'L' is for ladder

how many westerners does it take to kill a spider?

i haven't told you any bug stories yet have i?
i suppose none of them are too notable, except maybe the second giant spider. maybe also the first giant spider.
okay, so here goes:

the place where we stayed in Eluru was totally ghetto.
i mean, it had everything that the other places had, 2 beds in each room (the beds were hard, as hard as sleeping on the floor would be, so we would be sore in the morning, but i got used to it, and i like a firm-ish bed, so it wasn't so bad), a washroom with a toilet and a tap, a sink, a window, under which sat a desk and chair, a shelf for stuff, a mirror and hooks. but it was terribly ghetto. we were the only ones staying there, even though the place had quite a large capacity, so i suspect that the nuns who ran the centre also had the impression that the place was ghetto and didn't make anyone else live there.
there was mould growing from the ceiling to which i was allergic. at first both my roommate and i were stuffed up from allergies - but hers might have been from her mouldy shoes, so when she got rid of those, her allergies went as well. but mine lingered. whenever i was away from the room for an extended period of time they would start to clear, and then when i returned my sinuses went right back to their old green mucoid secreting selves.
our room had this horrible odor that we would notice whenever we walked into it. probably from the mould.
there were giant cockroaches living in our bathroom, so we never knew what we were going to find. my roommate was becomming quite the expert at killing them - WHAP!! and they were dead. we were both still a little squeamish though. we would keep one of her running shoes on the top of the toilet, just in case, because you never know when they would creep out. i'm blind without my glasses, so i never quite felt safe taking a bath because i wouldn't be able to see them and react. there was the usual fare of geckos and little spiders and bugs of undefined sorts. these weird wormy things (they were red, and oh so disgusting and about as long as your longest finger) would crawl around our room occasionally. we would hand wash our clothes in the buckets they provided and hang them to dry whereever we could around the room. once a wormy thing crawled onto my drying bra. i saw this red thing on my bra and wondered what it could be? so i touched it, and ACK! it was a wormy thing!!! i was mortified.
the bathroom was dark: the floor was dark and the walls were dark, so you couldn't tell how dirty it was in there. that was probably a good thing. you also couldn't quite tell what the colour of the water was because the light in the bathroom was not very good. also probably a good thing. but at one point, after the heavy rains, the water started running a very noticable muddy brown. so i had to avoid a shower for that day. i pretended it had cleared up the next day in order to convince myself to bathe.
we got into the habit of not flushing the toilet because it took so long to fill up. i guess it was a pretty good way to conserve water and all that. but ghetts nevertheless.
there were reddish splotches on the wall by my bed, that had sort of dripped down a little bit and were dried there. i had the sneaking suspicion that it was the blood of whatever some previous denizen was lucky enough to kill, and all that was left were the marks to decorate the rooms.
the electricity would go off every night at around 6:30 or 7:00 and be off for about an hour. we liked to have dinner during that time, because what else are you going to do sitting alone in the dark? besides the food wasn't spectacular and wasn't particularly helped by shedding light on the subject. so we would eat by torchlight or candlelight in the dining hall.
the mosquitoes were killer. at night after dinner, we would go straight to bed - around 8-30 or 9 o'clock. my roommate covered in her sleeping bag and i in my sheet, wrapped right round to the point of suffocation just so that nothing creepy crawly could come in and so that i had some, although not completely effective, measure of protection from the mosquitoes. by the end of our stay there they were getting worse and worse, even biting right through the sheet. so one day i decided to use my umbrella as a prop for my sheet, as a makeshift mosquito net, and i slept under the umbrella. (i can be pretty ghetto myself). my roommate was amused. it was terribly uncomfortable but it worked. so i tried it again the next night. it was the most uncomfortable thing that ever was, and this time they got in, perhaps through little places where the sheet was not held down completely. awful. i would not recommend it.
i mention all these things not to complain but because i think that they are really funny. the giant spiders were also quite funny.
the first one we lived with for a few days. my roommate saw it first and pointed it out to me. it was smaller than a tarantula, but getting there in size. it's body was a bit bigger than a toonie, and it's legs were long and hairy and thick. it didn't seem to be moving very far and it stuck to a corner of the room above the window where it was rather away from us. we were just extra careful to zip our bags up to make sure it didn't crawl into anything. but then my roommate pointed out that it could be poisonous. so we decided to ask the nun who had come with us what we should do. of course it happened that she was afraid of spiders. she came to our room, and then when we told her what it was, she didn't even look, she just backed out of the room, totally creeped out. we found that amusing. but before she went back to the city she did get someone to come in and kill it for us. there was this long pole, a sort of broom or mop type thing, but it was maybe twice the length of a regular mop. he took this thing, and used the opposite end, which was just the pole and ended in a sharp little jagged point, and he climbed on top of the desk in our room and zot! he stabbed the spider, impaling it on the end of the pole. and that was that.
until the second giant spider. this one was not in our room, it was in the hallway. same size and type. we were worried that it would crawl into one of our rooms. so someone had to kill it. my roommate was the obvious choice, because she was an expert at killing things - but she didn't want to do it. one of the other girls was also a good candidate as she would kill everything and anything, and was obsessed with keeping everything sterile - but she also refused to do it. the third girl was hopeless, she wouldn't kill anything. so they all coaxed me into it. it took a lot of coaxing but i was feeling a little bit brave because i had just killed my first giant cockroach, so i took the long pole thing and stood as far away as i possibly could, and attempted to do what the dude had done - stab the thing. it was terrifying and a lot harder than it looked. but i aimed and stabbed. i think my stab may have stunned the thing, because it moved off to the side, but it just lay there. i had missed. i couldn't work up the nerve to do it again, so my roommate came over and had a go at it. she stabbed at the spider that was just lying there. but she missed - and it got up and started running for us, so we both screamed and ran out the doorway outside the building. 2 of the nuns were standing at the front of the other building, probably amused, watching the fun of lame foreigners trying to kill something, but i don't think they liked us and they didn't come to help. well, the sterilize everything girl convinced us to come back inside because she saw the spider and it was safe, and so we went back in. she then took the mop pole thing and used the mop end to try and sweep the spider out (it was hiding under my umbrella which i had left in the hallway to dry). well, it worked sort of, but when she got to the end of the hall, by the entrance door, she couldn't anymore and so my roommate took over again. bang bang swish. out the door, and down the steps. but then bang bang bang, she was clobbering the thing. she deemed that it was best to put it out of its misery because in the struggle and the sweeping it had been injured anyhow.
so that was the end of giant spider number 2.
i'm so glad that i am not in that place anymore.

all apologies.

i probably should not have started the alphabet picture thing, because now it means i have to continue. it is agonizing posting pictures here (or doing anything online for that matter) because the internet connection is so slow, but i will continue my series "goa in pictures" when i get the chance. (the last part of that sentence makes me laugh, so i'll leave it in).


a lot has happened in goa these past 2 weeks since i've last written here - maybe more than i can say. the inside details of it lie scrawled in my journal*, not for these pages or the world to see.

forgive me if these reflections on my course and AP seem a little distant - that's because they are. i need some more time to chew through what's going on inside my head and heart right now, so these will have to suffice.





*(for ingrid: the nothing book!)

'K' is for kim

'J' is for junction

'I' is for Isaiah

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.

~Isaiah 43: 19-21

'H' is for house

'G' is for grille

'F' is for fishing boat

'E' is for exercise path

'D' is for decaying

this is an abandoned house that i pass on the outskirts of margao city, on the way to the city centre. it's beautiful the way nature creeps in and takes over whenever it is given half a chance

'C' is for creepy kim who thinks cemeteries are cool.

this is potentially where centuries worth of my dead ancestors are buried... or maybe not.

'B' is for breathtaking

this is Benaulim beach. beautiful no?

'A' is for amusing diversion

'A' is for amusing diversion

i've decided to capture goa - or at least my experience of goa in pictures. here is the first.

this is some of the artwork that i've been doing while here.

an accurate description.

there were 2 novels that the CHAI people gave us to keep. i've finished the first and am half-way through the second. they're by an indian author who is able to capture in words the experience that i cannot. so here are her words, not mine:

"Taxashila was then a good replica of India's filthy cities. Its citizens, like those in most other Indian cities, prided in the neatness of their homes. They kept their homes and premises clean by disposing of garbage, carrion and ordure onto public thoroughfares and open spaces. Its inhabitants maintained, with equanimity, the dichotomy of clean houses in a filthy and stinking environment, of the luxury of skyscrapers that soared to the skies from the squalor of slums, of the seductive nakedness of the fashionable amidst the revulsive nakedness of the ill clad, of BMWs that slugged behind bullock-carts, of serene Holy Cows that stood in the centre of the road and meditated as a chaotic traffic honked and whirled around, of billionaires who lowered the glasses of their stately cars and spat out on the unsuspecting passers-by.
"The city's municipal corporation took care that nothing was done to disturb the delicate balance of contradictions. Its employees let carrion and garbage decay and stink till nature did its own cleaning. People defecated and urinated on neatly laid roads just as their previous generations did on open fields. They made voluntary contributions for the beautification of the city by daily coating its roads, walks and walls of public offices with generous contributions of red pan-spit and phlegm."
In God's Own Country
~ Ponmala, 2000

baby you can drive my car.

this is an auto rickshaw.
once, we fit 12 adults (4 students, 2 nuns, 5 strangers, plus the driver) and 2 kids sitting on people laps in one of these babies.
craziness.

a letter to hopefully clear up misunderstandings

dear natasha and to whomever else may hold similar misconceptions,

i am indeed in india. (i had a dream one night, where i was in canada, and someone asked me why i wasn't in india because my facebook profile said that i was, and i had no idea why i wasn't in india, and so i reasoned that i would be going to india shortly, and then i was quite sad because i couldn't recall at all what i had been doing in canada the past month, and why it was that i missed home so much. but then i woke up and realized that i am indeed in india). anyhow... the misconception does not lie therein but seems to be summed up in the "doing some good work" bit. you see, i'm not doing anything. i suppose if you call 'learning' 'doing', then i am 'doing', but other than that, no actual doing of anything. i am watching other people do good work. watching them work and be dedicated and be nice and hospitable and generous and kind. but other than that, no doing. i am learning that... i guess the only way that i can think of to put it is that "real life is hard". by this i mean many things. i mean that realities of life are harsh; that things are not neatly tied up and are often a big complicated mess that it is terribly hard to understand; that for the actual doing of anything, there requires so much grunt work and so little reward that it is a wonder that anyone does anything ever. real life is hard. it's hard, but it's also beautiful and 'worth the breathing'.
maybe in that lesson, (and some others), is the value of this experience. maybe.

i suppose we shall see.

~ kim

what to make of it?

i never realized how much i take for granted until i came here. like, for instance, the simple luxury of being understood by people (not understood in the utter or profound sense, but in the simple, english sense).

we were supposed to leave from the convent/centre we were staying at 9:30pm to get to the station for our 10:55 overnight train. the plan was that 2 nuns (who do not live at this particular convent, but in 2 different ones) would get a vehicle, come to the centre, pick us up and see us off.
that was the plan.
so it's 7:30pm, the 4 of us are eating dinner and some dude that i had not seen before walks by (that was quite normal as a bunch of people work at the centre doing social service work, and we did not know them all). so the dude talks to us and says something that no one understands (which is also not out of the ordinary). i catch the words "Mister A." which is the name of the director dude of the social service work they do at the centre and so i nod and say "mhmm yeah, Mister A.". i suppose that he knew we and no idea what he meant, and he left.
outside however, we see him again and he is able to convey to me that Mister A. wants to speak with us at his house before we go, to which we're all, what-the-heck? we leave in a little while and we need to finish packing!
a little bit later on one of the nuns comes to our rooms and asks us about when we are leaving and if we need the vehicle to be dropped to the station. we tell her no, no vehicle is needed, the other nuns are coming to pick us up. she tells us to call Mister A. and let him know. one of the other girls does this, spending about 7 minutes on the phone with him repeating over and over that we did not need him to send the vehicle, no vehicle was necessary, we had a vehicle, we didn't need his. we go back and see the nuns again, let them know that we called Mister A., let them know that we still don't need the vehicle.
all is good.
half an hour later, the vehicle shows up and the head nun comes to call us to let us know we can put our stuff into it. at this point i'm trying hard not to freak out in our attempts to convey that we had told them ten thousand times that we didn't need their car and why did they still send it?
she just stood there confused wondering if we did not need their vehicle, why we didn't just inform them, and maybe we should talk it over with Mister A.


our 2 nuns arrived on time with their vehicle and off we went to our train with no further incidents. well, a few minor ones, but nothing like our first train ride to Eluru.

the elephant man meets britney

Eluru can quite accurately be described as 'the boonies'. it almost never sees any foreigners at all. some of the things there are incredibly strange, like the way it is normal for people to wear plastic bags on their heads when it rains; or how men can wear the equivalent of mini-skirts, (or nothing at all!) and women can't show their ankles; or how it is perfectly acceptable to gawk.
walking down the street, standing at the bus station, riding the bus, people would stop and just stare at us. in Toronto, even if someone stares, when you catch them staring they know it is rude and they are embarrassed and look away. not so here. you can't stare them down because they don't seem to think of it as rude and don't turn away. although the other girls drew most of the attention and my association with them is mostly what made me strange as well, even on my own i stuck out and was an aberration.
even though this has been my experience throughout Andhra Pradesh, Eluru was especially trying. being there was like constantly being on parade. it got old quick. i would walk down the street in my salwar kameez (which by the way looks like a bright pink prom dress, or in my bright blue scrubs, (because i have no normal clothes to wear) - which admittedly is like inviting strange looks from people - and it was a constant parade, somewhere in between the experience of a celebrity and the elephant man.
it did teach me a little bit about what those individuals would feel and how hard it would be to face constantly. having all eyes on you all the time, watching your every move and making you feel like some kind of freak show. it's no wonder that so many celebrities snap and go crazy.

summary #2 and the end of the program.

i hope that there will be more to follow, and quality stuff too, because there is lots to write about and reflect on, but i thought that since i'm here in Secunderabad again i'd give you the quick overview of what the past 2 weeks or so has been like.

we left Secunderabad by train on sunday july 27th at night. the whole train fiasco deserves a post of its own, which i haven't written yet, but it is documented here. we arrived early in the morning in Eluru, which is a small-ish city in the state of Andhra Pradesh in West Godavari district, on the east coast of india (so it's quite a distance!). a driver was there to pick us up and drop us off at the convent/centre that we would be staying at. the centre had a building for accommodations, which was empty most of the time except for us, as well as a building in which people did work etc., social service stuff that was carried out by the nuns and other people who stayed at the centre.

during the 2 weeks we were following two nurse supervisors (who were also nuns) who lived at different convents from the one we were staying at. the 4 of us would eat breakfast at the centre, walk 1/2 hour to the bus stand to meet with one or both of the nuns and then we would take a bus to wherever we were going for the day. we would pack our lunches in tiffins that we bought for that purpose. We would get back to the centre in time for supper. Usually the power would be cut off for about an hour from around 7-8pm, so we would sometimes eat supper in the dark by candlelight or by torchlight. our nights were extremely early, as if we stayed up very long the mosquitoes which were horrors would eat us up so bedtime was between 8 and 9 pretty much every day.

we went to Eluru to learn about the PHC Enhancement Project, which is the training of "Nurse Practitioners" to (wo-)man Integrated testing and counseling centres where HIV testing is available, pre- and post-test counseling is done and a whack-load of other responsibilities are also carried out.
PHCs are little government-run hospitals or clinics where patients can come to see the doctor, get/fill a prescription, have a baby, have minor surgery etc.. They serve a population of around 50,000. The idea behind the Enhancement Project is to have HIV testing centres at the level of the PHCs to make them accessible to the people and increase awareness of HIV.
India has a reported HIV prevalence of 0.3%, which may not seem like much but if you consider the sheer population here, it's a lot! Andhra Pradesh, the state that i'm in right now has one of the highest prevalence rates in the country, and West Godavari, the district that we visited, has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates of all the districts in AP. in some places the hospitals/doctors/staff were reporting rates of around 3-5%. yowzers.
so they started this initiative about a year and a half ago to try and bring these rates down, and especially to reduce the rate of transmission from mother-to-child. the "nurse practitioners" are trained to conduct positive deliveries. they also do a lot of outreach work with the villages that fall under their particular PHC, conducting awareness seminars and doing teaching and counseling.
we followed nurse supervisors (the supervisors of the nurse practitioners) who would go visit various PHCs, check-in with their NPs and see how everything was shaking. we visited a bunch of them (7), plus a few district hospitals, some faith-based hospitals, a care and support centre for HIV/AIDS + leprosy, and went to a few outreach/community events in the villages. oh, and we also went to East Godavari to observe a training session for the NPs. overall it was a LOT of traveling. we learned a lot though.
it was interesting to see how theoretical concepts and program planning is actually being carried out and it was neat to look at some of the barriers and challenges that the different players faced in trying to implement the program and have it run smoothly.
we got back to Secunderabad on wednesday morning, presented to CHAI about our experiences and learning etc. on thursday, and today is friday, independence day for India.
sunday we leave for goa. the other girls are coming too, but while they are staying in hotels i will be staying with family.

anyhow, that's the update. i hope it makes sense.

it's just too easy to come up with a pun, so i'm not going to.

i've been around a lot of nuns since i've been here, and i've decided to blog about them because nuns really are a very interesting breed of creature, and they fascinate me.
when i was younger i wanted to be a nun - it's because i loved the idea of being married to Jesus and entering into a life of service. of course that didn't materialize - mostly because i'm not catholic and i have certain theological disagreements with central points of the catholic doctrine, thus i could not become catholic or a nun.
being around nuns is pretty interesting though. it's sort of like the sound of music all the time. what's really weird is that no one here has seen the sound of music. we actually sand a few sound of music songs (my favourite things, and doe a deer) to some nuns in training (about 20 18-year-old girls who sand and danced for us and begged us for a song and dance in return - they liked the singing, the dancing disappointed).
i think in canada there seems to be this sense that being a nun is a very 'safe', tame profession. in some ways i suppose that may be true, as you give up a lot of your personal freedoms, like the choice to be where you want or study what you want - your superiours decide where they want to send you and what you will do. you have a ton of rules to follow, and (i'm reading this book about nuns and apparently) complete obedience to your superiors is pretty darn important too.
but here, where the choices available to many women are quite limited, and the pattern is often moving from being under the control of your father to being under the control of your husband and popping out babies all your days, the life of a nun is quite freeing and adventurous (not that i'm against marriage or having children!!).
you have to be ready to be sent anywhere in the world to do anything, and you are completely off your own agenda working for the good of others and could be sent to do anything. not only that but you have to give up so many things like personal ambitions, having children, getting married, having possessions... it's pretty wild!

i've really come to respect some of the nuns that i've been around and gotten to know (even though it remains that most of these nuns are CRAZY!!!)

monsoon weather.

we were supposed to go to visit the seashore today. but it rained all night and so the nuns rung up and said that we probably shouldn't go. which is probably a good thing since it has rained all day, continuously and there isn't really any sign of stopping.
so instead we are "working" on our PHCEP report.

today i am glum and miss home.

yup. that's all i wanted to say.




1 week till we leave for goa.

the tipping point.

the language barrier is really tough to deal with. it makes it really hard to do anything, to be effective at all, or to understand even a fraction of what is going on at any given time. however, perhaps even more frustrating is the cultural barrier, which threatens to drive me totally insane. some days i'm just ready to stand up and scream. i think maybe to live in this country i'd either have to be a little loopy or just learn to completely chill and go with it. i'm trying to chill... really, i am! but being utterly confused and not knowing what is going on ever is pushing me to the limits of sanity...

as you like it AND all's well that ends well OR much ado about nothing.

one of the other students i am with here watches hindi movies at home. three of us decided to go watch a hindi movie at the city's imax. well in advance she went through the newspapers, found one that looked good (a chick flick), went online, found the show times for the theatre so that we would know when to be there, tried to call the theatre but no number given actually ever works and by now we were getting used to that. we got there on time, went to the box office, and lo! the movie was sold out. not only that but all the online show times are completely wrong. the 4:30 show actually started at 4:00so we would have missed it anyhow. the only hindi movie that was showing near to the time was an action movie: "Mission Istanbul" starring (in my opinion) a Keanu Reeves look alike and a Viggo Mortensen look alike as his sidekick.

the basic plot was a journalist (keanu) covering terrorist stories and uncovering a sinister plot by the media to create fear. although the movie was in hindi, there was enough english thrown into the mix ("blah blah blah 13th floor", "blah blah blah hall of martyrs", "blah blah blah i will get your wife back [keanu], i swear it!!!", "blah blah blah go get 'em tiger!") that we could follow it pretty easily. not only that, but there were 3 song and dance numbers that were fully randomness. it was so great.
i thought the movie was excellently amazing. unfortunately the local paper didn't agree, giving it 2 out of 5 stars. it was great in the way that movies such as godzilla were great, perhaps not achieving the desired effect but definitely of entertainment value. what was my favourite part? maybe the mountain dew product placement scene where the 3 goodguys chug their mountain dew, do the classic can crush followed by a thrashing of badguys: hilarious. or the chinese-style fight scenes: golden. or maybe it was the complete randomness of the plans and actions of the characters: so good. i can't decide.
it may have actually turned me on to hindi flicks.

an incident that occurred during the intermission was a little worrisome:
i decided to get a sorbet: fat free, sugar free, dairy free. sounds good, right? so i'm ready to order and the ice cream vender gets a call on his mobile and i have to wait till he's done chatting to place my order. i get my sorbet, i'm in the theatre eating it, then i realize that my throat has started to close up because of it. turns out i'm allergic to whatever the artificial sweetener is that they use in these things.
(as an aside, i may also be allergic to something in the air here, possibly the mould growing in our room - my poor roommate has to listen to me blowing out gobs of green mucus from my right sinus all day and night).
i was a little alarmed and panicky at first - but quickly realized that it was my lower esophagus that was swelling up and not my bronchi, so i had no trouble breathing (which would have been disastrous if it had been the case). so i stopped eating my poisonous treat, informed the other girls i was with (who thought it was hilarious - it actually was in a way) and continued to enjoy the rest of the movie.
from now on i will beware of artificial sweetener and no-sugar, no-fat, no-dairy products while i am here.

amusante ausi.

there are so many fun stories to tell here, which is so great. here is one:

so, remember a little while back when i mentioned the hospitality of a couple who were practically strangers to me? well they did it again and invited the 4 of us for dinner to their house. however, one of the girls couldn't make it so when i called to tell the wife she sounded so sad that i suggested inviting 2 more foreign students (from America) who sere staying at the same place and who we had casually befriended. they were at work during the day and so i had to wait until they got back to invite them along. i waited and waited. they didn't come and i was so sad because i knew that the couple would be disappointed. finally, the husband came to collect us and the three of us crossed the street to get into his van, and who should be getting out of an auto rickshaw but the american students. so we invited them along for dinner and the 5 of us puled into his car.

well, after we had traveled for a short while, he started to ask what drinks we wanted and what should he pick up? "you're all over 18, right? do you drink beer? should i pick up some beer?", it was funny because it was not something we were expecting, staying with nuns and priests for almost a month. we tried to insist to him that we would drink whatever he had and not to go to trouble for us. he replied that "at home i drink vodka. will you drink vodka?" but somehow he managed to make "vodka" sound like "water". although i knew what he was saying and what he meant none of the others did so it was amusing to hear the others reply that "yes, water will be fine, we all drink water, water is very good". needless to say that they were all a little surprised when it wasn't just water that we received when we reached their home.
good times.

pretty in pink.

so, guess what?

when we were in Warangal we went with the priest to buy some fabric, and here in Eluru we searched out a tailor and had him sew it. the first tailor that we came upon refused to serve us, possibly she didn't understand enough english to be able to. so we asked some kids where we could get some saris made, (here we have to say "saaa-reee" to match their accent so that they can understand what we're talking about) and they pointed us down the street, where we asked someone else and we eventually were led to a little shack attached to a one room house where there was a plump little woman and her skinny graying husband and a man in the back at a sewing machine working away. our friends the Tailors were very friendly and measured us and took the material, and lo! i now have a salwar kameez.
yay.
i'm becoming more and more indian as i stay here.
it's a lot prettier than the ones that are in the wikipedia pictures:
kinda pink and shiny and over-the-top, but everything here is over-the-top, so it fits in.

amazing stuff.

i wanted to share with you, just briefly what was probably the most amazing experience of this whole trip, although i know that i will not be able to capture it with words.

the HIV/AIDS Care and Support Centre that we went to in Warangal is run by a priest who is the director and by nuns who are the nurses in charge. the land that it is on belongs to the catholic church, and a whole lot of the surrounding gated compounds are also catholic institutions. there is a cathedral-style church, there is the priest's house in which the 4 of us stayed along with some of the nurses who work at the CSC, there are a few convents, a few schools, a leprosy hospital, a rehabilitation centre for women (after they become widows they are taught skills that will allow them to support themselves), and a school for deaf children.

one day the priest that we were staying with took us to visit the school for deaf children. we entered the compound and first came upon a small group of boys in the back of one of the buildings. within a few seconds we were surrounded. soon after the girls came out also. it was a sea of hands and faces all around us, each one demanding attention. it was sensory overload and excitement to the max, but all in complete silence. occasionally i heard a girl laugh out loud but other than that no one made any sound. they spelled out words in english on our hands and on note pads, asking all kinds of questions. some of the girls danced for us - (the macarena!).

it wasn't very long, maybe 20minutes that we were there - but it was incredible and overwhelming.
by far one of my favourite experiences being here

fauna count

so, i've been making a list of all the interesting and exotic creatures that we have encountered here while on our travels. of course, i've left the list back at the centre where we are staying, so i'll have to give it to you from memory.

(by the way, completely unrelated, but i just had a mental lapse, where i could not figure out where my shoes were. i'm sitting here in the internet cafe typing in my socked feet, surrounded by a whole bunch of other people also furiously typing, and i suddenly couldn't remember why or where my shoes had got to. i was worried someone may have walked off with my runners right from under me. haha. the thing is they make you take your shoes off before entering certain places, so they are actually sitting outside. i just thought that was amusing and that i would share it.)

anyhow...

fauna list:

praying mantis: 2
butterflies: lots
beetles: lots
strange black beetles spotted with yellow circles: 1
flies: a bazillion-million-trillion
mosquitoes: millions
rats: 1
goats: lots and lots - probably hundreds
water buffaloes: also lots
cows: lots
chickens/roosters: many dozens
dogs: lots
cats: 3
ibises: 1
lemurs: 1
moneys: about 25
giant spiders: 1
giant cockroaches: 3 (+ 2 that were not directly observed by me)
little cockroaches: many
horses: 2
camels: 2
crows: many
geckos: many
iguana: 1
elephant: 1
people: 1 billion, or thereabouts