda, and Swahili surged around metal poles and between steaming cars.
I slept on a mattress with one sheet, mosquito zapped at my feet. I had an omelette for lunch, and talked of American politics and the Peace Corps and of sex tourism and my grandfather.
Yesterday, as I stared crying in front of the bitchy counterwoman who was, ironically, also named Grace, wishing only to get on the flight to India, I measured my breaths. I started to hyperventilate, standing in front of a smudged mirror, the door partly open and cleaning lady peering in worried, and counted. I sat in a taxi, standing in the middle of a crowded highway, men selling opened water and American girl dolls, lollipops and clinking coins and kissing the air, and I stopped crying.
I missed my flight because I did not have a yellow card. I stayed in Josh and Jessica's house, he a connection through my mom in a convoluted direction, both strangers. The house was beautiful and white and airy with the fans on, clammy and dark otherwise. The beach blew salty air, the bagagi driver friendly and young, talked of tacking and sailing and Somali pirates.
The ferry was hot, sweat glowed on necks and sunk through clothes of men carting food and crates of glass bottled soda, and Swahili surged around metal poles and between steaming cars.
I slept on a mattress with one sheet, mosquito zapped at my feet. I had an omelette for lunch, and talked of American politics and the Peace Corps and of sex tourism and my grandfather.
Before all hell
December 2nd, 2011. We drove through the dark and the first tendrils of sunrise, the mama Kilimanjaro uncovering her scarves to wish me a happy journey. My flight is canceled, the flight attendant corrupt, and the airport is empty except for a static filled TV channel and two women gesturing with their hands as they talk. Jafet and I sat in near silence as we drove to the lonely airport, come again, have a nice journey, in breathy words, eyes crinkled at the edge.
I left my new roommates as they slept, a sheet only for fear of the blankets, Sue in a white satin eye mask and earplugs, walked down the coiled metal staircase, and said goodbye to my home in Tanzania.
I thought of the blacksmiths crafting swords with leathered sooty hands, of the night guard, Joseph, of Ester who works at the equipment shop. I though of my children, my children, their laughs and tears, both of which I shave shared with them. I though of Aika, her elegance and power and tenderness and tiny freckles on her cheeks. I thought of the waiter at Union cafe, a falsetto in his voice, of the other volunteers and their kindness, their arms willing to contract in maternal gestures when an exhausted and feeble girl knocks on the wooden door in the middle of the night. I thought of Brenda, her spunk and the cuts on her arms, in the crease of her elbow, and deep voice when she tries to sing Waka Waka. I thought of those climbing, the summit night at an end, with the orange glimmer on the horizon milked into the sky slowly.
I wait to check in, a packet of cheap cookies and a nearly empty water bottle in hand, raincoat stuffed in the bottom of my backpack, and I can't say goodbye to Africa.
I sit in Dar, a man holding a dirtied white paper glued onto plastic, a picture of a man with black lettering under. Written in English, when he comes to my chair to show me, the eighth in a series, it talks of nothing, a letter addresses to a royal highness. His eyes don't make contact but stare above my left shoulder, blank. I shake my head, not sure the response, and he passes by, and I wonder. He limps, and there is a little pool of spit gathered at the side of his mouth. He holds his left arm with his right, a bend and unmoving hand, a dolls, it would seem. He wears a Kennybunkport shirt from 1989, and one of his tan plastic shoes lies discarded below his chair.
The roof of the outdoor airport is three stories up, and rain blows in, misty, coming through the cracks too. I sit facing forward in maroon metal chairs, connected with other seats. The people siting near come and go, children to covered girls to Indian men with large cell phones.
I left my new roommates as they slept, a sheet only for fear of the blankets, Sue in a white satin eye mask and earplugs, walked down the coiled metal staircase, and said goodbye to my home in Tanzania.
I thought of the blacksmiths crafting swords with leathered sooty hands, of the night guard, Joseph, of Ester who works at the equipment shop. I though of my children, my children, their laughs and tears, both of which I shave shared with them. I though of Aika, her elegance and power and tenderness and tiny freckles on her cheeks. I thought of the waiter at Union cafe, a falsetto in his voice, of the other volunteers and their kindness, their arms willing to contract in maternal gestures when an exhausted and feeble girl knocks on the wooden door in the middle of the night. I thought of Brenda, her spunk and the cuts on her arms, in the crease of her elbow, and deep voice when she tries to sing Waka Waka. I thought of those climbing, the summit night at an end, with the orange glimmer on the horizon milked into the sky slowly.
I wait to check in, a packet of cheap cookies and a nearly empty water bottle in hand, raincoat stuffed in the bottom of my backpack, and I can't say goodbye to Africa.
I sit in Dar, a man holding a dirtied white paper glued onto plastic, a picture of a man with black lettering under. Written in English, when he comes to my chair to show me, the eighth in a series, it talks of nothing, a letter addresses to a royal highness. His eyes don't make contact but stare above my left shoulder, blank. I shake my head, not sure the response, and he passes by, and I wonder. He limps, and there is a little pool of spit gathered at the side of his mouth. He holds his left arm with his right, a bend and unmoving hand, a dolls, it would seem. He wears a Kennybunkport shirt from 1989, and one of his tan plastic shoes lies discarded below his chair.
The roof of the outdoor airport is three stories up, and rain blows in, misty, coming through the cracks too. I sit facing forward in maroon metal chairs, connected with other seats. The people siting near come and go, children to covered girls to Indian men with large cell phones.
Archives
Demons. November 20th, 2011. We were sitting at the tables, talking about my climb to come and dreadlocks passed, and I head screaming. Simran and I look at each other, the others still talk. It sounds like a child being beaten, piercing, repeated cries. Some ask, is it a bird? No, it sounds like a person. The noises stop, and we talk again.
Suddenly, as Madison and Sarah chat next to me, I hear the sounds again. They come from the other side of our garden wall, straight ahead. Aryian and I jump up, because it's apparent that some one is in pain. We walk then run down the cobbled driveway to the gate, and poke the dozing watchman. We should do something, what is going on, we say, and open up the heavy wooden door to the pebbled and dirt street. A crowd is gathered, and we walk toward the congested center. A slender figure is held down by four people, one on each limb, back on the hard and rough ground. She thrashes, screaming and yelling and laughing and crying, beautiful Swahili words mutilated in muffled and pained sounds. We don't know what to do, how to help. We ask what is the matter, and Joseph, one of the other night watchmen with curved kind eyes when he smiles, says she is sick. Madison asks, does she have an illness, is she having a baby, like what is the problem. And I ask, pointing to my head, is she sick up here. And Joseph says, yes, I think you understand.
The only thing that is clear to me is that the slight girl in pain needs to be taken to a hospital. Baba comes out, and we all ask him to call an ambulance for her. He says, no, the only way to help her is to call the pastor, and he will pray for her. She has demons inside of her, and spiritual, said sp-ir-it-u-al healing is the only way to save her. They are calling the pastor on the mo-bi-le phone as we spe-ak Dada. (meaning daughter)
I am floored still. A fourteen year old girl, dripping sweat even apparent in the dark, is thought to be possessed by demons. Some from the home base think, oh, it's just cultural, that's just the way it is.
Jenna, a licensed nurse/mother figure from Ohio, came out, and asked the girl questions, calmed her down, after forty-five minutes of the crowd laughing, jeering. Small children ran around the gravel, enjoying the community spectacle. Jenna walked her back to her house, down the street from us. Her father says he might take her to a clinic. Baba says, no, that is not what she needs, she needs a church. (the pastor was called, and the girl continued to flail and cry) What can I do to help a child who doesn't understand why she is out of control of herself, happening since nine months before? To be told that you have the devil inside, and not be able to get it out, to have your neighbors, your community, laughs t you as youa re writing on the ground, speaking nonsense like TAKE MY BLOOD and I WILL COME LATER, translated for us by Joseph, to have your only salvation lie in the hands of God?
The Masai girl Jenna was seeing at KCMC, with burns all over Hrbody, died yesterday. She would have survived in the United States. She's in pain, staggering breaths, they said, and there's not a good chance she will make it. Jenna received the call last night, two days before she leaves to return to America.
Mary Cellen sits on my lap in the pouring rain. We stay under the awning, on unstable wooden benches outside my school. Clara takes a metal pencil box from her backpack, on which is a map of the world. I show where I'm from. And I say, I am going to be leaving soon, to go back home. And they say, why? You are leaving?
My nerves and mind are scattered and rushing and I'm climbing tomorrow and I hope I make it up but what if I don't and does it matter? Peace, come please. I think about so much.
Suddenly, as Madison and Sarah chat next to me, I hear the sounds again. They come from the other side of our garden wall, straight ahead. Aryian and I jump up, because it's apparent that some one is in pain. We walk then run down the cobbled driveway to the gate, and poke the dozing watchman. We should do something, what is going on, we say, and open up the heavy wooden door to the pebbled and dirt street. A crowd is gathered, and we walk toward the congested center. A slender figure is held down by four people, one on each limb, back on the hard and rough ground. She thrashes, screaming and yelling and laughing and crying, beautiful Swahili words mutilated in muffled and pained sounds. We don't know what to do, how to help. We ask what is the matter, and Joseph, one of the other night watchmen with curved kind eyes when he smiles, says she is sick. Madison asks, does she have an illness, is she having a baby, like what is the problem. And I ask, pointing to my head, is she sick up here. And Joseph says, yes, I think you understand.
The only thing that is clear to me is that the slight girl in pain needs to be taken to a hospital. Baba comes out, and we all ask him to call an ambulance for her. He says, no, the only way to help her is to call the pastor, and he will pray for her. She has demons inside of her, and spiritual, said sp-ir-it-u-al healing is the only way to save her. They are calling the pastor on the mo-bi-le phone as we spe-ak Dada. (meaning daughter)
I am floored still. A fourteen year old girl, dripping sweat even apparent in the dark, is thought to be possessed by demons. Some from the home base think, oh, it's just cultural, that's just the way it is.
Jenna, a licensed nurse/mother figure from Ohio, came out, and asked the girl questions, calmed her down, after forty-five minutes of the crowd laughing, jeering. Small children ran around the gravel, enjoying the community spectacle. Jenna walked her back to her house, down the street from us. Her father says he might take her to a clinic. Baba says, no, that is not what she needs, she needs a church. (the pastor was called, and the girl continued to flail and cry) What can I do to help a child who doesn't understand why she is out of control of herself, happening since nine months before? To be told that you have the devil inside, and not be able to get it out, to have your neighbors, your community, laughs t you as youa re writing on the ground, speaking nonsense like TAKE MY BLOOD and I WILL COME LATER, translated for us by Joseph, to have your only salvation lie in the hands of God?
The Masai girl Jenna was seeing at KCMC, with burns all over Hrbody, died yesterday. She would have survived in the United States. She's in pain, staggering breaths, they said, and there's not a good chance she will make it. Jenna received the call last night, two days before she leaves to return to America.
Mary Cellen sits on my lap in the pouring rain. We stay under the awning, on unstable wooden benches outside my school. Clara takes a metal pencil box from her backpack, on which is a map of the world. I show where I'm from. And I say, I am going to be leaving soon, to go back home. And they say, why? You are leaving?
My nerves and mind are scattered and rushing and I'm climbing tomorrow and I hope I make it up but what if I don't and does it matter? Peace, come please. I think about so much.
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