One Photo Please

Despite a comprehensive plumbing system, technology prevails in India. "One photo! One photo please!" or "Camera phone? Camera phone?". Once one or the other appears out of pocket, children swarm, all wanting portraits. "One photo" translates to a single shot, one person in the photo, just them. Mothers run back to their homes to bring out newborns peering over your shoulder to see their likeness in digital screens. The team has amassed millions of photos, but we've quickly been schooled in the art of stealth photography.

When I left, people told me that I'd return to the United States with a peaceful look on my face and about ten pounds lighter. I can't say that I've found that recipe just yet. The build has been going well, despite a lot of sick team members. One young lady developed culture shock disguised as a sinus infection on our second day and wouldn't leave the hotel four consecutive days. Others developed typical colds and sun stroke, but quickly recovered. The work is very hard and it is hotter than you can imagine here. Although the humidity has not quite hit Florida in July numbers, it is a close second. Lifting bricks and pans of mortar all day leaves everyone exhausted, and daily we are put to shame by both older women and their daughters who gamely toss bricks to the masons and tote large bowls of wet cement on their heads.

We are hungry all of the time, despite the spicy indian food plentiful at meals and I sense the alchemy of this work added to the combination of India's insanity and the indigent conditions of the village we've become a part of has left everyone speechless and spent. Getting to Mamallapurum will be a great way to end the trip.

Two of our hosts, Stephen and Dyan, have treated the team to a movie titled "Sivaji", hooting and hollaring with the rest of the crowd for the three hour extravaganza. "Sivaji" stars Rajinikanth, who calls himself BOSS and has his own theme song. Wow! The final number included a spice girls type dance routine with guitars as props, flying machine guns, shot entirely at the new Gehry museum in Barcelona. "Not logic, just magic" Stephen gleefully whispers to me. I am crazy in love with Indian cinema!

After telling us that this would be the third time they had seen "Sivaji" (which is like our "Pirates" in financial success), Stephen and Dyan reveal that they are die hard members of the Kamal Husan "clan", a rival Tamil star. Last week, they presented Katy Leigh and myself with their official fan club t-shirts. India's movie fans go to great length to show their devotion. For example, a "clan" will create large banners resembling billboards with a collage of their favorite stars' photos and films, the lower half displaying smiling faces of the purchasers. These "fanners" are then strung over streets and plastered to sides of buildings, making it clear who the real heroes are.

The film clued me in to the happy disposition prevalent in the people we bustle through the streets with and sweat beside all day. Color and music and magic and faith is embedded in everything they create, whether it be legends or blockbuster movies.

More to come...

Pondicherry at Last

Six of us have brought our Lonely Planet's Guide to India with us, thus increasing the weight of our baggage by about thirty pounds. Pondicherry is recorded as a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of other Indian cities and indeed, it is. Our three hour bus ride from Chennai was an experience, with the same non-traffic rules applying for the two lane dirt highway. It was best to avert our eyes at the on-coming cars, trucks, bicycles and mopeds. As I mentioned previously, three members of the team have arrived on their own due to missed connections etc, and during this trek, I thought of what they would be experiencing, first arriving at a crazy airport in the middle of the night only to get accompany a stranger and head off into the darkness, headlights shooting to the left and right of the taxi.

Pondicherry was once a French colony and a small quarter of the city labeled "White Town" remains home to about 500 French families. White Town abuts the beach with the promenade bustling with "black" Pondicherry every evening, but that is about as close as the two populations get. Even at Auroville beach, people are separated which is odd to experience. A beautiful statue of Ghandi crowns the horizon. August 15 marked the 60th India Independence Day or "Friendship Day", and he has been fully lit up and adorned with floral wreaths of jasmine and coxcomb.

I am moved to tears by the sight of his smile, walking staff, familiar spectacles and pocket watch dangling from his dhoti.

Driving to the build site on the red clay roads and crumbling housing, we are faced with extreme poverty. Despite this, the people are happy and the children run along the side of the bus shouting "Hello! Hello! Hello!". I learn that "Hello" means "Hey You" as well. I will miss this very much when we leave. There is nothing lovelier than a chorus of children's voices greeting you in the morning.

We are working in Chinna Kotakuppam, a small village of 600 which means "small fishing village". The residents were not directly affected by the tsunami, and in fact, they aren't fisherman, but as daily labourers, once the storm hit, work was scarce for quite some time. As this particular village is the poorest of the poor in Pondicherry, the Indian government has extended its tsunami relief efforts to townships such as Kotakuppam where updated housing will certainly provide much needed shelter against the elements.

Seventy brick houses are to be completed in this particular village, each 320 square feet with terra cotta tile roofs supported by palm wood beams. To expediate construction, Habitat has integrated a women's self help group to mobilize labour and produce interlocking bricks used on half of the construction. Both styles of bricks are heavy and are dug right out of the earth surrounding the structures. Clearly we are not used to this type of work. Women with babies slung about their waists were tossing bricks to one another like it was a loaf of bread.

Although we have been laying brick, mixing the morter is off limits. There is a very stern looking man clad in boots fashioned out of plastic cement bags tied at the knees, who stands proudly at the foot of his creation, his stare warning to stay back. I have labeled him Morter Man, Chief of the Cement. When you see his picture, you will laugh. Today he actually waved to me.

In this place, there resides 200 children of all ages, the babies clad in only a red string tied about the waist run to us with big smiles and joyous waves. Other children wear various pieces of old clothing or school uniforms that look like they are in their third generation of use. About 90% go barefoot and have various cuts and sores in different stages of healing or infection. The team was so disturbed by this, we took up a collection and purchased a caches first aid supplies. Everyday for an hour, we've set up triage, and the volunteers who apply an assortment of bandaging welcome an onslaught of complaints, cuts and bruises with the more serious injuries. On a lighter note, one of the children wrote on his hand in english "please can I have one banana?".

More to come...


P.S. In case you are wondering, I have found the best coffee shop and internet cafe in Pondicherry and they know me by name!

India: An Assault on the Senses

I have been here a full week and the words to describe India elude me. Overwhelming is too small. Incredible is inaccurate. Insane is inappropriate. But "an assualt on the senses" seems to fit.

Spending two days in Chennai pretty much primed the group for what was to come. With a population of eight million, the city is as big as Los Angeles, but the sprawl and infrustructure is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for anything. Spencer Plaza, the westernized shopping bazaar marks the center of town, and enormous billboards advertising gold, diamonds and silk saris rise above crumbling buildings housing merchants selling autoparts, truck tires, bike accessories. I try to find something to relate to, something that will keep me tied down.

Our hotel sits to the side of a main road into the city and the street noise is non-stop. And when I say that, I mean it.

Twenty four hours a day.

Horns of various timbre and volume, a quack, a blare, toot toots are all part of the cacaphony of noise. The barely paved street carries and bikes and people and motorcyles and trucks and cars and tuk tuks to destinations unknown. With the sheer mass of traffic, we find it difficult to orient ourselves. Side streets spill over with poor families, goats, dogs, chickens, cows and crude altars. Garbage is everywhere. People stare at us, some are brave enough to say hello.

Despite these bleak images, bright, color abounds from every direction, women in saris float by like snowflakes, scents of sumptuous spices from the street vendors hit our noses and assails the stench rising with the heat. Crammed buses blink multi-colored disco lights on the outside and play Bollywood movies for the passengers. All of the vehicles are brightly painted in yellows, reds, greens and turquoise. The average dump truck is its own work of art. With this juxtoposition, every image is an indelible photograph.

The group has been straggling in. One of the young women received a voice mail on her stopover in Doha that her sister had been hospitalized after a serious car accident and I've driven her back the airport in hopes that she can make it to Cincinatti. She had only just arrived ten hours before. The mother & son team have been delayed in Paris and are due to arrive in two days and after arranging transportation for them to Pondicherry, we pack up our disco bus and head south.

You're Not in Singapore Anymore

What a different a five hour flight makes.

We arrived at midnight in Chennai after the longest flight pattern I've ever traveled. LAX to Taipei, where I was lucky enough in our hour stop to find a Starbucks open at 6:30 AM, hopped back on the plane for a nine hour layover in
Singapore. If Foxwoods is the largest casino out there, Singapore Airport is its sister in size.

From full size gym and swimming pool to XBox center and live Soduko to massage & sleeping lounge to shopping galore, one can keep themselves entertained and fed for hours. Being adventurous types, we cabbed it to town where my traveling companion, Katy Leigh described memories of dancing with the snake charmer at the world famous RAFFLES hotel & long bar twenty years ago at age 8. So, off we headed into a pristine, lush city, where chewing gum is illegal, where garbage is not to be found, and an architectual mish mash of British and Asian culture. Although it was a weekday, the city resembled a ghost town. We found the inhabitants later at the mall where people rushed around shopping for Levis and Nikes. I thought Singapore would be quaint, but maybe I was mixing up my imaginary pre-WWII Asian port cities from movies like "Empire of the Sun" and "Indochine".

Chennai couldn't have been more different.

Bleary eyed and stunned by the hour wait through customs, we were barrelled out to
hundreds of family members and other greeters lining the barriers at the arrival doors to the international terminal. Our driver led us to his "MaxiTaxi" and joined the throngs of vehicles in what seemed to be a late night drag race on the narrow strip towards the outskirts of downtown Chennai. Five cars and/or motorcycles competed to fit into a two lane road, horns at a constant sounding, more for safety issues than for aggravation. "Just letting you know I'm next to you" or "Just letting you know I'm passing you" that sort of warning. The brightly colored trucks and tuk tuks display a painted "Sound Horn" sign on the back as invitation. Even with darkness surrounding us, I kept the window open and took in the energy. Cows lined the sides and medians of the road, trash was swept into piles or tossed to the side of the road, cars and bikes passed each other, people on foot wove in and out of the constantly moving traffic, Bollywood movie signs were tied to palm trees every few yards.

We arrived at the Astok Hotel, a drab little place with lots of men standing around shaking their heads at us. We were not in Los Angeles, nor Singapore any longer.