India!: Macarena Madness + a Warning

It’s been a pretty eventful week, despite all presuppositions.

Last Saturday was India’s Republic Day (or something like that) and we were invited to a festival in downtown Vizag and it was…..an adventure. It was the first day we had all gotten to wear our saris (getting sari blouses back from the tailor takes FOREVER) so we were all excited and got dressed up….poor Gowri spent an eternity wrapping us all up. For some reason, we arrived at the festival 2 hours early, so the only people present were a million kids dancing their little hearts out on a stage with way-too-loud speakers blasting Telugu hip-hop.

(Have I mentioned how loud everything is in India? Car horns, music, public announcements, dogs, demon crows that squawk at all hours of the day and night, and the crazy loud gongs and bells that go off at the Krishna temple down the street at 5 am and 6 pm. It’s actually not so bad for my roommate Lauren and I because our ridiculously loud fan drowns out the sound…tender mercies from God!!) So we just sat in the shade for a good long while and in no time flat, we had a group of nearly 100 kids surrounding us, staring. After a long time, I was tired of just sitting and exchanging “hello, how are you”s in Telugu and English, so my friend and I tried to teach them the Macarena. But the second they figured out that what we were trying to do was dance, they started SCREAMING and it was going to reach mayhem status pretty fast. Dr. Krishnayya stood up and yelled across the crowd, “No dancing! No dancing!!”. Whoops. I guess Macarena+India+white girls is a bad mix. We decided to take a break and come back once the festival had actually commenced, but the kids cornered us next to a tent where there was a goddess statue, so we got our picture taken and it ended up in the paper the next day. We were hesitant to actually head back once the festival was in full swing, but it wasn’t so bad the second time around….they just had us judge a sort of chalk-drawing contest and sit on stage for a bit while the kids had their singing contest….I’m not quite sure how, but we escaped after that! It was so sweet of them to make us the guests of honor, but I do miss blending in…you’d think I’d be used to being one of the token out-of-place white girls…

We showed up again in the paper a few days later, but we got in some trouble for it… a few weeks ago, we went to the beach to play and took some really cool jumping pictures (we stayed well away from the water and weren’t doing ANYTHING dangerous)…unbeknownst to us, someone took a picture of us jumping from the rocks and submitted it to the paper. We weren’t named specifically this time, but Dr. Krishnayya was very concerned because it looks like we’re jumping from the rocks onto MORE rocks. Not a good example for the chilluns.

During the week, I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible at Lebenshilfe. The school psychologist has been helping me a ton with visiting different classrooms to observe, visit, and play with the kids. They have extremely limited resources as far as formal testing is concerned, so he carries most of the burden of assessment for incoming and current students. I was a little freaked out the first few days, though….it seemed like I hadn’t really made it clear that I’m STUDYING speech therapy, not an actual speech therapist, so the teachers told me, “ok, observe for a few minutes and then pick a child you think would be a good candidate for speech therapy. Then you can take him to the speech therapy room and teach him how to speak.” Uhhhhh……ok. I picked a little boy I had played with a few days before and we went to go practice some “pa pa” and “ta ta” things….heck if I knew what I was doing…Within a few minutes of me trying to play games with him and sing songs with him, he ran out crying…thankfully he ran straight to the psychologist’s office…I told him, ”I’m apparently neither a very good singer or a very good speech therapist.” As it turns out, I picked the one boy who cries every time he moves rooms, regardless of who he’s with or how well they sing. Go figure.

I got to spend a few days in the dance therapy room where the kids were practicing a traditional folk song about birds eating a snake. All the girls circled around a little boy in a snake costume, flapping their arms and then pretending to eat the snake…super cute and really cool. Apparently, if any of the students become agitated in their other classes, they can come to the dance therapy class, put on a costume, and become a part of the dance set. One boy came in during one of the practices, put a small cardboard bow and quiver around his shoulders, and struck a Krishna pose. He stood like that for about 10 minutes, then decided he had had enough and went along his merry way.

Lebenshilfe takes a much more holistic approach to special education than the U.S., so it might be a bit of a challenge to analyze JUST the speech therapy assessments, but I’m learning a ton and I’m so grateful that I get to be here.

Last Thursday, we took a day trip to the more mountainous region of Andhra Pradesh and took our translator, Madhu with us. It was very….eye opening. The landscape was beautiful, we saw some really amazing things and we bonded a lot more, but there were a whole lot of bodily functions I had no desire to see so abundantly. So be forewarned: If you’re not a Beauchamp and such talk is not your thing, please skip reading and enjoy the photos.

So 6 am: Train to Araku Valley. Train stations. Exciting and stinky places. Exciting because they mean travel and adventure. Stinky because the squatty-potty toilets empty onto the tracks. We also discovered that the area next to the train tracks in the rural areas outside of Vizag are popular dumping grounds. We did our best to not make eye contact with people relieving themselves in the forests…but they were so close! And staring! Well, what can ya do. I guess you’ve got to keep yourself entertained during that time. But isn’t that what newspapers are for? Our train ride to the Araku Valley lasted about 6 hours, so we had plenty of time to teach Madhu clapping games and hangman.

This is what eye contact with a forest dumper will do to you.

He’s a very serious sort of person, so we try to help him loosen up…unfortunately, he seems embarrassed by us often…but then again, so does Christian, so maybe it’s just the nature of being with so many girls.

Our neighbor on the train was a very nice man from Kolkata who runs an orphanage in the city and he gave us some really great tips for where to go when we visit in a few weeks (oh! We decided for sure to go to Kolkata…we’ll volunteer at an orphanage for a few days then tour around the city J) Also, true to form, we had a number of kids come and take pictures with us. India’s doing wonders for my ego!

The countryside is so beautiful!! It reminded me a lot of Ecuador, though a bit less green. After a few hours, the smog cleared and the air was so fresh and cool….it was glorious!! We passed through a bunch of tunnels on the way up, and everyone would lean out the windows and scream the whole way through…WAY more fun than holding your breath!

Once we got there, we hopped on a chartered bus (my favorite! #rotarykids {we’ve gotten into verbally hash-tagging things. Ridiculous. But it feel like homeJ…despite the fact that I have never actually hash tagged anything in my life}) and went to a museum about local tribal life…Apparently, the marriage proposal ceremony either includes or consists entirely (I’m not sure which) of spitting water on your intended. Mmm. Sign me up.

Also, the women have 3 nose rings apiece. Super cool.

Botanical gardens--nose picking photo an unintended bonus.

We briefly visited some really beautiful botanical gardens that have treehouses available to rent. Holy dream come true, Batman! I love treehouses. I want one so much. But the most exciting part of that little adventure was when the man sitting behind Eva started choking on his orange soda and sprayed it all over the back of her nubbly head. She shrieked and pulled a duck-and cover, asking frantically if it was vomit. Thankfully, no….But the man (possibly because he was still choking, but more likely because he was embarrassed) didn’t say anything to her….no “Here, let me help you mop that up” or “I’m sorry I showered my beverage on you.” She was a bit sticky for awhile…but thank goodness for baby wipes!

We had lunch at a nice hotel, where we realized how mild our cooks make our food…they are definitely increasing our tolerance by degrees, but it was fuerte. And tasty. Until later.

There was an enormous line for the bathroom, so I had a nice chat with a woman from a neighboring state and I got some interesting insights on scripture study in Hindu culture… We got out just in time to see a dance by some of the hill tribe women and we even got to dance with them a little! If you give them money, they’ll chant your name and stomp in rhythm to it. Best 10 rupees I ever spent.

We loaded back into the buses and drove on winding, mountainous paths that rival the Andes highways for twists and turns, but have significantly fewer potholes… Unfortunately, at least 3 of the ladies on our bus got pretty carsick and threw up all over the side of the bus. I felt so bad for them! They had some time to recover when we stopped at a beautiful scenic overlook of an enormous valley and a bit later when we reached the Borra Caves. The Caves have some religious significance…we climbed down into the caves and saw some pretty impressive stalagtites and stalagmites (said to be original statues representing gods and goddesses) we even climbed up a rickety little staircase at the bottom of the cave that led to a shrine where you can perform a puja and ring a small bell.

Madhu was taking very good care of us and making sure the monkeys didn’t get close enough to steal our things...I think we drive him nuts sometimes, because we’re so easily distracted by all the new and exciting things…but I figure we’re just preparing him to be a good dad.

not the vomit side of the bus

The ride back to Vizag was even more twisty and gastronomically distastrous for our Indian travelling companions, but we made it in one piece! Unfortunately, I discovered at 3:30 the next morning that the food had given my poor roommate food poisoning….It also got Mackenzie, Eva, AND Christian. So Kelly and I played nurse for them the whole next day and our bedroom turned into the sick room, complete with multiple episodes of Alias, electrolyte powder, and plenty of just-in-case buckets. But truthfully, they are the most fun sick people I’ve ever been around, cracking jokes at every turn of their stomachs. A few of them love the show Parks and Recreation and felt a peculiar bond with this man from an episode in which everyone gets the flu.

Everyone’s better now, thank goodness. We’re so glad to get back to normal! But as a spiritual aside, Heavenly totally answered my prayer on Friday morning….I first prayed that my roommates would get better, immediately followed by a plea that I would NOT get sick, then that I could be of help to someone that day. Lo and behold, no food poisoning for me! Score one for the republic. I really don’t know how, either. I eat everything….maybe I should be more judicious. Tender mercies!!

Sorry for the graphic-ness, but this is also turning into my journal….plus you were warned. And it’s a true glimpse at life in India for BYU students.

Love you more than all the times we made it into the paper this week!

-Allison

And just because: more photos!!