afternoon thoughts

Contrary to some of my emotional jargon in the previous post, Mungeli has actually been really cool.  Immediately after the last group left I met two of the junior doctors who live upstairs:  Sudeep and Ashwin (Ash).  Sudeep is a gentle 28 and looking to continue his studies for Masters in general surgery.  He actually finished his work here last week, which was a sad time for everyone, and has gone home for a short break before starting school again.  Ashwin is a garrulous 24 year old dentist and aspiring maxillofacial surgeon whose energy is enough to overtake any conversation and whose life is (almost) one big party.  These guys are awesome.  They’ve been friends, mentors, teachers, and listeners, and they’re always down for an evening hangout.  So they’ve been a welcome core of young blood to spice up life here, and we get along fantastically.

 

I guess now is also a good time to explain the Indian educational system as all this “Masters in surgery” nonsense is really confusing until you understand how it works.  In India everything up to 10^th grade works the same, they just call things by different names (primary instead of elementary, medium(roughly) equivalent to middle, and high is pretty much the same).  In 10^th grade they take a standardized national exam which starts deciding the rest of their lives.  In 12^th grade they take another which determines if, and where, they will be able to continue further studies.  Then it’s three years of career-focused education (engineering, medicine, teaching, etc) which is essentially our version of college but more intense and professionally oriented.  After that the med students do their residencies and are given the “Doctor” title, but not an M.D.  They are referred to as “graduate” doctors and can then continue their studies for what are essentially specialties like surgery, orthopedics, neurology, OB, etc.  So this is where the “Masters” come from, some specialties, like surgery, carry that title while others, like the medicine guys (M.D.) carry their own.  Hopefully this makes some sense. 

 

So anyway, I’ve been having loads of fun, and will take this post to share a couple of the cooler things.  First off, I’ve electronically introduced you to one of the X-ray techs, Arun.  His lowly underling (kidding of course) is the hospital jokester and one of the resident alcoholics.  For the moment his name has slipped my mind but I know it starts with an R, so that’s what I’ll call him.  Anyhow, one afternoon I was hanging out in X-ray and he sheepishly invited me to meet his wife, a schoolteacher in a village school five km away from the hospital.  After canceling a previous invitation for that blood and boot fest I told you about in the last post, I quickly assented to spend my free afternoon with him.  The bike ride was spectacular.  Though my passenger technique is still a work in progress, I have learned after years of teaching frightened kids to relax in the water that the same approach is fundamental to the bike.  It’s interesting to experience the dangerous dichotomy from the other side, trying to be smooth when I’m quite literally holding on for dear life.  So we cut through the wind on a sunny afternoon road, dodging construction trucks and bull-drawn hay carts, rattling over bumps and carrying on broken conversation at the start of a language-catered hosting session only to be found in India.  After about three km we took a red dirt side road for two more km, blazing past clucking hens and blue-horned cattle, beeping our way around saried women ambling across the path toting sparkling metal pots full of the evening’s water.  We arrived at the school, in a village of clay shingled houses where the walls gently bow outward, seemingly weary with their existential task of containing the noisy patter of child life. 

 

We entered one of the buildings and passed into a cool room where I was offered a chair, the plastic deck chair type that is here often reserved for the guests of honor.  I was introduced to his wife and two of the other teachers, family again.  He then took me through the school rooms where his artwork was on display, painted upon aged plaster walls, a map of Chhattisgarh, a diagram of the solar system, the physics and anatomy of the eye, a tiger, a peacock, and a lotus flower, a group of smiling children.  He was again sheepish as I complemented his skills, and hurried me back to his wife and a waiting cup of welcome water, which I warily pretended to sip, remembering all-too-well the wicked effects of bowel overestimation.  Then it was across to another building where 126 students were taught by three teachers in two rooms, and we thought RMES was cramped… While none of the teachers spoke English, this being a Hindi Primary and Medium school, they were extremely welcoming. And happy.  After a few minutes of joking conversation, we were back on the bike waving goodbyes to a dusty farming village and as a clutch of disheveled kids vanished behind our red veil of dust made motion. 

 

Being more comfortable on the bike now, I took some time enjoy the sights and smells which are no longer culturally jarring, but systems that I’ve begun to understand.  We plowed through gravelly Mungeli streets and stopped for a drink, he being unfortunately lashed to the bottle, and a pair of boiled eggs served with chopped onion, cilantro, and chili powder, a manifested realization of something he always says with a laugh, two pegs, two eggs, and two legs.  I also realized something else after a conversation the previous night over a dinner dual wielded in piled pots from Ash’s kitchen to Ft. Henry – India doesn’t grow hops.  Their beers, Kingfisher and Hayworth’s 5000 are malt liquors, and taste like college.  Anyhow, after our brief stopover we zoomed through the narrow alleys crowded with pedestrians, pigs, bikes, and trucks, to visit the man who is sponsoring the February 16 eye camp in Mungeli.  He is a wealthy shop owner in his sixties who introduced himself behind heavy steel rimmed glasses as the son of his father, as his own son explained that the camp will be held in memory of his grandfather, whose picture stood garnished with flowers at the entrance to their store. 

 

They invited us to sit, but R had other plans and we were again on the bike for a short drive to meet more family – a brother in law who owns a print shop cum mobile phone recharge center just across the street from the peanut lady I’ve come to love.  Another brief introduction to the liquor store owner and we turned another side street to meet an uncle in his bicycle repair shop, this time not bothering to destride the bike.  Then we made our way through a street past the vegetable lady who sells more farm fresh produce than you can carry for Ru 100 (about $2) before stopping outside a faded yellow gate.  He shouted “Mickey, Mickey!” and we waited a few minutes before making the handheld introduction (they shake for a long time) of his cousin, a teacher, who speaks beautiful English.  From there we turned a corner to his street, stopping over briefly to make the acquaintance of another uncle whose daughter I’ve started teaching in the ninth grade class at RMES.  She gave a bashful, toothy grin when I voiced my recognition as her father sternly nodded.  Then we were over a bump and stopped at his “mini house”, a six room affair with an attached garden and a ninety nine year old grandfather whose blue eyes startled me almost as much as his steely handshake.  Then we drove through another dusty field I’ve come to recognize across from the school to visit the home of his mother-in-law for some spicy snacks and tea.  They are a Muslim family where the sheer, flowing gowns of the women catch the afternoon doorlight as in sh’Allah farewells are offered to a fly-buzzed room of half-naked children and an alcoholic uncle whose couch I briefly shared as a foreign ornament to the masked stares of his cousins around the kitchen corner.  Then it was no-hands ride up the street to the hospital where R dropped me at my gate with a proudly humble downcast smile and invitations for repeat visits.  There’s nothing like getting some dirt under your nails in a new world-walked home, and there’s nothing like Indian hospitality.

 

Ash has since warned me about getting in with that crowd, but my visit here is brief, and as a guest I’m graced with the privilege of living outside many of the traditional social regulations.  I’ve tried to make friends everywhere, and I still can’t get over how easily a smile translates in Hindi. 

 

So, In addition to hospital observations, general maintenance and computer work with Arun, and frequent travels, I’ve also started teaching English at RMES.  My favorite kids are the 10^th graders, five girls and three boys who break down in stitches every time I (mis)pronounce their names, but whose English has already improved remarkably.  My least favorite group is the 8^th grade class, four obedient girls and about ten wild boys who are the first people I’ve encountered (other than in Agra) who have tried to swindle me.  But here they don’t care for my money, just the time I keep them chained to their desks.  They love to play this game at recess with a balled-up stocking in which one person grabs the ball and throws it as hard as he can at anyone in sight.  Then someone else picks it up and does the same thing.  It’s endless, and the only point is to enjoy the power of holding the ball and the chaos of running away – seeing this game made it a lot easier to understand Indian commerce.  These were my main classes for awhile, but they like to move me around a lot.  I’ve also been with the sixth and fifth grade classes for one period each and the seventh graders have been whining so I may have to set them straight tomorrow.  The younger guys are challenging on many levels and seem to hold all the right cards – in the classroom, they sit on the powerful side of the language barrier, they command mighty numbers (30 to 40 for the younger ones), and they wield attention spans short enough to cut through well-planned lesson (not that I’ve sacrificed any of those yet, but it sure sounds good).  Luckily, I’ve been able to conceal my severe lack of knowledge in grammatical structure by playing games centered around the noun and the adjective, but after these arsenals run out, I can only hope the verb will hold them at bay long enough for friendly reinforcements to arrive with adverbs and prepositions. Hahaha you really have to have a patient sense of idealism to serve on the fronts of ESOL. 

 

But anyway, I was late to school today, something that hasn’t happened since high school when 4 am wakeups made wolfing down sweaty second breakfasts more important than the first thirty seconds of Mrs. Jackson’s French class.  Haha and there’s another common cord between this memory and that – today I got up early for a workout.  I’ve tried a few times to be active in Mungeli, but after an autumn bout with pneumonia I’ve been hypersensitive about my lungs and have been picky about the air I choose to gasp instead of breathe.  Mornings tend to be best, immediately before or after (or during) chapel before the canteen cookstoves light up and while the damp air holds the dusty road at bay.  It’s easy to get in some calisthenics anywhere – pushups, abs, and the old leg circuit I thought I’d left in Sarasota – but I’ve been craving some aerobic work, and, since the biggest pool in Mungeli is my tin bath bucket, that means finding a place to run.  A couple weeks ago I was overcome with desire to exercise and went across the street to a dusty field for an evening jog.  Silly me – the air was bad and bumpy tracks in the dark are hard to navigate, especially when being pursued by packs of potentially rabid stray dogs.  So Ashwin found a new place to run – the roof of our building.  It is certainly not an ideal circuit, for starters its only 20m x 8m but its also contorted around the edges which requires some tricky footwork around a particular bend and also has a clothesline on one end whose cables hang at just low enough to catch a neck at the upbeat of a running stride.  But there are no dogs on the roof (though a group of monkeys make the occasional visit they haven’t caused any problems yet).  Luckily, two decades of lap swimming have helped me master the zone-out, body-does-one-thing-mind-does-another technique so running up there is pretty easy as long as I change directions every so often to give my legs an equal share in the continuous turning work.  But anyway, after a few days of gorging ourselves with dinners and movies (Ash and Teresa have been teaching me how to make Indian food) while Anil’s been away for meetings, I was looking forward to a relatively long and relaxing run.  Hahaha there’s a great ceramic wall-hanging in the Henry’s dining room that reads “We Plan God Laughs” which is such a perfect summation of the Indian experience, and this morning was no exception.  Just as I was getting into my stride Arun called to say that Anil needed photographs of all the hospital construction sites for his meeting with an architect friend in Bangalore this afternoon.  Hahaha I’ve also learned better than to jump to for summons like this, so I gave it another 10 minutes before heading down to take the snaps.  Long story short, it took forever to upload the pictures and I didn’t make it to school until 11:30, recess hour.  But today I went laden with an Encyclopedia, a gift from Teresa for the library (which is still annoyingly unused and hurting for a system of implementation – a juicy job for the next group), and I soon found myself sitting in the entranceway surrounded by teachers just as eager to thumb through the book as the kids in my next class.  It was an incredible moment that actually brought tears to my eyes – this group of teachers at the table to my left huddled over a volume packed with secrets they’ve never seen, screaming kids swinging around the playground visible through the window bars beside them, and the older girls walking hand in hand through the dusty yard towards the doorway in front of me.  These were people I’ve come to recognize, people whose names I’ve learned and whose homes I’ve visited.  I came as an outsider to see their piece of the world and I came as a 22 year old kid on a year off after graduating college to learn what I could from a small hospital in rural India.  And here I found myself in a worn out schoolhouse in a worn out wooden chair fighting back tears as I saw so plainly the unwrapping of a gifted moment whose reality revealed a gentle understanding of the blessings I’ve received and whose perception shone through with a love I can’t explain.

 

~ by packerk on January 29, 2009.