J's India Trip

It is monsoon season after all...

It doesn't rain constantly, and some days it doesn't rain at all. The really bad days are when it rains constantly, heavily, for hours on end. More commonly, however, the rain will be moderately heavy for anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours, then taper off or stop completely for awhile, and then restart later. This weekend was very much this kind of rain.

Sadly, the weekends are the only time I actually have to wander around Mumbai and see the city, but I am brave soul (and don't mind getting wet) and wandered out into the storm (add some theatrical music to that if you would like). I did indulge somewhat by taking a cab, instead of the bus, to the area I wanted to walk around, but once I was there, my feet were my only mode of transportation.

Mumbai has some beautiful colonial architecture. Everywhere you look there are French doors out onto balconies and terraces, buildings lined with banks of windows with ornately carved frames, intricate wrought iron railings and so on. However, most of the buildings are in terrible shape, covered with layers of city grime that could never be washed off.

Part of the problem I've discovered with walking in the rain is that you're too distracted to really look at the buildings. With holding the umbrella, avoiding puddles (since some might be far deeper than they look), dodging the spray thrown up by the cars driving by, skipping around the piles of dog presents on the sidewalk, trying to not trip on the uneven pavement, and trying not to run into other people who are equally distracted, it is a little difficult to actually look around. Yesterday, I managed to walk right by both the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) and the Prince of Wales Museum without even noticing (I was trying to dodge buses while crossing the street at the time).

I did manage to find my way back to the NGMA before it closed at six. I don't know anything about the Indian modern art, so I honestly couldn't tell you how good a collection it is relative to what is available. There were only a few sculpture pieces and the vast majority of the works were paintings of different kinds. There were some interesting pieces and a few that, to my limited art appreciation eye, were quite good. However, the impact of exhibit was limited by the lack of organization and limited information about the pieces (often year wasn't even listed). However, the building itself was beautiful example of art deco architectural style and I really wish I'd been able to take pictures.

The other parts of the day were spent traipsing around the Colaba Market (rather quiet and empty since it was Sunday), the Gateway of India (a massive basalt arch built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Mumbai in 1911), the Taj Mahal hotel (a classic old hotel right near the Gateway) and the streets of the Colaba area.

At 7:30 when it started raining again and I'd already been soaked about three times that day, I figured it was time to head "home." Hopefully next weekend I will get over to Elephanta Island.

From the plane over Greenland. If you look close, you'll realize that what look like clouds are actually glaciers and icebergs.























Touring Delhi:
Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India.


















From atop the tower at Jama Masjid. A typical picture of Delhi.



















The Taj. It was a grey and rainy day. We all got very wet.

No, I'm not being paranoid. So I'm staying at this fairly fancy hotel (a Sheraton, but think a step or two above the average Sheraton in the states. Pretty darn swanky.) They're very big on service and have a little questionnaire they want you to fill out stating your preferences for food, flowers, beverages, etc. For their "long-term" guests, such as myself who has to suffer the hardship of staying there for six weeks, they are particularly solicitous. They even took my picture so that the staff could learn who I was.

I experienced the first byproduct of this when I was having breakfast yesterday morning. I got up to get my food from the buffet, and one of the servers comes up to me, "good morning madam (everyone is madam or sir, throughout India). You like mangos, correct?" Having temporarily forgotten about the questionnaire and the picture, I was quite baffled by this question, but agreed and the woman promptly offers to get me some (since there were none on the buffet). Two mangos come out, beautifully cut and presented and perfectly ripe. They were delicious.

The second experience of being spied on happened yesterday evening. That morning, as I was leaving, I accidentally hit the "do not disturb" button on my way out the door. (Nothing so crude as door hangers for this hotel. Here they have two buttons by your door, one is for "do not disturb", one is for a housekeeping request. If you press it, then a light outside your door comes on indicating what your status is.) A very reasonable result of my carelessness was that my room did not get cleaned yesterday (don't really care too much. It's not like I clean my room every day at home.) But, when I got home I realized the light was on and turned it off. Not two minutes later housekeeping is knocking on my door asking if I need anything and if I would like them to make up my bed. (oh yeah, they change your bed twice a day. The nice, decorative daytime spread goes on the morning, and then sometime around 5 or 6 (I think, I never back in my room in time for this), they take that off and put the less pretty, but more functional, sleeping comforter on the bed.)

It is all very strange getting used to this type of service. It does have it's advantages, but I can't help but cringe most of the times things like this happen. My politics don't really encourage being waited on, by anyone. However, since I know that I can't exactly tell them to leave me alone for the entire time, I tip generously instead.

Next topic: blogging in India
It's a good thing none of you are in country trying to read this. You wouldn't be able to. The GoI (Government of India) has decided that terrorists are using blogs to communicate, which is a less traceable method than email. In a very logical attempt to keep this from happening, they have asked all Internet Service Providers to block access to many of the major blogging sites, including blogspot. From looking online, the news coverage on this is relatively minor, which is quite surprising given the level of censorship.

My hotel is about 2km from the office we work out of. My driver (doesn't that sound pretentious) normally picks me and drives me to the office. (I've tried to say I want to walk and we'll meet there to head out into the field, but my Hindi is limited to "yes," "no," and "water." And I forget how to say "water" sometimes.) Anyway, as things turned out, I did walk yesterday (which was a really good thing since I needed find a place that would do my laundry instead of paying hotel prices for it).

So...the walk to work

Mumbai is...well...mumbai. Different from Delhi in various ways, at least comparing the parts I've seen. More crowded than Delhi, but more trees amazingly enough. The pollution is better than in many American cites and most of the time you don't even notice it here(perhaps because we're right on the ocean?)

My hotel is in a decent area, although no where in mumbai are you very far from the slums, which make up more than 70% of the city. Along my walk there are several "factory outlet" stores. Since most of the major companies have factories (aka sweat shops) in India, factory seconds and discontinued lines often get sold at greatly discounted prices in country. Of course, right along side those are the open store front tailors with foot-powered sewing machines, fabric stores with hundreds of bolts of cloth stacked to the ceiling in all imaginable colors, street vendors selling everything from fried snacks to fruit to shoes, stray dogs wandering around hoping to find someone who will feed them a cracker (which people often do), homeless beggars sitting on the sidewalk leaning against the store with the "Nike" sign in the window, and hundreds of people dodging each other on the sidewalk in their attempt to get wherever they're going as quickly as possible.

One of the things I love the most about India is the colors. The women in particular wear incredibly beautiful clothing, saris and salwars in all colors of the rainbow. I don't think I've seen a single one that looked liked any other. Most people buy cloth and take it to tailor to get their clothing made and embroidered, so everyone's clothes are unique. And they are all beautiful. When I compare that salwars I wear to the ones I see on the street, I get jealous. Mine aren't nearly as pretty and colorful. Thankfully, one of my colleagues is going to take me to where she shops later this week. I imagine my wardrobe will become more interesting after that. The funny thing is, though, when I compare what I wear here to what I wear when I'm home I'm so far outside my normal color range that it's funny.

The smells of India might be the topic of the next post. And, yes, there are many very pleasant ones.

Another one from 2006

******

so what am i actually doing over here?

I had to wait to answer this question since it was really dependent on where I got sent in India, as well as what the local polio project's needs were. So, now that I've been in Mumbai for a few days, have gotten to know the system here a bit, and have met most of the key players, we've hammered out a general plan of action for the next five weeks and a half weeks.

So here's my plan:
1) Conduct "Train the Trainer" workshops: One of the responsibilities of the various surveillance and public health personnel here is to meet with hospitals, physicians, community health workers and quacks (the local term for traditional health providers. Yes, that is really what they call them) and explain the polio surveillance system to them and convince them to participate. The various public health people are already quite familiar with how the system works, but explaining this to others effectively is something they are still not completely comfortable with.

So, in a less than 1 week time frame, I'm designing a one-day "train the trainer" workshop to help teach the public health/surveillance people how to go about training the health care practitioners on the surveillance system. Oh yeah, we're covering routine immunizations too. Woo hoo!

I'm actually having fun with this. I enjoy teaching and have done a fair bit of designing exercises and courses for students, but teaching teachers is something new. Should be fun! (Thankfully I have my educational expert (my partner D) at home to help me out.

2) Informal evaluation of the surveillance system: The system that the polio project has in place already is quite good, but there is always room for improvement. I'm helping them refine and implement some ideas they've had for improving the system and am generally keeping an eye on the system to point out issues when I see them.

Doing all this involves following the surveillance people around to hospitals to meet with providers and do active case searches, as well as to the homes of children who have been reported to the system. The majority of the children live in slum areas. It's actually nice to get outside of the "tourist mumbai" and see what the city is really like.

3) Implementing evaluations: The system as it currently stands has structures in place to do routine evaluations of the system, particularly on the large scale. We're trying to expand that a bit and see if we can provide more consistent feedback at all the levels of the surveillance system.

And all of this comes out to one thing: I'll be working a lot. 12 hour days, seven days a week is not out of the ordinary. BUT, I'm having fun and learning a lot. So it's worth it.

On the other hand, this means I probably won't get much time to see Mumbai, eat in restaurants outside of the hotel (thankfully the restaurants are decent) or do much emailing. I will, however, do my best to blog regularly. Eventually I'll even find a few minutes to post some pictures here!

to the point where I've started making a list of possible blog topics. I think today's will be the traffic.

After spending a week and a half here, I beginning to figure out that there is actually a system of sorts to driving. Some of the rules are as follows:

1) Honk if you want to pass someone. They will, in theory, move to the left so you can pass. (They drive on the left side of the road here.) This rule is sufficiently ingrained that all the trucks, taxis and autorickshaws have "Honk Please" painted on the back in all sorts of fun colors. Of course, this leads to a whole lot of honking and makes the driving experience somewhat noisy.

2) Lanes do not exist. If you want to get somewhere and there is a space, just go.

3) Rely on the people behind you not to hit you when you cut them off. This is a hugely important fact. As far as I can tell, cutting people off is the standard, and cars get into spaces I would never even try if I were driving a scooter, much less a car. But, the system does seem to work.

4) If you're a pedestrian and cars are going slowly, just walk in front of them. They will do their best to avoid hitting you. Don't rush either. You're not in a hurry.

5) Turn signals are for decoration.

6) Seat belts are optional. Most people don't seem to wear them.

7) Road rage does not happen. You don't curse at people or intentionally be aggressive with them (beyond the normal aggressiveness that is needed if you want to get anywhere.)

8) If there is no space for you to change lanes, try anyway. Eventually someone will let you in just to avoid hitting you.

9) Don't drive super fast, otherwise you wouldn't have any time to respond to the four cars that just merged in less than 6 inches from your bumper.

I'm glad I'm not the one driving! Amazingly enough, despite all of the chaos present in this system, I've only seen two accidents. Both minor. However, I do make sure to wear my seatbelt when it's actually there in the car.

Another update on life in India tomorrow. Perhaps the topic will be, clothing, in all its beautiful colors.

It's noon local time and I'm at the hotel waiting for the WHO car and driver (since I'm avoid regular taxis at this point). Thankfully the hotel has everything I need, restaurant and internet cafe, right nearby, so I don't need to wander around the city to find stuff.

I'll be sure to update the blog regularly. (And, as an additional FYI, A, H and E are all in different areas of the country and are doing fine. I spoke to them this morning.)

-J

Some of you might have already heard about the series of bomb blasts on local commuter trains in Mumbai this afternoon. I was safe in the Mumbai polio project offices at the time and am now at my hotel. From my perspective, nothing seemed particularly amiss, except the numerous vans of police around the city as they were deployed to (I assume) manage traffic and "maintain the peace."

If you want to read more about, check out Google News, or Google News India.

The offices may or may not be open tomorrow, but my hotel is comfortable enough and I have plenty to entertain me (mostly reading about polio surveillance here in Mumbai).

More soon!
J

which everyone calls Mumbai now, is my next stop.

I fly out of Delhi this afternoon, and it's a nice easy two hour flight to Mumbai. At this point, it looks like I'll be spending the next six weeks there, which is rather amusing 'cause I packed and planned for being in a remote rural area. So my mosquito net is going with H, since he might actually need it.

H, A and I went out to dinner last night at an Italian/Mediterranean place. I, very magnanimously, let them pick where we were going since they're both heading out to rural areas (Northern Karnataka and Northern Orissa respectively), and I'm going to the dining capital of India. Ha!

My general role in Mumbai, I think, will be to help convince the various private hospitals and providers about the need to actively participate in disease surveillance. The surveillance directors seem to think that an obvious foreigner from a US public health agency will have a little more luck persuading people than local disease surveillance personnel. We'll see if they're right.

Of course, this whole plan could change at any point (up until about 4pm yesterday I was going to Karnataka and H was going to Madhya Pradesh. Who knows where the musical chairs will take us next? :)

I am looking forward to going to Mumbai; I think it will be an interesting city to spend time for awhile (16 million people. Enough said). Although, I do hope I have some opportunity to get out to the more rural areas at some point. An SIA (Supplemental Immunization Activity), a several day long project where volunteers go house to house to immunize every (and I mean every) child under 5 years old (we're taking millions of children in just one state), is being planned for late this month or early August. Perhaps I'll be called out to help monitor that, in which case I would be working in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. We'll see what happens!

More from Mumbai coming soon!

I really am here for work, but I haven't gotten an assignment yet, so our weekend was free and weekdays are spent at the office working on emails and reading about what other people have done in the areas we might be sent to.

Anyway, that was just my plug to try to convince everyone that this really isn't a vacation. :)

Saturday was another shopping and Delhi tourism day. We went to Chandni Chowk, one of the major market areas in Old Delhi. And it was very much classic developing country market, with lots of side alleys, tiny little shops stuck in out of the way places and touts on the street trying to get out to visit their shop, which, without a doubt, has the best possible goods at the cheapest prices. We did have some good luck there; A and I both got salwar kameezs since it is generally advisable to wear the local dress (especially for women traveling outside of the major cities).

We also visited Qutb Minar, which was the first mosque built in India. The complex is a series of beautifully preserved buildings; it was fun to wander around the ruins for a few hours looking at the carvings and architecture. There is a gorgeous 73 meter tall tower which has beautifully intricate carvings and quotes from the Quran.

After visiting the requisite old temple/ruins, we, of course, had to visit a new one as well. Baha'i is a rather interesting religious tradition, and if I was forced to pick one to adhere to, it might be in the top ten. But, as with all organized religions, there are a fair number of inconsistencies. That said, the temple in Delhi has an interesting design (a very large lotus flower), is very peaceful inside and the gardens are pretty enough.

After our requisite round of temple hopping (I'm getting somewhat tired of this part, but A and H seem to enjoy it), it was back to shopping. This time we went to the state emporiums, which are run by each individual state and, theoretically, represent the handicrafts and styles specific to that area. Generally, the goods were decent and the prices were reasonable. I found a non-profit women's cooperative selling textiles and clothing from Gujarat, so of course I had to buy some stuff. :)

Sunday was a visit to Agra, which is about 2 hours away from Delhi by train and the home of the Taj Mahal, as well as Agra Fort and several other interesting tombs. The day started quite early, in time to catch the 6:15am train. We worked through a travel agent to arrange the train tickets, and a guide and car in Agra. Well, the agent got our names wrong, so the names on the train tickets were wrong, so we ended up having to buy new ones of the train (I was rather surprised that the ticket collectors really expected the names on the passenger list to be accurate. Despite the incredibly chaotic appearance that Indian train stations have on the surface, they are really very well run and very organized). We splurged for the first class AC car, and got fed breakfast and dinner (on the way back); both meals were better than I've received on most airlines.

The Taj was beautiful, and the craftsmanship that went into building and decorating it is really amazing. Sadly, (or perhaps luckily, since most of the north has been experiencing a drought), the rains started Sunday morning, so our pictures were of a beautiful building sitting amidst a fog of grey clouds. Not the most picturesque setting in the world at the time. But, it was still worth seeing. As were the various other sites in Agra.

I'm getting a bit tired of typing now (and I do actually have some work to do), so I'll leave it at that for now. Hopefully the next post will have some details about where I'm going next and what I'm expected to do while I'm there.

-J

Well, I talked about the mosques and ruins in the last post. Yesterday a was a trip to the Akshardam Temple, which is huge temple complex for the Swaminaryaran sect(not sure if that is the correct term or not) of Hinduism.

The temple grounds are enormous with at least a dozen large, highly decorated, buildings. The artwork and sculpture adorning the buildings are quite beautiful and intricate. The temple complex was only finished last year (and was built in a very quick five years), but it draws from traditional Indian architecture and design, so the style is not really contemporary at all. There are a series of three exhibits (all rather high tech) outlining the life of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, the founder of the movement (born in 1781), and the history of India (in 15 minutes). Sadly, we didn't have time for two of the exhibits. The one we did go to was a series of audioanimatronics (moving, talking robot "actors") dioramas outlining the life of Bhagwan Swaminarayan. It was...interesting. I'm going to avoid any extensive political or social commentary here, but briefly, the basic principles of the movement seem sound (peace, happiness, etc.). However, as an atheist pacifist with strong anti-hierarchical tendencies, I have some issues with the application. (And I apologize if I've offended anyone with my above summary or comments. I'm trying to summarize a rather complex religious movement from only my very brief introduction and a few readings online.)

Post-temple, we finally got in touch with the National Polio Surveillance Project which is who we will all be working with over the next two months. We met several of the people in the main office and received some orientation to the management of polio surveillance in India. Still no idea where the three of us are going (myself, H and A), but it looks like one person will be working on immunization campaigns, one person will be substituting for an SMO (surveillance medical officer) in Orissa (a state on the eastern coast of India) and the third, who knows. We should find out on Monday, and hopefully we'll be off into the field on Tuesday.

This weekend, we've arranged a trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and a few of the other sites there. It's a long day trip from Delhi. We'll be on a 6am train out of Delhi and not get back to the hotel until almost midnight, but it would be a shame to be in India and not see the Taj.

And now it's back to getting some work done on some Utah-related stuff. There isn't a whole lot of polio work for us to do at the moment, so I figure the time is well spent getting other types of work done.

So to answer the first question I’m sure all of you have, yes I’m here in Delhi. I arrived last night, about an hour after two of my colleagues arrived. Sadly, however, my baggage did not. According to American, it was left it Chicago for some unknown reason. My connection was an hour and a half, and the gates were fairly close to each other. So I’m at a loss. Big sister A, could you have a talk with your employer about that? And while we’re at it, could you have a talk with them about various other issues? A) my two colleagues, flying Continental, received complimentary upgrades to Business class. The reason? they were on official government travel. Well, gee, so am I. Did something like that even enter the mind of the agents? Nope. And if you’re wondering, yes, there was plenty of room in first and business. B) The entertainment options were terrible, both movies and video. Two Bollywood movies, two movies on golf tournaments (yes, TWO of them), a random BBC special on some guys trip to Kenya, and a bunch of episodes of some boring sitcom. And the radio options were even worse. C) No more free booze. I know that most airlines have gone this way, but I still want to register a complaint on this one. D) The coffee is terrible. I mean awful. Basically, it’s colored water with no flavor at all. And E) My bag got left in Chicago (and I had an hour and a half layover, so I’m curious to find out what excuse they give me.) (Sorry A, I know that you’re not charge of this stuff. Knowing you, the stuff you are in charge of probably works wonderfully.)

But here were some good things about the flight. A) We flew over Greenland. Amazing scenery and I even got a few pictures out the window. (I’ll post those soon) B) I had ordered a veggie meal, but here’s the great thing about flights to India. Every flight offers two meal options, one veg, one non-veg. That’s the default. And decent food too. The veggie options were always Indian food, and the non-veg were generally western-style meals.

OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let’s talk about India. Today was a day off/get adjusted day, we had breakfast at the hotel, my two colleagues (H and A) were still jet lagged, so that tried to nap for a few hours. Around 1pm, we took a cab over to the Red Fort and a nearby mosque. The Red Fort was built in 1648 by Shah Jahan, the same guy who built the Taj Mahal, when he was moving his capital from Agra to Delhi. It’s a huge complex with a number of beautiful buildings (built out of red sandstone and white marble, with beautiful inlays and carvings), and definitely worth the $10 we paid to get a guided tour. (Although, I must confess, my political inclinations regularly reared up when thinking about the cost of the palaces, the cost of the solid gold chair the Shah sat on, and the cost of having 300 dancing girls there every night. (Well, I guess the super rich deserve their entertainment, right? <-can you detect some sarcasm here?)

The mosque was also beautiful, with a very neat tall tower you could walk up. It gave a great view of the city, although walking down the very steep, uneven spiral staircase in the dark definitely gave my thighs a work out. Our guide there wasn’t quite as good, and often spoken in completely incomprehensible English. I could pick up every fifth word or so, and could vague piece together what he was saying, but it all very vague.

After the mosque and the Red Fort, it was over the Khan Market one of the smaller markets in the area near the hotel. ATM card is in working order, which is always nice to know. And I picked up one Salwaar Kameez (one type of Indian outfit, different from a sari).

And here are a few general observations. The vast majority of taxis and autorickshaws (think rickshaw, but powered by a motorcycle; they’re called Tuk-tuks in Thailand) run on natural gas. So the pollution really isn’t that bad. (I was quite surprised by this.) However, even though pollution isn’t bad, the driving is terrible (worse than other countries I’ve been to). I would never recommend walking along a street, much less trying to cross it.

Tomorrow we’re off to the WHO office to figure out where we’re actually going to be sent. Based on conversations with E (another colleague who’s been here for about 4 weeks), I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re told to cool our heels in Delhi for a week or so. Welcome to life in developing countries. The pace is far slower and far more relaxed. I definitely wouldn’t mind a few days of exploring Delhi (and picking up a few more Salwaar Kameez’s. They’re wonderfully comfortable.)

# posted by Disease Cowgirl @ 9:04 AM 0 comments