The Ways I Forget Geography and Then Remember Again

I have been living in Kerala long enough that I now sometimes forget where I am. Let me explain: My life has normalized into daily and weekly routines. I eat the same foods and sleep in the same bed and see the same coconut trees every day. So sometimes I forget that I’m living my life on the opposite side of the world from where I grew up. And then I remember. Sometimes I will simply look at the trees with fresh eyes, or maybe I’ll eat some new, previously unknown, and delicious fruit. And in re-sensing the world that surrounds me here, I remember: “Oh yeah! I’m in India!”

So in this post, I felt the need to re-document my geography. To remind myself (and maybe you too) of where I am in the world. So here is a map of India with Kerala highlighted. The capital of the state is Thiruvananthapuram (or Trivandrum for short), but I live in Pathanamthitta District (see second map), and the other three YAV volunteers live in Kottayam District.


The language here, as I’ve already mentioned, is Malayalam. I am surrounded by this language and am still struggling to learn it. The letters are especially beautiful when written, curving and arching in some confusing, graceful dance. Click here to see what Malayalam script looks like.

So yes: I am in India! Although I forget my geography sometimes, little things help me remember:

- When the lights go out, I love it. The electricity fails here pretty often, but in the evenings when the power goes out, I can’t stop smiling. In the dark, the students and teachers laugh more, are more free with each other. There must be something about being in the dark that makes people more open. In the dark we can’t stop laughing and smiling because, when we can’t see each other’s faces everything is somehow funny, wonderful, and shared.

- When I walk outside of my room I’m immediately surrounded by some 15 or 20 11- and 12-year-old girls who live in the dormitory where my room is. They all run up to me, happy to talk with me in their broken English, which they’re still learning. This happens at least three times every day.

- I have eaten several fruits here in whose existence I still do not believe. The most recent example is a custard apple. The texture is a little like custard, but it has nothing to do with an apple. Opening the grenade shaped (and textured) fruit, exposes a bunch of fleshy white pieces, each with a large seed inside the white fleshy fruit. This white flesh has a sort of custardy consistency. It’s sweet and good, but it tastes like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, so I can’t even draw an appropriate comparison. I’m sure this fruit cannot exist. But I’ve eaten it. Twice.

- Last week I almost died crossing the street. Traffic here is insane, and being a pedestrian sometimes feel suicidal. In most places in Tiruvalla there is just one wide-laned road with traffic speeding along in both directions and cars illegally passing, weaving in and out of fast, oncoming traffic. It’s pretty frightening. What is maybe more frightening, is that I’m now almost completely desensitized to this way of driving. But I forgot for a moment that I was in India, and last week I tried to cross the street without checking for cars illegally passing in the wrong lane. One such vehicle narrowly braked in time and I touched the hood of the car as I dodged around it. [Readers, please do not think that I am in too much danger of dying on the roads. Think of all our U.S. traffic accidents. I’m truly just as safe here as I would be driving in the U.S.]

- When there’s no water – that is, when the pipes are empty and the faucets don’t work – I go to the school’s giant well and pull up a bucket full of clean, drinking water that I can pour directly into my water bottle.

- When I had lunch with an older friend of mine here, she offered me a fork for the first time since September. (Everyone in India eats with their right hand, a surprisingly efficient way of eating once you get used to it. There are also fewer dishes to wash.) Anyway, I had to refuse the fork because I don’t know how to eat Kerala cuisine with anything but my hands.

- It is “winter” in Kerala and many people dress for the “cold” by donning sweaters and wrapping shawls and blankets around their shoulders in the morning. I think it’s finally comfortable at a balmy 75 degrees F.

- One night I stopped at the door of my room and stared out at the night. The full moon was a brilliant yellow/orange color and shone through the branches of the coconut tree near my bedroom window. The tree was silhouetted against the fullness of the bright moon, and the beauty of the scene was stunning.

Oh.
Wow.
I’m in India!

Work and Play

“She worked hard, and she played hard.” Although many people truly enjoy their jobs, most, I believe, still think of work and play as separate. Play might be going out to dinner with friends or playing games with your children or going to a movie with your spouse, but it’s almost certainly different than the work you do for your job from 9 to 5. I’ve always though that work and play should share more common ground, that they should overlap more. But in high school and in college I often had to rigorously separate play from work. Here it’s different.

I do have “work” as a YAV in Kerala. Teaching spoken English classes and music at Nicholson School is definitely work (and hard work!), as is the editing and clerical work that I do for the Tiruvalla Ecumenical Charitable Trust (the progressive social justice organization where I work once a week). But I’m gradually discovering that the time I spend playing with the girls at the school probably constitutes the most important work I do here. So for me, work and play are overlapping in wonderful, glorious ways. Let me give you some examples.

Halloween

I hosted a Halloween celebration at the school for all the boarding students and teachers. It was a blast! Halloween isn’t celebrated here and most of the children had never heard of it. So I asked the school principal to explain the holiday to the children in the morning assembly (in Malayalam so the younger ones would understand). Then I carved a jack-o-lantern and invited all 400-some boarding students to come to room between 8:00 and 9:30 that evening to trick-or-treat. As you might expect, it was chaos. But it was fun chaos. The girls came up with some really creative costumes especially considering that their only resources were the few clothes and toiletries the keep in boarding. Some came as ghosts or vampires with white talc powder on their faces. One group of tenth graders even put together a scary dance and song that they performed in front of my door! I was delighted that the teachers (who also board at the school) came trick-or-treating too. When they knocked on my door and yelled “boo,” I was indescribably happy. Most of them had also never experienced Halloween, and I was so glad that they wanted to participate in the holiday because it meant that they were also engaged in the cross-cultural celebration. It also seemed to me like an affirmation of the friendship that I’m building with them.

The Halloween celebration was a lot of fun for everyone, but it was also a teaching moment. The children got to learn about an important Western holiday, how it’s celebrated, and what it means. It was also a chance for them to use their creativity in creating costumes and (in some cases) songs and dances. Much of the schoolwork that the girls do does not nourish creative thinking or imagination, so opportunities to be creative are in short supply for the students. I also think the celebration gave them an opportunity to escape the strict rules of the boarding school and to simply play for a few hours. I believe (at least I hope) that the holiday escape from study and routine gave them a much-needed chance to learn by playing.

“Singin’ in the Rain”

Last week Nicholson School had a huge Exhibition as part of the school’s celebration of it’s centennial, which will occur this coming February. The Exhibition was a lot of work but it was also very fun. The school invited lots of different organizations to come and set up stalls. So, for example, ISRO – the Indian Space Research Organization, i.e. India’s version of NASA, – filled our auditorium with models of rockets and satellites and a Kerala-based Marine Fishing Organization brought aquariums full of dragon fish and clown fish with anemones. The students also made hundreds of models, charts, and experiments as projects to display. Picture the a huge high school science fair/art show, then add aquariums, rockets, and locally produced honey and you pretty much have it.

So for this grand Exhibition, I worked with some seventh grade girls to build a model solar system. You know, painted plastic balls with planet-name-tags on wire circles suspended from the ceiling. It was actually pretty cool when we finished. But that’s not the point. We were working on this model one afternoon, when it began to pour. We’re currently in the last stages of the NE monsoon season, and that afternoon, the skies opened and rain came down in sheets, flooding the school courtyard in minutes. The girls and I rushed out of the classroom where we’d been working to watch the downpour. I love rain, and I especially love big storms. So we stood on the balcony overlooking the flooded courtyard laughing at the beauty of the rain. Holding out our hands to catch the clean rainwater in our palms. Then I started singing the beginning of “Singin’ in the Rain,” which led to an impromptu teaching of the song to the girls. Then I taught them some basic swing dance steps, and we reveled in the rain with song and dance. The girls, in turn, showed me some classical Indian dance steps. (One student says she will teach me, so maybe by the time I leave Kerala I will have learned classical Indian dance!) Singing and dancing in the rainstorm the girls and I rediscovered the magic of playing, of finding impromptu fun so spontaneously.

Hindi Radio Appreciation

During the beginning of November, I accompanied a group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students on a field trip to Kochi (on of the biggest cities in Kerala). I was partly there as a guest to see the tourist sites that the girls would visit, but I was also implicitly there to help keep an eye on the children. The other teachers and I obviously needed to keep the girls from getting lost, pulling each other’s hair out, or, I don’t know, sticking their hands in stray bee-hives. So I was there partially to help supervise the trip.

The field trip was a lot of fun, and all the sites we saw in the city were great. However, the best moment of the day took place on the bus. On our way to the city in the morning the driver turned on a radio station that was playing popular Hindi music. The girls were so excited about being on a field trip that they were nearly jumping out of their seats talking to each other and singing along to the songs. Then one of the other teachers and I stood up and started dancing in the aisle of the bus. (Traffic and roads in India would merit a separate and very long explanation. For the moment just accept that while this wasn’t exactly a safe action, it’s not uncommon or illegal.) Within seconds most of the girls were on their feet dancing and falling over in the aisle of the bus as we went over bumps and bridges. All the while we sang to the upbeat, rhythmic melodies of the Hindi radio station. At least, the students sang. I don’t know Hindi and didn’t understand the words of the songs, so I just danced and encouraged the girls to embrace the moment of fun. The chance to be free and play with the students gave them a great opportunity to overcome their shyness of me. When I danced with the girls to their favorite Hindi songs, I wasn’t their classroom teacher; instead I was a friend or maybe a little like an older sister. Such icebreaking moments are really important for my relationship with these young girls, many of whom live at the boarding school far away from their homes and families. Dancing and playing with them has made them more comfortable around me, and now some of them are comfortable approaching me with problems with their friends or family or with their own feelings of homesickness. I need to play with the students because it’s through play that we can truly become closer.

Through all these moments of play, I’m learning to break through the shyness that some of the students still have around me. And this is my real work. Because when the students overcome their shyness and nervousness around me, they talk more with me. Simply by becoming comfortable talking with me, they improve their English speaking skills (which is, after all, what I’m supposed to be teaching.) More importantly, some of them are now comfortable telling me about their worries or their homesickness, and then I can try to offer them emotional support. So for me, play is work. Right now in order to do my work as I understand it, that is, to be a mentor for the girls and help them with their English at the same time, I need to play with them. Finally, work and play for me are one and the same.

A Day in the Life

Photo of the four volunteers on our way to attend a wedding. Sarah and I had to wear saris for the first time in honor of the occasion. (Left to Right: Cameron, Sarah, Tyler, Me).

I wore a sari for my first Indian wedding last month, but that was a special occaison. After almost two months in Kerala, my life has begun to take on a regular routine. My work at the Nicholson Girls’ Higher Secondary School and in the nearby town of Tiruvalla has finally settled into a pattern that I can now share with you. Here is a breakdown of my average day:

• 7:00 – Wake up. All the girls at the school are already up by this time. They get up sometime between 4:30 and 6:30, depending on their age. In the morning some of the older girls study, and all the younger girls do exercise drills.
• 8:00 – Breakfast.
• 8:30 – Read the daily South Indian newspaper.
• 9:30-10:00 – Teach Christmas carols to one of the classes. In December the school will perform a carol service, and I’m in charge of teaching the girls English Christmas carols for them to sing at the program. These songs include traditional hymns like “Away in a Manger” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” as well as some less common songs that are personal favorites of mine, such as “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
• 10:00-12:30 – Morning classes. I teach a few conversational English classes every morning. The purpose of these classes is to get the girls’ comfortable speaking in English because in Kerala everyone speaks to each other using their native language, which is Malayalam. I teach a wide variety of ages: preschool (where they are just learning the English alphabet) through eighth grade (where some are fluent in English).
• 1:00 – Lunch.
• 2:00-4:30 – Afternoon classes. Twice a week I teach afternoon classes at Nicholson. The rest of the week, I spend my afternoons in Tiruvalla doing other work. For example, I’m helping a local ecumenical organization that explores progressive perspectives on contemporary social issues in India. These issues can include concerns over identity politics, poverty, homosexuality, social discrimination based on caste, etc. It’s a great opportunity for me to get out of the close environment of the boarding school and engage more actively with relevant issues of social justice in Kerala.
• 4:30 – Afternoon tea. This is a necessary part of everyone’s day in Kerala. I have my afternoon tea and snack with the students. It’s a great time to sit and talk casually with them as we munch on sweet rolls, bananas, or vegetable-filled croissants.
• 5:00-6:00 – Free time/ Recess. I often spend this time playing games with the students. Basketball, badminton, duck-duck-goose, jump-rope, Uno, etc. The exception is on Mondays, when I teach a class at an evening school hosted by a local church. This evening school is particularly for children from poorer families who can’t go to regular school or who need extra help with their homework.
• 6:30-7:30 – Malayalam lesson. I have a fabulous Malayalam teacher at Nicholson who tutors me every night, as I struggle to learn the local language.
• 8:00 – Dinner.
• 8:30-11:00 – Me time. In the evening I get time to myself when I can read, write in my journal, build the next days lesson plans, etc.

Daily Joys and Challenges

My days here are filled with major and minor joys and challenges. Everyday something fills me with delight, but everyday I also face problems and challenges with which I seriously struggle.

One of the greatest challenges for me is the language barrier. English is one of the official languages of India, but in Kerala, no one really speaks in English. I learned when I arrived here that India is broken into fourteen different states. The divisions of these states are based on language. So, each of the fourteen states has its own language (and its own unique culture too), which everyone speaks there but which isn’t spoken in any other state in India. That’s why everyone has to learn English and Hindi in school. In Kerala, the language is Malayalam, and although every student learns English in school and college lectures and admission exams are in English, all daily conversation in Kerala is conducted in Malayalam. And, of course, since people don’t regularly speak in English, many of the students and teachers aren’t completely comfortable speaking English. So I have to work through this language barrier everyday in the classes I teach and in my relationships with the students and teachers at the school.

So, of course, I’m very motivated to learn Malayalam because I want to understand people when they speak and I want to strengthen my relationships with improved communication. I study with a tutor every night, and slowly, I am learning. But Malayalam is supposedly the second most difficult language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese. There are 56 letters in the Malayalam alphabet, but since all the vowels have a separate symbol that is used in the middle of words and some letters contract to form new letters, I think there are closer to 100 letters in Malayalam. And some of the letters represent sounds that I can’t pronounce correctly no matter how I try. Hopefully, this gives you some idea of how much of a struggle Malayalam is for me. But as I said, I am learning. I know the alphabet. I can count to 100 and say the colors. I know 20-some verbs, and I can say that “I have one older brother; his name is Benjamin.” But it’s very difficult. And I can’t express complicated ideas in Malayalam, and sometimes, even in English, abstract concepts are lost in translation. So at the school, it’s often difficult to talk about my opinions on climate change, or the unequal distribution of wealth in India, or gender and racial discrimination. I should point out that this is not always the case. I’ve had some wonderful conversations with people both at Nicholson and outside of the school, but the language barrier is always present in some way, shape, or form, and deep, meaningful communication is sometimes a challenge.

But despite the challenges, my life here is also full of joy. Every day holds something that delights me. Often these joys come from simple, small things, like a successful Malayalam conversation with one of the kitchen workers or eating my favorite Kerala food for breakfast. Here are some of the other daily joys that fill by new life here in Kerala:

• The smiles of the students when they tell me about their family or their favorite foods.
• The way some of the teachers will take my hand or touch my arm when they say hello as a sign of my inclusion in the sorority that exists among women here.
• Being greeted by people on the street who recognize me from one place or another.
• The many different kinds of bananas that I am always sampling. I’ve had at least seven or eight different kinds since coming to Kerala, and they’re wonderful. Most are miniature bananas and are sweeter and smoother than the one kind of banana we have in the States.
• The way the fifth grade girls, in whose dormitory my room is located, will sometimes knock on my door in the evening, just to say goodnight.
• The lingering smell of sandalwood soap after I bathe.
• The openness of the girls who bring me the stories and poems that they write in English so that I can help them with their creative writing.
• The sweet-sour taste of passion fruit.
• The practice of 4pm tea and the opportunity it provides for relaxation.
• The peace of sitting quietly in my room in the evening as I reflect on the past day.
• The joy of recognizing, of truly seeing, all the beauty that surrounds me here.

Adjusting to India

Me with the three other volunteers in Kerala and Father Thomas John, our site coordinator. (Left to right: Sarah, Cynthia, Cameron, Father Thomas John, Tyler)


It was raining at 3am when our flight arrived in India on September 2. As I stepped outside the airport, Kerala hit me like a wave. The heat, the smells, the people, the car horns (even at 3am). The rain. September and October are the months that end the rainy season in Kerala. It doesn’t rain every day, but more than once I’ve had the pleasure of falling asleep to heavy rain or thunderstorms. It has now been three weeks since I arrived in Kerala, and I am amazed at how quickly I’ve adjusted to my new life here.

Food:
The food in Kerala is wonderful. I know many Americans (including myself) who say, “I love Indian food.” As I’ve learned over the past few weeks, there is no such thing as “Indian” food. The food I ate at Indian restaurants in the U.S. is very different from the food I’m eating here. This is Kerala cuisine. The staple food in Kerala (and in most Asian countries) is rice. I think I’ve eaten more rice in the last three weeks than I have in the 22 years that came before. But I’ve also tasted rice in a greater variety of forms than I ever knew existed. Rice paddies, rice noodles, flat rice bread, raised rice bread, rice I sweet drinks, rice with curry, boiled rice, baked rice, etc. Each rice dish has it’s own distinct flavor and texture, and I’m only now beginning to differentiate between some of the dishes.

I admit that, although the food here is excellent, I’ve had many moments in the last three weeks when I’ve longed for cold cereal for breakfast or a plate of spaghetti for dinner instead of another unknown and very spicy curry. I’ve caught myself missing all the familiar comfort foods, like peanut butter or brownies or minestrone soup. It has certainly taken time for me to get used to the spicy, rice-heavy foods in Kerala. But I think I have (mostly) adjusted to the new cuisine. This past week I’ve been excited about certain foods here that I know I like: packed rice noodles and coconut for breakfast, potato curry and flat rice bread for dinner. I’m pleased to say that Kerala’s cuisine has welcomed me with open arms and that, after three weeks, I’m happy to embrace it back.

Clothing:
After our first week in Kerala, Sarah (the other female volunteer) and I adopted Indian clothing. Now in public I almost always wear a churidhar. Churidhars are the outfits traditionally worn by young women, although they are becoming more common among women of all ages because they’re more comfortable than saris. A churidhar consists of full-length baggy pants, a short-sleeve tunic that falls approximately to the knees, and a scarf that drapes back off the shoulders. The whole ensemble is a little tricky to put on because the tunic is tailor-made to fit your body. I also find the outfit a bit stifling in Kerala’s hot, humid climate. If I were in this climate back home, I would be wearing shorts and a tank top. But, of course here, showing that much skin would be inappropriate. As I adjust to wearing the churidar, I have discovered that they are actually very comfortable, and because they include less fabric than a traditional sari, they’re probably also cooler. More importantly I’ve found that when I’m wearing a churidhar, everyone is more welcoming and friendly with me. That’s not to say that people in Kerala aren’t normally friendly, but it’s somehow different when I’m wearing Indian clothing. The women in particular seem to appreciate my (rather clumsy) attempt to take part in this aspect of their culture, as though my clothing were an acknowledgement of the value and beauty of Indian culture, which, I guess, it is. Churidhars, like saris, are beautiful, and they seem to me all the more beautiful because they are expressions of the culture from whence they come. With coordinated colors and patterns, they act as paint brushes on the streets, lighting up the towns and the countryside of Kerala. And when I wear my churidhar, I feel included and welcomed into this colorful solidarity of Indian women and their culture.

Weather:
Kerala is too hot for me. Perhaps that’s because I grew up in northern Minnesota where winter lasts about six months and “summer” only two. Yet, September in Kerala, which feels like an unusually hot Minnesota summer, isn’t even one of the hot months here. Summer comes in March, April, and May, and then it will really be too hot for me. I think it’s the humidity more than anything else. The air is heavy and damp with about 80% humidity every day and 100% on the days when it rains. Slowly, I’m adjusting to the hot, sticky weather. Now, when I walk into an air-conditioned building, the cold air is shocking to me, and I’m actually glad that most places, including houses and schools, do not have AC. Living in this climate will be a continuous challenge for me, but I think it’s a challenge that I can meet.

Since my early morning arrival in India on the September 2, I’ve been trying to discern and describe the air here and particularly the smell of the air. Of course, I’m not in a large Indian city like Delhi or Calcutta, which are full of smells of people. All I can say for certain is that the air in Kerala smells different than the air at home. It’s not the stereotype of Indian air that smells of spices (unless you’re near the kitchen). I think the air is sweeter and dustier here than it is in Minnesota. It is full of life. Like the air in a sports stadium full of people is alive, but also like the scent of a greenhouse, full of the smell of green growing things. But maybe it’s just the humidity. The texture of the air. It presses against you, hugging you as though to welcome you.

New Beginnings

In a few weeks, I will begin a new chapter in my life. On August 31 I will leave the country and fly to Kerala, the southwestern-most district of India. I will spend the next year there serving as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) through the Presbyterian Church (USA).

I’m excited about the joys and challenges that this next year will bring. I will be keeping this blog as a way of charting my experiences over the next year both for myself and for any family and friends who are interested in hearing about my time as a YAV. Although I won’t have much to post here until I’ve been in India for a little while, I can, for now, give you an overview of the work I will probably be doing next year.

I will be living and working at the Nicholson Syrian Girls’ School in Tiruvalla, a boarding school for girls with the equivalent of grades K-12. I will be teaching spoken English classes to a variety of age groups and maybe a literature class or two for the older students. I will also probably be leading the school choir and helping students with creative writing exercises, such as writing poetry and short stories. If you want to learn more about the Nicholson School, you can visit the school’s website at www.nicholsonsyriangirlsschool.com.

Look for some updates on my experiences in India (after I actually get there) in September and October!

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can.
-J.R.R. Tolkien