Well I'm back in Lucknow, safe and sound. I got my visa updated meaning I'll be here until next December.
I'll get the posts for Nepal up, but you'll have to be patient.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Heading for the Hills
On the morning of the 19th I'm heading for Nepal to get my visa renewed. I'll be gone for about ten days so during that time I won't be posting regularily. I'll try to get one post up, just to say that I got there, but the long exposition will have to take place when I get back.
Please say a few prayers for me
Please say a few prayers for me
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Stew
The other day there was an extremely heavy monsoon. I was alone at the office and had to make my way over to the house. It's only about a five minute walk but it was raining extremely hard. I grabbed the umbrella, rolled my pant legs and stepped onto the flooded streets.
My initial plan was to hop between the raised parts of the uneven asphalt, and the sloped driveways but this soon proved inadequate. I was soaked and the streets I needed to go down were utterly flooded.
As I've mentioned before the streets of India are not like Canadian streets. They are covered in cow and dog dung and strewn with litter. There are no garbage cans on the sides of streets, rather there are garbage piles which the cows graze on.
Now all this filth which I had skirted in the past was floating in the brown stew of the flooded streets. Well there was no point on dwelling on something like that, so I stepped into the murky water, which was only about half way up my shins at the highest part. Little cigerette boxes floated around my ankles, and who knew what was floating around my toes.
I came onto one street where two little boys were playing in the brown water, bathing their legs in it. Two soaked girls came splashing past me saying, "Hi Didi!" (Didi means sister.) There was a festive air amongst these kids and I grinned back at them. Two boys had found an old peice of sterofoam and were using it as a raft to float along the roads, flailing and falling about it. Sometimes you just have to forget what's in the water and swim.
(And no, I didn't swim. I meant that metaphorically.)
My initial plan was to hop between the raised parts of the uneven asphalt, and the sloped driveways but this soon proved inadequate. I was soaked and the streets I needed to go down were utterly flooded.
As I've mentioned before the streets of India are not like Canadian streets. They are covered in cow and dog dung and strewn with litter. There are no garbage cans on the sides of streets, rather there are garbage piles which the cows graze on.
Now all this filth which I had skirted in the past was floating in the brown stew of the flooded streets. Well there was no point on dwelling on something like that, so I stepped into the murky water, which was only about half way up my shins at the highest part. Little cigerette boxes floated around my ankles, and who knew what was floating around my toes.
I came onto one street where two little boys were playing in the brown water, bathing their legs in it. Two soaked girls came splashing past me saying, "Hi Didi!" (Didi means sister.) There was a festive air amongst these kids and I grinned back at them. Two boys had found an old peice of sterofoam and were using it as a raft to float along the roads, flailing and falling about it. Sometimes you just have to forget what's in the water and swim.
(And no, I didn't swim. I meant that metaphorically.)
Friday, June 13, 2008
Imambare
Last Sunday Kara and I decided to do some tourism and go see one of the sites of Lucknow – Imambare.
We caught an auto rickshaw and took a nice long trip through the city while I played tour guide for Kara. Rickshaw is really the best way to see India, and it was a wonderful day, wet and drizzly.
We finally came the Muslim section of the city, which has many great architectural sites including our destination. Imambare was a palace built by some ruler or another with an adjacent mosque. We passed under a massive arch and entered the first courtyard, which had a circular path leading around a garden. At the far end was yet another arch this one lined with shopkeepers trying to make us by cameras and little carved things.
Beyond this second arch was a second courtyard. To our right was a massive mosque sitting atop a very impressive flight of stairs. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to enter because we’re not Muslims.
In front of us was the main building. We took off our shoes and entered a series of massive halls painted a sort of lime green with a baby blue trim. If you’ve seem ancient Muslim architecture before you can pretty easily imagine what we saw. There were the usual carved alcoves, and leaf-like patterns in the columns.
The main reason we had gone to Imambare was to see some sort of Labyrinth and after asking around for a while we realized we’d have to buy tickets for that portion. It’s 300 rupees for foreigners (that’s about seven dollars Canadian) and only about 50 rupees for the locals (about one dollar). We shelled out the cash and paid another 75 rupees for a tourist guide who spoke English. Never enter a maze unless you have a guide or a ball of string.
I was imagining the usual kind of labyrinth that we associate with Theseus and the Minotaur – you know the one with grey stone, and right angles shoved into a dungeon. To my surprise we reached the labyrinth by climbing upstairs and it was a sort of functional labyrinth. It was less like some crazy inventor’s idea of a prison and more like some sadistic chamberlain had decided that no one should work in the palace unless he had an excellent memory. Some of the passages led onto terraces, one on to the roof, and another onto a narrow gallery above one of the main halls. The side passages that led to wrong turns or dead ends were usually narrow staircases spiralling downwards or upwards.
At one point in the maze the guide stopped us in front of a stone wall and told us it was a wireless telephone service. He then ran off down the halls and out of sight. We put our ears up to the stone and after a moment we could hear his voice, obviously whispering, saying, “hello, hello”. Then he told us to come to him, and we took a few turns to see him surprisingly far off. It’s amazing the stuff that people in past ages were capable of.
After seeing the labyrinth we had one more stop in the complex. We went through another archway and came to a large court, most of which was taken up by a very wide, very long stair case that descended to a locked metal gate. Along the side of this staircase were hallways at different levels that could be accessed by arches placed along the walls. We entered one hallway and moved to the area beyond the gate.
One of the men told us it was a sort of well. Essentially there was a circular building of four stories with a hallow centre that ran down to the bottom. There were many open archways that looked out over the centre. That was my favourite part of the whole trip because I felt as excited and energetic as a little kid as I dashed about finding narrow staircases hidden in shadow, or suddenly popping out of some passage and saying, “Oh, this is where I am!” It’s the sort of place you dream about playing hide and go seek, or laser tag in.
After that we hopped back in our rickshaw and once more enjoyed the sights of Lucknow. The thing about India is that it really gives you the sense that there are stories behind everything. You just don’t get that impression from Canada’s cookie-cutter homes, or the people who you know went to school, got a job, got a family and are now trying to figure out how to get a bigger television. But in India, you see stories in everything. What is the story of the little boy with adult muscles carrying two heavy jugs of water? What is the story of the dirty old man with the huge beard sitting on the sidewalk? What about that woman with soaking hair draped over her face washing something in a bucket? Why doesn’t she move the hair out of her face?
Maybe it’s the romanticism of a foreigner, but it sometimes feels like the people here live lives a thousand times more real then the ones we live in Canada.
We caught an auto rickshaw and took a nice long trip through the city while I played tour guide for Kara. Rickshaw is really the best way to see India, and it was a wonderful day, wet and drizzly.
We finally came the Muslim section of the city, which has many great architectural sites including our destination. Imambare was a palace built by some ruler or another with an adjacent mosque. We passed under a massive arch and entered the first courtyard, which had a circular path leading around a garden. At the far end was yet another arch this one lined with shopkeepers trying to make us by cameras and little carved things.
Beyond this second arch was a second courtyard. To our right was a massive mosque sitting atop a very impressive flight of stairs. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to enter because we’re not Muslims.
In front of us was the main building. We took off our shoes and entered a series of massive halls painted a sort of lime green with a baby blue trim. If you’ve seem ancient Muslim architecture before you can pretty easily imagine what we saw. There were the usual carved alcoves, and leaf-like patterns in the columns.
The main reason we had gone to Imambare was to see some sort of Labyrinth and after asking around for a while we realized we’d have to buy tickets for that portion. It’s 300 rupees for foreigners (that’s about seven dollars Canadian) and only about 50 rupees for the locals (about one dollar). We shelled out the cash and paid another 75 rupees for a tourist guide who spoke English. Never enter a maze unless you have a guide or a ball of string.
I was imagining the usual kind of labyrinth that we associate with Theseus and the Minotaur – you know the one with grey stone, and right angles shoved into a dungeon. To my surprise we reached the labyrinth by climbing upstairs and it was a sort of functional labyrinth. It was less like some crazy inventor’s idea of a prison and more like some sadistic chamberlain had decided that no one should work in the palace unless he had an excellent memory. Some of the passages led onto terraces, one on to the roof, and another onto a narrow gallery above one of the main halls. The side passages that led to wrong turns or dead ends were usually narrow staircases spiralling downwards or upwards.
At one point in the maze the guide stopped us in front of a stone wall and told us it was a wireless telephone service. He then ran off down the halls and out of sight. We put our ears up to the stone and after a moment we could hear his voice, obviously whispering, saying, “hello, hello”. Then he told us to come to him, and we took a few turns to see him surprisingly far off. It’s amazing the stuff that people in past ages were capable of.
After seeing the labyrinth we had one more stop in the complex. We went through another archway and came to a large court, most of which was taken up by a very wide, very long stair case that descended to a locked metal gate. Along the side of this staircase were hallways at different levels that could be accessed by arches placed along the walls. We entered one hallway and moved to the area beyond the gate.
One of the men told us it was a sort of well. Essentially there was a circular building of four stories with a hallow centre that ran down to the bottom. There were many open archways that looked out over the centre. That was my favourite part of the whole trip because I felt as excited and energetic as a little kid as I dashed about finding narrow staircases hidden in shadow, or suddenly popping out of some passage and saying, “Oh, this is where I am!” It’s the sort of place you dream about playing hide and go seek, or laser tag in.
After that we hopped back in our rickshaw and once more enjoyed the sights of Lucknow. The thing about India is that it really gives you the sense that there are stories behind everything. You just don’t get that impression from Canada’s cookie-cutter homes, or the people who you know went to school, got a job, got a family and are now trying to figure out how to get a bigger television. But in India, you see stories in everything. What is the story of the little boy with adult muscles carrying two heavy jugs of water? What is the story of the dirty old man with the huge beard sitting on the sidewalk? What about that woman with soaking hair draped over her face washing something in a bucket? Why doesn’t she move the hair out of her face?
Maybe it’s the romanticism of a foreigner, but it sometimes feels like the people here live lives a thousand times more real then the ones we live in Canada.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Heat Rash
Sorry I haven't posted in a while, the Internet went on a little holiday.
As the title would suggest I have a heat rash right now. It's on my face, and torso, and climbing up my right forearm. For those of you lucky enough never to have experienced heat rash it looks like hundred of tiny red bumbs. It's kind of itchy but only if you instinctually scratch it. Then a new world of itch opens up to you. No, I'm exaggerating, it's really not that big of deal. All part of the Indian experience.
As the title would suggest I have a heat rash right now. It's on my face, and torso, and climbing up my right forearm. For those of you lucky enough never to have experienced heat rash it looks like hundred of tiny red bumbs. It's kind of itchy but only if you instinctually scratch it. Then a new world of itch opens up to you. No, I'm exaggerating, it's really not that big of deal. All part of the Indian experience.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
New Volunteer
Just a quick note that a new volunteer has arrived. She's named Kara from the States (West side), probably in her twenties, and has just finished four years of service in Haifa. She got an undergraduate degree and next september she's going for a degree in education. We've moved back into the office.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Phew!
We’re finally finished the first cursory draft of the Pathfinders book. Keep in mind that each of the nine chapters in the book had between two and ten drafts just by themselves. Some of those drafts were editing, and some were complete rewrites.
Now I’m going to go through the book, identify difficult vocabulary words and create a glossary at the back. I also have to make sure the chapter titles have a sense of uniformity.
And then will come rigorous testing. And the testing will lead to rewriting. And then we will do more testing, and more rewriting and then some more testing and you can see why I don’t want to leave in July.
Now I’m going to go through the book, identify difficult vocabulary words and create a glossary at the back. I also have to make sure the chapter titles have a sense of uniformity.
And then will come rigorous testing. And the testing will lead to rewriting. And then we will do more testing, and more rewriting and then some more testing and you can see why I don’t want to leave in July.
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