Happy Onam!

After 6:30 am Frisbee practice at Prasanna’s Layout (well more like 7 am because of the requisite bus troubles), I came back to Snehadaan campus for a day of festivities.  Onam is celebrated by the people of Kerala (the small costal state to the southwest of Karnataka- where Bangalore is).  Since Bangalore is a melting pot of people from all over India, naturally, there are a lot of people from Kerala residing here.  In fact, most of the staff including Father Mathew (the director of Sneha Care Home) himself is originally from Kerala!!  Anyways, Onam is a day celebrating the harvest.  Kerala women work late into the night making beautiful flower arrangements/carpets (see photos below) in celebration.   Technically Onam is a Hindu god, but according to Father Mathew, the festivities are more cultural than religious and all of the people from Kerala take part.  

According to random online searching, it is the Kerala harvest festival and is celebrated with joy and enthusiasm all over the state by people of all communities and faiths.  The festival is celebrated to welcome King Mahabali, whose spirit is said to visit Kerala at the time of Onam.  During the reign of mighty demon king, Mahabali, Kerala witnessed its golden era. Everybody in the state was happy and prosperous and king was highly regarded by his subjects. However, Mahabali's egotistical character was utilized by Gods to bring an end to his reign as they felt challenged by Mahabali's growing popularity. But, for all the good deeds done by Mahabali, God granted him the ability to annually visit his people with whom he was so attached.  It is this visit of Mahabali that is celebrated as Onam every year. People make all efforts to celebrate the festival in a grand way and impress upon their dear King that they are happy and wish him well.

So around 11 am, games in the Snehadaan grounds for the inpatients and the staff.  The kids sadly all still had class since they don’t celebrate the holiday—I felt kind of bad that I got to take aprt and they didn't!  Anyways…what started as simple music chairs and ball toss evolved into much more elaborate and interesting games.  My two favorites were probably “Draw the Bindi on the Woman’s Face,”  India’s equivalent of the childhood birthday party’s “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” and a ridiculously difficult game of “Eat the Bun on the string without your hands” while two mediators lift the clothesline the strings are hung from.  A lot harder than it sounds—photos also attached!

Probably everyone’s favorite part though is the lunch feast!!  Definitely my favorite meal I have had on the Snehadaan campus.  I decided to go “totally” local and sat on the ground with everyone else and used my hands to eat the feast.   As per tradition, all the food is served on a big banana leaf.  Servers came around with an endless array of chutneys, curries, veggies, and GASP brown rice!  I was told there would be 27 “items” in total, but it seemed like there were a bit less.  Definitely a change of pace from the rice and sambar we get everyday with the kids!  And we even got three different types of desserts to finish.

Not the most productive days over all, but how many times in a young American’s life like mine do you get to celebrate Onam!? 

Flower decoration/carpet created by the older girls and staff at Sneha Care Home

Flower decoration/carpet created by the Snehadaan Hospital staff.  So intricate and beautiful!  They were up until 2:30 am working on this masterpiece.

Banana leafs ready for our feast.  In come our servers!!

My delicious feast (minus the desserts).  My favorites were the veggie salad (far right middle, yogurt sauce, and banana chips!)

Me and my feast!  I successfully ate all my food (well almost all of the rice...) with just my right hand!

The VERY difficult bun-eating competition.  I definitely failed this one...

 And again...

Work, Play, and More!

Wow what a week!  Seems like I haven’t written in ages so here it goes...

ps- I wrote this on Sunday evening.  Now its Tuesday (first time I could get internet!)

After a few days of feeling lost and a bit frustrated with the slow pace of things around Sneha Care Home, I was able to meet up with Father Matthew and I am now feeling much more confident in my job responsibilities here.  It seems like things will pop up as the months progress, but as of now, I will be working on the following projects:

  Evaluation and Improvement of the Nutrition Program.  I am currently writing up a report on a study Sneha Care Home recently completed on the impact of spirulina (a protein rich algal nutritional supplement) for thirty malnourished children at the home.  The children’s weight and height data indicated that spirulina was not a cost-effective solution for these children’s malnutrition issues (it’s impact is far greater in severe or emergency situations).  Thus, I will be developing a new proposal for allocation of funding for the next phase of the program.  To do so, I will be consulting with a nutritionist from St. John’s Hospital to figure out how to best use these funds (most likely more protein-rich items like ground nuts, nut butters, and soy products).  I will be monitoring the children’s eating habits in the canteen and will be recording their weights and heights monthly for data analysis in the future. 

2.      Assisting at the HIV/AIDS Clinic at St. John’s Hospital.   I met with Dr. Anita and Dr. Chaithra, the pediatricians leadings the pediatric ID clinic (aka AIDS clinic) this past Friday.  They were both incredibly welcoming and excited to have me on board.  I hopefully will be working with Dr. Anita to develop an adolescent health and HIV study to carry out within the next few months and I will be observing in the clinics on Friday mornings.  I saw a sign at the hospital for an Au Bon Pain, which really excited me.  It may not be like in America—but I’ll definitely try it out one of these Fridays!

3.      Documentation in the Sneha Clinic-  In addition to helping with the nutrition program at Sneha Care Home, I will also be assisting with data cleaning and management in the clinic.  It sounds like tedious work, but there is a lot of organization and data entering that needs to be done for the children’s health check-ups and antiretroviral drugs.

4.      Intervention Package Management for the Kolar Outreach Program- Along with the institutionalized home and school itself at the Snehadaan campus, Sneha Care Home also has a community-based outreach program in Kolar (one of the neighboring regions of Bangalore) for children living with HIV/AIDS that are still staying with their families.   With only Sister Jaisy doing home visits, the program is fairly limited in capacity.  Thus, I will be assisting her to organize her notes and create priority-based intervention packages for each of the children.  For many of the situations, the greatest priority will be informing the caregivers of proper nutrition habits and advocating the government support services available to them.  Although I won’t be able to do the home visits with Sister Jaisy, I am excited to help with this very important arm of Sneha Care Home.   I’d also like to help find funding for additional staff to expand the Kolar Outreach Program’s capacities and services.

5.      Event Planning and Organization of Fundraisers- I will be assisting with organizing two of the major fundraisers that Sneha Care Home does throughout the year- Starry Night and Sports Day/World AIDS Day.  Starry Night is a Christmas feast on December 15^th (right before I head back to the US!) to fundraise for the organization.  We are going to incorporate an auction this year to raise additional money.  I’m in the process of brainstorming auction items but if anyone has any ideas, let me know!!  World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) is a big day for HIV prevention advocacy and celebration.  The day after, Sneha Care Home does a mini-marathon (5 km run) and field games with the kids.  I’m not sure exactly all it entails but I am excited to get my hands dirty in its planning.

6.      Glowing Stars Discussions- The glowing stars are the oldest (12-14 years old) kids here at Sneha.  Father Matthew wants me to have conversations with them to help improve their English, as many of them will be going into customer service in the future.   I’m thinking of doing story telling, prompts, and role-playing on Mondays and Wednesday evenings but we will see!

7.      Supervision of the Sports Program- The kids have sports time is from 4:30-5:30 everyday but sometimes it can be a bit disorganized.  The football players seem to have monopolized the largest field so we are going to work on splitting up time using that field so they can do drills part of the time and play the other half while a new (!) Frisbee team starts up.  It might be a slow start, but I’m hoping to get these kids just as excited about flying plastic as footballs and badminton.

Whoo!  Makes me tired just thinking about all those things!  Being the somewhat anal person I am, I made an iCal weekly schedule so I don’t feel lost trying to get all these things done at the same time but I am sure things will evolve and change around as time progresses.

And for some fun anecdotes/highlights from the week:

-          While I was working in the clinic on gathering the spirulina data, Miya, a volunteer teacher from Japan (vaguely reminds me of my mousy piano teacher from Tokyo) was teaching the youngest children Jingle Bells in her Japanese accent in the middle of August. It definitely made me chuckle!!

-          Going to Bangalore Central Mall with my new Frisbee friend Fern!  We gorged ourselves in a delicious Northern Indian buffet for a mere 250 Rs --$5!)  What a treat!! And it was so nice to have someone who knew all the foods there and could tell me the names of things.  Too bad I don’t remember any of it!  We also played some arcade games before heading back out.  I got back to Sneha around 8:30 pm.  Apparently that's way too late as the road leading to the gates is not safe!  So next time, Ill come back by 6 pm or stay at a friends place closer to the city center. 

-          Frisbee practice Wednesday morning- finally met the infamous Cliff!  What a great guy!  So enthusiastic about the sport and excited to have me here.  I’m liking this Bangalore ultimate crowd more and more!

-          Wine and donut night with Joy and Frank.  I don’t think I have mentioned them yet, but Joy and Frank O’Connor are two Australian volunteers who have been helping out with teaching, gardening, and various odds and ends here at Sneha Care Home for the past 4 weeks.  They are absolutely delightful to be around and I probably spend anywhere from 2-4 hours a day talking and relaxing with them!  We did donuts and Australian wine a few nights ago which was a real treat.  Joy has taught me how to play bridge (look out mom and Mrs. McClean, you have some competition!!)  and I love hearing their stories about their 7 kids, 20+ grandchildren, and various travels around the world.  It’s nice to have people who can sympathize with the various issues and inconvenience as well as laugh about the nuances of life here at Sneha Care Home.  They aren’t sure how much longer they will be staying, but it is nice having them around to minimize the loneliness that starts to creep up since Sneha is fairly isolated from the rest of Bangalore.

-          Saturday with Fern!  I spent all of this past Saturday with the Frisbee gang—3+ hours playing at the Loyola grounds (too bad the cricket team took over the majority of the field), South Indian dosa breakfast (that's the only food name I can remember) near the grounds and hanging out with Fern and her roommates.  Anil, Fern’s boyfriend and Spin Doctor member, and I also had some great conversation about western influence in India, life plans, etc.  Despite the rains and a very empty fuel tank, we went to Park Place for Mediterranean wraps (Falafel—yumm something different!) and Swenson’s ice cream.  Wow what decadent sundaes!! I forgot to take pictures of the sundaes before we ate them—I guess that just means we’ll have to go back J  We then headed to Neha’s (another Frisbee player’s house) for a Spin Doctors shindig!  Great company and great Indian dancing!  We should dance every day to build up our stamina for Chennai Heat Beach tournament coming up in October!  The combination of whisky and Indian food didn’t bode to well with my stomach (Prasanna – you will be paying for it with abs and sprint workouts at practice on Wednesday!!) but it was an altogether FANTASTIC time!  I’m slowly and surely starting to remember people’s name and build relationships with these guys.  I’m looking forward to many more spin doctors gatherings—whether it be playing Frisbee, busing to our tournament in Chennai, or trekking on some weekend excursion.  I keep thinking how blessed I am to have started playing ultimate…no matter where you are in the world, Frisbee players are alike in their welcoming-nature, good looks ;), and all-together AWESOMENESS. 

 And now for some pictures... 

Beautiful Flowers on the walkway between the Conference Center and Snehadaan Hospital 

Fern and our North Indian Feast at Bangalore Central Mall!  So many curries, chutneys, and types of bread to choose from :)

Some of the children at Shining Star School coloring images of their home villages 

The Pastoral Conference Center where I get internet (occasionally) and do laundry (also occasionally) 

Pediatric ID Clinic (HIV Clinic) at St. John's Hospital.  I'll be spending my Friday mornings here! 

 Scrumptious ice cream sundaes at Swenson's at Park Place Mall with Anil and Fern.  We'll have to go back for more!

1.    Asian Buffet Lunch at Shitaake in Bangalore Central Mall with my Australian volunteer friends Joy and Frank O'Connor. Thai and Chinese flavors for a change- what a treat!!

Thank you to all who read through the entirety of that monstrous post.  I’ll try to keep them shorter and more frequent but now that work is “picking up” well see.  Perhaps next time I’ll write less about what I’m doing and more about my musings here in India.  Being here at Sneha Care Home has given me a lot of time to think, reflect, and ponder.  Good bye for now, but more to come in the future!  

Mailing Address

I apologize for the "boringness" of this post but I promise more interesting stories are on their way!  In the mean time, some of you requested my mailing address...

I cannot promise that anything will get here in one piece, but I guess it is worth a try!

Sneha Care Home & Shining Star School

Snehadaan Campus

Ambedkar Nagar, Sarjapur Road

Carmelaram Post, Bangalore-35

Ph: 080-28440781, 7406655829

You have to include phone numbers because they call you when the package arrives!  Let me know if you have any questions!

Day #2, Adventure #1: Bangalore Ultimate

As many of you know, I have become moderately obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee (shout out to the FOYAS!!).  When I was googling Bangalore and checking out all of the options it had to offer,  naturally, I checked to see if there was any Frisbee going on in the area.  And to my pleasant surprise I found 2 Bangalore team websites.  I quickly emailed them both and was delighted to hear back from 1 almost immediately, "Learning to Fly".  Cliff, the creator/captain of the team was super welcoming and told me to get in touch with him when I arrived. 

I followed up when I arrived, and was pleased to find out that they had practices during the week at 6:30 am but also play games on Saturdays at 7:15 am as well.  Yes I had only been in Bangalore for less than 48 hours, but why not jump in full force?  So I worked out a complex plan to get to the fields with Fern and Hamsini, to of the girls on the team, using Sister Mini’s phone on Friday night and headed off on my adventure at 6 am on Saturday morning.

What a trip! I arrived 30 minutes early at the bus stop where Fern was to meet me, so I stood there waiting, watching my clock, trying to look as confident and nonchalant as I could.  Hard not to stick out though as a tall white girl wearing ultimate shorts and our fly Foya sublimated uniforms.  

Boy was I excited to see Fern walking down the street, garbed in Frisbee clothing and an infectious smile.  All the nerves that built up during that 30 minute wait were relieved.  We took a series of other buses and rickshaws and arrived at the Loyola School ground around 7:30 to find a sparse yet eager looking  group of Frisbee players.  Apparently everyone was out of town for the holiday weekend (Monday is a Muslim Holiday and Independence Day was on August 16^th) and this was a pretty weak showing but we were still able to field a scrimmage with multiple subs!! Apparently there are now 7 (SEVEN!!) ultimate teams in Bangalore and they usually have multiple games going on Saturdays.  Tons of fun running around and getting back into the swing of things.  Lots of potential talent out there (read: athleticism, speed, etc.) but many were pretty new to the sport.  Apparently the Learning to Fly folk are the older, more experienced players well versed in strategy and plays.  It will be interesting to see when the whole team is together but I was SUPER impressed by the level of play.

After of few hours of play, eight of us jumped into Babay's car and headed into the heart of Bangalore for some breakfast (now brunch since it was 10:30).  We went to Indian Coffee House, apparently pretty famous.  The ride was way longer than I expected but I enjoyed talking with all my new teammates.  Its funny-- they are speak English because thats the only mutual language they have in common (Bangalore is a "melting pot" of people from all over India since it is the IT hub of India and has tons of Universities, opportunities, etc.)  I had an omelette masala (aka egg with onion in it) and a plain dosa (South Indian pancake type thing).  Pretty good, but nothing nearly as good as the cuisine I had in Calcutta.  I'm still on the search for a place where I can get some naan and Paneer Tikka Masala.  Great company- I'm excited to get to know these people more.

The trek home was probably the greatest adventure of all.  Fern dropped me where I could catch the 500c bus back to where we had gotten on together but it most DEFINITELY did not drop me by anywhere I recognized.   Asked a few random strangers before getting on one bus (in hindsight- definitely the wrong one) which took me a few "blocks" before the driver instructed me I had arrived.  Hmmm..  Got on a new bus that was luckily going in the right direction. Started to see some semi-familiar places but there was a road block at the train tracks about 2 km from Snehadaan campus, so I got out there and walked the rest of the way.  That bus ride was also one of the crowded buses I ever been on-- luckily the weather here is so mild!!  The crowded little combis in Gaborone were easy as pie compared to these.  Hopefully I'll get used to it/figure out the system!

Anyways, I am so excited to have found a frisbee team!  Now all I need to do is sort out my tasks and responsibilities here at Sneha.  Internet is more intermittent that I thought it would be, but so it goes in India!  Expected the unexpected, right?! 

Love to all and hope everyone at Georgetown is gearing up and ready for the new fall semester!

Namaste Bangalore!

Namaste from the beautiful Snehadaan campus in Bangalore, India!

1 uneventful trip through Newark airport at 6 am,
3 airplane rides (Newark to London --> London --> Delhi, Delhi --> Bangalore),
2 movies ("Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and "Jack and Jill"),
59% of the Hunger Games (yay for Kindle!),
4 crappy airplane meals,
1 "chocolate brownie shake"- aka melted chocolate ice cream since I insisted the barista not put ice in my shake at the Delhi airport,
AND 1 two hour taxi ride through the bustling outskirts of Bangalore later....

I arrived at my home, Sneha Care Home, for the next four months.  I was pretty exhausted by this point, but excited to meet my new "family" and get some food in my belly!  I was greeted by a smiling and hospitable Father Matthew who gave me a short tour of the area and directed me to my room.  As you can see from the photo, it is simple but comfortable.  Ample storage space and my own bathroom with a bucket shower. Woohoo!!

My new room!

Sneha Care Home is on a beautiful, self-contained campus on the outskirts of Bangalore.  Amazing gardens, a small in-patient hospital (Snehadaan), a Pastoral Training Centre (where I am getting my wifi right now!), the Sneha Care Home residential buildings (where the 100 kids living with HIV/AIDS reside), and the Shining Star School rooms.  I was truly blown away by what a nice facility it is.  All the kids speak pretty good English (they take all their classes in English) so it will be fun getting to know them and interacting with them.

 My roles and responsibilities here are still very much up in the air.  The possibilities seem endless which is great, but also quite overwhelming.  Ideally I will be working on a bunch of areas including:

- teaching health education and science at the Shining Star School
- evaluation of the current nutrition program for children at Sneha Care Home who are undernourished
- assisting with two ongoing studies being conducted by St. John's Hospital, a hospital in Bangalore affiliated with Sneha Care Home about anemia (1) and the long-term impacts of HIV (2)
- developing programming for World AIDS Day (December 2nd)
- assisting with assessment plans for children affiliated with Sneha Care Home but that are still living with their families in Kola
- assisting with extracurricular activities, especially sports.  I was never a big soccer/futbol player but thats what's big.  Hopefully I can convert some of them to love frisbee as much as I do!  December 2nd is a mini-marathon and big sporting day so Father Matthew would like me to organize teams and prepare the children for this big day!

More to come, but thought I'd give some updates on my life.  Things definitely move slowly here but I cannot wait to jump in full force!

Love to all my family and friends around the world :)  I'd love to hear from any and all of you so email me (mohearn8@gmail.com) or respond to my posts!