Water Poverty Video - IRRAD

Tourist Traps and Tour Guides

As I mentioned in an earlier post, having light skin attracts a lot of attention in India. Unfortunately, the extra attention also makes you an easier target for people looking to take advantage of tourists. Of course it didn’t help that nearly all the buses and vans we were driven around in had “TOURIST” written across the top (as pictured above).

Our first night in Jaipur, we were all very excited to have dinner at a cultural festival/theater that was supposed to teach us about the new state we’d just entered: Rajasthan (literally meaning ‘land of kings’ or ‘land of colors,’ depending on who you talk to). This is the largest state in India and also is the farthest northwestern area of the country, bordering Pakistan. While we were given traditional Hindi bindis and blessings as we walked through the gates of this “festival,” it quickly became apparent that we were going to be experiencing something closer to a circus than learning a historically or culturally accurate account of Rajasthani people.

There were camel and elephant rides, horse carriages, tightrope walkers, puppet shows, snake charmers, dancers, monkeys on leashes, people walking on stilts, and acrobats—just to name a few of the “attractions.” Having seen the newly released film “Water for Elephants” I was particularly sensitive to how sad the lone elephant giving rides appeared, when I saw it up close. I was actually looking at his face particularly closely because my younger sister, who is in Vet School at Iowa State and is going to visit an elephant sanctuary in South Africa on a study abroad program in May, warned me about male elephants becoming aggressive when “in Musth.” Apparently, you can tell if they are entering this hormonal craze by a dark streak of sweat that frames their face/jaw area. Luckily for the people taking elephant rides and the elephant handlers, this elephant didn’t appear to be in Musth, at least by my diagnosis.

At one point, a group of us came out from walking through an underground tunnel/cave walkway that passed by a huge (and roaring) dinosaur statue—to find what looked like aboriginal tribesmen holding wooden sticks and dancing crazily around a bonfire. Upon seeing us, they rushed over and handed us their sticks, and indicated that by holding a stick you had to join in on the dancing. While there’s no doubt this was fun for a few minutes, the moment was somewhat ruined when we stopped dancing and tried to hand back our sticks, and were immediately met with stern faces and outstretched palms demanding monetary donations.

The dinner we were served that evening was the most bland and tasteless meal we had the entire three weeks, which definitely added to our disappointment. We were later told that it was because they are cooking for tourists, whom they expect cannot handle traditional Indian spices. But, perhaps the worst part of this ‘fake India’ (or, “India Disney” as most of our group started referring to it) was that our tour guide that evening had told our professor that the experience was already covered in the tour fee for that day, however, upon our return toGurgoan—our professor received a several hundred dollar bill for our group that night.

You live and you learn—and it’s no different in India.

The Girls

In an attempt to keep my post trip depression at bay, I’ll continue on with my favorite things from India list. One of the most incredible aspects of this trip that I never expected was the friendships that were formed by many of us in the group. It’s always a little worrisome to go on a group trip not knowing many people, but my worries were quickly assuaged within the first few days of our journey because we really did have many amazing individuals. If I had time to go through and give a short bio on everyone, I would, but I want to at least recognize my project group members—also the women with whom I was closest throughout the past three weeks—and whom I hope to continue friendships with long, long after our journey.

Meagan, my fellow MPH CBH department cohort member and classmate, travel companion, and dear friend before this trip—I could not have done it, or had such a glowing experience—without her. She went to Illinois State University for her undergrad in Health Education. She is both wise beyond her years and one of the most caring and thoughtful people I’ve ever known. This picture is of us on a bridge overlooking the great Ganga.

Kim is a graduate student in engineering, but comes from a liberal arts background. She is an incredible woman with the most beautiful children; two young teens from Cambodia, a 7- year old from Haiti, and an infant, Gracie. Listening to her stories of other travel experiences (like the trips to get her children), and discussing innovative research papers on subjects like ‘The Water Poverty Index’ (among many others), I could not have been happier to have to opportunity to spend time with and befriend this amazing woman. I know that Meagan and I will continue to work with her in the future. The picture of Kim standing in the middle of me and 4 other girls, in her beautiful orange/gold salwar kameez was specifically taken to show off her new clothes her very stylish daughter Sophie (13).

Meredith was on this course as her last requirement of her undergraduate degree at Iowa. Her degree is in Political Science but the purposes of this course were specifically for her Sustainability certificate. She was such an asset to our team in so many ways, but her interest and passion for learning about the tribal governance issues was much needed. Meagan and I said many times that we never want to travel without her in our lives again, as she is such an advocate and strong voice to have on your side ensuring that no advantage would be taken of us as first timers to India.

Kristina is an undergraduate in Environmental Engineering, and was instrumental to have in our group for the actual process of water testing. One of the pictures shows her (on the far right) and Meredith next to her actually taking samples from some of the villagers we interviewed. She is an avid photographer, whom I went to for advice on my own camera, but also whom I saw many people in our group trying to watch and imitate—as we knew that if she was standing snapping away from a certain angel—it had to be a good shot! She unfortunately got sick with a version of what Meagan and I had on the last days of our trip, and as a precautionary measure, Meredith, Meagan, and I got to experience the Indian hospital system the last night in Delhi, when we took her to be checked out.

Nandita was the second professor on our trip, she has her PhD in Civil and Environmental engineering, from Purdue. She is from Calcutta originally, and it was fascinating hearing her perspective on our journey through northern India, as compared with her youth traveling more in the south. Nandita is such a strong, smart, and delightful person, and our trip was such a glowing and positive experience in large part thanks to her. She (along with Kim) was an integral part of this course for Meagan and I, always advocating for our public health perspective and stressing the need for an integrated approach to the hydrologic problems most of our group was primarily concerned with.

Babies and Bananas

As I sit and type this blog post, I am fighting back the urge to burst into tears—because tonight, we leave India. On that note, I’m going to write about some of my favorite experiences and amazing cultural phenomena learned from this trip.

First—babies. I should start by explaining that everywhere we traveled in India, we were consistently stared at, photographed, and sometimes even swarmed. In a separate post I’ll have to describe some of my worst experiences and the swarming (and tour guides) in much more detail. Anyway, Meagan and I experienced people asking to get a photo with us almost everyday—some people had never seen blonde hair in their lives (and Meagan does have such beautiful and bright blonde hair!). Our Indian professor, Nandita, (whom again, I’ll have to describe in much more detail in another post, as she has become one of my favorite women in the world) explained that because we have light skin, we are viewed basically as “celebrities.” (Meagan and I have a favorite commercial from the one time we tried watching TV. and it was for a skin bleaching cream called “fair-faced.”) So, over these three weeks, we’ve grown quite accustomed to groups of women, school-children, teenage girls and boys, and even grown men coming up to us on the street and asking for a photo standing with us.

Sometimes they want both of us in the picture, sometimes just one or the other. One of the more rare occurrences that I had the good fortune of experiencing several different times, was families coming up to me holding out their babies or toddlers asking me to hold them for a picture. I wish I had asked Meagan to snap each one of the adorable babies I was asked to hold, but unfortunately she was only close enough for me to ask once, and that’s the picture of me and the toddler you see. I think that I was singled out in the group for these sort of photos because I am so crazy about children, and can’t help but break into a huge grin at every small child I see—obviously inviting the photo-op. Nonetheless, as anyone who also loves the feeling of holding a baby can understand, I so completely enjoyed those experiences. I appreciated the trust and sense of familial pride and happiness that is present when a baby is passed over to a complete stranger, just to have the memory memorialized through a photograph. The photo I have posted was the first time this happened, when we were in Haridwar, for the lanterns on the Ganga ceremony.

Another very heartwarming experience for me has been the times I was able to give something to children in need—whether it be kids in the villages, or children beggars on the street. One common food that most hotel breakfasts seemed to include was bananas, and these were actually the only fruit that we could eat without worry because they have such a thick and impenetrable skin/peel. Anyway, on the first day out in Mewat, Meagan and I both packed extra bananas in our bags because we knew we’d get hungry out in the field at some point. Well, it didn’t take us long to realize the conditions that the children in the Mewat villages grow up with in terms of food availability, so at one of the villages that afternoon I tried to hand my banana to one of the little girls that was following us around. To my extreme dismay, she turned and looked at me like I was trying to kill her, and scurried away. I asked one of the guides we were with and she said something like it wouldn’t be okay for her to accept anything from us for cultural reasons that I wouldn’t understand. I felt pretty devastated at this news, and so guilty for carrying around a banana that I knew would be so enjoyed by one of these hungry children. We finally moved on to see the last water tank on our itinerary for that day, and there we were surrounded by teenage boys and older men almost exclusively.

However, I did notice one young girl, maybe 9 years old, and every time I’d look at her I’d give a tiny grin—knowing that she probably was not technically “allowed” to smile back. But amazingly, every time that I did sneak a glance and grin her way, she’d reiterate the smile even bigger, and we’d enter into an infectious (and sneaky) huge smile exchange—all within the safety of our head scarves of course.

This sneaky glancing and smiling went on between us for the whole 20-30 minutes our group was there, and I felt almost overwhelmed with sadness to have to leave this little girl, with whom I’d had such an intense unspoken, yet undeniable connection. It dawned on me that maybe if another Indian offered her the banana she could accept it, and I thought it was worth a try. This was the first time I really interacted personally with Rash Kumar, (another one of my favorites from this trip—the best driver EVER) and I pointed to the girl and handed him my banana from inside of our van, and amazingly, he understood, called her over, and beaming, she accepted a banana from both Meagan and I.

All the little boys and men that were around her just looked at her jealously and almost mockingly—but she just broke into the most proud and shy grin I’ve ever seen and stood holding her bananas staring at us until we were out of sight. She will have a place in my heart and memory forever, and I so appreciate my exchange with her, it’s actually very hard to accurately put it into words. After that experience, I began taking bananas with me every time our hotel offered them and I’ve given them to children beggars (which we encounter all too often) whenever possible.

The last two pictures are of another little girl with whom I had a similar secret smiling exchange during my time at her village, only she and the other children were very willing and interested in being photographed, as compared to the children from our first day in Mewat. The last photo is an example of being swarmed—but one that was safe and I totally enjoyed. This was when all the children at one village crowded around our vans with such excitement and happiness that the drivers could barely drive away. We left that village saying to each other “well, now we know what it’s like to be Brittany Spears…” and honestly—that has been how we’ve felt many, many times during our stay in India.

As I will discuss in my next post, a lot of the attention received just for being Caucasian is overwhelming, and even scary at times… But these experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have with children during these last three weeks have so deeply touched my heart.

Delhi Belly Strikes – Even CPH Students Are Not Immune

Meagan and I are currently spending the second evening in a row alone in our hotel room; resting, recovering, timing out when to take various doses of medication, trying to stay hydrated—and taking turns in the bathroom. We truly thought we had managed to avoid sickness almost completely on this trip… until yesterday morning. Meagan started feeling sick first, and I stayed in our room with her not wanting to leave her alone. At first I was actually a little relieved to have a mini break in our non-stop schedule since arriving in India. But about 4-6 hours after she presented with her initial symptoms, they started hitting me. Luckily, our professors and all the other students were very supportive and helpful to us last night and we did sleep soundly through the night, even getting up this morning, going over to IRRAD with the group, and thinking we were on the mend. Unfortunately, that was not the case, because after about 20 minutes at IRRAD nausea had overtaken me again, and I had to run to the restroom. Our professors called a car to drive us back to the hotel where we have been resting ever since. After sleeping all day, and my antibiotics beginning to finally kick in, I am feeling MUCH better right now. Delhi belly, a more polite and very commonly used expression among travelers to India, struck nearly everyone in our group at some point on this trip. Yesterday, we were among the 4 total students in our group who were sick.

Well, since I wrote about such unpleasant subject matter, I thought it was best I leave you with some beautiful pictures from our last weekend trip to Jaipur and Agra. The palace that is in the middle of the lake, and looks like its floating, is the lake palace in Jaipur. It was originally built by a king for fishing and bird watching, and currently is under renovation to be an expensive hotel and resort. The (semi) group photo was at the City Palace in Jaipur, near by the Observatory, where the world’s largest sundial is located (third photo).

The last two are more photos of the Taj Mahal, which was a tomb (not a palace as commonly thought) built by a Mughal emporer king for his third (and favorite) wife when she died during childbirth. The close up photo shows some of the semi-precious stone design inlayed in the weather proof marble of which the Taj is built. The Taj is both magnificent but eerie, because the king killed many of the 20,000 workers he hired to construct the tomb upon its completion—so that no one could ever build an exact replicate.

The Taj Mahal - No Words Needed

Monkeys, Bindis, and Hindu Gods

We traveled to Haridwar, which is located at the foothills of the Himalaya mountains and along the Ganges river, in northern India last week. We spent most of the day being shown various canals, dams, and hydrologic structures that were built along the tributary rivers leading to the Ganges, or the Ganga, as it is called here.

After seeing more canals and bridges in one day than I thought was possible, we took a break from our water studies to drive up a mountain and visit a Hindu temple. We were carried up to the top of the mountain by cable car, from which we could see hundreds of monkeys throughout the trees we were passing over. Although we were all excited to finally be seeing so many monkeys, we were all a little uneasy because the signs everywhere saying “Beware of Monkeys.” We were continually instructed not to make eye contact, carry any food with us, or take any direct pictures of them because that might instigate an incident—particularly purse and/or camera thievery. I did see a small “gang” of three or four monkeys surround a young mother and her two kids, and steal the street food snack one of the children had been eating. I also saw a monkey go up to a woman and grab her shiny sequined scarf and try to pull it off of her, but this monkey was beaten away by the woman’s husband and his quick reflex to grab a stick. As a result, I don’t have many good photos of them because I was trying so hard to not initiate any attention or trouble from them!

To enter this mountain top temple, you must show respect by removing your shoes (which at first really bothered me, but I have since gotten over, as I visit more and more places in India where this is required). After you walk through the temple and are handed some puffed rice that you can leave as an offering to one of the god statues, there are several shrines where you can enter to be “blessed.” This consists of entering into a small room where a holy man has his shrine/alter, telling him your name, him tying a ribbon around your wrist, chanting a blessing (that includes your name), patting you on the back three times with a stick, and dipping his finger in bright red dye which he uses to mark a little red dot in between your eyebrows—also known as a bindi.

There are several major Hindi gods which are represented by these holy men and their alters, and you choose from which god you want your blessing depending on what you need in your life that day. (Or, you can go get a blessing from each of them—as long as you pay the tiny blessing “donation” at each alter, which some of the boys in our group definitely did.) Meagan and I chose to visit the Monkey god, Hanuman, because we were hoping his blessing would provide us with protection from his live counterparts whom were just outside the temple doors. (So far, his blessing has worked wonderfully…) This god is known for loyalty, selfless service, and learning—which we found quite appropriate too.

I’ve included a picture of a huge statue of another Hindu god, Shiva, who is known for his dualist nature as a destroyer and benefactor. We saw the statue of this god from a top a huge bridge we were visiting over the Ganga, and then later we could see the same enormous statue from the back, when we were in Haridwar.

In the evening after visiting the temple, we arrived to the town center of Haridwar. We witnessed a daily ceremony where leaf and flower lanterns are lit and released to float down the Ganga at sunset. Despite being a week night, and not a “warm” time of year (still extremely mild to our group of Iowans), the streets were packed with people waiting to witness the ceremony. It was difficult to see all the lanterns actually being released in the river because of how many people were there, but it was a pretty magical experience nonetheless. That night we had our first taste of haggling in the market place, and many of the girls in our class fell in love with the thrill of negotiating a great deal.

No Wi-Fi, No Water, No Worries…

We recently were at IIT (India Institute of Technology) Roorkee in northern India for several days. This is the most prestigious engineering school in India, with branches in several different cities throughout the country, and is one of the best engineering institutions in the world. When you first enter through the gates of the IIT community, the difference from the rest of Roorkee is night and day. There is no trash on the streets, no beggars, no pigs, no street carts, no rickshaws. There are beautiful manicured and maintained gardens, vegetation, and palm trees. The campus is not only closed to the outside world, but it is a town within itself; containing shops, housing for faculty of all levels, all students, and pretty much anything else you might need as a student, professor, researcher or staff member of IIT.

However, to us there were several startling intrinsic discrepancies. Initially, Meagan and I were slightly distressed because the room we were assigned had ants scurrying along the floor everywhere, and thus had to instate a strict shoes ON policy while in our room. Next, when we went to the front desk to ask for another water bottle (as there was only one in the room, and we are definitely not allowed to drink anything except bottled water on this trip) we were told simply “No.” And, not wanting to wake up our professor, were forced to retire back to our rooms dreading the ensuing thirst that would hit us in the middle of the night. (Keep in mind we are public health students and drink a lot of water every day and also had been traveling by car on Indian roads getting car sick for the last 7 hours, so we really felt we needed a water bottle each!) Then, when we got back to the room and pulled out our laptops and realized there was no Wi-Fi, and were denied access to internet cables—we felt almost devastated.

We ended up going to dinner at the main cafeteria and were joined by almost 50 of IIT’s students at one point. I spoke with two students from Africa, one from Ethiopia focusing on mathematics and one from Zambia studying civil engineering. They told me how much they missed their food from home, how great it was to study at IIT academically, how difficult it is to understand some of the Indian teacher’s English, and how much they’d like to someday travel to Las Vegas, Nevada—among other things. Some of the other people in our group spoke with some of the girl students at IIT that night, and learned that there was a strict 10 p.m. curfew for the girls, absolutely no drinking allowed, no PDA’s (even hand holding) with their boyfriends in public, and that it wasn’t safe for them to leave the IIT compound after dark.

When Meagan and I returned to our room that evening we felt humbled from our conversations with the IIT students, and reflective on our whole experience in India thus far. As we laid down on our beds that were literally as hard as laying on a piece of plywood—one of us asked the other whether the kids we’d met in the Mewat villages earlier that week, would ever lay in a bed as comfortable as we were in right then. We realized that sharing our one water bottle that night might be more fresh water than many of those children might get for several days at a time, and that internet was a luxury that those children might never even experience once. Being in India has not only completely changed my world view, but it’s provided me with a perspective that I don’t think is possible to obtain without experiencing this incredible country first hand. The next morning, we were awoken by our doorbell and a Roorkee IIT staff member who was going door to door bringing delicious fresh chai to each room on the compound.

The pictures I’ve included are mostly of hydrologic models that we were shown during our tour of the Roorkee campus. I wish I could explain each one in detail, but that’s something I’d need to leave up to all the hydrology students in our group—who were in heaven getting to see these structures.

Group Shots and New Year's Eve

This first photo is taken by a canal that goes under a tributary river leading to the Ganges.
The second photo is our project group of girls and our favorite driver, Rash Kumar.
This third photo is the whole group in our traditional Indian clothing on New Year's Eve.
The fourth photo is the group on a bridge over the Ganges, the life force for much of India.
The final picture is the group back at Mewat district.

Eggplants

One of my best experiences was at an extremely isolate, tiny village where we were to look at a large check dam. The check dams were built to help recharge the fresh groundwater pockets, by trapping rainwater in an area to hold it long enough to permeate deep below the surface and refill the natural underground “tank”.

As with each village we stopped at, we were soon surrounded by the village boys and men, with women watching us standing at a distance. This village turned out to be particularly friendly and one of the men invited us down to the housing area for a demonstration of the cow patty fires (I’ll explain in a different post) and to show us some of their crops. We were lead to a field of plentiful purple eggplants—as you can see one of the boys showing us proudly.

This village was not only friendly, but also more advanced and well-kept than many of the others we visited. I think this is in large part due to the check dam which supplied them with appropriate water, resulting in betting living conditions overall and those beautiful fields of eggplants. Additionally, two of the teenage boys had cell phones and started asking for and taking pictures of us. This resulted in hundreds of photo exchanges between our two groups, us taking picture of the villagers alone and with them, and vice-versa. I had learned earlier that day that often the people in these friendlier villages loved for you to show them pictures of them on your camera, right after you’d snap one, and this village was certainly no different.

When it was time to leave, there was quite a large crowd around us, maybe 40 villagers (again, mostly boys and men, but in this group a few little girls too) and I turned to snap one last shot of a group of boys who were following me as I walked back to the vehicle. Of course I showed them the picture, and we were all smiling at each other and I was starting to say good-bye, when the boy who had picked the eggplant in the field handed me the vegetable, giggling nervously. Shocked and amazed by this sweet gesture, I immediately turned bright red feeling incredibly guilty about taking something that could have provided a nutritious meal for one of these kids. But I also remembered how devastating I had felt the previous day when a little girl refused to take the banana I had saved from my lunch to offer her—so of course I took the eggplant. I said thank you to the boy, and the men standing with him, and many of them immediately said “Tank you! Tank you! Tank you!” back to me and too each other laughing and beaming with pride at their new American words. I sat back down in the car feeling overwhelmed by the experience, and just wishing I was able to use that beautiful eggplant to cook something delicious.

Head Scarves & Women

As requested, here’s a shot of the women wearing our head scarves. While we definitely do not blend in with the villagers, we absolutely feel an eerie sense of camaraderie with the women in the Mewat district villages. Being forced to cover your head, wear long sleeves and pants in warm, sunny weather—while your fellow male classmates are walking around in T-shirts, is unsettling to say the least.

One of the most fascinating things to see at these villages was that the women were the only ones working, and I’m seriously not exaggerating. When you drive through these primitive and poverty stricken areas you see many hard to comprehend sights—like bare bottomed children squatting to urinate in the streets that are lined with animal manure and many other forms of waste—but nothing as consistent as the continual sights of women carrying containers on their heads, kneeling beside water washing clothes, carrying babies and leading cattle, working in the fields, sorting vegetables, cutting sticks, or gathering cow patties for their cooking fires.** Yet every male you’ll see will be sitting in a group of other men, playing cards, talking, laughing, and probably smoking. Our instructor even asked one of our guides about this, saying something to the effect of: “why don’t all these men that are sitting around get hired to work for IRRAD, or the government to maintain these dams and wells [to help the water shortage issue plaguing these villages]?” He responded by explaining that most of them just don’t work, it’s not in their culture. The women do all of the household and “living” work, while about 70% of the men will never have a real job but instead will just “hang out” their whole lives.*

*Please note there is even a government sponsored program to ensure employment for at least one season per year for every person in the rural areas of India, yet the majority of these men just do not participate in the program.

**It's culturally taboo to take photos of women, unless they explicitly give you permission, so not only do I not have very many photos of women, many that I do have are taken from inside our vehicle as we're moving. My interaction with the woman shown below was one of he highlights of our second day in Mewat. We are fairly certain she was the wife of the principle of the school we were touring, because at one point she opened up the principle's office (where she, her husband, and kids also slept) and even showed us some of the school children's work books. She and I made fast friends after we kept exchanging smiles because I couldn't stop admiring her baby. Several other people in our group snapped pictures of me with her (I'll try to get one of those pictures to post) because she immediately allowed me to photograph her and her baby--I think in large part because she is one of the lucky women who has more access to education through her position as principle's wife therefore less afraid and more excited about our presence. She also showed Meagan and I the new bathroom facilities that were built at that school, explicitly so that more girls were allowed to attend school longer.