melaga

What to even begin to write about India? Feels impossible. What an amazing amazing place. giant mirror, though. Amazing sense that unimaginable things are possible, but it all depends on what you put out.

We arrived in Varanasi the day of Shivaratri.The streets were mostly closed down for the festivities later that night, so we took packed auto rickshaws from the train station as far as we could. I had no idea that many people and backpacks could fit in an auto rickshaw and I imagine even more could if we really got creative and cramped. The walk was fast paced first through the main street and then through a maze of alleyways. There were infinite people lined up for Shivaratri who had been lined up for likely a full day already. Little unclear exactly what they were lining up for, but it certainly had something to do with the holiday and making pilgrimage to temples and the like. Much attention of all kinds being directed at us, Om nama shivaya.Our hotel overlooks the Ganges. I think maybe I want to bathe in the Ganges today? Just my feet perhaps?

We all went out for Shivaratri in the evening despite hearing that it wouldn't be possible for the women over and over again. The plan was for us all to walk to an ice cream shop and for the women to watch from above and for the men to go out in little shifts, and perhaps if it were safe enough escort women out and act as bodyguards. This isn't what ended up happening. On our way, we got caught up in the procession, and we all were in the middle of it, men making a human shield aroiund the women, having the times of our lives and just going with it, flowing with the dangerously uninhibited Indian collective unconscious. I had a great time! I was strategically placed and got a lot of positive attention and a lot less grabbing and groping than the rest of the women. At the point at which the chaos got to be too much, it dispersed and passed.

I no longer feel I can recount events in chronological order.

I've been watching bodies burn at the particular ghat where they do that. That was something I knew I had to do in Varanasi. I went 3 times, and I think the first 2 I wasn't really ready to see anything, so my subconscious stopped me from actually being able to see anything, even though it was all around me. I saw fires and ash, but nothing recognizably human. On my third visit, after standing around and again seeing nothing, the extent to which death was all around me finally set in. The mangled burning flesh entered my field of vision, bones being tossed in the water, dogs poking around for the remains, ash, mourners, chanting, smoke. The ground around me I realized was likely covered on bodily remains, and an awareness of how full the water must have been came to me as well. I made my way on to see the city in all of its other many stages of life, as well, being passed on the way by many processions of people carrying bodies wrapped in colorful cloths to the funeral pyres, chanting together and not seeming all that somber, simply with an awareness that all life eventually goes in that direction.

I escaped some bad odds this morning. I was invited to dinner at a Brahman's house last night, and the 3 other people I was with are all sick this morning.This began yesterday morning where I went out alone in the morning, awoken early by the bustling sounds of the city, incredibly eager to get out there! Being out alone certainly made me more of a target, I was followed by all kind of people. Do you want a boat? Why not, very cheap! Hashish? Chai? Where you from, what country? Where do you go? Do you need help? Won't you come and see my silk shop? Very cheap, 100% real silk. Please, I'd like it if you'd stop following me. I'm not following you. Its all rather harmless, though. I found myself wandering through the maze into a little square where I saw a man speaking sign language and immediately thought of Jessica. I asked a man, who happened to be the Brahman man I spoke of, if this man was deaf. He was one of the Brahman's nephews, and I told him I had someone I wanted to introduce to him who was studying sign language and deaf culture. The fact that I was actually able to find my way back to the hotel and back there with Jessica and Sophie was pretty amazing. In a weird way I haven't had much of a sense of direction in any other city we've been in, but in a city with total chaos and no rhyme or reason I kind of intuitively get it.

We returned and met the same Brahman man, who took us into his house, which was in a 7 story building his family owned, and introduced us to an entire deaf family, whom Jessica was able to communicate with with a mixture of sign languages. We had Chai with them, the best Chai I've had in India this far (which is saying a hell of a lot!) and asked lots of questions about Hinduism while Jessica and her new friends communicated in a flurry of signing. Sophie and I were taken up to the roof to admire an incredible view of the whole city, and were all invited back to dinner, where we were served amazing Coconut filled chapatis. We all had the very Indian experience of eating to our bursting point and not being able to get out host to stop filling our plates again.

 

silk shops, getting ripped off again and again, thinking we were in some way not ripped off and had finally beaten the system only to find they got us again, or perhaps the ones telling us we've been cheated are lying?

 

Must go, we go to Sarnath today and I want to take a walk before coming back to shower and pack. The city awaits!
 

I cannot yet even begin to convey it in writing, I just want to be out in it every minute.

...wow!

All I can say at this point is that India is like the most amazing place ever.

India Tomorrow

And so the adventure continues with a flight to India tomorrow morning. Very early tomorrow morning, I should mention, which brings on a immensity of feelings, all rather subdued. I think it was only yesterday that I cognitively realized we were leaving so soon, the transitions are continuous. The only constant. I do feel ready, I feel ready for just about anything, in fact.

Hard to exactly make sense of what I'm feeling tonight. This trip has been pretty shattering so far, but not at a rate that I can't handle. being in such unfamiliarity (yet familiarity) leaves me feeling that I'm missing some part of myself, that some part of me still resides in Bellingham with my community. I am trying to let go of feeling that way. Pull back into myself and realize how complete I am right now, because the fact of the matter is even if I went home right now everything would be different. People are off traveling, situations aren't the same, everything is constantly changing and there is nothing to cling onto. If I place a part of myself so far outside of myself as to rely on certain situations for it to be a reality than it isn't really mine, and perhaps never was to begin with? I am trying to recognize the fact that I am complete right now, and have access to all my resources and all parts of me. I especially need to become familiar with this fact considering that I have at least a few months more travel in front of me, and I need to be solid.

This is a tough one to l learn especially as I start to feel my social skills polarize and diminish. For example, I met a fire circus from all over the place the other day that performed and did workshops in the refugee camps. I sat down and talked to a few of them for awhile, and then went over to their guesthouse that evening while they had a poi workshop and I found it really hard to connect with them. I've been interacting with the same people for a month now and perhaps and losing some versatility. At the same time I gain versatility at making communication in intercultural situations.

Can't believe it has already been so long, the thought of going back to the US feels increasingly more depressing. Not the people, however. I am realizing more and more how incredibly lucky I am! My community situation is a very rare one I think, I don't know if most people have become accustomed to feeling as met and supported as I do in a regular basis at home.

I feel very ready for India. I've been so excited for such a long time. it feels difficult, however, to formulate solid intentions. I am beginning to see the extent to which intentions are a huge guiding force when traveling. The universe certainly provides in a myriad of creative ways.

The first image is some puppies having their way with me at the village. The next is a temple in mae sot and the lines are bats, it was a long exposure. The next is the head man of the village, picture taken after I interviewed him and the last is the ESP classroom in Meala. I added a few pictures to old posts as well, so take a look.

Meala

Hmm.. lets see, what to disclose and what not to disclose. It seems that all the best adventures go somewhat below the legal radar.

We went to the Burmese refugee camp today. By we I mean a group of 6 of us with Jared (which is a large group of Farang to go unnoticed). After working with Burmese refugees who were ESP students (ESP refers to engineering study program) for the microhydro project many of us became interested in Burmese issues. The camp was about an hour ride from Maesot. Jared devised what probably had been a solid plan, but we didn't have a cell phone with us. I believe the plan was something along the lines of calling our contacts inside once we were close and having them meet us at an entrance and going in, but without a phone we didn't know where to get off. Then we had to ask to use a cell phone, which made us very apparent to the authorities.

Our friends that we knew from the inside met us outside and we were able to uhh...find a way in. It was an interesting place to be. We were stared at a great deal inside, which doesn't surprise me. We went and saw the ESP school and interviewed the teachers. The school is a pretty competitive program. Only 60 students get in per year, and we asked what kind of opportunities completing the program offered to students, but considering that most of the students don;t have UN approved refugee status and there is basically no chance at resettlement, and there is no opportunity to work inside the camp, there isn't really anything they get to do with their education. It still seems very important however that they be empowering themselves through higher education, but since there is no where to go from there the situation feels very hopeless. I could feel the frustration from them.They can't leave the camp. Most of them had been there for years and years. The place is completely packed.

It doesn't look like an entirely unpleasant place to be. People have built their oen houses and it seems like the community is very tight knit and close, and there was a nice vibe in the air, music being played. It basically felt like a huge, completely overcrowded village. People generally seem to make the best of a bad situation, and the situation inside the camp is likely alot better than where they came from.

We had the chance to ask the teachers many questions and meet some of the students. We were able to look at their textbooks and see what they were doing, and hopefully will be able to provide them with more up to date textbooks. The engineering textbooks werefrom the 60's.

I'm still processing what it felt like to be there. How can over 140,000 people all live there and not be able to leave? It is such a huge privilege to be able to move freely in the world, and I'm having the opportunity to look at all sorts of different factors that inhibit that movement for most of the world. I didn't exactly know how I would respond to that upon seeing it. There definitely is some guilt that I experience. Some responsibility. At the same time I can't get too carried away with that. There are many things I have that people all over the world don't, but many things they have that I'll never have. Perhaps much truer and more pure wealth than anything I have.

I really did enjoy talking to people in there, and it felt pretty badass to sneak in and out. Getting out was almost harder than getting in, although I don't think the consequences for getting caught would have been all that severe.

I think people from my group are getting more real. Experiences like the Karen village and this are certainly shattering to the ego, although it does a lot to fight back. I think, after being with the same group for so long, I'm beginning to lose my social skills.

More about the Karen village

The Karen village was a lot to process. I can't even begin to put it into words. I felt the feeling that I didn't want to leave at the end. It wasn;t so much a genuine feeling, but I at that point had hardly dove in. I was justbeginning to breach another layer and feel safe enough to go in more, interact with the locals, be present, make an effort to speak another language and have intercultural communication and really see what opportunities were there. I hardly know anything about the people, I just touched the surface and they hardly know anything about me. There is so much more that could have been exchanged.

 

The women seem to have different sounds to get animals away, and sometimes they seemed to yell at the kids a tiny bit more than I wondered was warrented. It was their tone more than anything that surprised me, their strength and the temporary deviation from their quiet, compassionate demeanor. hmm, their publicbreastfeeding and their compassionate childraising.

 

The kids are very loud and very alive, constantly discovering the power of their voices. Their playful screams and their anguished cries fill the village from morning until night as they learn their own inner strength.

 

I did at one point find myself throwing a stick at a rooster. They get going around 3:30 am and carry on all morning, making sure to get as close to you as possible. They stop several hours after sunrise and seemed to briefly resume again in late afternoon, making sure no one stays asleep after the afternoon lull.

 

I at one point witnessed an old woman carrying a huge bundle of sticks suspended fromher head across a river with quite a heavy current. Their ideas about bodies are so rooted in what they have to do, and what they have to do is so tied into where they are, and serving the basic needs of the community as dictated by the enviornment.

 

Bamboo foot bridges, pinky toes coming out of sandals, squatting, spitting, beetlenut, red stained teeth, power of the old women!, beautiful handwoven textiles, pounding flour, woman somewhat isolated in the house all day, soccer and that weird hackysackvolleyball game and how all the kids completely kick ass at it!, the extreme politeness of the kids who whenever they saw us would stop, put their hands together and say Sawadee ka (Thai for hello, thai is not these kids native langauge). Everytime. Just how fast information travels, kids carrying smaller kids on their backs, motorbikes on almost any surface, thr animals fear of humans, the dogs absolutely know the meal schedule and are always on time, intense calf muscles, that old woman's haircut, momma dog barking at me, orion's belt.

I have perhaps realized the true value of willful ignorance as a coping mechanism

I have returned from the Karen village. It was a time of a lot of reflection.

We went incredibly deep into the jungle outside of Maesat to do a microhydro electric dam installation to provide a Karen village with electricity. We were working with an NGO called BGET (Border green energy team) and Engineering students from Burma who live in a refugee camps outside Maesat called Maela.

Events are all blending together, but I believe it was the second night there I got really sick. I likely had a fever of 102 or so and laid in the house not being able to move, completely miserable. The fever broke in a day, and after that it became more along the lines of a cold. It was an intense experience to have a body malfunction away from civilization.

The entire village must have known I was sick, too. I didn't realize that at the time. As I laid there sweltering hot and delirious I felt very isolated, a feeling I often feel when sick, but the next day when I was feeling a bit better and moving about, the level of acknowledgment I got from the villagers was astonishing. People were pointing amd smiling, and I could just tell by the looks in their eyes that they had known I was sick, and were glad I was better.

The whole village experience was very , confusing and amazing. Only a few spoke Thai, the rest only spoke Karen, so any language interaction had to be translated from english to Thai to Karen. I was able to do an interview with a man who spoke Thai, who I later found out was the head man of the whole village, and a very important person to the Karen as a whole (which there are 7 million of). He was incredibly down to earth and funny and very willing to talk about anything.

I didn't get the chance to do a whole lot of work on the dam due to sickness. I had to take it easy. I really enjoyed the work I did do, however. It was really rewarding. There are a lot of ethical issues around supplying the tribe with power, however. The power is technically for the school, the temple and the church, however it will produce far more than that. The village had a previous microhydro dam installed 8 years ago that failed. I heard (and what i heard might be skewed through translation and other people's various biases) that with the input of power 8 years ago people started getting televisions. The televisions and access to the western world started creating desires beyond basic needs that could be fulfilled by the village, and people began going out to the cities and buying more, they sought out solar panels from the government (which 40 of the houses now have) set up a small very basic village store, and improved their roads so there is now better access to the cities (better is a relative term, however). This microhydro installation will give more opportunities for television watching.

While this village is still pretty isolated and fairly in tact culturally, it is sad to see them go the way of just about everyone else towards towards globalization, but I don't have a completely one sided view of this issue.


I'm still having a lot of trouble with this group of people I'm with. I'm experiencing a pretty frequent struggle between really trying to think of ways to improve my situation, not dwell on negative feelings, be more accepting of where people are at, or frankly just try to flat out ignore what I'm feeling because I don't want frustration and negative feelings to get in the way of having a good time on this trip. On the other side of it, I am feeling this way! I am feeling a great deal of negativity around both the group, and how I'm being treated and how I really am having a lot of troubel being myself, resourcing how I'd like and doing what I love. If I am feeling this way, can;t I just be allowed to feel what I'm feeling? Can't I just be frustrated, angry and sad without it consuming me? Getting to the title of this entry, I am really seeing how willful ignorance of feelings and the messages of the body is a very effective coping mechanism. I almost wish I actually could ignore what I'm feeling, but every time I suppress an emotional experience, push it down and don't somehow aknowledge and utilize the action potential behind the emotion I tie new knots. I create new armoring in my body that is going to lessen my ability to be authentic and express myself and actually be in my experience in the future. I can actually feel these knots in the body, and I wish I wasn't making new knots. I haven't really figured out a way to really nurture my whole self on this trip.

Its a struggle, basically the main struggle of the trip. Basically being a part of this group and all the challenges that go along with that has been much harder than anything Thailand has thrown at me. I'm open to change. Things are always changing. It isn't a bad thing that I'm having this difficulty. My higher self acknowledges that it is even an opportunity. (damn higher self).


I don't want to stop traveling. I hate to inform my parents of this, but my very conservative estimate of there being a 7% chance I won't come back has now increased to a 10% chance. However, things change. I wonder what is more difficult for me, traveling with a group of people I don't really resonate with or traveling alone. Traveling alone has been a pretty big challenge in the past. We'll see.