Stories & Evals from Belize

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Brooke

12 days left until the longest day of my life

Yep, that's right. 12 days left in India. 6 days left at field. 4 days for one final excursion. And then the longest day ever. If everything goes according to schedule (which it won't) Chris, Michelle, and I leave Mumbai at 1:50am on the 30th and 32 hours later (via Amsterdam and Memphis) arrive in New Orleans at 9:20 pm on the 30th.

Let's just say the 32 hour trip is not one of the things I'm looking forward to when these 12 days are up.

Honestly, I can't believe that I have less than two weeks left here. Time started really slow, but is definitely now moving at lightning speed. These final days at my field agency are especially busy. November is Adoption Awareness Month and my agency chose this week as our specific adoption awareness week. There are different awareness meetings scheduled with doctors, and nurses, and events for the families that have adopted a child through the agency. It's really great work.

Not only is this last week at my field busy, but the previous week was full of new excitement. Michelle and I went to the Ellora and Ajanta caves and then we met up with some of the other international students in Tuljapur where the rural campus for TISS is and spent the week there.
I accidentally erased my camera's memory card (oops), but was able to recover most of the pictures (yay!) and Michelle let me have her pictures as well before the recovery happened.
The Ajanta caves are all Buddhist caves and some of them are painted. The view was definitely fantastic and we has a guided tour so met some other foreigners as well.

At the Ellora caves there are Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain caves. Definitely more variety and more stairs. Both caves were equally amazing in different ways.

The rural campus visit was definitely a learning experience. This picture is from a village we visited. The two students are from Sweden and the children were definitely not camera shy. We also visited with multiple NGOs and exchanged our social work experience in our countries with social work professors at one of the local colleges. We ended our 3 day experience with some sugar cane juice, which was delicious.


Once I finish my field work Chris and I are planning one last India hurrah in Rajasthan and it may involve a safari. Just 12 days and then you can ask me about it.

Scary porridge and Grapefruit-o-lanterns

Well, there I was feeling all homesick for some fall in the Midwest — pumpkins, leaves, jackets, football — or at least a little Halloween fun in New Orleans, when lo and behold, I walk into the kitchen and they’re all carving grapefruits. They did it just like a pumpkin: cut a little hold in top, reached in and pulled out the insides, then very carefully, using gigantic knives with no handles and teeny little fingers and grapefruits, carved out spooky little faces. Then they put a candle inside, tied some ribbon to either end, and hung them on the doorknobs to greet trick-or-treaters, who don’t come on October 31^st. They come on November 1^st and 2^nd for All Saints and All Souls days. They even have a creepy little version of trick-or-treat: Eshpasha pa la calabera, si no me das te da cagalera.

Translation: Special porridge for the skull, but if you don’t give me, it will give you loose stools. Usually, then, the villagers give the kids some porridge and sweets, sincerely wanting to avoid the loose stools.

On All Saints Day, they light little candles for the kids and babies who have died, and place the first plate of food they cook on the table next to the candles and wait for the steam of the food to go to the souls of the babies. After about half an hour, they say, “Okay. The souls are finished eating. Now it’s time to eat!”

They also place one plate of food and one little black candle on a chair for the anima soula: the lonely soul. Each person gets a plate of food, including kids who come to the door, and a special plate is always set aside for the lonely soul. The very next day, on All Souls Day, they do the same thing for adults who have died.

Also, we’re out of water again. The water went out Friday night, and by Sunday night — with no clean dishes, no reserve water in the drum and nothing to bathe with, people started asking around. Apparently a pipe broke. I suggested we try to wash some dishes with the maybe five liters of water we had left in the drum, but Antonia said it wasn’t clean. She said we have to be careful because these are the times when people, especially ones with babies, are desperate to use any water they can find to wash and cook and bathe, and people start getting sick from the unclean water. Point taken. Taking a shower now costs $2.50 in 1.5L of Crystal water:

Update: it poured all day. Everyone ran outside with soap and shampoo and bathed, right there in the front lawn. I really wanted to lay all the dishes out on the grass, too, but I didn’t think of it in time.