my chai guy..everyday!

my chai guy..everyday!, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

i will miss this guy... chai and salty biscuit everyday.

happy birthday to my Akka...

this was the only random photo that I had of the two of us together... it was so long ago... we were trying to be like brothers but we are actually just sisters. Yo!

31 years old. HOLY SHIT!

Krishna's Butter Ball

Krishna's Butter Ball, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

We tossed up whether we should sit underneath the rock for lunch. Well it was the only shade around...

Mamallapuram

Mamallapuram, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

I know that this may look like a really cool wall that exists in another country and is part of another travellers photo group.. but please take a minute to understand that this whole wall was done BY HAND!!! WTF???

A Parrot Fortune

reading English version of fortune - very outdated, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

We headed to Mamallapuram for the weekend to check out the Beach Temples. On Sunday all the Indian flock here to go the beach and experience the market stalls etc. We found an old man with a parrot in a box with about 30 little booklets lined up. You pay 10 ruppee and the parrot is let out and choose about 5 booklets from the row. This is your fortune spread. He opens the little booklet and hands you the English version of the particular fortune. I wish i could have photocopied it.. it was crazy. There was a lot of broken English with words such as 'fortune' 'wealth' 'money' littered throughout. I feel that is all the Indians want to see from their fortune. But at the end it said that happiness would be with me from Sept 2004 to October 2007. I let this indiscrepency go - i mean the guy was telling my fortune but....whatever. It somehow seems appropriate in a country that is stuck in some serious time warp. The men and their fashion especially.... moustache a must, tight long polyster pants with a flair and ALWAYS a shirt. They all look like 70's tV stars. Hilarious.
I guess the funniest thing was the crowd that gathered. You can't see from this photo but there is even a massive horse standing right behind me breathing down my neck.
Gotta love this place.

R.I.P

street dog puppy we adopted, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

it takes three things to survive as an animal in India. 1. to be physical strong 2. to be intelligent and 3. to be lucky. In the time that I have been here I have seen one kitten being mauled by a dog and left dead - it came back to life, a small baby kitten die, another kitten lost to the canal and this morning we awoke to find our gorgeous little puppy has been killed by the street dogs and was dead in the road with flies all over him. Devo'd to say the least but I must say that I've taken it in my stride here and have become quite immune to all these deaths. It's a kill or be killed world out there in the street dog business and they are bloody ruthless mean scrappy bastards who are extremely territorial.
Some sad news but life goes on in the crazy country...and there are pretty of other street dog pups being born everyday. Only the tough survive.

heat rash

man it is starting to really heat up here in India. My days are now planned around what i can do in the morning or evening. middle of the day is out of bounds and i literally am a walking zombie drooling at the mouth and trying to focus on anything i'm saying or doing from 3pm to 6pm. This is when i usually take my siesta. I truly truly understand the siesta as a necessity when you live in extreme heat.
today we had to look after 200 children. woah! wasn't really prepared... so many questions usually asking me what my name was "what is name?" "alexandra" "ohhh alethandra.. that is a berry beautiful name." "you have such nice eyes.. why do you only have one anklet on? (two is the fashion here)? foto foto..can you take a foto of me.... miss miss..shake my hand... what is name? " and so on and so forth.
There were these young teenage boys who took about 50 photos of me on their mobile phone and by the end i was running away from them. I mean what do they do with all these photos - show their family "look granny... a white person and me."?
I also had to stop myself from adopting this young boy -- he comes from a lot of abuse at home and he has suffered some nerve problems due to being hit in the head - so he blinks a lot and has some nervous ticks. He is soooo grubby all the time and I wonder who is looking after him. Some boy picked on him today and hit him , i stubbled upon the poor bugger in the corner of the room inspecting a very badly cut knee from the attack. I cooed over him asking him what was wrong... of course the tears start.. and my heart breaks. A large crowd surrounds us.. Who HIT HIM! i ask - everyone starts to find the boy that hit him. we find him on the other side of the hall and i drag the bully in front of his victim and show him his knee.. forced him to apologise - the young kid was hugging the little boy and saying sorry.. i ordered him to look after him.. like a very protective mother.
I then gave this poor little kid a long hug.. he seemed awkward with the affection but grinned from ear to ear.. he followed me around the rest of the day and helped me with anything that i was doing. I quickly snuck out of the hall with him and bought him a sweet at the store. I didn't want to show favouritism... but this kid was so cute and helpless.
I swear the children in India are soooooooooooooo different from the children in the western world... you NEVER hear children for this or that - no tantrums. Hardly any tears even.. they are much calmer and sit listening with big brown eyes that just stare at you.. they catch you looking at them and the big smile starts to crack across their face. Oh jeez louise. it's a killer.
i'll post some photos...

infection

i feel bad that i haven't written for a while. I've been struck down with an ear infection.. nothing serious..
NOT middle ear thank the mother f&*( lord! Basically anything that becomes scratched gets infected in a second in this type of heat and pollution. The funniest part about it was the trip to the doctor. ENT specialist. perfect english. during my session about 3 people walked in and just had a chat with the doctor. absolutely no privacy. Lucky I wasn't getting a pap smear.. hahaha.
Consultation cost: $2.80. Drugs cost: $7.14. WTF?? I felt like I should have my annual check up in India - it's so cheap that it's not even worth claiming on the travel insurance.
I'm getting closer to leaving soon and I'm dreading it. I don't want to go back to the western world. WAaaaaH! Who needs developed countries anyway they are just full of pretensious wankers.

women power day

women power poster i made.., originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

Last Saturday I helped organise a Women Power Day. We invited women from the Self Help Groups to a local community hall. Interestingly Indians give invitations to events 2 days before - and they are hand written and hand delivered. This will ensure that no one will forget. i was stressing that no one would show because we were organising everything very last minute. The poster was printed the day before... my event management skills were being tested as there is absolutely no organisation. But somehow it all comes together in the end.
There were three motivational speakers - two were men from the bank who talked to the women about ways to use the money from the microfinancing loans. This is a problem, managing what the women do with the loans... on-lending is a problem.And there was another lady who was a Principal and founder of a local school - she talked about her experience starting the school and told women to be brave.
I also invited six of the women from the groups - six who had been successful with the use of the loans and started businesses - to give a small presentation on how and why they started their business and discuss the challenges that they faced from their community and family and how they were supported etc. It proved to be a great way for the other women to see how people just like them could change their situation. With a little self confidence and a loan.

i gave a small speech at the end of the program and talked about my own experience of gender discrimination back home in my old job and said that women everywhere suffer the same obstacles in a different way. But that we all have to make sure that we don't stop striving for change.. I kept it brief and I think they appreciated it. Sometimes it's only best to share your experiences -rather than to start professing solutions.

affection

Affection in India is quite different to back home. Men and women do not touch in public and find it highly embarrassing when you do. I did catch a couple once who were sitting on a bench near the beach, they were holding hands but when people approached they quickly moved their hands apart and sat seperate.

Just because men and women don't touch doesn't actually mean that affection still doesn't take place. There is always a lot of slapping of friends or older parents to their children. It's quite common for boys to be thudded on their back with a fist affectionately and you will see women slapping men in that flirty kind of way. It's an outlet at least. But one of the most interesting ways that affection is shown in Indian is by the men. I first saw two Indian men holding hands when we went to the beach and I was amazed that they could be so open about the homosexuality in this country. Then I saw two old guys holding hands walking along the road.. and this confused me. I didn't think that sh0wing signs of being gay in Indian was so accepted. Then I saw two male University students holding hands--ok wait a second... so I asked around and was told that it is completely common for two Indian male friends to hold hands walking down the street. Even the most macho guys will partake in this very common sign of friendship. Also my friend Felix told me that being male in India when you shake hands with another man it can be for a very long time. The longer your hand is held after the shake the more they like you.

It's like the absolute opposite of our culture and a little piece of India that I find very sweet.

the women

IMG_0413, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

love it

love it, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

women

today had a strange start- at night i'm dreaming like i'm revealing my soul to myself and there seems to be much to deal with in the shower in the morning. Then we awoke to discover the cleaning lady here has been stealing our food like potatoes & mangoes, she drinks the Sprite in the kitchen and then pours water in it to top it up. It's so funny (and sad) that she thinks she can get away with it seeing as she is the only suspect. Then we found a new born kitten at the front door - almost like an offering and for all the cat lovers out there... stop reading now... it died this afternoon being so frail and new.
The afternoon we went to give a seminar on HIV & Domestic Violence/ General Enpowerment to a group of women in a more rural area. They were very receptive and willing to learn and discuss and by the end of the session there was some great and revealing comments from the group about some women that they know who have been victims of domestic violence so extreme that they have died or committed suicide. The women then band together and arrange for someone to become the step mother of the children of that women. There was one woman in that group who was one of those children. It was quite rewarding to see them talk so openly about it as usually they are too shy or scared to discuss this in an open forum.
They said some amazing things as well.. I was explaining to them that it doesn't matter where you are from or what colour your skin is but that all women should be equal. One woman explained that they don't see skin colour as all women have the same mind. The group also identified that women have their own power that is different from the men. It's so great to hear women in India say these things as the male dominated society is so overwhelming here at times that you think that some women are just too repressed to even have an opinion. Which I am slowly realising is not the case. They bitch about their husbands and say they are hopeless always sleeping all the time.
India is a place of such juxtapose.. the dowry is still praticed even though it is illegal and women are repressed and expected to marry & have children as their only sense of purpose. But yet they have so many women politicians and leaders in the country who are extremely influential and also respected. Things are definetely changing here...
I was so moved to see the same women support network in the middle of a rural town in India as I have at home. Women everywhere really do have the same mind.

auroville

I visted auroville yesterday. auroville is a community that was started around the late 60's and its ideal was to be a place that had no race or religion and belonged to noone in particular. It is a human experiement in unity. In pratice it's greatest achievements are it's sustainable communities that have existed there for many years as well as successfully re-foresting acres of desert to now have a thriving eco system. It's truly amazing when you see the greenery to think that there was nothing there and some forests are only 5 years old.
Jonas - a Sydney sider- collected me and took me to 'Fertile' a community area of Auroville. He grew up here as a child and his father Johnny still lives here and is one of the only original members still around. We ate some amazing lunch with chapatis made from aurovilles own wheat. There are so many different characters that drop by and hang out at Fertile - there were two guys ( a Frenchi & a Brit) who lived just south of Pondicherry-- they buy modern artworks from local art students and then exhibit and sell them in a gallery in Kensington London. The money that they receive for these works goes towards an art school that they are starting in India for children. Amazing.. this week I'm going with them to visit some art students and see how they negotiate their prices. I'm quite curious to see this "modern art" as everything else i have seen is so traditional.
Next weekend there's a party at Auroville for Jonas' birthday- in Auroville they call it pot luck?? still not sure why?
This week I'm interviewing some success stories of women that have utilised their microfinancing loans and created profitable businesses. We are hoping that by doing this it will encourage some of the other women to WANT to work and learn new skills to help themselves make even more money.
There is much to be said about pratical change... there are so many documents and articles written by people about how and why things should change in third world countries, but they just seem like farts in the wind when you are here. It means nothing to the people. "you have to be the change that you want to see in the world" Ghandi.

auroville kitchen, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

auroville - , originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

community

community, originally uploaded by alexandrafletcher.

culture shock

It's day three in India and I acutally had a small case of culture shock (it actually produces physical side effects) and had to have a lie down. Seriously! I arrived here and just jumped right in. My first day was spent navigating around on a bicycle - and if anyone who has been to India could testify - that is quite impressive. It is seriously a death wish on the roads and i'm sure that someone has the rule book somewhere, maybe the English took it with them when they left. I was thinking it would be a laugh to try and get my Indian drivers license just to see what the rules are.

I'm better now after my chill out. A volunteer here said that i have to wait for my soul to arrive to India, apparently your body arrives by plane but your soul comes by horseback and so it takes a while for it to arrive.

In three days I actually have managed to do quite a lot - I've done an Indian yoga class which is unbelievably different to the way the west teach yoga. The guy was an absolute task master - you are in a posture at about 90 degrees and he comes over and yanks you to about 180 degrees. The guy even tried to stand on my legs while they were crossed and push my back down. F^&*^ hell! He was walking around the whole time saying in his Indian accent.. "Yoga is Union - Yoga is Equal - Yoga is Pain" Yep... damn straight.

The children here are on some serious steroids of cuteness.. I don't know what it is but they make your heart melt when you see them.. and their parents are always shoving their kid in your face so you can take a photo of him or her.. and then they grab the littlest one and hand him to you like he is the prize. It's like they know you are a sucker for those goregeous cute faces.

The NGO I am working with is Indian run so it can be extremely disorganised. I have started already in my first few days to implement some structure to their organisation and we have set up some handbooks and orientation materials for future volunteers. It's fun to bring Indian culture into all these things as well.. On all the Handbooks we have drawn traditional Kolam designs that Kavitha (the office manager) is teaching me to draw.

I head to Auroville on Sunday which will be another adventure. Stay tuned.
check out some of my other pictures here