I wake up to the patter of feet on the marble floor outside my window. It is probably 5.30 am. In the courtyard below the sari workshop is coming alive. The rhythmic creak and rush of the pump being used for the wake-up wash or to fill the bucket for the squat toilet. The hocking and spitting, like they've all just been sick. Every morning the sound of different taped preachers, echoes of fire and brimstone, lets wake up the infidel.
The orphanage occupies the first and second floor of a three storey building. On the ground floor about 15 muslim men and boys work from when I wake up until a couple of hours after I go to bed. Effectively they live there, as they work there all day and when they finish work, they sleep there. The lads themselves seem friendly enough, some of the younger ones seem slightly cowed, smiling warily at me, conscious of disapproval from others perhaps. Others are openly friendly, trying to strike up conversations but these are quickly reduced to painful exchanges of facial expressions and gestures as they don't speak english and I don't speak muslim.
It can be difficult to ignore though, there is one particularly Hitleresque taped preacher and despite the language barrier you can hear the hate dripping from Every, Shouted, Word.
Across the road is a butchers, more of a stall than a shop. The first few days I saw goats tethered on the grass verge and thought to myself, Hmmm, that's a funny place to keep goats. Spanner. A couple of days later the kids and I watched in grisly fascination as a headless goat was disembowelled on the pavement opposite. Who needs tv?
The kids are only marginally slower to be up and about. Straight into play or homework or a muddle of both. The single tone reading of fairy stories, out loud, becoming just a list of words. Several reading at once, the volume increasing as they fight to out-monotone the rest. The clack of the carom board, a kind of snooker/subbuteo/backgammon hybrid. The screechs and thuds of the lads wrestling, their laughter and inevitable tears. I lie there and curse everyone for sounding so happy, knowing that I will also have to sound that happy when I open my door, and I delay as long as I can. But generally, between creaking into an upright position and reaching the bathroom, a smile will creep up on me, morning D sir, namaste D sir, hey D, they're a difficult bunch to be grumpy around.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Confessions of a burnout...
Warning this be my rant space. Comments telling me the error of my ways and reminding me of the other side of the story are a waste of time. I know, I know, I know. Let me vent, I'll be fine come morn...
A district seminar to educate the local disabled population on their right to vote. Disabled people, in wheelchairs and on crutches or limping. The car park is a building site, a war zone. A conga line of wheelchairs and their helpers pick their way through an assault course of piles of gravel, planks and steel cables. The wheelchairs have to be ramped up, tilted backwards to scale each new obstacle. One wheelchair is tilted too far back and the female helper is unable to stop it falling right back onto the ground. They're quickly helped up and it's laughed off. I realise the toilets for the venue are on the other side of the building site and anyone wishing to go has to navigate back through it all. Inside the hall people in the wheelchairs freewheel through a large puddle which pedestrians have to skirt to get to their seats. The sound system doesn't work and no-one sees fit to turn on the lights. Various delegates are gathered on the stage and at some point someone quietly starts talking and I think the show is on. The various delegates assembled on the stage take their turns speaking to the gathering. It is difficult to tell who is talking, they generally talk quietly and the lack of decent light makes it difficult to see their lips move . Mobile phones ring and are answered even by those on the stage. One speaker waits patiently for one onstage phone call to finish but then has to plough on when it shows no sign of ending, struggling to make himself heard over his pompous companion.
The director of NSD,N ( hah!) takes the floor. The pompous one takes another call. The audience is no better. People are talking all around me. Pouring in the wide open windows are the sounds of the building site, the general hammering, the crash of sheets of ply, the shouts of the workers. Back in the hall, down the back, cups are being noisily unpacked for tea. It has become entirely irrelevant that I do not understand the language being spoken onstage as I can't hear it anyway. The guys on either side of me start talking over me. I have to struggle not to laugh. I wouldn't mind if it was just chaos. But this meeting stays on the borderline of chaos, the speakers refusing to surrender it to anarchy and continuing on with earnest faces and gestures and just making it worse. It starts to piss me off a little. I want to stand up and tell the audience to grow up and stop being so fucking ignorant. But I'm angry at the people on the stage as well for such a piss poor showing. Then I realise I'm angry at the whole bloody country.
In all facets of everything I am doing here I have to increasingly often avoid this temptation to grab people and just fucking shake them until they see things my way. The logical way. Some structure, some common sense, some ambition. Not just in the various work environments but everywhere, on the roads, in shops, at the pool, in the cinema. It even pisses me off a little that nobody says thank you. Thats how bad its got. I know, stupid, pointless sentiments, betraying more about me than about the country.
But thats just the way I roll, dogs.
A district seminar to educate the local disabled population on their right to vote. Disabled people, in wheelchairs and on crutches or limping. The car park is a building site, a war zone. A conga line of wheelchairs and their helpers pick their way through an assault course of piles of gravel, planks and steel cables. The wheelchairs have to be ramped up, tilted backwards to scale each new obstacle. One wheelchair is tilted too far back and the female helper is unable to stop it falling right back onto the ground. They're quickly helped up and it's laughed off. I realise the toilets for the venue are on the other side of the building site and anyone wishing to go has to navigate back through it all. Inside the hall people in the wheelchairs freewheel through a large puddle which pedestrians have to skirt to get to their seats. The sound system doesn't work and no-one sees fit to turn on the lights. Various delegates are gathered on the stage and at some point someone quietly starts talking and I think the show is on. The various delegates assembled on the stage take their turns speaking to the gathering. It is difficult to tell who is talking, they generally talk quietly and the lack of decent light makes it difficult to see their lips move . Mobile phones ring and are answered even by those on the stage. One speaker waits patiently for one onstage phone call to finish but then has to plough on when it shows no sign of ending, struggling to make himself heard over his pompous companion.
The director of NSD,N ( hah!) takes the floor. The pompous one takes another call. The audience is no better. People are talking all around me. Pouring in the wide open windows are the sounds of the building site, the general hammering, the crash of sheets of ply, the shouts of the workers. Back in the hall, down the back, cups are being noisily unpacked for tea. It has become entirely irrelevant that I do not understand the language being spoken onstage as I can't hear it anyway. The guys on either side of me start talking over me. I have to struggle not to laugh. I wouldn't mind if it was just chaos. But this meeting stays on the borderline of chaos, the speakers refusing to surrender it to anarchy and continuing on with earnest faces and gestures and just making it worse. It starts to piss me off a little. I want to stand up and tell the audience to grow up and stop being so fucking ignorant. But I'm angry at the people on the stage as well for such a piss poor showing. Then I realise I'm angry at the whole bloody country.
In all facets of everything I am doing here I have to increasingly often avoid this temptation to grab people and just fucking shake them until they see things my way. The logical way. Some structure, some common sense, some ambition. Not just in the various work environments but everywhere, on the roads, in shops, at the pool, in the cinema. It even pisses me off a little that nobody says thank you. Thats how bad its got. I know, stupid, pointless sentiments, betraying more about me than about the country.
But thats just the way I roll, dogs.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Nepal I
I was a little worried in India that I was enjoying it so much and that it was all so exotic that from then on things would start to stale a little, that the a lot of my travels subsequent would be not so interesting. However I've started volunteer work so currently I'm not travelling. I have a regular lunch place. I swim in the same pool same time every day. I own a bike. I live in Nepal.
I stay in an orphanage where I help out in the mornings and evenings. As this work is outside work hours, during the 9-5 shift I work in the Nepal Society of the Disabled, Nepal (sic) in the morning and then help in The Mountain Fund volunteer agency in the afternoon.
I started in the NSD,N ( you gotta love it) on the back of just another ill communication. When I told the TMF agency that I worked with learning disabilities at home they insisted the NSD,N were the same, but in fact they are strictly a physical disability organisation which is an entirely different thing. Also its not a "coal-face" organisation, it's an advocacy organisation trying to make a difference at a policy level which means I don't work with disabled people directly ( except for employees of the organisation). What's embarassing is the prestige that seems to be attached to my presence there. The diminutive director is wheelchair bound and his penchant for white clothing and a white head wrap give him quite a Gandhian air. Everyday he comes to me to try and talk to me, to see that I understand what they are doing and he always waits for me to say something but there's never anything I can convey in the pidgin-ness of our conversations.
Part of the problem of my advice being sought is I have so little to offer in the face of such a steep (and unfamiliar) hill to climb. Disabled people are the bottom of a very high and unhappy pile here. The general population is poor and by the hierarchy of needs of society not a whole lot of people give a shit about the disabled, between dealing with poverty, corruption, an autocratic king, and weekly demonstrations and strikes. Add to that the traditional belief that disabilities are a result of previous life's indiscretions and you have a very unsympathetic atmosphere. The coordinator who I work closest with is there on a contract basis, is not disabled and refers to all the others as "them". I'm not sure if she means the company or the disabled but either way it reflects something of a detachment from the cause. Every couple of days the director of the NSD,N has to argue his way past the motorcyclists who park in the driveway of his building, they are uncowed by his appearance and shout down his soft-spoken entreaties. His own employees (most of them also disabled) forget to hold the door for him. Its staggering.
Then this weekend I was invited to a seminar in the second city, Pokhara ( being an executive kinda guy I flew while the bus would have cost 4 euro). This was attended by journalists, politicans and the UN. I liased with the UN representative over coffee, she talked about monitoring the upcoming election and the stability of the current regime, I talked about how icky it was that the people wiped their bum with their hand. I also talked for a long time to the vice president of the NSD,N who holds degrees in law and in social science and is studying for a masters in rural development and who's attention to my opinions made me feel like some sort of charlatan. The next day I was introduced to the head of another local disability organisation who showed me around the area. After much discussion he frankly and directly asked me how his organisation could proceed, like one might ask a consultant. Bewildered as to what they could possibly do that they weren't already, I offered some empty comments before I struck on a notion that if he petitioned the local disabled population and approached politicians and offered them the petitioned votes in the upcoming election in return for pledges (with journalists present) that that might work. He seemed to genuinely like the idea. Useless notion maybe but it made me feel like Erin Brockovich.
***
Before I started the volunteer work I spent a few days getting settled. I went out drinking on my own one night ( first time ever). There was a band and they were good, they played classics by Dire Straits, Santana, Pink Floyd, The Beatles. Then into this gallery of greats like a shit in a paddling pool came a song by James Blunt. I'd like to say I got up and bottled the lead singer as a lesson to all the long haired, trendy locals that singing "You're Beautiful" is just not cool. But as I was sat on my own drinking a pink cocktail any protest I made would have come across a little ironic. I later went to a club on my own (not first time ever). I sat at the bar and resented the youths on the dancefloor for their enthusiasm. This made me feel old and I went home.
To make up for this I went drinking another night not on my own. It was with a guy called Graham and his assortment of friends in the local music scene. He was a (very good) trumpet player. He used to play with the Fine Young Cannibals and had also played with UB40. At the end of the night he said, "The world needs more people like you, D." This from a world famous celebrity musician, who am I to disagree?
I stay in an orphanage where I help out in the mornings and evenings. As this work is outside work hours, during the 9-5 shift I work in the Nepal Society of the Disabled, Nepal (sic) in the morning and then help in The Mountain Fund volunteer agency in the afternoon.
I started in the NSD,N ( you gotta love it) on the back of just another ill communication. When I told the TMF agency that I worked with learning disabilities at home they insisted the NSD,N were the same, but in fact they are strictly a physical disability organisation which is an entirely different thing. Also its not a "coal-face" organisation, it's an advocacy organisation trying to make a difference at a policy level which means I don't work with disabled people directly ( except for employees of the organisation). What's embarassing is the prestige that seems to be attached to my presence there. The diminutive director is wheelchair bound and his penchant for white clothing and a white head wrap give him quite a Gandhian air. Everyday he comes to me to try and talk to me, to see that I understand what they are doing and he always waits for me to say something but there's never anything I can convey in the pidgin-ness of our conversations.
Part of the problem of my advice being sought is I have so little to offer in the face of such a steep (and unfamiliar) hill to climb. Disabled people are the bottom of a very high and unhappy pile here. The general population is poor and by the hierarchy of needs of society not a whole lot of people give a shit about the disabled, between dealing with poverty, corruption, an autocratic king, and weekly demonstrations and strikes. Add to that the traditional belief that disabilities are a result of previous life's indiscretions and you have a very unsympathetic atmosphere. The coordinator who I work closest with is there on a contract basis, is not disabled and refers to all the others as "them". I'm not sure if she means the company or the disabled but either way it reflects something of a detachment from the cause. Every couple of days the director of the NSD,N has to argue his way past the motorcyclists who park in the driveway of his building, they are uncowed by his appearance and shout down his soft-spoken entreaties. His own employees (most of them also disabled) forget to hold the door for him. Its staggering.
Then this weekend I was invited to a seminar in the second city, Pokhara ( being an executive kinda guy I flew while the bus would have cost 4 euro). This was attended by journalists, politicans and the UN. I liased with the UN representative over coffee, she talked about monitoring the upcoming election and the stability of the current regime, I talked about how icky it was that the people wiped their bum with their hand. I also talked for a long time to the vice president of the NSD,N who holds degrees in law and in social science and is studying for a masters in rural development and who's attention to my opinions made me feel like some sort of charlatan. The next day I was introduced to the head of another local disability organisation who showed me around the area. After much discussion he frankly and directly asked me how his organisation could proceed, like one might ask a consultant. Bewildered as to what they could possibly do that they weren't already, I offered some empty comments before I struck on a notion that if he petitioned the local disabled population and approached politicians and offered them the petitioned votes in the upcoming election in return for pledges (with journalists present) that that might work. He seemed to genuinely like the idea. Useless notion maybe but it made me feel like Erin Brockovich.
***
Before I started the volunteer work I spent a few days getting settled. I went out drinking on my own one night ( first time ever). There was a band and they were good, they played classics by Dire Straits, Santana, Pink Floyd, The Beatles. Then into this gallery of greats like a shit in a paddling pool came a song by James Blunt. I'd like to say I got up and bottled the lead singer as a lesson to all the long haired, trendy locals that singing "You're Beautiful" is just not cool. But as I was sat on my own drinking a pink cocktail any protest I made would have come across a little ironic. I later went to a club on my own (not first time ever). I sat at the bar and resented the youths on the dancefloor for their enthusiasm. This made me feel old and I went home.
To make up for this I went drinking another night not on my own. It was with a guy called Graham and his assortment of friends in the local music scene. He was a (very good) trumpet player. He used to play with the Fine Young Cannibals and had also played with UB40. At the end of the night he said, "The world needs more people like you, D." This from a world famous celebrity musician, who am I to disagree?
I'm Brian and so is my wife.
So I've escaped the clutches of the hills of spiritual India, of those bleedin hippies and their enlightened views. Bastards with their open-mindedness, their live and let live attitudes, where's the hate, the good old fashioned bigotry? I remember once upon a time you could safely think someone was a dick because they thought the body had special "energies". Or if someone said you had a good aura you'd know it was mushroom season. Or when someone talked about different dimensions they were probably talking about Star Trek and you were probably barely listening anyway and they were certainly a dick. And what happened to the fact that all the different religions can't be right, that it is impossible that all these differing religions with their monkey gods and Wailing Walls and Eucharists and merciless killing in the name of their all-merciful gods, that they can't all be the One True religion. Apparently they can, if they're all just different interpretations of the same thing. Goddamn ecumenicism and understanding. And chakras and acupuncture and reiki and feng shui and mantras and personal moons and feckin tea-tree oil. And God help us all, creationism.
I went to a yoga class in the hills and they talked about sleep and yoga. And they said that a wet dream was someone stealing your energy in a different dimension. A sort of inter-dimensional rape. Mentalists.
And the scariest thing, of course, is that in some small way I've started to Believe.
Hommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Postscript robbed from Irish Times.
The old Irish woman who was asked by the anthropologist if she believed in the fairies: "Indeed and I do not," came the dismissal, "but sure they're there all the same."
I went to a yoga class in the hills and they talked about sleep and yoga. And they said that a wet dream was someone stealing your energy in a different dimension. A sort of inter-dimensional rape. Mentalists.
And the scariest thing, of course, is that in some small way I've started to Believe.
Hommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Postscript robbed from Irish Times.
The old Irish woman who was asked by the anthropologist if she believed in the fairies: "Indeed and I do not," came the dismissal, "but sure they're there all the same."
Sunday, July 1, 2007
The story so far II...
Some pics from the principal places of the last month, most places deserve a write up...
Pushka
Lake where Brahma apparently dropped a lotus flower, very holy to Hindus. My camera had filled with sand from desert and was not functioning.
Agra
My future home. Pity the town around it is such a dump. I might have to have it razed.
Golden Temple, the Sikhs most revered temple. Also close to the border with Pakistan and their insane flag down ceremony.
Home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, also something of an Israeli community in exile. Foothills of the Himalaya.
Varanasi
Udaipur
Octpussy was filmed here but i can't find the relevant photos so here's a nice one from Jaisalmer.
Jodphur
The most impressive fort I ever expect to see. This place has never been breached. Jodphur is the blue city, as long as you are selective with your camera angles.
Jaisalmer
Desert trek, i don't know how i ended up in all the shots.
Pushka
Lake where Brahma apparently dropped a lotus flower, very holy to Hindus. My camera had filled with sand from desert and was not functioning.
Agra
My future home. Pity the town around it is such a dump. I might have to have it razed.
Amritsar
Golden Temple, the Sikhs most revered temple. Also close to the border with Pakistan and their insane flag down ceremony.
McLeod Ganj
Home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, also something of an Israeli community in exile. Foothills of the Himalaya.
Varanasi
One of the Hindus most sacred spots, on the river Ganges, people come here to die and are burned on the rivers edge. Pretty mental place.
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