Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye is no fun. I don’t like it one bit. And I’ve had to do it a lot lately as I’m heading back home after my ten months of living in this place. But here’s the secret: the fact that saying goodbye is so difficult is evidence of the relationships I’ve formed and the love I’ve found for this new city and the people in it. These things are worth every last bit of the pain that comes along with goodbye.

Part of saying goodbye is taking the time to remember what I’ve experienced over the last ten months. Let me share with you some of those things that I did in my last few months in India.

Retreat

For our yearly office retreat, we drove a couple hours south of the city to a picturesque resort on a mountaintop. The air was peaceful and the scenery was stunning, and a very welcome break from the dust and noise of the city. We spent a wonderful weekend playing cricket, swimming in the pool, eating good food, dancing and celebrating and resting together as a team. It was a well timed break from our daily routine.

The Administrative Team

The Interns 

Monsoon

The rainy season came, and it came hard. To be honest, I had never really understood the Biblical account of the flood. I wasn’t able to imagine how simple rainfall, in any amount, could succeed in flooding anything. Well, now I know. If it rained as hard as it did those first few weeks for 40 days straight, I have no doubt that the earth could easily be flooded. Rain makes for a good adventure on our commute to work, as well— with more rain, the demand for covered auto rickshaws skyrockets. There were a few days where we thought we might have to walk to work in the rain (fortunately we were rescued by a timely rickshaw a little ways into our walk).

Here's a video of my commute home from work during monsoon. Turn on your speakers-- this rickshaw came with it's own soundtrack.

Bollywood

On one particularly rainy day the weather was so bad that even the local trains had been shut down, and our office was sent home from work early. As my roommate and I headed toward the elevator of our apartment complex, we ran into our neighbours on their way to see a movie. An example of Indian hospitality, they invited us to join. We had just been wondering what to do with our free afternoon, so we said “Sure, why not?” It was an excellent decision. We saw “ABCD2” (imagine an Step Up), a movie produced by Disney but spoken entirely in Hindi. Being a Disney movie, the plot wasn’t too hard to follow. But any movie in a foreign language with no subtitles is hard to follow for almost three hours in a row!

Here’s the trailer. Like the movie, it’s much longer than necessary and full of excellently cheesy quotes.

Some Thoughts

When I see you in person, it’s very likely that you’ll ask me “How was your trip?” and I’ll say “It was great!” And then the conversation might start to head toward a standstill. I know you want to hear about my time in South Asia, and I want to tell you. But my trip wasn’t just a vacation, it was my life for the last ten months. I can’t summarise all the details, joys, heartaches, and laughter of my past year of my life in one minute any more easily than you can. So I need some help from you. I’ll need to be asked some questions.

Since I’ve returned, I’ve been asked many questions about my trip. The best questions are those that make me recall and describe specific details of my life. It’s those details I want to remember and share with my family and friends, because it’s those details that defined my life for the past ten months. So ask away— ask me about the smells, the sounds, the textures, the language, and the tastes. Ask me what I ate for breakfast, where my favourite shopping spots are, and what I liked to do on a Saturday night. More often than not, those questions lead to stories that I wouldn’t have otherwise remembered to tell you.

The next best questions are those that ask what I miss. What did I miss the most from home while I was there? What do I miss now that I'm home again? What won’t I miss? I’ll answer some of these for you here. I missed blending in and Chipotle and thick blankets. I miss my friends and my apartment and rupees and friendly bhajia-walas and chai on the roof. I don’t miss pollution and not having cheese. There are many, many more answers to these questions. And I’m looking forward to telling you more about them in person!

Mangoes and Cricket

Confession time: it can be difficult to think of things to write in these updates. Yes, everything is different from home. But I’m used to it now. So trying to think of interesting things to say about my life here feels a little like trying to find interesting things to say about my life at home: I’m know there are things to say, but as soon as I sit down to try to think of them, all my recent memories fly out the window!

However, the good news is that I have managed to think of some things to share with you, namely: Mangoes and Cricket.

Mangoes (Or, Proof that Heaven is Real)

It’s mango season, and I couldn’t be happier! Literally, mangoes are one of the main reasons I was excited to come here. Mango season didn’t begin until the summer season (around April and May), and so I have waited patiently this entire time for mango season to arrive, and my wait is finally over!

There’s just something about a good mango— and the way its impossible to eat one without looking like you’ve been attacked by an orange pulp monster. You just have to learn to surrender yourself to the stickiness, because eating a mango isn’t just a snack; it’s an experience.

And mangoes come in a variety of delicious forms! There’s mango kulfi (an ice-cream-esque dessert made of condensed milk), mango shakes, mango lassi (kind of like a sweet mango yoghurt) and aamras puri (fried sweet bread dipped in mango pudding). And of course, there’s always fresh mangoes for sale on the street. Although that was an adventure for a while, because my fruit guy won’t sell me any less than six mangoes at a time.

My roommate and I enjoying delicious mango shakes on our street.

Cricket (Or, Baseball’s Distant and Not-Quite-As-Cool Cousin)

There was a good deal of excitement in the office the other week, because a donor gave all our staff members free tickets to a professional cricket match! I didn’t really understand cricket, but a professional sporting match is usually good fun, and it was a nice chance for everyone to get out of the office together.

Cricket, like baseball, involves a ball, a bat, pitchers (or “bowlers”) and fielders, but that’s about where the similarities end. Instead of alternating innings like baseball, cricket games are divided into two portions: first, one team is “at bat” and scores as many points as they can, and then they switch. Because of this, the strategy is completely different than baseball. Cricket games can often last up to 24 hours. Twenty-four hours. What. Fortunately, in the professional league they often limit play to a certain number of “overs,” essentially curbing the number of times the bowler can bowl the ball in a game. This makes each game much shorter— only about three hours long.

These three hours were made much more exciting by the atmosphere in the crowd. Every time something significant happened (about every two minutes) the speakers would blare out Bollywood dance tunes, and the crowd would go nuts. Especially entertaining were the group of guys a few seats over, who got up and danced every single time, even when the event benefitted the other team.

Something I did not expect to see at the game, however, was cheerleaders. Other than in Bollywood, modesty is taken very seriously here. But there they were, cheerleaders in as little clothing as they would be at an American football game. But the thing that stood out most about these cheerleaders was not their wardrobe (or lack thereof) but the fact that they were all white. As you can imagine, this created an interesting dynamic. My friend, one of the IJM lawyers, told me that they’re mostly American and European women who have moved here to act in Bollywood, and are doing the cheerleading gig on the side. Here’s another article, if you’re interested in reading more: http://indianexpress.com/article/trending/hate-being-ogled-all-the-time-ipl-cheerleaders-tells-all-in-reddit-ama/

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I should include this in my update. Since most of you have never been here, I don’t want one of the only impressions you have of this country I've come to love to be one that is less than tasteful. Because there is so much more to this place. It is full of beauty and colour and adventure and lovely people who are passionate about changing their country and the world for the better. But, like all cultures, there is brokenness here as well. This is just one of the ways that this particular culture’s brokenness expresses itself. To be fair, if I was going to an American sporting event for the first time, I might experience similar emotions- there's as much brokenness at home as there is abroad, it just takes different forms.

I think that one of the most important things I’m learning here is that there is more brokenness in the world than we can imagine, whether it be here, in Baltimore, or even my home town, but that there is also more hope than there is brokenness. Or, at least, the hope is stronger than the brokenness. Because we have a God who has not abandoned the broken places of the earth, but has instead enabled us to be his “repairers of broken walls, restorers of streets to live in,” and promises to help us every step of the way. (Isaiah 58:12)

P.S. Baseball is waaaaay better than cricket. I fully realize that my primary motivation to say this is a sense of nostalgia and patriotic duty to my country, however, in an effort to be fair, I have come up with a legitimate reason to make this claim: since cricket is a much higher-scoring sport than baseball (teams will often score more than 200 points), the principles of economics teach us that each point is worth less. Therefore, there is not as much motivation to make charging sprints, diving saves, and epic jumps to catch a home run over the wall. So it's just not as exciting to watch.

Chai, Beef, and Hindi

*To get the full effect of this blog post, before you continue reading, go put on your winter jacket and snow pants and run to the nearest freeway. Sweating yet? Hearing traffic roaring by and horns honking? Ok. Now you’re in the right setting.

In spite of the hot weather, there is incredible beauty in this place. The almost-seven months of experience has allowed me to become comfortable enough to enjoy that beauty in new ways. I’ve enjoyed natural beauty: the colours of the sun setting over the pacific and the feel of the breeze rush past me as I stand on the train. I’ve enjoyed man-made beauty: the lights of the city and the sounds of the trains and the smell of street food. Here's closer look at a few more aspects of my life here:

Chai:

My days have begun to fall into a comfortable pattern. One of my favourite parts of the day is Chai time. Our office, like many buildings here, has a spacious rooftop overlooking the city. In the corner of the roof is a makeshift stall made of bamboo poles and blue tarp, providing cover for a little stove. (You can see what I’m talking about in my Facebook profile picture!) At 3:30 every day a group of interns and staff hike up the stairs to the roof to take a break from our work and enjoy the fresh air. We all crowd under the shade of the stall and watch as our favourite chaiwala (tea vendor) makes tea for us.

Side note: I am happy to announce that I have just mastered the art of making chai! When I get back, let me know, and I’d be happy to make some for you— you can taste a little of what life is like here :)

Beef:

This is an interesting time to be in this part of the world. One reason for this is the recent ban on beef. It is now illegal in our state to slaughter cows and purchase, sell, consume, or possess beef. Not that there was a ton of beef available in our state to begin with: the predominant religion here is Hinduism, and many Hindu people regard the cow as sacred. Prior to the ban they didn’t even serve hamburgers at the local Burger King. But now all slaughterhouses have been shut down, and what beef was available has been driven out. This has some interesting political and social fallout, especially as the people whose livelihoods depended on the meat industry now have to find new sources of income.

Hindi:

Main Hindi sikh rahi hu (I am learning Hindi). Once a week, we gather in another intern’s apartment for Hindi lessons. A New Yorker, a Canadian, a British couple and me all desperately trying to figure out how to imitate what our teacher is saying. The results are pretty comical. Often our issue lies in pronunciation— for example: there are four different ways to pronounce the letter “d.” I can’t distinguish between those different ways, because they all just sound like a plain old “d” to me. But to a native Hindi speaker, it could be the difference between two entirely different words or concepts.

Fortunately I don’t need to know much Hindi to get around. Most people speak English, or enough that we can communicate with short phrases and lots of pointing. I’m excited to be learning more Hindi, though— the looks on people’s faces when this farangi (foreigner) breaks out a Hindi phrase is priceless!

Racism

My experiences here in South Asia have given me a new perspective on the issues of racism. This is largely because, for the first time in my life, I am living and working in an area where I am part of a racial minority.

And it isn’t easy. I came here already having the expectation that I would never be able to blend into a crowd. When I walk down the street, heads turn. Eyes follow me wherever I go. Sometimes I can simply ignore it, but it's harder when the stares turn into pointing, giggles, whispered comments, or even catcalls.

Sometimes it’s useful to stand out in a crowd. I’m easy to find if I get separated from my group on the trains. I’ll admit, on some occasions I’ve enjoyed the privileges that my skin color brings me in this culture—for example, I’ve been able to walk around fancy hotels that I’m not staying in with no questions asked. Once, a rickshaw driver chose to take me on as a passenger instead of someone else who got there first, and I accepted, not wanting to fight the crowd any longer.

But honestly, sometimes it’s exhausting. There’s days where the thought of leaving the safety of my apartment to face the sea of stares is just overwhelming. Even walking down to the corner grocery store becomes more of a chore when I think about all the different reactions I may receive because of my foreign-ness. I’ve become an expert in facial expressions. There’s a clear difference between a curious stare and an uncomfortable stare; between a kind smile and a nasty smile.

I have to remind myself that usually the people staring at me aren’t trying to be rude (I realized this when I caught myself staring at other white people). Their “racism” toward me is a natural action of seeing something (or someone) that is out of the ordinary. They probably didn’t even notice they were doing it. They just saw something unusual, looked on curiously, and then went about their day. But their action, no matter how unconscious or innocent, made me feel uncomfortable. And, from my perspective, that’s something that matters to me. Even if they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong, I was negatively affected by their actions.

It’s not bad all the time. There’s good days and bad days, good places and bad places, good people and bad people, just like you’d find in any other country. And there’s definitely been a good outcome: I now have a different perspective on racism, both abroad and at home.

Living as a part of a racial majority my whole life, it was difficult to imagine what life must be like for those in a minority. I could conceptually imagine the everyday difficulties of being a racial minority, but I couldn’t really understand what it was like. I didn’t have the experience. But now I’ve begun to think harder about what life is like for minorities in the U.S. The thing is, my own experience as a minority isn’t even close to what their experience is like: even my “minority” status here is one of privilege. American culture and appearances are often seen as an ideal in this part of the world. What must it be like for someone who’s minority status is often seen as one of less credibility, not more?

This is something I want to remember when I head back home to my comfortable world, once again a part of the racial majority. I don’t consider myself, or really anyone I know, to be “racist.” But now I can understand from my own experience as a racial minority that actions taken by individuals and communities can be legitimately “racist” in their effects, even if it was not intended that way at all.

When I hear people a part of a racial minority talking about their struggles, I don’t want to brush it off as illegitimate. I want to remember how difficult it is to be a part of a minority, and not take for granted the enormous privileges my skin color has given me. I hope to use some of that privilege to work for changes that makes life better for everyone.

Christmas

As some of you may know, I had the opportunity to come home for Christmas! And it’s quite a story. The whole trip, from beginning to end, is a reminder that God is truly in control.

Everything was out of my control from the very beginning. On December 11th, I realized that the plane ticket I originally bought wouldn’t get me home next summer like I planned, at least not without a very large fee. I was left with an un-refundable ticket home, and since most of the office would be off for Christmas anyway, I decided to use the ticket and spend Christmas at home. Less than a week later, I was on a plane headed to the States.

I was so excited for a chance to go home. But I was also sad for my friends, who I knew would have loved to see their families for Christmas, but who would be remaining behind. “Who knows?” said my friend as I described my conflicting emotions, “Maybe there’s a reason God has you coming home, and them staying here."

I decided to treat the entire trip as a giant Christmas present from Jesus. It was amazing how much I was able to do. In the same two-week period, I was able to visit with my boyfriend and his family, be there for my brother’s 18th birthday, spend Christmas day with my family, attend my roommate’s wedding, visit with friends from high school and college, and spend time with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents at our annual Grimes family Christmas gathering. Everything was timed so perfectly. It was clear that God was orchestrating this adventure for me.

But on New Year’s Eve, I still wasn’t aware of the full extent of God’s plan for this trip. I spent one last day with my extended family before my flight back, which was scheduled for New Year’s Day. As has become tradition, we went to catch a movie with our cousins (there’s a lot of us, with a wide age range, so we usually split up). I was sitting between two of my cousins, wondering what would happen after Jack slayed the giant who had just stomped on everything, when I heard a voice behind me saying “GG’s sick. We have to go.”

I remembered my aunt telling me earlier in the day that my grandma was sick, so I knew that if I was receiving this message again in the middle of a crowded movie theater that it was serious. We grabbed our coats and ran out of a still-dark theater and into the parking lot. “No, God!” I thought, fighting back tears as we rushed toward the car, “This CAN’T be the reason you brought me back here!”

At some point in the course of that hectic night, I learned enough to put together a story that highlighted the continuing theme of God’s timing. GG had experienced a sudden heart failure in her living room. My Grandpa and aunt found her, and called 911. Just as the dispatch officer was beginning to instruct my aunt in CPR, my other aunt, who is CPR certified, walked in the door. She immediately began the procedure, and continued for what must have seemed like an eternity until the ambulance arrived. As the ambulance drove toward the hospital, my family followed, certain that GG was gone. Much to their joy and surprise, the doctor at the hospital informed them that not only did she have a pulse, but she was responding to vocal cues as well.

As GG continued to improve and we began to relax, more stories of God’s timing popped up. Some of my family wouldn’t have known what was going on, but for my one-year-old cousin who happened hear his aunt’s phone vibrating in her purse and managed to grab it and toddle over to her. My cousins and I at the movie theater realized as we piled into the car that we were almost out of gas and didn’t know if we could even make it to the hospital in time (we did). My whole family happened to be in town for Christmas to help care for GG and my Grandpa, and my aunt walked in at exact right moment to save GG’s life with her years of CPR training. And I was there with my family through the whole process, instead of receiving frantic text updates from hundreds of thousands of miles away.

I am so grateful that I was able to be with my family for Christmas and during those chaotic couple of days. God may have led me across the ocean to a new place, but he also led me home right when I needed to be there. He put everyone exactly where they needed to be this Christmas. Anytime I begin to be afraid that something won’t work out (which I’m sure I will), I just need to remember this Christmas and be reminded that God’s timing is so much better than my own, and I can trust him to be in control of everything.

What's Life Like?

I've been living in South Asia for over 4 months now. And it's finally starting to feel normal. When I first arrived, I was so busy trying to mentally accept everything new that was being thrown at me that I didn't have the ability to realize how out-of-sorts I was. Now, looking back, I can see clearly the difference between my state of mind at the beginning, and my state of mind now. I'm feeling comfortable getting around on my own, and navigating the daily tasks of transportation, grocery shopping, and work. I've also made a great group of friends, both from IJM and from my church, that make going about daily life lots of fun.

The strange thing about living here is that it doesn't always feel that strange. It seems like every moment  should feel exciting and exotic, but often it just feels like I moved to a different town and started a new job. But then, just as I think everything is normal, something will happen to remind me that "I'm not in Kansas anymore." I'll describe to you what a typical day is like for me, and then let you be the judge of whether or not life is "normal."

I wake up in the morning, get ready for the day, and my roommates and I walk out of our apartment to catch an auto rickshaw to work. After about 20 minutes of dodging other vehicles and inhaling gas fumes I arrive outside the office. We pay the rickshaw driver (a little more than 50 cents) and make our way through the mobs of people on the street and into the relative peace of our compound.

Our day at the office begins with office devotions, where all the staff gather together to sing, hear scripture, and pray for the work that we will do that day. Everything is covered in prayer, from ill family members to office purchases to rescues and rehabilitation. Afterward, we find our desk or a quiet corner for half an hour of personal devotional time. At the end of this period, my team (the Administration team) gathers again to pray for our teams specific needs that day, and then the work begins.

So far, my jobs have included a wide range, from interviewing potential legal employees to designing posters for our office photography competition. Aside from the variety of "as needed" odd jobs, my main tasks include assisting the HR (Human Resources) department, managing the office timesheet and employee leave process, and helping schedule visits to the office. Since I have no experience whatsoever in HR or recruiting, the amount of responsibility I have came as a surprise to me. What kind of standing do I have, with my Bachelor's degree, to be trusted to interview candidates many years my senior in both age and experience? Recruitment is the job that's been assigned to me, so I take a deep breath and, ready-set-go, dive into the world of recruitment. I've been gathering that this is a common experience in IJM offices. "I'm sorry, I must have heard wrong. You can't possibly have just said that you want me to write a training manual for police in dealing with trafficking victims," said one of my colleagues. But here, things need to get done, and if you're the one available to do it, then your supervisors  trust you to do what it takes to get it done.

At about one in the afternoon, I take a break for lunch. I usually run down to the vegetarian restaurant down the street to buy something delicious to eat. Paneer biryani (rice with spices and cheese), idli and wada (fried and steamed breakfast biscuits, served with a yummy coconut chutney), and masala dosa (fried flatbread stuffed with spiced potato) are some of my go-to staples. Sometimes I'll order reshmi chicken (chicken cooked in a creamy spiced yoghurt sauce) from the non-veg restaurant around the block. I'll bring the food back to the office, where I head to the legal department to eat with the legal team and the other interns for lunch. Tastes of my coworkers' lunches are shared just as readily as stories and jokes, and after a nice break and a full stomach, I head back to my desk to start work again for the rest of the day.

At about 5:30 things start wrapping up, and my roommates and I head back out through the crowded street to catch an auto rickshaw back to our apartment. Our evening activities are as varied as the languages we hear on the street during the commute home. I might spend a quiet evening cooking dinner, reading, or catching up with family and friends. Or I might head to my friends apartment to borrow their blender to cook or to watch their TV. Or I might head out for dinner with the other interns or friends from church. The last couple weeks before Christmas, it seemed as if everyone leaving for home or having a birthday- that made for a couple busy weeks of both celebrating and saying goodbye.

On Saturday mornings I'll catch a rickshaw with my roommates to our friend's apartment where our church's small Bible study group gathers. Afterward we might to one of the nearby malls for lunch and a movie (complete with the national anthem and a 10 minute intermission that sometimes arrives right in the middle of an important dialogue), or even to HyperCity, the local grocery superstore. On Sunday mornings, we'll catch a rickshaw in the other direction to church, which is usually followed by trying out one of the many restaurants in the area with a group of friends from church.

I've described a typical week, but the events of each week are about as varied as the languages we hear on the street. And that's encouraging to me. It means I've found enough friends and activities for life to start flowing on its own. Although I miss my family and friends in the States, I'm so grateful for all I have here, and that I'm starting to feel at home.