McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 7

On Sunday I left the apartment with the other interns by 4 AM for our 6:30 AM train to Jhansi. From Jhansi we took a four hour cab ride to Khajuraho. We spent early Monday morning visiting the West Temple Complex which houses India’s only temple devoted to the Kama Sutra. The temple is covered in carvings of recommended sexual positions which were encouraged as a form of meditation when the temple was an active site for prayer. The complex itself was beautiful with bright green grass and colorful flowers here and there. It was nice to be out of the city if only for a couple of days.

Kajuraho Temple

During my past month and a half here in India I’ve been hoping to see some lotuses. The lotus is India’s national flower and can be seen in many religious depictions amongst Hindu gods and goddesses so I was surprised that I was yet to see one in person. While we were driving to the temple complex, we passed a large pond with – yup, you guessed it – lotus flowers! I was so happy and we stopped by on our way back to take some pictures for a few minutes before hitting the road for Delhi.

Lotus

The rest of this week included fun food, work from home, shopping, and some relaxing. My favorite food of this week was kulfi which is Indian ice cream. Kulfi is a more creamy version of American ice cream and I ordered the mango kulfi on a stick which was soo delicious! My second favorite new food was pani puri (also called golgoppa) which is a thin hallow deep-friend bread that looks like a little round puff which you push a hole into with your fingers and pour a delicious potato, chickpea, and tamarind chutney mixture into the center and enjoy! My work for the week was building upon the brochure I had started making for the handicrafts program and following up on the volunteers’ additions to our Google Doc for distribution site visits. The other interns and I visited Khan Market twice this week to shop for souvenirs and to buy Indian clothes for our planned trip to Sirohi for Eid. Our boss invited us a couple of weeks ago to go to Sirohi with her to celebrate Eid which is the end of Ramadan. We were really excited for the trip and we went shopping for nice clothes and sweets for the villagers as a gift. Unfortunately, on Saturday night our boss cancelled our trip for the following morning. We decided to still wear our new clothes on Sunday and to celebrate Eid by visiting Humayun’s Tomb in the city and taking some nice photos. This week I also began to pack my things so I could do a test weigh of my suitcases in order to prevent any additional fees at the airport and I was pleasantly by how little they weighed. I can’t believe I only have a week and a half left in India! See you soon for my next and last full week!

Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi

It was VERY hot the day we went to Humayun’s Tomb. Children were playing in all of the fountains surrounding the tomb.

McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 5 & 6

Week 5

As I mentioned in my last post, Monday was spent flying back home from Bombay and rushing to get Emily on her flight back to the U.S. The rest of my week was comprised of meetings, a lack of concrete work, and not many pictures (sorry!). Tuesday, I relaxed from the trip, did some work from home and planned my discussion points for my meeting with Gauri the following day. On Wednesday, Meghna and I met with Gauri in the evening to discuss our next steps for the internship. We talked about my boss’s plans for future trips to the village Sirohi for the handicrafts project. She explained that what was needed was for me to go back and forth to the village for about four or five days straight for several weeks in order to start the handicraft production. My boss said that although frequent trips were necessary, the organization couldn’t afford to send me and volunteers (which are necessary for translation purposes) to Sirohi so if I wanted to do that then I would have to pay out of pocket which I can’t afford to do because the daily commute is around 4 hours. My boss then said that if I couldn’t pay to travel to Sirohi, my work would have to be done in Delhi instead and I would focus on the marketing and distribution aspects of the handicrafts program. This change in plans was disappointing but it was more convenient to spend most of my days in Delhi due to the commute. On Thursday I had to reschedule the meeting with my volunteers for Monday because of some conflicts for them. I used this day to add new discussion points to my meeting schedule due to my previous conversation with Gauri. On Friday, Meghna and I had what felt like a short day. We only visited Gurgaon for lunch at Olive Bistro and worked from home afterwards.

My box of Indian sweets!

I celebrated the 4th of July from my bedroom as I helped to move the new and last intern Purabi in to our apartment. We helped her settle in, gave her some important information, and let her take a nap to try and kick some of her jetlag! The next day, we met with Gauri for Purabi’s first work meeting. On our auto ride over, Meghna and I realized that our auto driver was taking us in a roundabout path to get to Gauri’s house. Once we noticed, I said out loud, “You’re not taking us the direct way”, but he just looked at me in the rear view mirror and pretended as though he didn’t hear me. Once we arrived at our boss’s house, we told the driver it wasn’t right that he drove the path he did and that the meter was way more than it should be because of it. Embarrassed we caught him, he told us we could pay what we wanted so we gave him Rs. 60 which is how much we usually pay to get there. I felt proud after confronting the auto driver because not only did I stand up for myself, but I surprisingly have gotten to know Delhi enough to realize when we aren’t taking a normal route! During our meeting, Gauri told Purabi to ask me what I’ve been doing so far during my time here and to identify tasks for Purabi together. I’m looking forward to having another intern to work with and help me during my last few weeks here in Delhi!

Week 6

This week I met with the handicraft interns to talk about their market and shop visits. Purabi came with me to the meeting to meet everyone and hear about what we’ve been doing so far. During their site visits, the volunteers discovered none of the shop owners wanted to buy the charpoys (woven beds usually used outdoors) but were interested in our new rug and stool handicraft designs. This was a surprise to me because the charpoys have always been the main focus of the handicrafts program but the shops say there isn’t a large enough market for them in the city and any charpoys that are for sale in Delhi are sold for a small amount of money. I have a lot of good and interesting notes after our meeting with the NSS volunteers and I’m looking forward to meeting with my boss to fill her in. After a meeting with Meghna and the solar panel volunteers, us interns went to the historic Regal Cinema to see a modern Bollywood film, ABCD2. On our way home, we stopped at the Mother Dairy cart for some much needed popsicles! (I bought the mango cream flavor. It was so good!) This week we visited Dilli Haat again for more souvenirs. It was pouring and the monsoon season officially began! The roads were flooded so what should’ve been a 20 minute drive home ended up taking about an hour and a half. We came home to our usual delicious home-cooked dinner of daal, rice, chapati, potatoes, and yogurt which warmed us right up after a day spent in the rain.

Stuck in traffic!

One of our delicious home meals

On Wednesday I visited the Lotus Temple with Purabi. The Lotus Temple is nondenominational, therefore people of all religions can visit the site to pray, meditate, or just marvel at the amazing tranquility of the structure. Afterwards, we met up with Meghna at Select CityWalk Mall for some shopping. I finally bought a friend’s graduation gift which I’d been meaning to find for the past month and we ended our day out with a viewing of Jurassic World in 3D at the mall’s movie theater. A few weeks ago, my friend mentioned an orphanage nearby where she used to volunteer. On Thursday we visited the Samarpan Orphanage with our friend’s mother while the girls were are school to see the condition of the orphanage and to ask if we could possibly volunteer in our free time. I’m excited to begin visiting the orphanage in the evenings beginning next week in order to help the young girls with their English homework. On our way home we bought some delicious mangoes from a street fruit vendor which I’ve been meaning to do. I love mangoes and definitely haven’t been taking advantage enough of their abundance and inexpensiveness here in India. That evening we went to our friend’s mother house for a delicious home-cooked meal and for her to take my measurements for the blouse for my saree (can also spelled “sari”) which she’s helping me with. I’m getting very excited to try the completed saree and then all I’ll need is to be invited to an Indian wedding! This weekend we planned for our upcoming trip to Khajuraho. We’ll be there from Sunday to Monday and I’ll give an update on next week’s blog once we return! Namaste!

The Lotus Temple

McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 4

This was Emily’s last week in India so it was filled with last minute trips before she had to leave. On Monday we went to Starbucks for Emily and Meghna’s meeting with some of the National Service Scheme volunteers. I stayed in a separate part of the Starbucks and read a book while I waited for them to finish. After their meeting, the volunteers joined us on our visit to Janpath market for more souvenir shopping and we all went to dinner at Berco’s before heading over to the India Gate. It was late and dark at this point so the lights for the monument were on and it was pretty cool to see.

India Gate

Tuesday I spent pretty much all of my day doing work from home and preparing my handicraft volunteers for the coming week. After creating a list of all the market and store ideas, I asked the volunteers to chose which sites they would visit based on the location to their homes in order to make it easier for them. I spent most of my time creating a document for the volunteers for when they visit stores and markets. This document outlined the points to present to the store owners when giving the pitch for our handicrafts and it included long examples of what to say in various situations and if certain questions were asked. On Wednesday I continued work but Emily, Meghna and I also went to the National Gandhi Museum and then took a trip to a shoe store which I found on a Delhi Facebook page. I bought multiple pairs of leather sandals as gifts at the price of Rs 300 per pair (less than $5 US). On Thursday went to the community center to print our flight itinerary, send some postcards, and eat some samosas. A quick side note on samosas: I absolutely love samosas. Samosas are heavenly fried pastries filled with potatoes and peas that usually come with two types of chutney for dipping. I first tried them in my Controversies in Contemporary India class when our professor brought a bunch in for our last day of class and I have been in love ever since. Anyway… after the community center, we went to Chandni Chowk for saree shopping with our friends the Guptas. We had a couple of stops along the way one of which was where I bought my first real diamond, a small nose pin for $35 US. We also had the famous paratha street food which was oily and delicious!

A residential street off of the main market road in Chandni Chowk

After finding some beautiful sarees, we went home to pack for our flight to Mumbai and for Emily’s flight home to the U.S. We met with Gauri (not our boss, a different Gauri) and her sister Surbhi for Emily’s goodbye dinner in Khan Market and we found out our flight had been delayed from 3am to 7am and slept for maybe an hour or two before heading to the airport. Friday began our weekend in Mumbai and we began by checking into our hotel and taking a long nap before heading to Marine Drive for a walk along the Arabian Sea. We sat on the wall along Marine Drive to relax and talk before finding a spot to grab some dinner. We walked for a while to Chowpatty, the area known for restaurants, and picked the first place we saw. We all ordered the thali which is an amazing meal made up of a variety of small dishes and to finish it off we shared a bowl of mouthwatering mango ice cream.

Marine Drive

Mumbai’s Thali!

On Saturday we went to Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia and the same slum filmed in Slumdog Millionaire. We were shown the different businesses within Dharavi and that the slum is not exactly as it’s shown in the film. Afterwards we were on our way to Colaba for some shopping when we stopped for some delicious vada pav from a street vendor. Shopping in Colaba wore us out and we headed back to the hotel after some dinner.  On Sunday morning we took an hour boat ride to Elephanta Island (no, there aren’t any elephants). The island is known for its ancient cave carvings of Hindu deities and the abundance of pesky monkeys.

Elephanta Island

The docks for the boat to the island are right next to the Gateway of India so we took some pictures of the structure before heading back to our hotel to rest after a long day in the heat and we were so lazy that we decided to order room service for dinner. Monday morning we packed our bags, checked out of the hotel, grabbed some lunch and headed to the airport. Our flight was supposed to depart at 5:30pm and arrive around 7:30pm while Emily’s flight to the U.S. was scheduled to leave Delhi at 11:30pm but our flight out of Mumbai was delayed. We rushed once we landed in Delhi and Emily eventually made it to her plane. Meghna and I staggered into a taxi to take us home after a tiring day and ordered in some baked mac and cheese to help us relax.

McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 3

My third week wasn’t as exciting as my first two weeks but I still had a good time! On Monday and Tuesday I rested after a tiring weekend in Rishikesh and did work from home. Emily and I went to the New Friends Colony Community Center and got mendi (henna) on one hand. Afterwards we had an all you can eat sushi and dim sum lunch at Yum Yum Tree! On Wednesday I did more work from home and in the evening Emily, Meghna and I went to Gurgaon (a nearby city) for dinner and to see the Bollywood show Zangoora: The Gypsy Prince at Kingdom of Dreams. During the intermission I said I was craving honey roasted almonds which they usually have at live shows in the States. Emily decided to go check out the concession stand and came back with two containers of roasted almonds! I was so excited but then Emily warned me that she thought they were honey roasted but they’re actually masala roasted almonds. During our trip so far we’ve been pointing out all of the masala (sometimes advertised as “Magic Masala!”) flavored snacks but I really wasn’t expecting this. I’ll tell you what, masala roasted almonds is nothing like honey roasted almonds. Nothing like it. But it was incredibly nice of Emily to think of me and buy an extra. The entire show was in Hindi and while Emily and I could infer what was happening sometimes, we actually were confused and lost for most of the show. The excitement of the song and dance numbers balanced with our confusion so we had a great time anyway.

My mendi (henna)!

A live Bollywood show!

On Thursday and Friday, Emily and Meghna were on an implementation trip to Uttar Pradesh so I was alone in the apartment. I spent my Thursday planning for a meeting with the National Service Scheme handicraft volunteers during which we would coordinate our next trip to Sirohi. I had created a spreadsheet with all of the survey results from our first trip and needed some questions answered for the one sheet which was filled out in Hindi and some other notes in English which I still couldn’t decipher. I made a schedule for the upcoming meeting during which I planned to ask about the few points of confusion from the surveys, ask about how their experiences were on the trip, if they had any suggestions for improvement, and different ideas for markets where we could sell our handicrafts in the future. On Friday I took an auto to the Starbucks in CP (Connaught Place) and met with the NSS volunteers. They all had similar answers to my questions. They all said they really enjoyed the trip to Sirohi and Khoiri but they would change our preparation. We all agreed that it would have been better if we’d coordinated with the villagers or a reliable contact within the village in order to find a more suitable day and time to visit the village. This planning could’ve prevented the unfortunate conflict with the community event and would’ve enabled us to survey more women. While I didn’t plan the first trip and I wasn’t aware that no one had coordinated with locals before it was planned, I now know to doing more coordination for any future visits that I’ll be running. I was also planning to discuss the ideas for markets and shops in Delhi for distribution of the handicrafts as my boss had suggested. On the morning of the meeting I received a call from my boss notifying me that she’d changed her mind about me focusing the meeting on distribution and she decided I should plan for another trip to Sirohi for the following week and to plan the trip along with how to begin production of the handicrafts. I decided to still discuss the market ideas with the volunteers but I also included the new task on my agenda. My weekend was fairly laid back. On Saturday morning Emily, Meghna, and I met and ate brunch with our boss. We discussed some issues we’ve come across during our time in our internships as well as expectations and hopes for the rest of our time here. Sunday was International Yoga Day! Unfortunately my will to wake up early for yoga was much weaker than my will to catch up on some much needed sleep. After getting some rest, I went to Dilli Haat market with the other interns to buy souvenirs for ourselves, family and friends.

So far, my position with Skilled Samaritan Foundation has made me more flexible with my expectations for assignments, as well as with my position as a whole. Before leaving for Delhi, I was under the impression that I would have more concrete assignments and have assistance from my boss as to how she wanted the handicrafts program to be structured. After being here for a while, I have experienced a very unstructured position which leaves more room for leadership on my part due to the expectation of me to organize meetings with volunteers, plan trips, and develop the program without many requirements. While an internship with a leadership role can provide challenging opportunities for personal growth, sometimes I find the position to be too independent. For instance, our boss usually does not accompany us on our trips and this can be challenging when I do not speak Hindi and do not know the area. Although I have volunteers with me who speak the language, usually they have not been to the site before either. Experiences like this have definitely forced me to step up in times of uncertainty and dilemma.

McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 1 & 2

Week 1

The exquisite Taj Mahal

Just a warning, this first post will be a long one because I will be covering my trip from my landing in Delhi on Friday, May 29th to this past Sunday, June 14th. After arriving in Delhi late Friday night, I settled in for a day before heading to Agra on Sunday at 5am. I spent my second real day in India marveling at the Taj Mahal’s beauty. Although I’ve seen many pictures of the Taj throughout my life, the tomb truly exceeded my expectations. After spending the day in Agra, my fellow intern Emily and I took a car to Jaipur where we ran into some issues checking in at our hotel. Apparently Indian hotels require copies of passports and visas from all foreigners staying at their establishment. This was news to me because I thought I was being smart by locking my passport in my bedroom back at the apartment so I wouldn’t lose it or so it wouldn’t get stolen. So Emily and I spent about an hour trying to reason with the concierge at the hotel so we wouldn’t have to sleep on the street. Luckily our landlord had a copy of my passport and visa in his office so he emailed us a picture and we ended up have a nice comfy bed to sleep in for the night. The next day we explored beautiful Jaipur by visiting the Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace), Jantar Mantar (an observatory with the world’s largest sun dial), and Amber Fort.

Super cheesy picture of Emily and me jumping in front of the world’s largest sun dial

Monday evening we drove back to Delhi to finally relax before my first work meeting. On Wednesday morning another intern named Matt and I took an auto rickshaw (or just “auto”) to a Starbucks in GK-1 M Block to meet with our boss. Matt and Emily had already been in Delhi for a few weeks and are solar panel interns working with villages to help install solar lights and panels where they are needed. Unfortunately, Emily was sick so she couldn’t join us for our meeting during my first week. Among other things, our meeting mapped out my upcoming tasks for the handicrafts internship and the goals my boss and I hope the program can accomplish over the next two months I’m here and the following month after I’m gone when the second and last handicraft intern will still be here. This meeting was also meant to plan for a handicrafts visit to Sirohi on Thursday, June 4th and solar panel installation in Uttar Pradesh (UP) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday but these trip plans fell through when some issues with funding arose.

While the sudden change in plans was disappointing, it ended up working out for me that the trip was cancelled because my Thursday was a looonnng day spent in bed. It seemed that whatever Emily had caught had also reached me and the following 24 hours were a rough combination of *WARNING* vomiting, fever, aches and constant trips to the toilet. While my first assumption was food poisoning or traveler’s diarrhea of some sort, our boss and local roommate both had the same bug and they are used to Delhi’s food and water. Emily and I concluded that this sickness might have been some kind of 24 hour flu but it will remain a mystery. On Friday I was already feeling much better so Emily and I took an auto to Lodhi Gardens and strolled around the beautiful park while taking frequent breaks from the unrelenting heat to sit down and chat. The weekend of June 6th and 7th was spent visiting Khan Market and Haus Khas Village in New Delhi where we found new Indian kurtis to wear on our work trips to villages and in the evening we discovered great live Punjabi music.

Week 2

After we had found out that the first trip was cancelled, the other interns and I began planning for a volunteer orientation we were running on Tuesday, June 9th. At this meeting we met with 11 engineering students from Delhi Technological University’s National Service Scheme organization. We spoke to them about the available roles and our upcoming trip to Sirohi on Thursday, June 11th. I was kind of nervous for the meeting but it went really well and I recruited six amazing volunteers to help me with the handicrafts project! On Thursday we all met up at the exit from the end of the metro line before taking an hour long tempo ride to Sirohi. Emily and I were feeling adventurous and decided to risk sitting on the back of the tempo for a bumpy and exciting ride. Our handicrafts team gathered the local women in Sirohi in order to survey them on their handicraft skills and their work availability. Unfortunately, we discovered there was a Muslim community event going on that day which prevented a large number of the community’s women from meeting with us. Even though we ran into this issue, we met with some local women and walked to the neighboring village Khoiri to speak with other available artisans. Throughout the entire day, everyone we encountered welcomed us warmly into their communities and the local children eagerly posed for photos and tried to speak with me even though my Hindi only includes two words. We left Sirohi and Khoiri with 17 completed surveys and I look forward to gathering more local women in the future and conducting more surveys in order to gain a better understanding of the skill sets available to our program.

I had a great time in Sirohi village! The children really enjoyed posing for photos.

After a long hot day with a total of four hours of commute, Emily, Meghna (another solar panel intern), Surbhi (our new friend), and I packed our bags for a night bus to Rishikesh for a weekend trip. We ran into some trouble at the bus station when no one seemed to know which direction to point us in for our bus but luckily we made it to the back alley near the bus station where our bus was waiting with a couple of minutes to spare. We arrived in Rishikesh at around 6 in the morning and wandered around before grabbing a taxi to our campsite. We booked one night of camping and one day of rafting through an adventure agency. The campground and tents were very nice and the food was amazing! Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised.

Our campsite was at the foothills of the Himalayas

We enjoyed a nice cold dip in the Ganga

We spent the next day rafting for over two hours on the Ganga (the Ganges River) and went to our new hotel for a much needed shower and nap. We had an awesome weekend in Rishikesh and found an auto to take us back to the bus station for our 4:30 ride when massive amounts of traffic appeared out of nowhere. We were freaking out and terrified we were going to miss our bus and after running into the booth at the bus station at 4:40, a worker told us our bus was stuck in traffic too so it hadn’t arrived yet. We were so relieved but our relief eventually turned to extreme frustration when our bus took two and a half hours to arrive to the station and our drive took almost twelve hours when it should’ve only taken six and a half. We definitely had a rough trip home but we eventually made it back to the apartment and I tried to relax before my third week in New Delhi, India.