The Fish Bone is Connected to

Somewhere below Calcutta above Chennai, in a small town, in a dirty hotel room, surrounded by bed bugs and mosquitoes, TG stares up at the slow circling fan. He has been doing the job of ten NGOs this past week without the paychecks, the prestige, or the gratitude. He has been investigating water sources, sitting in on town meetings, looking for points of contamination, and trying to come up with solutions that suit the local politics and the budget.

His foot is throbbing. He doesn't know why. That same foot, the one stung by the sting ray about a month ago, has not yet healed, not completely. He can walk, yes, a great improvement over the hopping cripple he had been immediately following the injury, but he can not run. TG, a marathon runner, has not been able to walk without a limp or pain since the accident. He wonders if he will be able to run again. Irritated by the heat, and the buzzing of the small hungry bugs flying about his exposed skin, he begins to rub at his old wound. He mutters at it. Yells at it. Picks at it.

"What is wrong with you?" addressing his throbbing foot.

His foot does not answer. He begins to dig into the scab now, the fresh blood getting under his fingernails and the already stained sheets. There is something there. He digs deeper, wincing as he tears into his heel with his fingers. He manages to grab hold of something, something buried in his flesh. He pinches the hard substance and pulls. A two inch fish bone dressed in coagulated blood is wrenched from his throbbing flesh. The doctors kept telling him there was nothing in his foot. The fan does not help to cool the room. The bugs are attracted to the blood. The throbbing in TG's foot begins to subside.

A retelling of what occurred...

Looking Back...

From the batch of the final Kodak disposable camera I was dragging around with me. Enjoy! 

INDIA Update

TG's latest...


Hey Love,
I am staying in Chepaldibbadapalem this week with a family for work.  This village is pretty rad-tastic.  The NGO found me the top floor of a relatively rich person's house, and they rented it to me for about $5/day.  They also include all meals.  It is one of the villages where I have to finalize a bunch of in formation for a 1.5 million rupee project in the next 7 days. No commute, no electricity until night time, and everyone that is supposed to be a leader is corrupt and unprofessional. Time for me to shine. 

Modern Martyr

This Post is dedicated to the memory of the Fakhra Younus, the Pakistani 33 year old female who was a well known acid victim. She recently took her own life. A reminder how hard it is to be a woman in some parts of the world, and how we should take more advantage of the freedoms that we have. 

The Saga Continues... Tough Nuns and the Indian Boy George

 After two international flights and one very long delayed national flight, I am home, well, I am in my mother's home. Buried in the ease and quiet of a small american western resort town, I try to regroup from my travels before returning to Oregon to work. I have depleted the majority of my funds, and TG is already discussing the next country. Oh boy! I better get back to the grind. Meanwhile, TG is still there, in that strange dust and spice infested world, finishing up his projects. He is finally breaking out of his solitude, and beginning to have interactions with the people around him. These are the stories he shares with me, in his own words:


As I was nearing the end of the epic "Shantaram" in the Parkstreet Oxford Bookstore in Kolkata, the characteristically rude staff told me to get out of their cafe.  So I found a corner and was immediately approached by a young man with a lot of questions.  He was a chemical engineer, had once worked on converting methane to hydrogen in a clean energy research program (I had worked on hydrogen transportation in my internship with U.S. Congress) so we talked about that for a bit.  He said he liked to talk to strangers and treat people as his subjects.  The store was closing but he was keen to continue the conversation, so we went and grabbed some chicken tikka in a restaurant shaped like a train.  


He talked about his ambition to be famous so that he could show all the people who had disrespected and disregarded him that he was better than them.  He spoke of hating India and Indians, and hating his job as well.  He mentioned getting a lucrative scholarship in Europe but having to turn it down because his mother said no.  He said that no one really understood him, that he had to act and pretend all the time, and that I was one of the only ones who had ever seemed to accept him.  The next day he called, but I was too busy to meet.  The memory of a neglected and similarly intense lonely boy, when I was young, prompted me to call back this Indian fellow to hang out on my last day in Kolkata.  He told me that his mother ran the family and his father was rarely home.  He had been instructed to be with his sister at all times. He shared her friends from an early age and her things and life.  He almost died after a snake bite as a boy, which made him terrified of dying alone, and caused his mother to never let him go out without his sister till he went to college. His mannerisms were very feminine, and while in most U.S. universities, there would be a group of people ready to accept that kind of behavior, apparently Indian universities are still culturally dominated by machismo.  Even in his working life, he couldn't connect with anybody in Kolkata any more than an effeminate man could connect with anyone in my redneck home town.  Its time for the tyranny of machismo to die in popular culture.  They need a Boy George (or a Michael Stipe) and a Patti Smith (or even a Wendy O).

On the other hand, in my first foray talking to foreigners in a long time, I ran into a Portlander volunteering in a hospice for the dying.  He worked with a crew of tough mother fucking nuns helping impoverished Indian people die with some dignity.  The hospitals here.  I mean: people are lying and screaming in crowded rooms with no attendees and the hygiene could not possibly by good enough.  People are taking their last breaths in the streets, coming in with terrible wounds and diseases that could have been cured if they had waited until way, way too late.

And there is me, in villages that are drinking straight out of a waste canal, floods throwing them from their homes 2-3 times per year, barely scraping a harvest together or always a few days away from completely broke.  Fishing, craft markets, agriculture, all declining in a crisis state: and there are safety nets here in India: not always the best implemented safety nets, but the government does help hundreds of millions of people.

It seems like in such a state, a social revolution for equality would be secondary or thirdary to basic human needs.  I'm not sure.  Thats the way it worked in America, we got richer, then we got more tolerant fifty years later.  But India needs to leapfrog the U.S. in development patterns in a lot of ways, and I've met so many women ready to change the way women are treated there and with the power and education to do so.  One more generation of mothers, hopefully.  Mothers that say, "go out and make a good impact on the world" instead of "stay here with me and never leave."  

From His View; The reason we came

A video of some of the small villages we visited, the projects TG has been working on, and the people he has been working with and for. The reason for it all.

Color Me Bengali Baby

On the 11 hour sleeper bus, TG tells me a story. " There was once a girl. She was in love. She followed her lover deep into a crazy world. Everyday she fought past the tangled overgrown web of dangers. The barbs of life pricked at her skin, and though it stung, she plucked the painful poisonous spears from her body, and continued on. She emerged somehow, stronger than before." Oh. So much for ghost stories.

We have arrived in the New York of India, the cultural capital of the country, Kolkata. Banyan trees stretch over the wide sidewalks. The cabs are large, yellow, and furious. Modern colored lights and office buildings couple with tiled mosques and faded time washed walls to makeup the cityscape. The city looks as if it has been burnished; antiqued for our pleasure. We arrive the day before Holi, the colorful Hindu festival of Spring.

We spend the majority of the day searching for internet, but to no avail. Then, happily drench ourselves in the bright customary powders of Holi. Bengalis walk about their skin stained red, green, and purple, for days after the holiday. TG is apple green, and I am cherry red. In our colors, we drink, and are merry.

Until now, we have been living on $15 a day each, including housing, food, and transportation. Talk about budget travel. We live on the locals budget, doing what the locals would never do, and going where the tourists would never want to. The dirtiest hotels, the cheapest buses, the longest commutes, and I am realizing what I have survived, and what I have grown to love.

I seem to have grown quite fond of cold showers, flat shoes, and Mcdonalds. Not all changes are good of course. I have learned I can not go without toilet paper, raw leafy vegetables, or internet. Oh India. Three months ago, I would not have imagined that this would be the impact the country would have on my life. I'm also more grateful than I have ever been. We lead such a privileged existence, and as a woman, with education, choice, and freedom, I have so much, I don't think I ever realized how much, until now.

We are staying at a 600 rupee night hotel, approx $13 a night for two people. They are modest accommodations, but surprisingly clean, homey, and with the best view I have seen in all of India. TG has a few weeks off. We bask in the warmth of the locals, the endless winding neighborhoods, and the emptiness of the day.  The sky turns purple when the sun sets. It is my final week in India.