Best Laid Plans

This post isn't about reminiscing.

Three years ago almost to the day, I ventured with my dear friend Sári on an overnight train in sleeper class to Jammu in Northern India. The train was followed by an approximately 12 hour journey in the cramped rear seats of a jeep along the winding road through the western Himalayas to Srinagar, Kashmir. Misty, magical Srinagar, where we stayed with Ferooz and his gorgeous family on their modest flower farm, holding baskets of hot coals under our traditional cloaks to keep warm in the chilly April air, taking jerrycans full of hot water to keep our beds toasty, wandering through manicured, Mughal-era gardens and playing with the sassy toddler and red-cheeked newborn in the house. 

In the fall of 2014, severe floods affected large portions of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ferooz and his family's home and farm fell victim.

The sign on the left is for the family farm.
The water covers what is usually a busy road.

Across the street. These planters are about five feet tall. 

The lakeshore is normally 10+ feet to the left of the planters.

The family home

The green tarp hangs over the flooded greenhouse

According to Oxfam, over half a million people throughout Jammu and Kashmir were displaced by these floods, which were reported to be the worst in over 100 years. Roads that usually swarmed with traffic and bustle were now traversed using traditional shikaras, the long boats propelled by hand with small heart-shaped paddles normally used to shuttle tourists and traded goods across Dal Lake. "Yep," Ferooz said, when I asked him how his family had fared in the flood. "Too much water." After completing "some repairs," Ferooz and his family returned to their home where they began to rebuild the contents of their nursery from scratch in order to restore the family's primary source of income. 

But this post isn't about a flood. 

After a painless thirty minute flight from Kashmir to Delhi, Sári attended a wedding in Patna and I spent the next three months traversing Southeast Asia and Australia on my own and with spontaneous, wonderful companions. By October, I had begun my Master's degree in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies at King's College London, living in student housing and spending the same amount of money for a beer as I would have on a week's worth of groceries in India. I hoped that this degree would allow me access to the field of peacebuilding and conflict resolution that I had envisioned being a part of for so long. My professors were knowledgeable and (mostly) engaging and my classmates hailed from all over the world. They provided unique insights and experiences to create a rich basis for discussion of some of the most pressing issues of our time. 

But arguably the most important lesson I learned in this Master's program had nothing to do with the ins and outs of Track I diplomacy. Maybe the lesson I most needed to learn was that a job that does not involve working with children for most of the day will not work for me.

Fast forward to January 2016, when, after applying to dozens of jobs and experiencing a mounting sense of disappointment and rejection, I was hired for the position of Youth Facilitator at a charter school in Oakland that had been recently founded. I was told that my primary responsibilities in this position would involve leading exercises to nurture teamwork, build trust and educate students to effectively and nonviolently manage conflict. Yet the school's major structural, administrative and academic failings precluded my ability to do meaningful long-term work with the kids. Within the first week, it was clear to me that I had been hired to do a job that did not exist; I had been warmly invited onto a sinking ship and then left to bail myself out with little or no support. Two months after I had been hired, I was laid off when the administration chose/was forced to discontinue the sixth grade and send the students to other schools. (There are many more details to this story which are irrelevant to this discussion of my current plans and whereabouts.)

As luck would have it, my roommate/landlord informed me a month ago that I would have to move out, as the house's faulty foundation had possibly led to mold inside the walls of my room. And so I find myself back where I started a few months ago, without a place of my own or a job to speak of. Last fall, however, I did create a Plan B, taking exams and applying to teaching programs. I was accepted to UC Berkeley's Developmental Teacher Education Program, through which I will obtain a Master's in education and a K-8 Multiple Subjects teaching credential. My hope is that working as a teacher will allow me to work with children in an extended and meaningful way, and will eventually lead to a path that incorporates elements of peacebuilding and conflict resolution into educational systems. Or that's the dream, anyway. The program starts in June, which gives me about three months to make the most of before I become a student again (for hopefully the last time, though my mother has her eye on a PhD that I feel uninclined to pursue). 

And so we reach the reason for this post after such a long hiatus. I think the theme of my past year has been restarting, relearning lessons I thought I had learned, repeating mistakes I swore I would never make again, and emerging with a whole new set of plans. Because you can cultivate a nursery full of seedlings and hybrid flowers in your own backyard, the safest place in the world to you, and then floods come and suddenly you find yourself sitting in a rowboat, peering into the second story window of your house. I played my cards right, went for a degree in something I thought would lead to what I wanted, completed a lengthy interview process for a fellowship that was offered and then rescinded, was rejected from jobs that I knew I could do with my eyes closed, and offered a job which made me doubt myself and my abilities in profound ways. And yet I find myself with an acceptance to graduate school, surrounded by some of the kindest and most supportive friends imaginable, trying to take deep breaths and feel calm, content and accepting of whatever comes my way.

That last part is easier said than done. My new plan is this: 

On Tuesday, April 5, I fly to New York where I will hang out with my family and other people I love, help my mom settle in to her sweet new digs, sort all my possessions, which have been in storage since I went to India four(!) years ago, and eat a bagel or twelve (before Passover, of course). 

On Sunday, April 24, I fly to London, from which I will travel via rideshare to Calais, France. Calais is the current site of one of Europe's largest and most notorious refugee camps. It is the main French port on the English Channel and has housed a camp, with varying degrees of state sanction, for refugees and asylum seekers since the late 1990s. I spend eight or nine days volunteering there with Help Refugees, a UK-based charity that  is working to distribute resources and provide basic services for the estimated three to six thousand refugees that are living in the current camp sprawl. I have requested to work in the kitchen and will be posting again soon with more information about the work being done and how you can support the humanitarian efforts there.

On May 4 or 5 I return to London, where I will enthusiastically and joyfully snuggle the future newborn of Neta and Rotem, whose delightful two-year-old nugget I had the pleasure of caring for after finishing my (first) Master's. Neta is due on April 19 and I'm going to hang out with them and other London people I love until May 15, when I fly back to the Bay Area to look for an apartment once and for all! Or until it gets moldy, I guess. Words cannot describe how excited I am to see Alma again, the baby I nannied for who is now a year older than when I saw her last, or how thrilled I am to hang out with a neonate. Did I mention I love babies?

Who knows how this plan will work out, but at least it exists! If you will be in New York, Calais or London when I am there, and you care enough about me to have read until this point, I would lovelovelove to see you. Cheers to the waiting period between floods! 

Desert Days

The real reason I came back to India after Thailand was to see Sári, my good friend from Hungary with whom I volunteered at Corrymeela for one year, in Northern Ireland. Sári is one of my favorite people; I was very close with most of my volunteer team, and she was no exception. Sári turns 31 in October and complained constantly at Corrymeela about being "so old" compared to the rest of us (except for Roland, who was also 27 at the time), which always cracked us up. Before she came to Corrymeela, Sári spent nine months traveling around India and became very close with a guy she stayed with in Kashmir for several weeks, named Farooz. Sári always talked most fondly about Kashmir and we decided that's where we would go upon her arrival. First, however, our friend Ethan, who was on the Corrymeela volunteer team the year before us, was in India and going to visit a place in Rajasthan, Western India, where he had volunteered a few years ago. Ethan is an awesome person doing amazing things, including starting a nonprofit called Peace by Piece, focused on peacebuilding and sustainable development in the UK, India and Kenya (so far). He was traveling with his friend Antonio, networking in India for the organization and exploring possible projects. Ethan has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, which never seems to slow him down from what he sets out to do, but it did prompt us to hire a car and driver to take us to the tiny rural village in Rajasthan where Ethan had stayed.

Corrymeela goes desert! Starring Yael, Sári and Ethan

After a misunderstanding with my landlord about paying rent for the month of April, I moved all of my stuff out of our apartment, leaving a suitcase at a friend's house and taking only what I would need for the next two weeks in my trusty backpack. When Ethan and Sári picked me up to go to Rajasthan, I officially moved out of the apartment in Malviya Nagar, which (surprise, surprise) prompted a nice, big, emotional cry the day before. In any case, I walked to the market with my all my stuff and enjoyed my last few moments in the early morning at Malviya Nagar market before the van pulled up and we were off to the desert.

We drove mostly west and south for six or seven hours, stopping a few times to stretch our legs, through the dry landscape of Haryana and Rajasthan before pulling up around 5PM to the dusty campus of Singla's Barefoot College. The Barefoot College is an organization that seeks to teach rural villagers, especially women and children, skills and knowledge to make their families and villages sustainable. Some notable projects include training villagers to create and install solar panels to get off the notoriously unreliable Indian power grid, rainwater storage in the desert to prevent the damaging practice of pumping groundwater, and creating high quality handcrafts for sale to visitors and locals. The Singla campus, where we stayed, functions as a night school for rural children, and serves to catch them up to speed so they can enter school at grade level, since many kids miss out on years of school they are supposed to attend, mostly because they work on their family farms or need to spend half the day fetching water for the house. We were met by the friendly workers who run the night school, and were so delighted to see Ethan again. One of the main administrators, Shivraj, is a man who was clearly disabled by polio as a child. His upper body strength is pretty intact, but his legs are of little use to him, and he alternates between hoisting himself along the floor cross-legged using his hands, and getting around in a wheelchair that looks like an adapted tricycle for adults that he propels with his arms. It was striking to note the contrast between Shivraj and Ethan, both brilliant people doing great things, one who sits in a wheelchair that can fold and pretty much go anywhere, and one in a converted bicycle whose only indoor mobility is on his hands. It's also pretty heartbreaking to see Shivraj, who is obviously very bright and exceptionally motivated, whose life is so limited because he contracted this highly preventable disease and lives in a place with little access to resources that could significantly improve his quality of life. He told us about how sad it is for him to not be able to find someone who will marry him, how difficult it is to take care of his family in his condition. He was a really great, fun person and I was very grateful to have been able to meet and spend time with him. 

Shivraj wanted me to give his chair a spin 

Sukijee makes chapattis on the first night 

Feast!

That night, the cook, Sukijee, a lean man with the traditional gold hoops in his ears, multicolored turban on his head and the characteristic white dhoti worn by many villagers, made dinner which included chapattis (round, flat bread, like pita without a pocket) over an open fire. It was delicious!! Then Sári and I moved our mattresses outside and slept on the terrace under the stars.

Tilonia showroom and store 

Library friends!

The next morning we drove to Tilonia, a larger Barefoot College campus, where a lot of the crafts are made and where they have a store in which you can buy them. Ethan and Antonio are fundraising by buying lots of the goods from Tilonia and reselling them in the UK. This meant that they were buying a crap ton of stuff, and, more importantly, that we had free reign of the store to pick stuff out for them to sell. It was hot, but the "work" was fun, and the goods were so beautiful. We had lunch there and saw the puppet workshop they have, before hanging out with some kids in the library they have there for the villagers. By the end of the day, we were outrageously hot, dusty and exhausted, and Sári pretty much had heat stroke. W returned to Singla in the late afternoon to rest, and then I helped Sukijee make dinner.  He does everything on the floor, where the two-burner stove is, from washing to peeling to cutting to seasoning, opening jars of this or that spice and combining them in the lid of one of the containers before dumping the mixture into the pot and turning its contents completely red or yellow.

After Sári's strong reaction to the heat, we spent the next day taking it easy, relaxing, napping, reading, cooking and playing cards. At one point I became confused when I couldn't find my flip flops after a card game and realized that the driver had walked off with them. He offered to return them but I preferred to just let them stay his. It was weird. Sukijee eventually got used to my insistent help, (he tried to discourage me in the beginning), though if I was doing something too slowly he would just take it out of my hands and complete the task in two seconds. He was such a kind man, with a great smile and a generous spirit; cooking with him was definitely a highlight. 

Nothing beats a Sukijee smile...except a Sukijee parantha

For our last morning, Sukijee made the most incredible paranthas, fried flat bread stuffed with potatoes in this case, but often cauliflower or other vegetables. We were on our way after breakfast, and watched the desert scenery change gradually into the urban jungle of Jaipur and then Delhi. To avoid the sound of the incessantly whiny retro Hindi music the driver insisted on playing, Sári and I had a marathon singalong, completing the entire repertoire from the Sound of Music, along with many a Beatles tune and a few other favorites. It was so nice to be able to spend time with Sári and Ethan, neither of whom I had seen since leaving Corrymeela, not to mention the comfort of being with people who know you very well. Singla was also by far the most rural place I stayed in during my time in India and I was happy to get to experience that and see the Barefoot College.

To see all of my photos from Rajasthan, click here.

Me, Ethan, Sári, Shivraj and Amit the shoe-stealing driver

Milk Migration

In India, the ways that people have been doing things for hundreds, if not thousands, of years are performed alongside some of the most ubiquitous modern technology. Many of the things I see every day are so basic and obvious, I wonder why we don't do it this way in the US. So many aspects of daily life involve community; it's no wonder people feel so comfortable giving unsolicited advice and being in "your' personal space all the time. 

On Friday afternoons, my roommates and I, tired from the week's work, usually take it easy and stay at home. Saturdays are the days we explore this crazy megacity, see movies and go out to dinner before we go out at night. Sunday is our day for recovery, and we usually spend it at home, catching up on emails, cooking for the week, doing laundry. This past Sunday afternoon, I headed down the street to the Mother Dairy down the block, and the corner store next to it to get bread and milk and other stuff for the week. Mother Dairy is a national distributor of milk and dairy products, serving as the middleman between farmer-owned dairy cooperatives and individual consumers. Every day from 10AM to 1:30PM, and again from 4PM to 10 PM, the shutter of the little stall is lifted and the disgruntled but generous man who operates the store awaits the customers from across the black granite counter. He always seems grumpy but acts glad to see me, patient with my flailing Hindi and with the children who can't decide which ice cream to get. Next to the counter are two machines that look like those automatic coffee vending machines, but instead of a small niche for a flimsy plastic cup to drop down from, there is a huge space between the spout and the drain. 

"Three Cows" by Subodh Gupta,  National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi

On Sunday afternoons, people come from all over the neighborhood, mostly children with a few aunties thrown in the mix, bearing tall, empty, aluminum canisters. The children come holding the weightless cylinders by the long, wire handles, banging them lightly against their legs as they walk. They wait in line, pay the Mother Dairy, and fill their containers to the top at the milk dispensers before heading back home, weighed down by their loads. Like bees leaving the hive to get pollen for the queen, the kids head out when the shadows are long, pockets full of change for the milk and sometimes a cold treat, fetching milk for their mothers and grandmothers who await them at home. It's such a simple act: buying milk. There's nothing fancy or exciting about going to the Mother Dairy with an empty can, filling it at the machine and going home. It's not that you can't buy milk without your own container--milk also comes in boxes and plastic bags. Yet the way that it happens in this way is so communal. Plastic and cardboard aren't wasted on packaging. Kids see their friends and neighbors before the hectic week begins. The grumpy man who works at Mother Dairy spares some milk for the families that live in makeshift slums by the side of the road and the unbathed children who hold out their empty hands to him. The fruit wallah and vegetable wallah play cards in the park next to the dairy,  jumping up and making their way to their carts when they see a potential customer approach their carts.

The Mother Dairy is literally around the corner from our house, but I get to see all this meeting and interaction the second I step out my door. The building on the corner is under construction, and that in itself is a sight to behold. The construction crew consists of both men and women, with men doing most of the hand work and women doing most of the carrying and transporting of materials. They are always wearing saris, usually chiffon and always very colorful, with the pallu made long so as to cover their heads with it. They place a small terry cloth ring on their heads, on top of which they balance up to eight red bricks without anything to help them hold it or balance. Sometimes they have big baskets that they fill with dirt or concrete powder to bring it wherever it's needed. On Krishna's birthday they decorated the inside of the unfinished building with colorful banners and marigolds. I wonder where these workers live, how it can be socially acceptable here for women to do such physical labor, when there are so many other restrictions on what they may and may not do. I think about how difficult it is for me to walk in a sari, tripping every few feet, and often holding it up to allow me to move, and how gracefully these women schlep bricks on their heads and lay mortar for the walls. 

The stray dogs in the neighborhood are familiar to me now; like the seniors who congregate daily in the park across the street, the dogs often congregate to laze in the shade under cars, bark at birds and sniff the trash. At night they sleep on top of cars, roused rudely from their slumber in the morning by commuters and cleaners. Men pass by on bicycles at all hours of the day, a bag hanging from their handlebars, soliciting recyclable cardboard and newspapers which they sell by the kilo to collection centers. 

Sunday afternoons are relaxed here, but so much happens all the time in this neighborhood, in this megacity, that I feel like I'm the only one for whom these afternoons are lazy.

On Thursday we leave for three days in Varanasi and then a week in Kolkata to celebrate the major festival of Durga Puja. In other words, it may be a few weeks until I write again. Until then, enjoy the rest of what the internet has to offer! 

Sending much love from Mother India, xoxox