the blog returns

Hi kids. I'm back from my post-India hiatus, and if anyone is still reading, I'm going to keep blabbing.

It's a lovely Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, and after a lot of unpacking and reorganizing on Thursday, I've essentially spent the last two days hanging out in my apartment catching up on the Colbert Report online (two months' worth of clips is a lot to watch, you know). I did get out of the house yesterday to enjoy the nice weather, walk to the grocery store, and then walk to my dear friend S's apartment. He has mono, so he's very tired and a bit depressed, and I hadn't seen him since I'd gotten back to the city, so it was really nice to spend some time with him and hopefully cheer him up slightly.

I've also been out on a couple of dates since I've gotten back (with guys that I was corresponding with over the last two weeks or so), and the results have been mixed. After our second date last night, I've decided that J and I are just wrong for each other, which is too bad because he is a very nice guy. There's a bit more promise with D, and in theory our second date is tonight, so we'll see how that goes. He and I have an excellent rapport, but he's a little bit crazy (then again, so am I; maybe that's why our rapport is so good) and he's a bit older than I am, so who knows. I suppose at the moment it's just fun to go out on dates.

Tomorrow is both my birthday and my first day of class. I've decided to make tomorrow a working day (in the morning I'll work on survey data-related stuff that needs to be done, and in the evening I'll go to class), so I'm sort of celebrating my birthday today, mostly by making E and H come over and help me put my new Ikea bed frame together, and by goofing off and maybe doing a bit of shopping. Though I'm very excited about turning 28 (8 is, after all, my lucky number), I'm not really so much into making any kind of a deal about my birthday this year. I'm just happy to be settled back into the city, starting school again, going on a few dates, and figuring what sort of cool things I can do with the rest of my life. All that seems like celebration enough. Oh, and maybe I'll have a bottle of wine. =)

Stay tuned, because I promise to become a regular updater again. I don't promise that my life will still be interesting to read about (if it ever was) but I'll do my best.

America, when will you be angelic?/When will you take off your clothes?

I've no idea why I thought it appropriate or necessary to quote Allen Ginsberg, especially to quote a poem that is unflattering toward America. Because dude, I am lovin' on the good ol' US of A right now. It's so clean, so quiet, so shiny, so soft, so cool, so calm, so full of cheerios and Dr. Pepper and fancy lettuces with balsamic vinagrette.

I've always liked those two lines from "America", and I could never put my finger on what it was about them, but having spent the last two months in India, however else I would describe it and however much I would deride some things about it, "naked" and "angelic" seem like utterly apt descriptions, both for what India is like in some meta-sense and how India is different than America, beyond the obvious rich/poor thing. I don't think America will ever be angelic or take off it's clothes, and I think that's okay with me. This is my home, my decadent, effortless home, and I will always love it and want to return to it. But leaving is so good; the alternating waves of idealistic love and self-righteous scorn I've felt for India have been so good.

I've been up since 5 a.m. I'm jet-lagged and nutty. I promise no more pretentious, self-important posts that quote poetry, at least not for a while.

leaving on a jet plane

Don't know when (or if) I'll be back again. But I hope I will be. We leave for the airport in about 30 minutes, and I am feeling a bit sad. And yet, at the same time, thrilled out of my mind to come back to the states. I'm been fantasizing about Dr. Pepper for weeks.

The last few days have been mostly relaxing and good, the bags are packed, and I feel a reasonably good sense of closure. I have lots more pictures to post, stories to tell, and observations to make about this whole experience, and that will happen once I get back to Bakersfield and hug my ma and play with my dog and sleep for a while.

DONE!

Our research is done. Yay! There are so many problems with it that I can't even think about it, but that doesn't matter, because we learned a lot, and it is done. (I feel like quoting Josh from the West Wing now: "...and while I'm not one to be selfish about credit, I think it's important to know that it is DONE and I DID it!"...oh, and M and E too.)

I took a nap this evening, which is a bad habit I've gotten into, because I wake up groggy and with a headache. I also threw up again today. But I feel okay. I suspect I just have some little bit of bacterial third-world badness floating around in my intestines, and I probably should have taken some cipro long ago to clear it up, but it's not bothering me much, and I've lost at least 15 pounds or so (woo hoo!), and I'm not in danger of wasting away, so I figure I'll just wait it out another week and get better when I get back to the states. It's funny, because I think I'm back down around my post-marathon weight, but I feel (and most likely am) really out of shape. I sweat a lot, which gives the deceptive illusion of exercise, but most days I do much less walking here than I would in SF, and of course I haven't gone running or anything like that. I'm actually looking forward to getting some exercise when I get home.

Anyway, I've got to run, but tomorrow we go to Mamalapuram for a final hurrah, and I will certainly post at more length there.

the west wing and a loss of momentum

So, there's this nice British guy that we met in Mamalapuram (I know, we've met a million nice British people, don't even try to keep track). He'd been volunteering doing some cool drama workshops about gender relations and empowerment, and now he's just kind of chilling out. Anyway, we were chating and I discovered that he's a big fan of The West Wing, which you may know is more or less my favorite TV show. I think I frightened him a bit because he was at the computer next to mine in the internet place, and he found this "West Wing Quiz" online and I knew all the answers. And then later we argued about whether or not Donna was a slut who slept her way to the top (she WASN'T). Occasionally other people would turn to us and say, "Are you guys talking about the West Wing again?" and roll their eyes disgustedly. He was fun to talk to, though, because he was very intelligent and knew a lot about real politics as well, especially American politics (which surprised me at first, but he pointed out that American politics matter quite a bit in terms of what happens in the rest of the world). In fact, he's reading Bill Clinton's biography right now. Apparently when Chelsea Clinton was really little she got to go the White House with mom and dad (some governor's ball or something) and she asked then-Vice President Bush where the bathroom was. How precious.

Anyway, one nice thing about going home is that I will start reading the news again. E bought a copy of The Economist last week, so I essentially know what's happening with the whole Isreal/Lebanon/Hizbullah/Hamas thing, but other than that I've been utterly clueless. But the nice part about it is that normally I keep up with current events largely out of a sense of obligation (because it matters for my profession and also for my role as a citizen of the US and the world) but I've discovered that after a while I actually miss reading the news, which must mean that I enjoy it on some level as well.

My posts have gotten a bit dull, I know. I'm too lazy to upload photos, and I just feel tired and sort of want to go home. I only have a week left, and we still have three more days of work to do, and I have lots of shopping left to do for people, and I want to take lots more pictures and all, but my momentum is really waning.

nothing of consequence

I don't have much to say at the moment; I've been feeling a bit sluggish lately. We ended up not working Thursday or Friday (Thursday by design, Friday because IMED changes their schedule radically without telling us). I did literally nothing for most of the day yesterday; I guess I caught up on sleep and did half a crossword puzzle, but I didn't even get any reading done or anything. This was partly because we were out quite late on Thursday night. We went to Zara's to celebrate M's and P's birthdays, but they close at 11:30 (as pretty much all bars do), so we went to Pasha, the dance club, for about 30 minutes until they closed as well. We met this nice guy in his late thirties who works for Goldman Sachs and ended up going back to his hotel room about a five-minute walk away to drink beer, chat, and (in the case of myself, P, E, and M) soak up the luxury. It was like being in another world. There was a huge (and I do really mean HUGE) arrangement of star gazer lilies in the lobby, which made the whole lobby smell good. The room had AC and really comfortable furniture and a balcony and everything.

Here are two anecdotes about that night that I think say something about Indian culture: first, M and I were out on the balcony for a while. While we were out there, the front desk called the guy whose room it was (the Goldman Sachs guy) to tell him that there were two women on his balcony. Not to tell him to get us off the balcony, or that he's not supposed to have guests late at night (which he's not supposed to), just to tell him that we were there, as if he didn't know.

Second, and in a similar vein, we wanted more beer, so he called room service and ordered six beers and six glasses. So, clearly, there were six people in the room (for those of you keeping track, the sixth person was one of his coworkers). But the guy whose room it was wanted to make sure that the person that brought the beer to the door didn't see any of us (he didn't make us hide in the bathroom or anything, just stay out of the sightline of the door). Clearly he was breaking the rules by having people in his room late at night, but as long as you keep up some sort of pretense of following the rules, no matter how absurd, they don't seem to mind.

I'm really going to miss this place. We leave so soon (a week and a half, I think). In fact, unfortunately, E may be leaving in a matter of days, because his grandfather has taken quite ill and may not live much longer, so E wants to go see him as soon as possible. It's looking like we may have nearly a week more of work to do, since IMED is working on finding some dropped-out borrowers for us to survey (I'll explain later why this is important). So we might have to finish up the last bit of work without E, but of course that's just fine. He did get here and start doing work a week before we did. And of course family is much more important than any of this research silliness.

Well, we're off for E's last trip to Mamalapuram.

nonfiction

As you will note if you look to the right side of your screen, I have solved my reading dilemma. For a couple days I didn't read much of anything (except for a few articles out of a copy of The Economist that E bought), and then I settled on a nonfiction book that I brought with me that is not quite as academic as the Krugman or Keynes that I foolishly brought with me. Since virtually the entire field of mainstream economics is essentially pro-globalization (which is not to say that we don't examine the problems and inequities it causes, because we do--Joseph Stiglitz's books are one good example), I find that it's helpful to do some reading that takes a more critical look at globalization from a standpoint other than textbook economics. The last couple books I tried in this vein were unneccessarily hostile and flippant and horribly written, but William Greider is an excellent and even-handed writer, so I'm looking forward to this one.

obscene

As I mentioned in my last post, I have (in my opinion, at least) an interesting cultural analysis of my run in with Ravi prepared for you, but today was a long day of work, and I have a long evening of deciphering bad handwriting and stapling ahead of me, so we'll save that for another day. One thing I forgot to mention about Ravi was that when I was finding out his name and mobile number, I also found out that he's only 15. Which doesn't mean that he can't already be a lecherous little pervert who goes around groping people because he can get away with it, but it does make it, in my mind, more likely that he's a product of his culture with who has had a difficult life, no good role models, and no opportunity to learn self-control. And as Muffin, who has spent time in India, pointed out, Chennai is a conservative city--it's not like Mumbai or Bangalore. Even though I do my painstaking best to avoid even a hint of cleavage or the sight of a bra strap, it's probably not all that wise or respectful of me to be wearing tank tops around (that's what I was wearing when I got groped--a ribbed cotton tank top from Old Navy). I dress conservatively at work, as I've mentioned, but in the evenings, we're mostly hanging out at home, going out to eat, or doing things like going to the internet place. Of course there are Indians all these places, but I'm not with them or interacting directly with them (except for waiters and stuff) so I just don't think about it as much. And the last time I spent 2 months in a developing country (Mexico), it was mandatory that I dress in a way that was considered culturally appropriate (all skirts, no bare shoulders, no bare knees, etc), and there's a part of me that is rebelling against that a little, I suppose. I guess what it comes down to is that there's only about 3 inches between my throat and where the shadow of my cleavage starts, so lots of things seem low cut on me. And it's hot here, and I hate being told what to wear or being made to feel that my body is inherently obscene and has to be covered like some unsightly scar. I want to go back to the US where guys just think I'm fat and don't, for the most part, try to molest me (a creepy guy on the bus tried to show me his penis once, but I escaped before he could get his fly down).

Okay, I think I've worked through most of my rage, and I promise to post a dispassionate and interesting essay on the cultural issues raised by little Ravi sometime soon. Thanks for bearing with me as I drone on about this.

P.S. Remember my problem where I couldn't view my blog? It turns out that I was a victim of censorship! (Not very effective censorship, however, because I could still post.) Read a little blurb from The Economist about it here (scroll down just past the picture of the boat and look for the word "India" in bold).

ravi the frotteurist*

Well, I had a very interesting, and rather unpleasant, cultural experience last night. I'll warn you at the outset: I will be going into excruciating detail about it, so this will be even longer than my usual marathon posts.

So, E and I decided to come back to Chennai on Sunday night. We got home, ordered some Pizza Hut (I know, we're so bad...but E is always the instigator when we eat American food), and I went to the internet place right by where we live to do a little emailing before the pizza arrived. Like many internet places, this one has a little loft where most of the computers are, and the people that work there and take your money and all are downstairs. I'm using a computer next to the wall, and there was no one at the computer to my left. There were maybe two other guys using computers in the loft area.

At some point, it ended up that I was up there with only one other internet user, and he was sitting at the computer right next to me. But I didn't really notice any of this happening, because I was engrossed in what I was doing. Then the guy next to me, who was a young-looking Indian, tapped my leg with his finger to ask me a question. The fact that he tapped my leg seemed mildly weird, since I think that the shoulder is the most common and appropriate place to touch a stranger, but whatever. It hardly seemed like a big deal, and you never know what is appropriate when you're in another culture. He seemed to be setting up a Yahoo account, and he was asking me questions about how to do it. This all seemed very reasonable and normal: he could see that I was using my Yahoo account, implying that I'm familiar with how it works, and his questions seemed like normal questions for someone who does not speak very good English.

But he kept asking me questions, and they got more confusing and less clear. And the next time he tapped me to get my attention, it seemed like he was going to tap me on the shoulder, but instead he ended up lightly tapping, with one finger, the side of my breast. I'm sure many of you are thinking that the red flags should have gone up at this point, but look at it from my perspective: my breasts are big, and they stick out, and people sometimes bump or touch them without meaning to. And I don't tend to assume that any random person next to which I'm sitting has any lascivious intentions, and I especially try not to assume this with Indians, because it makes me feel like I'm racist. So I just answered his question and went back to my email. The email, not him, was what the bulk of my attention was focused on. He kept asking vague questions and after a while I told him that I'm not sure what he's trying to do and I don't think I can help him.

Some moments later, he leaned over and quietly asked me another question, which I didn't understand. "What?" I said, leaning toward him a little. I can't remember his exact words, but he seemed to be asking for something or to do something. But he wasn't saying what he was asking for, and I was too oblivious to have figured out yet. So finally, exasperated, I said, "You want to do WHAT?"

This was not the right question to ask. In response, he fully grabbed my left breast, and as I pulled away, horrified, he did what I can best describe as a rather revolting licking pantomime. I pushed his shoulder hard and said "No, that's disgusting, don't touch me."

And then I got up and left, right? Well, sure, now that seems like the logical thing to do, but again, look at it from my perspective. I was almost finished with a longish email to my dear friend H, whom I've been neglecting lately and who is doing similar research to ours (the link to his fascinating blog is to the right--unless your computer will display Korean characters, the link probably looks like a bunch of little squares--but the blog is mostly in English). So anyway, I really just wanted to finish my email, and the guy seemed sufficiently chastened by my rebuff. As if to confirm that I'd scared him off, he left his computer shortly after that. As he walked past me, however, he reached down and ran his open palm rather firmly over my breast (the left one again--the poor little thing). It was revolting. More revolting than I would have expected, given that I'm not way hipped up on personal space and all (not like I think it's okay for strangers to touch my boobs, just that I didn't think I'd feel as violated as I did).

So I'm shocked, and for a split second I am totally dumbfounded. I believe, furthermore, that had this happened a couple months ago in the US, I might have remained dumbfounded long enough for him to escape without a response from me. But, I am proud to say, a whirled around and grabbed his arm roughly at the elbow. I didn't yell at him, but I spoke very sharply. I can't remember exactly what I said to him, but it was along these lines: "Hey, you little pervert, that was not okay. That was disgusting and it isn't okay to touch people that way. Don't ever do that to anyone again. Do you want me to call the police?"

I have no idea how much of what I was saying this guy even understood, but he certainly knew the word police, and suddenly his entire demeanor changed. He put his palms together at the chest (you know, like you do in yoga--Indian people do it as a greeting, mostly) and apologized over and over again. I could tell that he was absolutely terrified of the police (for good reason--I'm sure if I had called the cops, who are quite corrupt, they would have beaten him senseless, which is of course not what I really want) and of the people downstairs hearing what I was saying. After his numerous apologies, he tried to explain to me that he had only done it because I am "so beautiful" as if that would somehow make it less inappropriate and creepy. I told him several more times never to touch anyone like that again, and then I let him go.

I quickly finished my email, practically threw a ten rupee note at the cashier guy, and high tailed it to E's room at Broadlands. I told him the story, and of course his first question was, "is the guy still there?" (Which is very sweet, but I also think E is looking for a reason to beat up an Indian.) So I whined and curled up in ball on his bed and discussed my hatred of men while eating my pizza, which had just arrived. I was wishing that I'd slapped him or kicked him in the nuts or at least said something more to him. After mulling it over with E a bit, I went back to the internet place and told them what the guy had done. We have to write down a bunch of info everytime we use the internet there (oh Indian bureaucracy, we bow down to your awesome size and power), so I asked for his name. He had just written "Ravi", but he'd written his mobile number, and I got the guy to give it to me (totally illegal, I'm sure).

I haven't actually done anything with the number, and I probably won't, but I'm still thinking about it.

Meanwhile, this whole incident has gotten me thinking about a lot of very interesting cultural issues, and I'm going to blab all about that, but I'll have to do it later, because this keyboard sucks and I'm tired of typing.

*frotteurist is the clinical term for a person who gets off by rubbing up against strangers, or something like that. I'm playing fast and loose with the definition in this context, but it's a fun word to use. Either Rebel or MJ, both Psych majors, taught it to me, so props to both of them, since I can't remember which it was.

birthdays, up late, literature

Whatever bizarre glich was preventing me from viewing my blog (and your much-appreciated comments) seems to have resolved itself, because all is back to normal. I was intending to post some more pictures today, but evidently I took the cord for my camera out of my bag, so maybe later. We're in Mamalapuram (of course, 'cause it's the weekend), and the internet place here is much nicer and more reliable than the one near us in Chennai, so posting pictures is much easier here. I hope I didn't leave my camera cord in Chennai.

This past Monday night was the six-month anniversary of my dad's death, so I used it as an excuse to go out to a nice bar in Chennai and have a lot to drink. M wasn't feeling well, so just E came with me, and we had a nice time and ended up talking to this nice Indian guy at the table next to us. I've probably mentioned that M's birthday is tomorrow, the 24th. Maybe I haven't mentioned the cool Dutch woman, P, that works for Oxfam in Chennai and that we've befriended at Broadlands. Her birthday is on the 25th. In conversation with K, the Indian guy, I discover that his birthday is the 26th. So, I think this is fabulous and I insist that he come to Mamalapuram with us on Friday night to celebrate. The cool thing was that he drove us down here in his car, which is much faster and nicer than taking the bus. And I sat in the front seat, where the driver would be in an American car, and told K all about how in the US, people don't constantly honk and run stop signs and weave indiscriminately between lanes and stuff. But I have to say, once you were used to it, I bet driving in India would be a lot of fun.

I stayed up very late last night and the night before. I keep intending to stay up until sunrise so that I can watch the sun rise over the ocean (yes, I know you can see that on the east coast of the US, but as a life-long west coast resident, it seems like a novelty to me). I keep making it until about 4:30 or so and then crapping out and going to bed (of course, I've usually had a bit to drink at this point, so it makes me even more sleepy). We've been hanging out with a bunch of people, mostly Brits, that work for an NGO called Earth Aid (I'm not sure exactly what they do but it involves health clinics and female empowerment), and we've ended up dancing and hanging out late into the night at one of their houses (they are here for a while, so they actually rent real places to live). Apparently no one cares if you play music very loudly at 3 a.m. in India. So it hasn't been a very productive weekend, nor a particularly restful one, but it has been lazy and fun, and there wasn't much productive I needed to accomplish anyway.

One thing I did this weekend was finish The World According to Garp. It was very good, but I think I've been spoiled forever for John Irving novels because the first one I read was A Prayer for Owen Meany, which I thought was stunning and incredible, so I think maybe the other ones just can't live up to it (and I've only read two others: Garp and A Widow for One Year). My dad once commented (as I'm sure many others have in the past) that John Irving basically writes about the same stuff over and over: people with weird sexual hangups or proclivities, children growing up with only one parent or a parent of unknown origin, people with weird voices or speech impediments, private schools for boys, writers, etc. And actually, there were some interesting parallels between Garp and the last book I read, Everything is Illuminated, which was also quite good (and fascinating and bizarre; I definitely recommend it). Stories within stories, younger men with older women, writing about being a writer, etc. I feel like I need to move onto something very different next, but I'm not sure what. I have some nonfiction with me that I've been wanting to read, but it's difficult to concentrate on anything complex when you're always kind of hot and kind of sleepy (which is why I had to put down Currencies and Crises by Paul Krugman after just 3 chapters: it's very readable compared to some other scholarly economic works, but pop economics it ain't). I didn't bring another book to Mamalapuram with me, and I might stay here tonight and go back to Chennai early Monday, so I'm thinking of perusing some of the many tiny used book stores here to see if I can find something interesting.

More pictures tonight if you're lucky, otherwise maybe I can upload them sometime this week at the IMED office. I've heard it's really hot in the US; I hope everyone is not suffering too much (especially since I'm not really suffering too much--you just get used to the heat and then it almost never bothers you). As E would say, peace out.

big rats and cute babies

Okay, so for some reason I haven't been able to view my blog all week, but I seem to be able to post, so I will just go ahead and do that and trust that the rest of you can access it, since you seem to be able to. Probably some crazy Indian internet thing. God bless the third world.

We have finished the bulk of our surveying. We surveyed 60 different borrower groups; anywhere from 4 to 10 borrowers per group were surveyed. Our sample size is already above 400, and we'll do a little more surveying next week. The lack of bias in our sample is certainly questionable, but at least we have a really big sample (big for a student project, anyway). And again, my mantra: we're learning so much. Going to the group meetings has been mostly lots of fun; the women often seem vaguely amused by or in awe of you because you are a white American. At one meeting they gave me a bindi and some flowers for my hair, and many of the groups have been inexplicably excited to have their picture taken with me. Here is me holding a particularly adorable baby (at the meeting after the one where they gave me the bindi):

Next week, we will have just one group of enumerators out surveying, while the rest of them stay at the IMED office and translate some of IMED's records from Tamil into English for us.

One thing I haven't posted pictures of (or even taken pictures of) is where we live: Broadlands Lodge. It's not all that nice, but it is a very old building with lots of charm, and our room is large and has a nice patio area in back. We meet cool people there and we generally like it.

Last night, I was in bed, listening to my ipod, and M was out on the patio reading. She had one small light on out on the patio, and a small light in our room was on, but otherwise it was quiet and relatively dark. Muffled by my headphones, I hear what sounds like some sort of whooping noise. I ignore it, because India is as full of noise as it is of garbage, so you learn to tune it out. But then I hear it again, accompanied by what sounds like someone saying my name. I sit up and discover that M is standing on her chair on the patio, yelling for me. Apparently, she felt something around the toes of one of her feet; there are always flies and mosquitos and random phantom itches, so at first she just moved her foot somewhat mindlessly. At this point, she saw what she described as an enormous rat's ass followed by a very long rat's tail scurrying under the opposite chair and into the darkness. She wanted me to check to make sure the rat was gone before she got off the chair. It was gone, of course, with all the screaming and with me making whatever freaked-out noises I was making as I peered cowardishly around the corner to look for the rat (I know "cowardishly" probably isn't a word, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to make "cowardly" into an adverb).

We were aware of the presence of this enormous rat on the premises (I haven't really seen it, but I did catch it out of the corner of my eye once, and it appeared to be the size of a small beaver), but it usually stays away from light and noise. There are also cats that live at Broadlands (a male and female cat, who have four adorable kittens), but I think the rat is bigger than the cats are. I did see one of the cats with a very large mouse (or a normal sized rat, I suppose) in it's mouth.

So, yeah. The rodents creep me out, but not as much as I might expect. And happily, I haven't seen any cockroaches in our room, which would actually freak me out more, because I assume a cockroach is way more likely to climb up the side of your bed than a rat.

technical difficulties

For some reason yesterday and today when I tried to look at my blog, the computer couldn't find the website. So I'm not sure if this post will even show up, which is okay, because I don't really have time to write at the moment. Things are fine, and probably this weekend there will be pictures and more stories about surveying and stuff. Mostly I'm just posting this to see if it will work.

cleaning day

Well, it's the weekend, and I'm still in Chennai. M when to Mamalapuram with a cool Dutch woman who works at an NGO here in Chennai and is staying at Broadlands also. I almost went with them, but decided to stay home and do laundry and clean up our room a little bit. I'm feeling generally sort of scattered and off kilter, so I think spending some time alone doing something meditative like laundry will be beneficial. Also, I'm wearing my last pair of clean underwear. E is also still in Chennai, but he is having some "E time" today, seeing a movie and probably chilling in an air conditioned coffee shop.

As for surveying, the first week seems to have gone reasonably well. We surveyed around 250 people, I think (which in and of itself is a respectable sample size, but the more the better, so we'll keep at it). I'm concerned with both the quality and the randomness of our data, but we're doing the best we can, and again, learning a great deal. We also need to get a bunch of information from IMED's records before we go, but most of it is in Tamil or way-sloppy English, so we will need our enumerators help with that too.

I think one of my enumerators has a crush on me. He's the one that always asks if I ate breakfast, and he gave me a flower on Thursday, and on the rickshaw ride home asked if he could "party" with M, E, and I. I told him maybe after the project is over because I didn't know what else to say. Oh, and totally randomly, this Singaporean guy that we met at Broadlands said the nicest thing to me. I went downstairs to get a beer, and I went over to say hi, and he said, "You look beautiful this evening." I assure you, I have not looked beautiful once while in this country, but I had just showered, I was wearing a pretty skirt and some matching beaded necklaces, and I had my hair down, which is an extreme rarity. Maybe he realized for the first time that I actually have hair. Anyway, when you feel gross all the time, it's nice to get a bit of flattery.

Well, today is cleaning day, not blogging day. More later.

not so much with the brevity

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but we started surveying borrowers on Monday and it's been an insane, consuming, and tiring undertaking. Before I delve into that, I will reassure you, as if it is even necessary, that I was not on a commuter train in Mumbai and was not hurt or killed in the bombing. I'm deeply embarassed to say that I don't really know anything about it. I got a worried email from B and so I called my mom and said, "Did something bad happen in India?" I had a fantasy that I would keep up with world events while here by reading NYT.com and Economist.com, but there's only so long I care to spend in one of these internet places, and I prefer to spend it writing my blog and reading (and occasionally responding to) correspondence. M and E were watching TV at Broadlands when I left to grab some dinner and then come here, and I think there was a thing on TV about it, but I wasn't even really paying attention. For some reason a bombing seems like no big deal these days. A sad state of affairs, I suppose.

So, surveying. This whole summer research project is, as you know, a requirement of my master's program. Therefore, I believe it is best regarded as a learning experience, a sort of "real world" class in field researching. I say this because the surveying itself, like all the work that led up to it, has not really turned out as we had expected or hoped, and in three days I have learned a LOT about what to do and not do.

This was the general plan: IMED's Field Assistants (FAs) conduct around 3 borrower group meetings a day. M, E, and I would each take 3 of the enumerators we hired (actually, E takes 4, since we hired 10) and tag along with the FA to the three meetings. We have randomly pre-selected the six borrowers we want to interview at each meeting, plus four alternates in case some are absent (if a randomly chosen borrower is absent, you should really go back and survey them later, or else your data might be biased, but that's a whole other story). We thought that we would get to the meetings, and they would do the usual meeting stuff: say a prayer, do their borrower pledge, take attendance, and do repayment accounting. After that, the FA is supposed to do a training module. We figured that during the module, we'd take the first three women outside and the enumerators would survey them, and then they'd go back in, and we'd get the next three, and there would be minimal disruption to the meeting itself.

Well, let me tell you. First of all, whether the meeting even happens is questionable. Sometimes the group leader is sick or something, so you end up sort of rounding up any six women from the group you can find and surveying them. Sometimes meetings happen, but they don't do the pledge and stuff like you think they're going to, and you're not sure why. Sometimes lots of people are absent. Sometimes two meetings are back-to-back in the same place, so one meeting has ended and another has begun and somehow you have not noticed. Oh, and forget taking 3 women outside to be surveyed. EVERYONE comes outside if you do that, and not only do they watch, but they answer questions for the women, talk to the enumerators, etc. And you don't know what they're saying or what is happening because it's all in Tamil, and the enumerators supposedly all speak English, but quite frankly, their English usually sucks. Also, our survey is apparently written in a confusing way, so we've had to do a great deal of explaining in order to try to get the answers we are looking for. And you never know when an enumerator is making up an answer just because he wants to please you and get done. And you never know what crazy thing a borrower will say. I had two today that claimed not to have small businesses, even though you have to have one to get a loan. It turns out that this woman is a tailor and has a sewing machine, but for some reason answered the questions that would elicit these responses in the negative. Oh, and hardly anyone has business assets (like a sewing machine) because most of the businesses are very non-capital intensive, and I'm supposed to be writing my thesis about business asset acquisition, so, hmmm...

On the other hand, the enumerators are nice guys, and they are learning pretty quickly and by today (their third day) were doing pretty well. All the borrowers are super-nice, and I usually get to play with at least one adorable baby a day, so that's nice. In fact, I have no idea why I find surveying so tiring, because I don't actually do that much. I just look over the completed surveys to find missing stuff, then try to explain what is missing and what they need to ask the borrower, all the while trying desperately to understand what is going on and make sure the right people are being interviewed, if possible.

Another thing about surveying is actually going to the borrowers' neighborhoods. There's plenty of intense poverty just steps away from where I live (there's plenty of it everywhere, really), but I saw some especially intense stuff in the last couple days. Examples: on two separate occasions, a little boy taking a shit on the side of the road (sorry to be so crude, but I somehow feel there's no other way to say it); tiny, furnitureless concrete houses in tiny, labirynthine shanty town-esque places; lots of goats eating from huge piles of garbage; a woman (only 35 years old) who had just died, shrouded in a white sheet and covered with flowers, surrounded by her sobbing, wailing family and friends in the middle of the street. I haven't really talked about the poverty and my reactions to it on this blog much, mostly because it's overwhelming and I don't know how I feel. Now that I see how hard it is to get good, consistent, unbiased data out in the field, what I'm doing seems that much more useless in the face of so much need. But because it is everywhere, and because the poor go about their lives just like the rest of us, it begins to seem normal and I stop caring about it. I stop caring if microfinance works or not, because how can it really matter?

But I think it does matter, and I'm still not ready to give up being a development economist. Give me a couple more days, and we'll see...

On a lighter note, on the second morning of surveying, BJ (the nice young guy who works at OI and has heled us a ton) called me on my cell and in a very awkward and apologetic way told me that he heard from the people at the Saidapet branch that some of the enumerators were making some comments (in Tamil, of course) about, as BJ tactfully put it, cleavage. So he wanted (again, so apologetically) to make sure I would be coming in to the office wearing something as non-cleavage-y as possible (he didn't actually use the world "non-cleavage-y"). He also let M know, but I'm pretty sure the enumerators were talking about me. The thing is, I know that I can't go around wearing the stuff that I wear in the US when I'm around modest female borrowers and 21-year-old Indian guys (who according to BJ have the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old) while working with a conservative Christian organization. What I was wearing, as far as I could tell, was perfectly appropriate. It was a short sleeved button-down top, and I had it buttoned up past my cleavage. It is possible that if I were leaning over you would have been able to see the tiniest bit of something, but not really. And halfway through the day I even buttoned the top button just in case. The problem, I think, is that at one point toward the beginning of the day, when we were giving the enumerators their initial briefing, one of the buttons in the middle came undone, and who knows how long it took me to notice. But it's not like I had a boob hanging out. And you all know that shirts that other people can wear without showing cleavage might show cleavage on me because there's more there to show, so today, since I wore a perfectly innocent v-neck top, I had to wear a scarf around my shoulders to basically cover my whole chest area. So it's kind of annoying. Furthermore, because pale skin is considered beautiful (and a novelty) here, and because the standard female body ideal is a bit heavier here than in the states, I tend to get some unwanted attention from Indian guys. I was talking to one guy in Mamalapuram a couple weeks ago, and he was telling me that he is illiterate, and that he wants to go back to school but is scared to, and I was encouraging him and telling him that his spoken English is excellent, and telling him that I would teach him the English alphabet, and he put his arm around me, and said, "You're so beautiful, you teach me whatever you want." So here I think I'm having a great cultural bonding moment, but it's just some guy hitting on me. Lovely.

A few other things have happened since I last wrote, like me yelling at another rickshaw driver and having 2 more milks at Sparky's, but nothing particularly exciting. Oh, and a happy birthday shoutout to T, whom I thought of all day today as I wrote the date on the completed surveys. And an apology and an exactly one month late happy birthday shoutout to IB, who's birthday passed without me acknowledging it. But I still had jet lag on 12 June, so that's the excuse I'm sticking with.

More pictures soon, more about surveys soon. I miss everyone so much. But I'm also feeling pretty good, very self-confident and capable. I think India is good for that.

pictures and the head bobble

First of all, here are the pictures I was supposed to post last time but was unable to due to technical difficulties:

The Oregon license plate on the wall at Sparky's. Woo Hoo!

The elephant that we saw outside of a Hindu temple in Pondy. Very interesting. E loved it.

M with her shiny bindi and E with his frosting bindi (on the 4th at Sparky's).

This is us in Pondy at the yummy French-Italian restaurant where I always ordered spinach ravioli. I just thought it was a particularly cute picture.

Me finishing my second milk at Sparky's. Note to S: NO, IT'S NOT THE MILK THAT MADE ME SICK! THE WHOLE POINT OF THE ULTRA-SUPER-DUPER PASTEURIZATION IS THAT IT KILLS EVERYTHING IN THE MILK SO IT WON'T GO BAD FOR, LIKE, EVER. STOP BAD MOUTHING THE MILK! p.s. to everyone: isn't that a cute top I'm wearing? I got it here for like 3 bucks at Casablanca.

Anyway, on to the rest of the post. Guess what? We're back in Mamalapuram! Have I mentioned how much I love it here? We went to Yogi's (our favorite restaurant), but the adorable smiley waiter wasn't there like he always is, and we freaked out (well, not really). But then we found out that the regular waiter is in Chennai visiting his wife and baby and the new waiter was the guy's brother, and he had the same adorable smile and mannerisms. Speaking of mannerisms, I think E, M, and I are starting to pick up the Indian head bobble a little bit. They do it when a Westerner would nod: to say yes, when they're listening, when they're contemplating, etc. The problem is that although the motion is predominantly a side-to-side tilt, there's also a slight back and forth shake involved, so instinctively you think people are saying no when they're saying yes. And they so often don't verbalize assent, so you're always like, "Yes? Yes? It is okay?" and they keep bobbling their head at you like you're kinda dumb or something.

Not much else excitement here; the survey schedule is typed up for the first two weeks, the survey forms are printed, and all is set to go. I'm very excited and hope to get a lot of rest this weekend.

sick and stuff

So, I was cursed with a touch of illness yesterday. Opinions vary as to the cause. I think it was too mild to be food poisoning, but I suppose it could have been just a mild case of food poisoning. We had our big ol' 4th of July dinner (and I had 2 glasses of milk, thank you very much) and then came home and chilled out. I had noticed earlier that day that (***SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT MY BOWEL MOVEMENTS**) my run-of-the-mill India diarrhea had turned into something a bit more intense and frequent, but I didn't think much of it. I felt kind of yucky that night, but I thought it was just because I was really full (and I hadn't been that full in quite a while). But then I woke up at 6 a.m., had some more of that lovely diarrhea, and puked my guts out. I stayed at home that day, drank water, pooped out all the water I drank (I'm sorry, I know it's gross, but this is part of my India experience too...), and dry heaved a little because I felt like I was going to throw up but there was nothing in my stomach. Oh, and there was some weird power strike so the fan was off most of the day, so I just lay in bed sweating and feeling miserable.

But, by evening I was much revived, and managed to eat dinner. I'm feeling a bit queasy after today's lunch, and things still aren't going very well with my "plumbing", but I'm not nearly as sick as E got, for which I'm quite grateful.

While I was sick at home, M and E came up with our surveying schedule for the first week. Our sample is not exactly as random as it is supposed to be, because for logistical reasons that would be sort of impossible (Shhh...don't tell our advisor). But things are all set to go for Monday, which is great.

Here are some pictures from Sparky's on the 4th. You can't really tell, but M and I are wearing sparkly bindis (those dots that Hindus or Buddhists sometimes wear on their foreheads...it's religious/cultural origin is as a representation of the Third Eye, but it is now not unusual for them to be worn primarily for decorative purposes, as M and I do). Anyway, M thought it would be funny to use the red frosting from one of the cupcakes to give E a bindi too (yes, I know, we're so culturally sensitive). And I'm sure E would want me to tell you that he was not happy about his frosting bindi and got it off of his forhead post haste.

Okay, just kidding about the pictures. Blogger is being annoying and not letting me upload them. I'll try again later.

god bless america

Happy 4th of July! Today has been a good day so far. We hired 10 ennumerators (the young guys who speak Tamil and--theoretically--English who will actually administer the surveys to the borrowers). This charity called the Tamil Nadu Foundation found the enumerators for us, and essentially as a form of repayment, they want us to make a donation. India is interesting (and kind of refreshing) because if people want something from you they just come right out and say it. He wasn't rude or tacky about it, just direct. And their charity does good stuff, so we're going to see if we can get our parents to give a little and maybe USF to give a little, and we will too. Anyway, the survey is translated, so now all we have to do is get the consent form translated and pick our random sample (and from that make up a surveying schedule). So actual surveying will start on Monday. I can hardly believe it. I can also hardly believe how long it's taken to get to this point, but this is supposed to be a learning experience, and we're learning a lot.

So I think we're going to just chill out this afternoon (I know what you're thinking: isn't "chill out" all they ever do?) and then tonight, as I mentioned, we're going to the 4th of July bash at Sparky's. I think I might have two glasses of milk. I think I might just sit there all night in the air conditioning, drinking milk.

Oh, one interesting Pondy story. We rented a motorized scooter thing (like a motorcycle, but wussier, I guess), and E drove it to a beach 10 kilometers away in crazy Indian traffic with me riding on the back. He was freaked out, I could tell, but he was an excellent driver. M went on the back of the scooter of a guy she met in Pondy (just a friend; Romeo is still very much on her mind). In theory it's incredibly dangerous to be out in crazy traffic with huge trucks and buses whizing by (sometimes less than a foot away) while you're on a tiny scooter going really fast with no helmets. But you regularly see whole families, including toddlers, on these scooters (the toddlers aren't driving, of course). E went pretty slow, for which I was greatful. And since there are so many bicycles and random things on the road too, none of the Indians care if you go slow, they just go around you.

And because I've been here for nearly a month, Indian traffic no longer seems odd or scary to me. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the crazy traffic situation in most developing countries, but I will explain anyway. Imagine a street like Burnside. Replace about 2/3rds of the cars with motorcycles and autorickshaws. Have a cow, dog, or goat wander into traffic every once in a while. Ignore the painted lanes; they are an irrelevant pretense. If someone is in your way, feel free to swerve into oncoming traffic to pass them. Feel free to run red lights. Go as fast as you can. Honk your horn at least every 30 seconds. If you are getting off the bus, don't expect it to stop; it will just slow down enough for you to jump off. If you are walking, walk in the street, because although there is almost always a sidewalk, it is almost always blocked by something (a pile of rocks, a woman selling fruit, a pile of garbage, sleeping children, etc). Cross the street anywhere you want, and feel free to dash in front of fast-moving vehicles.

Enjoy the fireworks or whatever you're doing, and if I don't die in a car crash, I'll post again soon.

milk has been made available!

So, I'm way behind on stuff I want to say. I suppose it's because I go on forever about each topic so I don't have time to cover them all. Anyway, we had fun that other night at Zara's and at the nightclub Pasha, which was incredibly loud and crowded and expensive, but somehow much more fun than American night clubs, which I don't care for. Maybe it's because none of the Indian guys were leery or creepy (a welcome change from the Indian guy on the beach who told me he was watching me sleeping), and because expensive in India is just normal in US terms. Or maybe it was just the novelty of seeing hip young Indians on a packed dance floor dancing to Indian pop music. Anyway, we danced like crazy, and had a great time. Our British friends have left India and are on their way to Kenya, and we miss them! They were super-cool and fun.

Anyway, we got some more work done in Chennai, and then we went down to Pondicherry for the weekend, which is where I am now. "Pondy", as they call it, is about 2 more hours south of Mamalapuram by bus, and it's an old French colony, so there's some neat architecture and all the streets are called "Rue Blah Blah". I've done some more shopping while I've been here, acquiring a skirt, a dress, a scarf, two shirts, and two gifts. We went to this great department store type place called Casablanca (Muffin, if you're reading, which you BETTER BE, it was a lot like Odels) which is where I got the tops and the scarves and one of the gifts. It's great because I found an adorable beaded and tye-dyed shirt, but the sleeves were too short, so their tailor will just take them off for me for free. And in this heat a sleeveless shirt is better anyway.

But let's get down to the real topic of this post: MILK. As you may know, I LOVE MILK. And as you may imagine, they don't really drink milk in India, at least not the sort of milk we drink in the US. I haven't been to a grocery store yet, so I'm unclear on the exact milk situation, but I'm under the impression that there's milk that comes in a bag and milk that comes in a box (think of a cardboard box like chicken broth comes in). I have no idea what the story with the bag milk is or what it really is. The boxed milk is almost like regular milk. Here's the deal: most of us drink pasteurized milk. I don't know exactly what pasteurization is, but I know it involves heating the milk to kill bad stuff and make it last longer. Certain brands of organic milk sold in the US are ultra-pasteurized, which means they're heated more or hotter or something, and they last longer. It also makes the milk taste a little different. Opinions vary, but I think it tastes better. I drink ultra-pasteurized milk in the states even though I can't really afford $4 a half-gallon. The boxed milk in India is something beyond ultra-pasteurized. Something that will allow it to keep, unopened, at room temperature for quite a while.

So anyway, the other night we went to a restaurant in Chennai called Sparky's, which is owned and run by an American guy named Tom and specializes in Western-style food. I had a burger and fried zucchini. Yummy yummy. After dinner, we were chatting with Tom, and I suddenly got an idea: "Do you have any milk?" I asked him. He seemed a little confused but said that they did have boxed milk, but he wasn't sure if any of it was cold (because you don't refridgerate it until it's open). I said, "I don't care. Throw a couple ice cubes in. I'll pay however much you want. Can I please please please have a glass of milk?" So they brought me a glass of milk, and it was heaven. Cold, creamy, full-fat heaven. I hadn't had any milk in three weeks (other than what they put in our coffee, and who knows what that is?), and I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I had that glass. I was making noises of such ecstacy while drinking it that M and E asked me if I wanted to be alone at the table with my milk.

We're going back to Sparky's for their 4th of July buffet, and I'm going to have at least two glasses.

assertiveness training

The fun (and the spending too much money) continues. Last night the cool British couple that we met in Mamalapuram were in Chennai, so we went out to Zara’s again, and then to this very hip nightclub called Pasha. The evening was pretty interesting, but for now I will start with obtaining transportation there because I think it’s a rather illustrative anecdote of one aspect of my life here.

We wanted to get a ride to Zara’s in an auto-rickshaw, which are the little three-wheeled vehicles that are used as taxis. This is what they look like:

The thing about the rickshaw drivers is that they will almost certainly try to rip you off if you’re white, because they figure you probably don’t know any better. But since we’ve been here for a few weeks, and since we go to the same or similar places repeatedly, we have a good sense of how much we feel that we should pay (it’s probably still more than a local would pay, but hey, we can afford it, so I really don’t mind). So you have to haggle with the drivers to get a reasonable price. Our tactic is to decide how much we’re willing to pay beforehand, and then start about 20 rupees under that and talk them down as they talk us up. The most effective way to get a good price is to start walking away, and even if they call your bluff and let you leave it’s not hard to find another rickshaw.

A rickshaw has a front seat for the driver and then a bench behind that will more or less fit three people. M, E, and I sort of have to squeeze together to all fit (mostly because my hips are huge), but it’s not really uncomfortable, other than the fact that we’re sweating on each other. So for the five of us, we decided M would sit on my lap and cool Brit boy would sit on cool Brit girl’s lap, and we’d just sort of cram ourselves in for the ride. A couple rickshaw drivers wouldn’t even let all five of us into one rickshaw (which is funny because I’ve seen rickshaws with literally nine or ten Indians packed into them), but there was one driver who agreed to take us in one rickshaw but wanted to charge us Rs. 100. The driver is one of the regulars on our street and has taken us places before, so we know him a little bit. E talked him down to 80, but we wanted to pay only 70, so E politely persisted in saying that we would only pay 70. I was looking the other way and didn’t see this, but according to E, the guy raised his eyebrows and stared at him rather derisively and condescendingly and said, "You make joke?" as though E was stupid and ridiculous for suggesting such a low price (when in fact Rs. 70 is quite reasonable).

Let me pause for a moment to say something about E, since most of you don’t really know him. He is incredibly kind and infinitely patient. You all know how annoying I am, and he’s been spending practically every day with me for nearly a solid nine months, and he puts up with me serenely and with good humor. He doesn’t raise his voice (well, not in anger–he raises his voice all the time to sing annoying songs that then get stuck in my head) and he doesn’t lose his temper. Not usually, anyway. The cultural adjustment has been trying for him, as it has been for me, because people are always getting in your face trying to sell you something, trying to rip you off, etc. As E puts it, "I feel like I have to be an asshole and I don’t like doing that."

So anyway, the rickshaw driver was being a jerk and insulting E, but I didn’t really notice. What I did notice is that E suddenly said, a little loudly and very sharply, something to the effect of "Fuck you. I don’t want a ride from you anyway. Just get away from me." I was totally scandalized. He says he just sort of snapped, and that it almost never happens to him in the U.S., but it’s happened a few times in India. I think I know what he means. I’ve also found myself feeling more hostile toward people that I expect to try to take advantage of me. I had an experience with a rickshaw driver where he wanted me to pay extra because he took me to the wrong place, and I said I’d give him 20 rupees more and that was it. I needed to give him 70 total and all I had was a 100 rupee bill. The driver claimed to have only 13 rupees of change, so I got out of the rickshaw to go up to a little store to get some change. So soon the rickshaw driver is following me and has magically produced 30 rupees to give me in change. Without even really thinking about it, I gave him the 100, snatched the 30 away from him, and said, "You lied to me about not having change, and you lied to me about how much the toll was (there’s a toll road between Mamalapuram and Chennai and they tell you the toll is Rs. 50 but it’s really 45, and they try to keep your Rs. 5 of change), and you think I’m just a stupid American tourist and that I don’t know any better, but I do, and I really don’t appreciate your behavior." And then I stalked off as he was no doubt cursing at me in Tamil. I’m not even sure why I was so angry; I guess things just start to build up. Already that morning the guy at the guesthouse tried to charge me for 6 nights instead of 5, and the guy with whom I negotiated to get the rickshaw ride from Mamalapuram to Chennai told me that it would be more expensive to go to Saidapet (the neighborhood in Chennai where the OI office is) when I know damn well that Saidapet is farther south and therefore closer to Mamalapuram than a lot of other places in Chennai.

The hostility and aggressiveness is a weird side of me, and from what I can tell, a weird side of E too. It’s good because it makes me feel confident and assertive when I’m able to say, "No, Saidapet is in the south. It should be cheaper, not more expensive." But on the other hand, I have to remind myself that for as many Indians who are trying to cheat me and getting in my face, there are so many who have been incredibly kind and helpful (one example: the guy I buy water and TP from in Mamalapuram directed me to another store where I could put more money on my phone. I was going to buy water from the first guy, but all I had was a 500 rupee note, so I said, "I’ll buy the water on my way back" and he said, "No, it’s okay, you take the water now, pay me on the way back."). And of course I can always think back to the women at yesterday’s group meeting, or all the helpful people at OI, and then I feel downright warm and fuzzy about this country again.

As with my last Indian inconvenience, there is a happy epilogue to the story, which is that we found a driver who would take all five of us in one rickshaw for Rs. 70. He turned out to be a nice, funny guy, and we got him to take this picture of us all crammed into the rickshaw:

And in addition to the 70 rupees, we also gave him a one dollar bill, because he found out that three of us were from America and many Indians really like getting foreign money, especially dollars. So in theory we spent 115 rupees on the ride, but when people are kind and honest, you want to give them more, you know? And E’s little outburst was pretty hilarious to the rest of us, especially since he’s normally so calm and agreeable.

On an entirely unrelated note, isn’t this a great picture of E and I?

group meeting

So, after a little rebellion, a little football-watching, a little beer, and a lot of sleep, I snapped out of my funk and came back to Chennai on Tuesday morning, where I met E and M at the OI office. They seemed surprised to see me, especially E (and especially because I got there earlier than they did, and I had come all the way from Mamalapuram). We fine-tuned the survey a bit more, then we went to a borrower group meeting to observe and to pre-test the survey afterwards. The basic idea with pre-testing is that you make sure the questions make sense and are interpreted correctly by the people who are answering them.

The group meeting was very interesting. As I mentioned before, all OI borrowers are women (technically, OI is just the sort of an umbrella organization--the actual MFI is called IMED, which stands for Intermission Micro Enterprise Development or something like that). Anyway, the women form groups of usually about 20 borrowers, and they each get an initial loan of somewhere between Rs. 1000 and 4000 (US$22 to 89). Group leaders are responsible for collecting weekly repayment (probably Rs. 20-40 per week) on Sundays and depositing the money into the group's joint bank account. IMED is given checks drawn against the account which they cash every week to receive the repayment (BJ says this repayment situation is far from ideal, but there were a lot of problems with how IMED was working, and that's why Jim and BJ are there working on fixing them). Anyway, during the meetings, they take role, pray (it seems a little weird to me, because a lot of the women are Hindu, but IMED and OI are Christian organizations, so it makes sense), and the loan assistant person from IMED does a training session. The meeting we went to had a lesson about confidence. It seemed pretty cheesy based on what was being translated to me, but these are women that are generally in need of confidence and impowerment, so I think it's a good thing.

All of the women were incredibly kind and open. They all sit on the concrete floor (the meetings take place in one of the borrowers' homes) but they gave us chairs to sit in and welcomed us very warmly. Afterwards we used our OI helper to translate the survey and administer it to two of the women, which went pretty smoothly and was extremely helpful in making a few additional edits. They insisted on giving us tea and cookies (best tea I've had since I've been here, and the cookies tasted like those Girl Scout shortbread cookies, which I love) and had us all sign the group's guest book. It was really cool to be at an actual microfinance group meeting, to meet the women and hear about their microenterprises and their lives. One woman told a story about how her husband is a drunk and beats her and her children, and it was clearly very upseting to her, but moments later she seemed joyful and silly, joking with the women around her and telling E (through our translator) that he needed to shave (she was right).

So, I'm feeling really good about our project again and very excited about meeting and interacting with more borrowers. It is a huge privilege to be able to attend their meetings and survey them, and I'd like to learn to say that in Tamil so I make sure it gets across. We emailed a potential translator today, we have an appointment with someone that can help us hire enumerators on Friday, and we have our release form written, so things are really coming together. And the cool British couple is in Chennai tonight, so we'll go out and have some fun.

I'll try to post more pictures soon. I have some of Chennai and some of us being goofy. Only one of the computers in the internet place near us will talk to my computer, and it isn't working right now, so we'll see how that goes.

all better

I'm back in Chennai and things are much, much better. I still want to be an economist and for the most part I really like the Indian people. I want to tell you all about it, but I'm in a rush at the moment so I just wanted to say I'm fine and no longer freaking out. And I want to give a shout out to T and Rebel for their words of comfort and concern (and to B for the phone call). More very soon!

AWOL

E and M are in Chennai. I'm still in Mamalapuram. I'm not supposed to be. I can't explain exactly why I'm still here, but it's possible that I'm having a minor freak-out. Very minor. Nothing to be concerned about. Maybe the final stages of cultural adjustment? Maybe wondering whether I really want to be a development economist? There are still a couple Westerners here that I know (the dutch guy, the documentary chick, some random French stoner) so I'm not exactly all alone. And plus I'm a beloved regular at two restaurants and one little shop (where I buy the necessities: water and toilet paper).

I'll go back to Chennai in the morning.

post script

E is feeling better, and he took all of his Cipro, so hopefully no more relapses. M got a very sweet email from Romeo and is on cloud 9 again. I have a phone and a phone number; I won't post it here for obvious reasons, but I'll send out an email.

european friends, shopping, and random things on fire

We are in Mamalapuram again. Have I mentioned how much I love it here? The awesome British couple that we met last time we were here are back here again, so we've been hanging out with them a ton. We also met another fabulous British woman who is the assistant producer for a documentary about India that the Discovery Channel is producing (note to Muffin: yes, I got her email address), and this cool Dutch lawyer guy who made piles of money and has been travelling around the world for the last two and a half years. It's amazing how many Europeans, in many cases rather young ones (the aforementioned awesome British couple are only 19, but seem quite mature and well-adjusted), seem to take long holidays in South Asia or Africa. We hardly ever meet other Americans, and if we do, they're usually volunteering or working or studying like we are.

So, I did some shopping. I bought a cute red, pink, and gold silk wrap-around skirt (Rs. 150/US$3.33), a silver anklet, a very interesting-looking pendant with three peridot stones (that's my birthstone), peridot earrings (total for all the jewelry was Rs. 1050/US$23.33), and a red and black enameled box to put my share of my dad's ashes in (Rs. 300/US$6.66, which I felt was kind of a rip-off, but I really liked the box, I felt guilty about haggling excessively for someone's final resting place, and when I get home I'm eager to take the ashes out of the spice jar, purchased by my brother at Linens 'n' Things for $1.99, in which they currently reside). I might buy a new lungi (like a sarong, basically) from the woman who keeps harassing us out on the street to look at her stuff. Oh, and I bought a stone pendant carved into the shape of the "om" symbol (Rs. 40/$0.89) from some guy on the beach who kept bugging us.

My section of the survey has been revised per my advisor's comments, and he seems basically happy with it, so after a few more minor changes and some comments from Jim and BJ at OI (which we will get Monday morning) it will be ready to translate. Translating it into Tamil and then typing it into Tamil will take a while, and then we have to pre-test it to make sure the questions make sense and ellicit the answers we want, and then we have to hire ennumerators (people who speak Tamil and English to actually administer the survey) and then all systems will be go. The process of finding ennumerators and a translator has been started, but it will take some time to get it all done and I don't think we will be able to begin surveying this week like we'd hoped. On one hand, we're basically getting done everything that we should be, and we're doing it in a fairly reasonable time frame, but on the other hand, this place deeply saps my motivation, and I know we could be working faster. I'm having a difficult time because I don't like Chennai much, so I feel sort of hot and gross and unmotivated a lot of the time that I'm there. Here in Mamalapuram, I feel great, but I'm having too much fun to get much work done (although I did get up at 9 a.m. when the internet place opens to email the survey revisions to our advisor, despite the fact that I was up until nearly 6 a.m. the night before, so I'm trying to be dilligent, at least).

Some Indian guy just came into the internet place with a green coconut that had a hole cut in the top and something stuck in the hole and lit on fire, creating what looked sort of like a coconut candle, but with a bigger flame. What this is, I have no idea.

I'll try to update more often; my access to internet is generally good; it's mostly laziness that keeps me from posting more frequently. Oh, and also this is probably going to cost me 40 WHOLE RUPEES. That's right, I'm paying nearly a dollar to keep you all informed. You're welcome. =)

daddy's girl

Poor E is sick again, so we didn't get much done yesterday (don't ask me why M and I couldn't get work done...India has really sapped my sense of urgency for getting things done). But the good news is that E is doing much better, and as of this morning our survey is finished! Yay! Now if I could only get my flash drive to work on a computer that also has its internet working, we could email it to our advisor. This internet place is starting to drive me nuts, because the internet is always going out, and some of the computers have old operating systems that won't do what you want them to. But it's cheap, it's air conditioned, it's nearby, and I have no reason to believe any other internet places are more reliable, so oh well.

I had sort of an interesting cultural experience two days ago. E and I wanted to get Indian sim cards for our cell phones so that we can use them here cheaply, so one of the office helpers at OI, this very nice older Indian guy, took us to the Airtel store to buy them. We were getting prepaid sim cards, so we pay for the cards and then pay for the minutes before we use them. So in theory, they should require that we provide little or no information to them. But hey, maybe India wants to keep tabs on who has a phone. No problem. So at the Airtel store, they took copies of our passports, the Indian visas in our passports, and a receipt from Broadlands Lodge to prove that that's where we're staying. Then we filled out forms. Then the woman at the Airtel place called in the information to someone. I thought we were all set, but then I discovered that the woman wouldn't activate our cards until we provided a passport-sized photo to attach to our applications.

I like to think that normally I'm fairly patient and tolerant of bureaucracy and hassles and such. After all, I was once a bureaucrat myself. But for some reason I just sort of snapped, and I started channeling my dearly departed father, who had little tolerance for anything that he felt was pointless or illogical. I asked the Airtel woman why she needed a photo of me. "For proof," she said. "Proof of what?" I asked. I can't remember her exact response, but it was some sort of circular non-answer like, "Of your identity" or something. "But I'm standing right here, and there's my passport," I said.

So E dragged me out of the office, fuming, and the helper from OI took us on a sweaty 10 minute walk to a place where they take photos. On the way, I tried to find out from him why the picture was necessary. "For proof," he said. "Proof of WHAT?" I said. We went back and forth a bit, and finally he said, "Because this is how it is done in India." Ah, the truth comes out. He asked, "They don't require a picture in US?" and like the smug, obnoxious American that I apparently am, I told him that no, in the US they don't ask for a bunch of unnecessary information when you're getting a prepaid cell phone, and they NEVER ask for a picture.

Anyway, we got to the photo place, where I discovered that we had to buy a minimum of 8 passport-sized photos. "Why?" I asked, knowing that there is no meaningful answer. Besides, at that point I was just being petty, because to have my picture taken and 8 photos printed cost Rs. 80, which is less than US$2. I resigned myself to my fate and placated myself by refusing to smile in my photo. And E cheered me up a little by saying "Well, it's good that we have extra photos, we might need one later if we want to buy an ice cream cone." We walked back to the Airtel office and procured our Indian sim cards, only to discover that they won't work in our phones because we need some kind of software upgrade. "You need to go to the Motorola store," the Airtel woman tells me, but despite the fact that I ask, she can't be bothered to find out where the Motorola store is. They are not all about the customer service in India. In fact, I'm starting to feel as though the Indians that are nice to me are doing so because they know I am a rich white person and they want something from me, and if they don't want anything they aren't particularly nice to me. This is, of course, an overgeneralization, and it's also a reaction to being a comparatively rich minority in a country that's culturally very different. But I do find myself feeling more annoyed and jaded. Hopefully that feeling will pass soon.

The epilogue to this story is that it turns out that we can buy an Indian cell phone for Rs. 500 (US$11), so we're just going to do that instead of going through the hassle of making our phones compatible. When I get my cell phone (probably today) I will email the number to y'all.

more pictures!

My mojito from Zara's.

M and Romeo at Zara's.

The server lighting one of the Frenchie's cigarettes at Zara's.

Beach at Mamalapuram. Like everywhere else in India, filled with garbage.

At our guest house's restaurant in Mamalapuram with some fellow travellers and locals we befriended.

A fishing boat that was clearly donated by Catholic Relief Services after the tsunami. These are all over the beach. Seems funny that CRS feels the need to advertise.

More CRS fishing boats.

More travellers we met in Mamalapuram. That old guy with the tattoo was trying to do a trick with his beer and he spilled it all over himself.

pictures!

Me on the bus on the way to Mamalapuram

Lakshmi Lodge, our guest house in Mamalaparam. Our room is just to the right. We LOVED those swinging chairs.

Another shot of Lakshmi Lodge

The beach at Mamalapuram

An intersection in Chennai

More pictures soon...I'm having trouble uploading more pictures to blogger right now, so that's all for the moment.

work and play

Well, we've been living a bit of the high life since we got back to Chennai on Thursday. On Thursday night we went to sort of an American-style pub called the Bike and Barrel. By India standards it was pretty obscenely expensive--I paid Rs. 800 (about $17.70) for three glasses of wine (a pinot noir made in India--not too bad), dinner (pasta with chicken and shrimp--yum!), my share of an appetizer (something called "potato nachos" which tasted like tater tots with cheese and peppers on them), taxes, and tip. And I suppose I was also paying for the privilege of sitting in air conditioning for three hours and watching the England-Trinidad and Tobago football match (England won by scoring 2 goals in the last seven minutes of the game--very exciting). The only annoying part was that the music was quite loud, but they did play an entertaining selection of random, often cheesy, often old American hits. The highlights:

• You're the Inspiration by Chicago
• Dancing Queen by Abba
• Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean
• Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees
• Faith by George Michael
• Maneater by Hall & Oates
• All I Want to Do is Make Love to You by some annoying chick (note to B: I nearly died when this song came on)

As if that wasn't luxury enough, on Friday night we went to an even swankier place. First, let me rewind a few days back to Mamalapuram and give you an update on M's love life. There were these three French hippies staying at our guest house, and M kept exchanging looks with the really cute one. Eventually she met and started hanging out with them, and a little romance blossomed between "Romeo" and her. As luck would have it, they were planning to head to Chennai about the same time we were, and also planning to stay at Broadlands Lodge, which is where we're staying too.

So they arrived Friday night, and we decided to go to Zara's, which is a hip tapas place. I found it rather entertaining. First of all, they have a dress code which forbids men from wearing sandals. Since that's all the Frenchies (as we affectionately call them) brought to India with them (and reasonably so, I feel), the restaurant actually gave them shoes to wear while they were there. The servers were very attentive, and I almost peed my pants when M got out a cigarette and a server rushed over and lit it for her. And they had cocktails! With ice! After drinking a lot of lukewarm Kingfisher (a local beer--their slogan is "The King of Good Times"), my mojito and my whiskey sours were wonderful. A little too wonderful, in fact, because I had a few too many. This was coupled with the fact that I hadn't eaten since breakfast and all I had for dinner was 3 shrimp, a piece of "bruchetta" (actually spaghetti sauce on bread, but it was still good), and a piece of fried paneer (Paneer is a soft Indian cheese, a little bit like cottage cheese but it has smaller curds and tastes much better. The fried paneer was sort of like the Indian version of fried mozerella sticks, and it was YUM). So I was pretty wasted last night, and I'm pretty hung over today. And we spent a ton of money. I think it came out to an equivalent of around $35 a person.

So, no more splurging for Jenn. At least not for a little while. In the meantime, we managed to get some work done finally. On Friday we went to the Opportunity International (OI) main office to meet some people and get some more information on how things work. The main person we're working with is a cool guy named BJ (that's not actually his name, but in keeping with my "privacy" policy, I'm just using two of the letters from his name). He just finished an MBA in economic development, one of the requirements of which was field experience, which he got by working for OI in India on a contract basis. After he was done with his MBA program he decided to extend his contract with OI, so he's been here since last September and plans to be here until this coming September. He's 26, and his parents are both from India, but he was born and raised in the US. He's really nice and really helpful (in fact, E and I are in his air conditioned apartment right now, using his wireless internet connection on our laptops).

Anyway, going to the OI office was great. We looked through some borrower application forms to get a sense of what the women do (all the borrowers are female) and what sort of information OI collects about them. After reading a couple books and more than a dozen journal articles on microfinance, as well as studying it in class, to actually see the pictures of the borrowers (there's a picture on their application) and see the information about them was really exciting. I felt like I was looking at pictures of rock stars or something.

Today E and I went to a coffee shop (more AC! yay!) and started rewriting our survey (Romeo is leaving Chennai tomorrow, so we told M she should spend the day with him instead of working). We made pretty good progress, and are going to try to finish it tomorrow.

I will be posting some pictures in just a few minutes...

tiredness and the world cup

We're still in Mamalapuram. We were supposed to go back to Chennai today, but decided to stay one more day because we love it here. I think we'll be spending lots of weekends here. Our favorite restaurant is called "Le Yogi" and it's advertised as serving "franco-indian" food. Basically it's Indian food plus crepes. The service is ridiculously slow (it's just one cook and one waiter), but the atmosphere is wonderful (you take off your shoes, and most of the tables are low so you sit on cushions on the ground; there are paper lanterns and usually a nice cool breeze). I've been having the egg and cheese crepe for breakfast, and alternating between prawn noodles, prawn rice (both of which are technically Chinese), and prawn curry for lunch and dinner. I do love my prawns.

So far, I've had mercifully few encounters with large insects. In fact, I was starting to fantasize that all the cockroaches in India were small. Then yesterday E mentioned that there was a huge cockroach in his bathroom, which of course freaked me out. So when M and I got back to the guest house I checked our bathroom, and lo and behold, a 2-inch-long cockroach (with creepy inch-long antennae) was crouched on the sink next to M's toiletry case. I called M in for backup and we managed to kill it, with minimal girlish shrieking, using my Lonely Planet India guide.

I mentioned in my last post that we've been watching World Cup matches. I have, as I'm sure most of you know, no interest whatsoever in football*, but M and E both do, so I've been watching with them, and I'm starting to get into it. The US got positively trounced by the Czech Republic last night, which was sad, but just a little while ago Korea beat Togo, which I am celebrating on behalf of my dear Korean friend H. The restaurant at our guest house finally got their TV working, so tonight we're watching just a few yards from our rooms rather than on the beach at Bob Marley. India is only about 4 hours later than Germany, so we can watch the matches live at a reasonable hour.

So things are great, except for the fact that I'm exhausted all the time. I think it's a combination of jet lag, the heat, the sunburn I managed to get, and the fact that so far we've mostly just been hanging out (today I actually went over a little bit of the data that Opportunity International gave us, but we haven't written our survey yet). I've been going to bed anywhere between 8:30 and midnight, and usually waking up really early, like 4 or 5. I lie in bed for a few hours, then I fall back asleep from around 7 to 9 (or in today's case, 11:30). Around 5 p.m., I become profoundly sleepy and usually take a nap of some sort. Right now it's 9:15 and I'm hoping I can stay awake long enough to watch the France-Switzerland game, which starts in about 5 minutes.

I have pictures to post, but I keep forgetting to bring my camera cable down to the internet cafe with me.

*football = soccer, for all you yankees

around the world

I've been making notes in my journal so that once I finally sit down in front of a computer, I can remember what I have to say about my various experiences. So our journey begins a few days ago, back in the states...

LAX

Muffin drove me to the airport and saw me off with much love and good advice (he's an experienced Southeast Asia traveller). There's this whole bizarre procedure where you have to get your checked luggage screened before you check in at the counter, so I waited in the wrong line for a while. Then M arrived at the airport, we determined which lines to stand in and in which order, and made it to our gate shortly before our flight started boarding. Our first flight was the longest, 14 hours, and thanks to the valium I borrowed from M, it was heaven. I think I slept for 8 hours.

Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan

We landed at around 6:45 a.m. local time in Taiwan, where we had a very brief layover before getting back on the same plane and heading to Malaysia. We walked around a bit, used the bathroom, and sat in a little airport restaurant drinking a Heinekin. During the flight from Taipei to Kuala Lumpur, I read Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, which was recommended to me by my dear friend R, and which I found bizarre, engaging, and enjoyable.

Empress Sepang Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Our otherwise incompetent travel agent managed to get us a free hotel room for our 8 hour layover in KL, so we had a free curry lunch, showered, and lounged around in air-conditioned comfort for a while before returning to the airport. M was beside herself with happiness when she discovered a Yankees-Red Sox game on the TV in our room.

Chennai, India

Our arrival into Chennai went smoothly. By the time we were ready to board our final flight, we'd been awake for a while and were both quite sleepy. Exacerbating this was the fact that we each consumed nearly a Schefke* at the KL airport before boarding. Needless to say, we slept through the whole flight. We don't even know how long it was. We did notice, before we passed out, that we were the only white people on the plane. The upshot of this was that the majority of the people on the flight were Indian nationals, so the "Foreign Passports" line at immigration was quite short. The kind woman who stamped our passports was very concerned about the two of us travelling alone, and very relieved to find out that we were meeting a male friend in Chennai.

I've only spent about 13 hours in Chennai so far, and a good half of that was sleeping. We met up with E the night we got in, chatted for a while, and went to bed. When we got up we had a traditional Indian breakfast (something called Puri, which is a sort of curry-esque potatoe and onion mixture that you eat with lightly fried, puffed-up flat bread. Yum. And it cost less than 50 cents (it cost 18 rupees; $1 = 45 rupees). After breakfast we looked at a couple guest houses in the area to find one better than the one where we'd stayed that night. Then we took a taxi to the central bus station, where we boarded a bus to Mamalapuram, a coastal town just 50 km (30 miles) south of Chennai.

Mamalapuram

Anyone who has travelled in a developing country will not be surprised that it took nearly 2 hours on a bus to get to a destination 30 miles away. We've been staying at a charming little guest house here, hanging out on the beach, watching World Cup matches on what seems to be the only TV in town (located outdoors at an establishment right on the beach called the Bob Marley Restaurant), and sampling the various restaurants in town. I'm still having a bit of trouble with jet lag, but I'm working on it. The ocean is a perfect temperature: whereas it's usually too cold in California (and certainly in Oregon), and it was a bit too bathwater-warm in the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean is about the temperature of tap water--warm enough to be inviting, but cool enough to be refreshing.

There's more to say, but this post is rather long already, and the ergonomics of this computer are set up for someone much shorter than me, so I'm going to go before the cramp in my shoulder gets worse.

*1 schefke = 4 beers. Definition courtesy of B.

very quick update

Well, I made it to India safely, and it's great, and I have a ton of stuff to say about it, but we're on our way to have a late breakfast, so I'll have to post later. Just wanted to say hi and let anyone who might be reading this know that I arrived safely and things are wonderful so far. More soon.

shoes

I've been having Muffin give me some advice on how to take better pictures. One of the first things he taught me is the rule of thirds, which is a compositional guideline that involves mentally dividing your frame into thirds using both vertical and horizontal lines, then placing your subject(s) at the points where the lines cross. I practiced with this picture of my shoes (I didn't pose them like that, I just tried to frame them in such a way as to create good composition), and I sort of like the way it turned out.

Nine hours left until I leave. I'm basically all ready to go. I bought a new backpack because one of the straps on the old one was about to rip off, and because I found one that was relatively cheap and has almost all the compartments and things I wanted. Also it's red, and how fun is that? I got it at this surplus store near Muffin's apartment. They also had long underwear, army fatigues, and pistol cases, but I didn't buy any of those things.

If I stumble across internet access en route, I'll post again. Otherwise, see you in India.

a little more real

So far, the prospect of this trip has been fairly abstract. I'm excited and I'm nervous, but I've been experiencing those emotions in sort of a theoretical, cerebral way, as opposed to actually feeling them. But I got an email from E tonight giving M and me advice about getting from the airport to the place where we're staying, and it's becoming slightly more real that I'll be in India in less than 48 hours. Although I've been to South Asia before, I'm slowly getting the impression that India is a lot different than Sri Lanka, and there will be quite a few challenges (the first of which is to be assertive enough to not get ripped off by the taxi driver that takes us to the hotel from the airport).

But it's late, and I'm exhausted, so I better go to sleep. More tomorrow.

emma

Isn't she adorable? These aren't the best pictures, but it can be hard to get her to sit still while you're trying to take a picture of her. Oh, and also I'm the worst photographer in the world. That might have something to do with it too.

Well, I haven't posted in a while, but very little of interest has happened. I've been hanging out with the fam, playing with the dog, and corresponding with E a little about our research. Things seem to be going well for him so far in India. The people at Opportunity International, which is the MFI with which we will be working, sound extremely nice and helpful. We're figuring out which lending branch we will be surveying borrowers from, and when and where we will be doing the surveys. There are all these things you have to consider when choosing groups from which to sample in order to avoid ending up with results that are spurious. It's all fairly involved, and I'll explain some of it later.

Tomorrow morning I'll go down to LA and spend the next two days with my best friend Muffin. And then I leave. Woo hoo!

bakersfield

I arrived in Bakersfield yesterday evening, and I've belatedly come to appreciate the balmy, breezy weather that I left behind in San Francisco. It's not even all that hot here, at least compared to how it could be (or how it will be in India); I think it was only about 90 today.

My ma's puppy Emma, who is about 5 months old now, has grown significantly since I was last here. She is big enough to swim in the pool now, and although she's quite boisterous, she seems to already be a little more calm than our last dog, Hannah. Or maybe her rambunctiousness isn't as annoying yet because she's still pretty small. Anyway, I will post a picture as soon as I get one downloaded onto my mom's computer, because she's freakin' adorable.

I went to Target today to get some of the last things I need for India, including a flash drive, a thin towel, and yet more sunscreen. I now have 4 different kinds of sunscreen: some oil-free stuff for my face, some waterproof and sweatproof spray-on stuff, some waterproof and sweatproof gel (because I forgot I had the spray-on stuff and because I will probably need two bottles anyway), and a little sunscreen stick (looks like lip balm but quite a bit larger), which I will keep in my bag for reapplication. It is my intention to be particularly fanatical about sunscreen this summer, especially given all the cancer-related badness that's gone on around me in the last year.

Well, sunscreen is about as exciting as it gets around here at the moment, so I'll stop writing now.