A long post, covering emotions, culture and missionaries

I am back in Joshimath after spending Diwali in Dehradun and Mussoorie respectively. It was a welcomed break from fieldwork, but was pretty draining itself. I am however, very happy that I made the switch. Based upon the amount of sweets that the family here has given me AFTER Diwali, I think I would have died from diabetes if I had actually been here for the real deal.

Tomorrow is Halloween and Monica—the fifteen-year-old girl whose family I am staying with—is turning sixteen. The whole sixteen-years-old thing is not a thing here at all. But I am hoping that I can try to share some Halloween with her for her birthday. I was hoping to find a green coconut or a kaddu to carve for Halloween, but my prospects are looking bleak, as Joshimath is not as well stocked as Dehradun. I will probably get a hard coconut and try to use nails or something to make the semblance of a face.

Now that I am getting ready to come back home, I am strangely feeling more homesick than I was before. Why does knowing that I’m going to see people soon make me miss them more? It also makes the thought of coming back for five or six more months very daunting. But I have to remember that the medical school process will be more-or-less completed at that point, so I should feel a lot less anxious, which will be nice.

It’s weird what I miss and what I do not miss while I am in India. Obviously, I miss people. That is a given. And that doesn’t really change over time. Right now, I am living in a three-room apartment, which experiences frequent power cuts and only gets water about twice a day. Strangely, I do not miss reliable electricity or water. I do miss easy hot water though, especially now that it’s getting colder. Fortunately, I pay for the gas, so I don’t feel guilty for boiling a lot of water for bathing. I do not miss going out at night, but I do miss good Internet. The Internet is my only way of constantly being connected with people. It also is a means of escapism. As much as I do love India, it is nice to read about what stupid thing Michelle Bachmann said or to read about the Occupy Wallstreet Protests. Knowing about what is happening in America makes me feel less disconnected from the people back home.

It is also funny what incidents annoy me and which I couldn’t care less about—I hate it when people lie to me, but I don’t mind paying more money than Indians. Essentially, these are the same things. If someone lies to me about why they were late for a meeting, it is no different than if someone lies to me about the price of a piece of fruit. The difference that I see is that the person who is selling me food, expects me to pay more. They charge all foreigners more. I know this and they know this, therefore it doesn’t seem like a lie. I can choose to argue or to walk away or to just pay and save myself the energy. But if someone tells me that my internet will be fixed tomorrow, when they know that is not true. Or if someone tells me that they will call me back in ten minutes, and then never call; I get really irate. I don’t know if Indians experiences this or not. But I don’t think I’d care either way. I just don’t like being lied to.

I explain to my Indian friends that Americans are very direct. They say, “Oh yes, in India as well.” No. You’re wrong. I don’t like to tell people when they’re wrong about their own culture; but even the Director of the United States India Education Fund agrees that Indians tend to be more passive in their conversation. This is something that is hard for me to navigate. It also means that what I perceive to be a flat out lie might be someone else’s way of being polite. It would be very rude to say that one cannot talk or does not want to talk. It is better to say that you will call back. It would be rude to not invite someone over to your house, but you might not actually want that person to come over at all.

Therefore, I miss direct conversation. I miss feeling like I know how to control a situation. I have, however noted that Garhwali women yell a lot. So, I fee comfortable yelling for the time being. At least when my internet is not working.

As for Diwali…that can be best summed up with this conversation.

PhD student: Are you going to celebrate Diwali at the Wildlife Institute?

Me: No, I am going to Mussoorie.

PhD student: Are you and your friends going to set off crackers?

Me: Yes, but I think only small ones. You know, selling these fireworks to just anyone would be illegal in America.

PhD student: (looks aghast) If you took away our crackers, there would be riots in the street.

Indeed there would be. There are fireworks for the three days up to and the three days after Diwali. Diwali itself is a complete madhouse, albeit, a wonderful madhouse. Very small children light very large fireworks though, which I am not a fan of. In Mussoorie, we got some smaller firecracker and some sparklers. If you ever want to light an Indian firework, you should know that they are actually very difficult to light. That is actually appealing to me normally, but it is not appealing when there are three people huddled around a cracker trying to light it. It probably took Nick and Andy about thirty minutes to light even a sparkler. There was one point when Nick and I were trying to make a human shield around matches that kept on going out no matter how quickly Andy lit them and put them to the supposed fuse. Meanwhile, Kerala kept yelling “stand back.” I think we went through all of Victoria’s matches, and a lot of her candles to try to lit the fuses. Eventually we had some firecrackers. But our neighbors outdid us and there were actual, very large fireworks right about us. Fortunately, we were not underneath the ashes as they fell.

The thing that none of us could understand were the “bombs.”  These are firecrackers that make no light, but only a very loud noise. At one point we were certain that people were sneaking into the apartment and lighting them inside, because there was no way that anything that loud could come from the street. But it was possible, and it was possible up to about 3:00 AM.

Diwali is a funny holiday. In Mussoorie there were fires, crackers, fireworks, bombs, and drunken people in the street. But when I returned to Dehradun, I saw that the professors who I work with and the PhD students had a very different Diwali. Theirs’ was more like Christmas than New Year’s Eve: lots of lights, lots of ghee lamps, and lots of decorations. Also, they ate a lot of sweets. Similarly, up in Joshimath things seem pretty tame. Some people light fireworks and crackers even now. But the family decorated the house and made a lot of food. It is both a very public and private holiday. Christmas can be like that as well, but something about Diwali especially evokes the dichotomy of chaos and order unlike anything that I have previously seen in the United States.

I’m not judging the drunkenness. We had a couple of drinks up in Mussoorie. If anyone out there wants a marketing Fulbright, I recommend studying liquor marketing in India. There is a vodka named “White Mischief;” but believe me, the white people were not the ones causing mischief on Diwali. There is also a Whiskey called Antiquarium. The bottles are designed to look like Grey Goose or Hennessey, but fail miserably. For some reason a bottle of vodka had a frosted exterior, like Grey Goose, but instead of the goose it had a guitar on it. On the opposite side of the bottle, viewed through the guitar was a man swimming. Something was very, very wrong with his shoulder. Nick asked me to diagnose his illness, and we mutually decided that is what happens if you swim while drinking vodka. Indian vodka companies don’t write out the risks of their products, they show you them. Very responsible.

Overall, it was a very good Diwali. As much as it would have been nice to have a sweet-overloaded, cozy Diwali with the family in Joshimath, I am very glad that I had some fun with some friends. Also, Diwali is completing insane, and it’s good to reflect on that with other outsiders.

After that rollicking discussion, I’m going to sum up this long blog post with a more serious topic. Over the past week back in Dehradun, I met one woman who openly told Alison and I that she is a missionary and two people who clearly are missionaries, although they had a very weak lie to explain their presence in India. Forcing or encouraging religious conversion is illegal in India. You can convert to any religion you would like to here. You can also go to a Christian Church with services in any language. But one cannot try to actively convert someone to a religion. I knew that missionaries were still coming to India, but I never expected someone to directly tell me that she is a missionary. This woman has been in India for eleven years and I told her that being a missionary, in the traditional sense, is illegal. She said, “No it’s not.” She then proceeded to explain medical missionaries. She knew that I am studying medicine, so I’m surprised that she thought that I’d fall for the medical missionary defense. Medical missionaries provide medical care, often funded through church groups. This woman was not a medical missionary.

The two women who I met with a thin lie were more aware of their position in India. But their lie was bad and their knowledge of India flimsy. They said that they were exporting spices. Nick, Alison and I compared our conversations with them later and found that we all knew more about spices than they did. It is worth noting that Alison is studying Tibetan history in India, so these girls should have not have been schooled by her. I also am from Jersey City, I can take the PATH to Journal Square aka Curry Square. We are not in dire need of more spices being imported to the United States. As Nick aptly put it: “We don’t need Marco Polo.”

I have serious issues with the woman who was honest about her missionary work, but lied about its legality. She’s flaunting her illegal work and lying about laws that she well knows. I am concerned about the two women with the weak lie. It’s not a good time to be pushing people’s buttons, and if you want to go out and spread Christianity, you’d better know a bit more about India.

 I probably shouldn’t be writing about them on my blog, but I don’t have a ton of sympathy for people who go to do missionary work in a country that does not welcome them. Go somewhere else, where the government wants you. You’re being disrespectful to the country in which you’re living. More importantly, you’re naïve to think that this isn’t illegal for a good reason. Sometimes Christians are killed for perceived conversions. I think that’s terrible. As I said before, India is a democracy and technically people should be able to become Christians if they want to convert. But I do believe that outright conversions should be prevented in India. There’s too much religious tension here, it’s just unsafe for everyone involved. More importantly, if people are going to preach Christianity to Indians, they should themselves be Indian. The Gospel is too complex to be explained through translators and poor Hindi. I think if people choose Christianity, they should understand the religion fully. It takes a complete linguistic and cultural understanding to do this.

I don’t know why I’m okay with convincing people to get microloans, but not with them being convinced to convert. Nick, Alison and I talked about it for awhile, but never could decide why we dislike missionaries so much. To me religion is personal. I don’t like it when people try to challenge my Buddhist faith, and I’ve only been a Buddhist for four years. I imagine that I would be very offended if people questioned a faith that was a part of my familial and cultural identity. I have a lot of Christian friends, some of whom have converted. But they converted out of their own choice and for personal reasons. With the gap between Indian and foreigner, it is difficult for me to imagine that these foreign missionary conversions can be personal.

I myself have had to struggle with the fact that some people respect me here because I am white and because I have more money than they do. If I were to preach Buddhism, I would be exploiting how people perceive me to spread my faith. Missionaries also have more money and are a different race than those to whom they are preaching. It is an abuse of residual colonial feelings about ethnicity to use your race to persuade people to convert. Whether or not missionaries realize that they are doing this here, it is what they are doing.

Himalaya Photos!

Here is my album from my time in Joshimath! https://picasaweb.google.com/101737615291512796999/JoshimathManaBadrinathAndMore#

I just got back from celebrating Diwali with my friends up in Mussoorie. It was a much needed break and I'll write more about Diwali and post pictures tomorrow. Right now, I need to get more tickets booked for my interviews back home!

Enjoy,
Erica

Sorry for the delay!

Hey! I'm sorry for the long delay between posts, here is an update!

It has been a whirlwind adventure for sure. On the 17^th, I became violently ill. Have you seen “Bridesmaids?” It was like that…but for longer. Fortunately, it seems that my body was playing fast and furious with whatever bug was in me, because 24 hours later I was fine. Dehydrated and exhausted, but fine. About 18 hours into my terrible aliment, my internet stopped working. When I was healthy enough to call customer supported, I found out that someone still hadn’t sent in my documents. I would try to keep Sameer from ever selling Tata products again, expect that I really do not have the time to try to figure out how to register a complaint in India. I asked over the phone and this is how it went:

Me: Sir, the retailer who sold me this did not send in my documents. He told me that he did twice and then he never did. This also happened to my friend. How can I register a complaint?

Customer Service Rep: No madam, you need to resubmit your documents.

Me: I know, I want to file a complaint.

Customer Service: Where is your home, madam?

Me: America

Customer Service: Pleased to meet you.

Me: How can I file a complaint?

Customer Service: Just go to any Tata dealer and resubmit your documents.

It could have well been a language barrier. But I also think that registering complaints would not translate even if I said it in Hindi. Nevertheless, it is probably for the best that I’ve been without internet so that I can’t search the CDC web site for what I had.

The next day, my adviser came into Joshimath with a group of students from forest departments over the country. I was sitting in the Joshimath Hospital when he called. I told him that I was just getting blood work done and he came down to basically stare down the pathologist and repeat, “Report normal hai?” Yes, everything was normal. Although, I am a little concerned that the pathologist changed the results out of fear.

I declined to join the group that particular day, but the next two days I rode around the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve with them. It is a pretty intense place, bordering Tibet and filled with a lot of wildlife that could kill me—leopards, snow leopards, black bears, and Tibetan wolves. Fortunately, it being a reserve there is enough natural prey that these apex predators don’t mess with humans. The first day we went to Badrinath, which is a very important Vishnu Temple. I honestly am not a huge fan of holy sites. They tend to be very crowded and dirty. This place as a bit better, because of the high altitude and the dry climate, but it was still pretty crowded. The scariest people in there were the tiny, ancient-looking, Garhwali women who really wanted to get to the priest to bless their food. I would not fight one of them, which was evidenced when I left them temple rather than stay inside.

We then moved onto the so-called “Last Indian Village,” which is much less dramatic than it sounds. Mana is the last Indian village before the Tibetan border. I find it funny that the Indian government still refers to it as the Tibetan border when geography is discussed, but it is China when military matters are discussed. There are huge Indian barracks around Mana. I don’t think that the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve is going to be the way that China would try to take India down. I would guess, although I am unsure, that a large part of what the Indian army does there is to try to get Tibetans through the border safely. There are very large Tibetan communities in Uttarakhand and other neighboring states. From what I have seen, India seems to welcome all Tibetans, but do little else with regards to it’s policy with China.

Mana was very beautiful. The Saraswati river is there, but is always good for a student to encounter. It also begins to look like the Tibetan plateau, although to actually get there we would have needed to get too close to the border. The econological significance of Badrinath and Mana are that they are both areas where snow leopards have been found as well as other high altitude species.

I was exhausted after the day out, especially after having been sick. It was also hard listening to so much Hindi while I was tired and in a new place, but I guess that is what I signed up for. When I got back home, I began to get heavily into the DVD collection that my mother sent me. Jeeves and Wooster as perfect escapism. Why can’t I have a valet in India? Maybe then I wouldn’t wonder why my room smells and then realize that it’s because I haven’t bathed in the past several days. Of course, I’d like to bathe. But it’s hard to do when you’re sick and there’s only cold-water bucket baths available. I did manage to bathe since.

The next day we went to Reni, Lata and got to the trans-Himalayas, which are the mountains right before the Tibetan Plateau. The air is very dry and the vegetation is much more sparse. Most people up there migrate down to the Greater Himalayas during the winter, because it gets so cold up in the trans-Himalayas. It is very much like a cold desert and is actually beautiful, although I don’t think it would be a very nice place to live all of the time. Most of the people up in that area are Bhotias—an Indian tribe that emigrated from Tibet hundreds of years ago. They used to be the traders between Tibet and India before the border closed in 1962, now they have a lot of sheep and trade wool.

That day was particularly exhausting, it was hours in a car over very bad roads. But it gave me a lot of new villages to look into for field sites. Dr. Uniyal introduced me to a homestay that Shazia used when she went up to Lata for her field work. It is a doable drive from Joshimath, but it would be easier to stay overnight if I’m doing interviews there. The terrain is a bit tougher there and most villages are off the motor head, so it will take a lot of energy to do my interviews. But it is a beautiful area, it is where the Chipko movement started. This was a grassroots, women-led movement to save the trees in the area from being cut down. There are tons of pine and cedar forests around the area and it is very close to Nanda Devi. The Nanda Devi Temple is in Lata, which hikers have to pray in before going into the “inner sanctuary,” which is the area around Nanda Devi. I watched a video of researchers hiking in the inner sanctuary, and it did look very beautiful and very dangerous. I will not be going there.

The weather has been amazing, it has actually felt like fall and most days are completely cloudless, with the exception of a few clouds around the mountains. But all Indians are very concerned about me being in the cold. If I know someone well, then I explain Minnesota and they back off. What really bothers me is when local start telling me about America, and that Joshimath is much colder than America. When I explained that America is cold too, one man responded, “Maybe Alaska.” You would die in Alaska, buddy. You would die. You’re not as hardcore as you think you are. So for me the weather is perfect, but even Garhwalis seem a bit bitter about it.

Since then I have returned to Dehradun. I picked up a fellow Fulbright rsearcher from the airport named Alison. She and I are going to be living together, but we’ll both be doing fieldwork elsewhere, so it will be a good home base. I also have been running errands and trying to get my life together after being out in the field. Internet again is an issue, but I have since resubmitted my papers to someone other than Sameer, so I’m hoping that problem will get fixed.

Dehradun is a lot cooler and more pleasant than earlier this month. Of course that means that Jannat is freaking out about the cold. Dr. Rawat, the owner of the house, and his wife are back for Diwali and very nice people. They’re helping Alison and I to get our floor of the house a bit more habitable. We’re pretty much without furniture right now.

I’ll post pictures soon. The Wildlife Institute has better internet than I have, so I’ll upload pictures there.

Also, new phone number!

I also got a new phone number, because my old numbers did not work very well up here. The number is--

+91 865-063-5370.

You can try calling me through Skype or Google Voice. Peter has used both, and I believe that Google Voice is a bit cheaper. There is a +9.5 hour time difference between here and the East Coast. Hopefully, I can talk to some of you all soon!

Research has begun!

Hello!

The past week has been pretty busy, because I have finally been able to start my research. Fortunately, women are pretty fine with answering the questionnaire. Unfortunately, women up here work so hard that it has been very difficult to track them down and get them to answer the questions. Sarita, my interpreter, is very helpful and very supportive. She has however, had a lot of family commitments, which has limited our ability to do field work. She is pretty passionate about the study though. She explained to me that she is one of the few women in her community who went to a hospital to deliver, and she ended up needing a c-section. Three years later, she still has abdominal pain where her incision was. She told me that it was a bad hospital and a bad doctor, but Dehradun would have been too far to go to for a decent hospital. Aunty--my landlady--delivered both of her children in Dehradun, but she has family around Dehradun. Aunty is also wealthier and has a higher level of education than Sarita does. Sarita is not poor or uneducated by any means, which indicates how difficult it truly is to get to a well-run hospital in this area.

The most striking thing about Garhwal in comparison to Mewar--the part of rural Rajasthan that I lived in--is the presence of women in the home and economic life of the villages. Rajasthan has a very strong tradition of purdah or veiling. Women would even cover their faces in front of me sometimes. Here, purdah has never been popular. Aunty's daughter, Monica, told me that purdah was "nonsense" and that in Garhwal women only cover the back of their heads with their scarf when showing respect to an elder man or woman. I also see women working in almost every area here. Women work the fields, they have government jobs, and they are teachers.

The biggest health problem that I can see so far is that women are too busy working to take care of themselves. Sarita's aunt is a dai, or traditional midwife. I asked her to explain the birth and postpartum process here. She told me that women have seven days after delivery to rest and then start working the fields again. I was shocked to hear this, because it is a far shorter postpartum rest time than what similar studies have reported in other parts of India. This rest time however, is close to what studies in Nepal have reported. Rural Nepali women have a very high rate of uterine prolapse, which some researchers believe is due to the very short recovery time after delivery. I have not been able to find any research on uterine prolapse in Garhwal, but I am interested in finding out what the local term for it is, so that I can begin asking about it.

The mountains here are gorgeous and my research takes me to beautiful places, however I am always reminded of what a burden the geography is on the shoulders of the women with whom I work. Even Sarita has to work the fields, and she has a separate job as a forest guard. Men do work here as well, but it is undoubtably the women who do most of the manual labor. This is partly due to the fact that Garhwali men have traditionally comprised a huge percentage of the armed forces in India. Therefore, there is a so-called "geography of missing men" here that requires women to do a lot of work. I have also noticed that while women collect crops, men sell them. This is a less physically demanding job and it gives them more economic freedom than their wives have. Nevertheless, women are certainly more liberated here than in Rajasthan. While my point-of-view as an America is that women should have the same opportunities as men, I am gratified that I spent time in Rajasthan, so that I can appreciate how vocal and free-moving many of the women are in Garhwal.

I certainly not upset that I choose this area for research or that I'm working with women. But right now is is very tough to work with women who give so much for their families and get back comparatively little. I will say though, that women laugh a lot more here than they did in Rajasthan. They are also very quick to tell me a lot of information about their health, from early infant deaths, to vaginal discharge, to urinary incontinence. Sarita is great and does not get embarrassed at these conversations. She just keeps saying, "Cute project. Good project." Cute is one of the only affirmative English words that she knows, so she is basically saying that she thinks the work is important and doesn't mind having these conversations to get the data. I could not imagine carrying out this work as a foreigner in Rajasthan and I certainly don't think that I would have found a field assistant who is as positive as Sarita is.

As I am here, I get continuously more frustrated with the abortion debates back in the United States. I got particularly irked with a bill passed through Congress that gives hospitals the right to refuse to perform a medically necessary abortion. For example, a woman could be miscarrying and bleeding heavily, but if she goes to a hospital that does not want to perform any abortions, they can refuse treatment. It would essentially give hospitals the right to put a fetus, which will probably die soon anyway, above the mother's life. It is a bill that probably won't make it through the Senate. But it is so incredibly short-sighted, because if a mother dies than the child that she is pregnant with will die as well. So what is the point in refusing to treat her medical condition? Such debates frustrate me, because women here don't even get the luxury of going to a hospital when they are miscarrying. We have so many facilities in the United States, but we get so locked down with ideology that we forget to just take advantage of the well-developed health system that we have. I cannot imagine Garhwal ever having as nice a health system as even poorly-served areas in the United States. I makes me wonder how we mess things up so much in our health system when we're already ahead of so much of the world.

Tickets bought to come back home!

Hello all!

I just bought my tickets to return home for med school interviews! I'm getting into Newark at 12:40 PM on Friday, November 11th and I'm returning (sigh) to India on Monday, December 12th. They were relatively cheap--although relative is still pretty expensive when you're flying from India.

I still haven't found a translator in Joshimath yet. I think that I might have to work with a man. I don't dislike men, of course, but it would be better to do women's health research with just women around. Oh well, I guess I'm up here because women do not have many services or opportunities, so I shouldn't be surprised that I can't find a woman who speaks some English up here. The women who do speak English, generally leave this area and go get work in Dehradun or Delhi.

I really love the family that I am staying with, they are such amazing people. Garhwal is totally different from Rajasthan. The women here are much more open, almost to a fault! When I was talking with some local women, one of the asked me if I smoke "bang," which is Hindi slang for marijuana. I told her that I didn't, but I was so shocked at her question that I asked her if she does. She claims that she doesn't, but I really doubt that, because why else would she have asked? Her next question was if I drink chai, and then invited me into her home for chai. So, I'm guess that's where the bang conversation was going to go if I had responded positively.

Also, the mountains are beautiful! I know that I'm not even around the most beautiful mountains. I'm looking into doing a trek at some point. I wish that I had know that I would just be sitting around here or else I would've planned one out when I first got here. But it took me a long time to adjust to being up here, so it is probably better for me to do it as a break from research. It is nice to know that I will be up here for so long, because it allows me to stay relaxed and allow myself to get used to the town rather than wearing myself out.

I am definitely happy that I choose this area to do my research in, because it is both visually stunning and socially relaxed. I am having a much better time now than I did when I was living in Rajasthan. Now, I wish that I could just find a translator!

Hopefully, I'll get a good enough internet connect to download some pictures soon!

Erica

In the mountains

Hey all!

This is a quick message that I am in the mountains and that I am safe. I am staying with a very nice family, but I have my own room and everything. I have to go now, because the young girl who I am living with is standing next to me and passively trying to get me off of the roof where I have good internet.

Good night!

Erica