They made the pasta around 7 but the nurse had understood anna's simple statement of fact as an invitation for all the hospital staff. They brought the pasta to the roof by Biku's room and started cooking their portion around 8:30 and finished around 10. By this time, the much anticipated pasta risotto was congealed and solid and mixed with the standard curried vegetables. While dinner was cooking, the Spanish girls and I went to dance with some of the other nurses. Milan confided in us that this was the first time she had danced and had fun since her marriage. She's been so busy taking care of her family, working, and studying in nursing school.
Having the Spanish women here allows us to have access to the entire other half of Indian society that had been closed to us. Despite our efforts, the nurses and other women wouldn't open up to us (except for some of the patients). It took a few weeks before they would start smiling at me while I helped. Having friendly and female foreigners here helped to lower these barriers. Now we'll have conversations and share our experiences. The life of women here seems much more difficult than in western society and the segregation of the genders is as clear as it is unequal.
The next morning, the nurses shrugged off my attempts to wake them for the run so I went farther and faster than usual. I almost ran through the 3rd village away but decided to listen to Manu's warning and start back before the bend.
The nurses still weren't awake when I was back so I went to see patients and change dressings with Digama. He is unfailingly professional and is always in one of his 5 crisply ironed button down shirts. He's excellent at his job and I'm leaning more about dressing and stitches than I would in an American hospital. He often has to improvise slings bandaging to stand in for fancier devices I've become accustomed to back home.
In the early afternoon, the Spanish nurses were going to Niele with Biku to shop for sarees and other gifts. There was no room in the car for Connor and I, so we had the afternoon to ourselves. The lack of a doctor meant that there wouldn't be too much medicine going on so I worked on a few administrative projects for Citta and then found Chiku to teach Connor and I to ride motorcycles. He has a (half-baked) plan to ride through India on one sometime after I leave and step one is learning how to ride a bike. I've ridden motorcycles a few times but not in a few years and the refresher was helpful. After a quick lesson taught in hand-gestures. I hopped on and rode down to the village and back, getting used to the bumpy roads and shifting gears. After getting back, Connor jumped on and promptly stalled out a couple times before riding directly off the road and narrowly avoiding one of the ubiquitous stacks of dried rice stalks. He quickly got the hang of it though and we took turns riding back and forth for a while. The strangest part is getting used to riding on the left and passing on the right. After our lesson, Conner went to study some more Odia and read.
Having some time without Biku or the nurses was valuable. Biku has been a near-constant companion and having some time without him prevents him from becoming a cultural crutch.
I planned to walk to one of the small hut-shops in the village. There are usually a few people playing cards there and I've learned the most common games they play here. I stopped at the bigger store by the hosptial and met a former Sargent in the Indian army and one of the other villagers. They spoke passable English and the first questions I was asked were, are you marriage?, and why not? Then we discussed my educational background and work. These questions have been pretty standard. They were surprised when I asked for their names. We stood around for a while in the now-almost-comfortable Indian silence before the shopkeep invited me inside and offered me a packaged cake and a cough drop. We talked about his dreams to have a bigger shop and about Michael daube. This alien cultural is starting to feel much more normal. After about half an hour, I resumed my quest to the card games.
Just before I arrived, Lipu, one of the older kids who hangs around the hospital sometimes and plays frisbee pulled up on his motorcycle. Without a word, I hopped on.
We rode through the village and out the other side through progressively narrower "streets". Any time we'd come to a fork in the road, he'd shrug and point to both directions. I shrugged back and pointed at random. We rode through several new villages and passed a huge temple which was blasting prayer music through a big speaker system powered by a generator on the back of a decrepit jeep. It quickly got dark and on the way back, we rode over a huge bridge to the other side of the river. I think Lipu was planning to go farther but there was a police checkpoint up ahead and we turned around and beat a hasty retreat to avoid the inevitable questions about his non-existent license.
Riding through the crowded, cramped villages while the sun was setting was a surreal experience. The loud prayer music floating over rice paddies enhanced the other-worldly feel. While on the river road, we passed a procession of at least a few hundred people all wearing white and yellow robes. Some were carrying staffs or banners and most were draped with flowers.
We stopped a few times on the way back to pick the bugs out of our eyes and hair and got back just a few minutes before the women and Biku returned. In his limited English, as a response to my thanks. Lipu expressed his gratitude for my presence and because I've treated him like a friend. He said that he loves me.
The girls were back later then they had planned because they had been stopped on the way back by a crowd of beggars in the village we had been told not to run though.
Connor finally finished downloading Star Wars after 5 days and we were going to watch it before dinner. Everyone was exhausted though and we decided to postpone it until tomorrow.
*
When I first came out here, everything was a exciting exploration and a new and positive experience. As we've gotten used to the strangeness, I had started to get slightly frustrated with the pace of things here, the huge gaps between meals, plans less substantial than mist, etc. Having the Spanish girls here also has accentuated challenges that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Since I realized this a few days ago, I've worked on recapturing the wonder that I first met India with. I was never unhappy with the state of things, but I was also starting to impose my cultural expectations on this experience. This is not what I am here for and I'm taking another step back from my preconceptions that have come creeping back. While I still wish dinner was served slightly earlier, I no longer mind the delay and am once again truly open to going with the flow. (At least that's what I keep telling myself).
-AB
Bugs in teeth
Who needs a license
Just hop on
Some older pictures:
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