Firsts

Our first weekend in India was a pretty relaxing one. Still feeling our jetlags we fell asleep Friday night at 3am, and woke up Saturday around 10am. After a bit of ‘hanging around’ (I lóve my hammock) we made our breakfast specialty: sandwiches with an omelet and sausages. It’s not a bad start of the day.

The day before we had spoken with Raj about our workplan and we had agreed we would send it to him today. Therefore this morning we made a plan for the coming 4 to 5 weeks. The first two weeks we will pay visits to different health care centers, hospitals, schools, colleges, scavengers and cremator families.

In India there is a big difference between for example Government Hospitals and Private Hospitals. The main reason is that in India the health care system consists of an ‘Out-of-Pocket System’. This bluntly means that everyone has to pay for the health care they need when they need it. The government hospitals are really cheap and accesible for everyone. As a consequence the quality of the health care and the hygiene among other things, really s*ck. (For a lack of a better word) The private hospitals are accesible for the wealthier people, but it reaches a smaller amount since about 70% of the people in India live under the poverty line.
We are really interested in observing these health care providers with our own eyes and find out if there is something we can do by means of education.

In our plan we also appointed some time to two of our passions: Cricket & Basketball. Cricket is to Indians what soccer is to us Dutchies. People in India live cricket. Bhavvik plays in his hometown and ofcourse he would like to play here too – with the local people. Ananth, the guy who’s accompanying us, plays cricket too and our hopes are that maybe we can join him one time.

While people in India live cricket, me, myself and I, live basketball. When asked about our hobbies I wanted to say ‘skydiving’, but since I’m not able to teach people that -yet-, I stuck with basketball. I told them I’ve been coaching U16 girls for a couple of years and immediatly we were arranging plans for me to coach a girls team from a private school. I’m really excited for this: Everytime you have a chance to pass on your passion and learn people something, you should grab it with both hands.

By the way, since our internet is really slow here, I won’t be able to watch any NBA games for two months. (Here I am, with my NBA league pass) I will probably return with some withdrawal symptoms; lock myself up untill I’ve watched every Lakers’ game :)

Anyways, after finishing our workplan we decided to do a little walk through our village. The people here are much nicer than in the city. Once you say ‘vanakom’ (or something like that) and you put your hands together and bow your head, they smile at you real friendly.
One thing I really need to get used to: the staring. People just stare at me, unashamed. All the time. Everywhere I go. It’s pretty uncomfortable actually. Luckily everything has two sides. Kids treat me like I’m a freaking star. They want to shake hands and for me to take pictures of them. When walking past a school, one kid came to me to say hello, and when I finished responding suddenly there were 20 of them. All trying to shake my hand and getting my attention. Unfortunately they didn’t really know any English, so we had trouble communicating. When we left they were screaming ‘bye’ untill we were out of sight.

At night Bhavvik & I played a game of ‘Candle Light Scrabble’. It’s played almost the same way as normal scrabble except you have to play it without electricity and you can neither see your own tiles, nor the tiles on the board.

On Sunday we would go see some Temples in Trichy. While driving towards before mentioned temples, we stopped at a field where kids – around 10-14 years old – were playing cricket and volleyball. Some of them spoke English really well so we talked a little bit. I also joined them, playing volleyball and showing off my basketball tricks – which was pretty hard with a volleybal on an uneven land, excuses – excuses, I guess I’ve lost my ballhandling skills (what skills?!) already. We agreed we would meet them again next Sunday, so probably next week there will be a blog about how Bhavvik got his ass kicked in cricket by the local kids.

We then went to visit some temples. The first one was the 'Jambukeswarar Temple'. In the temples you are not allowed to wear shoes, so off we went, barefooted. (I totally saved Bhavvik from stepping in some animal shit, you're welcome) Inside the temple there were smaller temples, and places to worship. These places were only for Hindu's, so ofcourse Bhavvik was able to go in while I had to wait outside. While walking we suddenly saw an elephant. I was only standing a couple of metres away from this beautiful animal, an amazing feeling. The elephant was decorated with Indian traditional paintings.

We decided to visit another temple, one we've seen multiple times when riding through the city, rising above all buildings: 'The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple'. (Try saying that out loud) We were told it is the largest temple in Asia. The colours and sculptures are amazing. Once you're walking (still barefooted) towards the temple you pass 21 'gopurams', (tower gateways) Each and everyone of these gateways are unique and beautiful. For us it was really interesting to visit these temples and to get an understanding what religion means for the people around here.

Tomorrow we will start with our workplan. We don't know our shedule exactly yet, but I'm sure you will read about it in this blog, later this week.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Stephanie & Bhavvik