Don't know about you, but this is kinda how I felt for most of 2008. I'm so glad this year is almost over.
Seen in Kolkata.
Yeah, sometimes life just goes on. There's simply no other way. You find a niche and you claim it.
May all your dreams come true in 2009!
Sher, who left a comment under one of the CADIP-related posts, said she was heading to India and wanted to know about volunteer opportunities over there. She meant really affordable volunteer opportunities, I gather, because otherwise why would she be looking at CADIP in the first place, right?
India! That is a whole ‘nuther story altogether. You have volunteering in your run-of-the-mill developing nations, and then you have volunteering in India. Taking advantage, or even outright scamming of budget-minded voluntourists has become a whole cottage industry in India.
While researching grass-roots NGOs for my upcoming book, I have emailed more than 50 organizations in that country. I wanted to know about their volunteer procedures and costs involved. I explained it was for a possible inclusion in a book about do-it-yourself voluntouring. Then I asked a couple of friends interested in volunteering to contact those organizations and ask the same questions as prospective volunteers. And oh my, oh my! What strange responses did we get! Some wanted money wired to private bank accounts, some turned out to be fronts for river tour, hostel and shop owners, and what not.
Out of the initial 50, I feel comfortable recommending only these:
Loreto Day Sealdah
www.loretosealdah.com
Unity Charitable Trust
www.unitycharity.org
First Light
www.firstlightindia.org
They are friendly, straightforward and most of all – transparent. And of course, they all fall into the “budget” category – volunteering with them won’t break the bank.
Ah, India! There's no place quite like it.
I always thought I had an indestructible stomach. A stomach that could hold and digest just about anything. It turned out I was wrong. After years of chowing down natto and surströmming, duck blood and pickled jellyfish, and assorted Filipino and Cantonese specialties that are better left unnamed, my stomach finally gave out. In Paris, of all places. And the culprit? Raw cheese. Which sent me to the Infectious Diseases ward of my local hospital.
After that experience, my ability to process strange foods and airline meals has greatly diminished. So, when I announced my plans to go to India, friends and medical professionals alike shook their heads and advised me to stock up on Ciproxin. And fed me a steady diet of Indian horror stories.
Oh c’mon people! I lived in Africa! I could handle a little bit of India! And handle it I did. I ate things that, quite possibly, were developing new species of intelligent life forms on them. I ate hot stuff, mild stuff, dirty stuff, and even fish. But sadly, no chicken – bird flu was going around. I was fine. I didn’t get sick.
I came home to a normal, hygienic life as we know it. Then I had a sandwich at a fast food joint in Stockholm. And wouldn’t you know it? That bloody thing was almost lethal…
PS. I'm slowly recovering!
I confess, I like tourist ghettos. So sue me!
Be it Khao San Road, or Aguas Calientes, or Waikiki, or somewhere else, they’re all fine to me. And while I wouldn’t stay in any of those locales, even if you paid me, you have to admit – it’s hard to find a better place to chill and people-watch. And marvel at the sheer ingeniousness and the stupidity of the human race…
In Kolkata, the obvious choice was Sudder Street. I parked my bum on the sidewalk in front of the gate to the Fairlawn Hotel, stretched my legs, and enjoyed the show. After a few minutes of suspicious looks and futile attempts at harassing some alms out of me, the locals gave up and let me be. After all, the street was crawling with freshly arrived foreign financial aid. Straight from the airport.
I watched as a Spanish couple tried to ask a rickshaw guy for directions. A crowd of maybe 20 people immediately surrounded them, and the poor tourists gasped in horror. Of course, everybody “knew” where they wanted to go, and everybody was offering to lead them there. For a price.
Ten minutes later, the Spaniards were back on Sudder St, still asking for directions. The helpful rickshaw man took them where he wanted them to go – to a guesthouse, where no doubt, he had a kickback arrangement with the owner.
A cycle rickshaw went by carrying a young blonde reading a Lonely Planet guide and holding a surfboard. A surfboard? In Kolkata? A loud American couple walking in the middle of the street, was cursing loudly at the incessant honk-honk of taxis. They stared at me with disgust. What was this farang doing, sitting on the sidewalk among the natives? While they were busy discussing my mental facilities, I took out the camera and snapped their picture. They quickly walked away…
A group of local men was chatting up three foreign chicks in tank tops and shorts. The men’s eyes were fixated on the girls’ breasts. And breasts sure they had. Sans bras.
A timid Japanese couple was looking for the Blue Sky Café. I told them to turn around and read the sign. They thanked me profusely and disappeared as quickly as they came.
The Spaniards were still looking for the address they had written on a piece of paper. A crowd of willing helpers was still following them around.
My butt began to hurt. I got up and went inside the Fairlawn to get a drink.
Face masks are a common feature on the streets of Kolkata, where the omni-present smog can slay a dragon on the best of days. An asthmatic like me never stood a chance. I chocked and wheezed my way around the city until my nasal passages dripped soot, and my lungs turned into a sulfur pit.
Biswal, my driver, while excellent at driving, didn’t inspire my confidence with his sympathetic medical stories.
“My sister had asthma, too,” he tried to cheer me up. “She almost died.” Sensing my unease, he quickly added, “then left Kolkata and she’s fine now. No asthma problem anymore.” He fell silent. A puff of black exhaust fumes from the auto rickshaw in front of us hit the windshield.
We stopped at a traffic light. A flock of beggars and street sellers, noticing a foreigner in the car, surrounded us like a pack of hungry vultures. In no time, the passenger side window was covered in dirty palm prints, drops of saliva, and other mysterious bodily gunk that, seemingly, only the street people can produce.
“Nothing but germs,” Biswal grumbled. I didn’t ask, if he meant the dirt or the beggars. Or both. “They come from villages, and you’ll see, chicken flu will come with them, too,” he continued. The light changed to green and with much honking we started to move once again, the street sellers reluctantly peeling off the car.
“What about bird flu?” I asked my driver. I had seen dead birds in the countryside, culled chickens thrown into ponds, piled in ditches, plucked and cooked by the side of the road by people unwilling to part with the only source of their livelihood. As a veteran of SARS 2003 and the Indonesian poultry disaster of 2004, I traveled with a set of surgical face masks, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. Because you never know when a dead chicken may try cross the road.
Yet even though the West Bengal bird flu scare caught everybody unaware, the mutant avian virus wasn’t the number one concern of the people I met.
“It won’t reach Kolkata, don’t worry,” Biswal informed me with the authority of someone who had seen worse. “But no hand shaking with strangers. And wear that mask,” he said looking at me in the rear view mirror. “It’s pollution you should be worried about. Air is too dirty in this city. We get sick all the time and nobody cares. But when our chicken get sick, government panics. You see now who is more important in India…”
We stopped at another traffic light. I realized that my skills at ignoring the seething humanity pecking at the windows had become surprisingly good.
After ten days of ema datse (Bhutanese chillis and cheese) and red rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, my taste buds were dreaming of something less firey and more mundane. Like chicken. Fried chicken, chicken tikka, chicken salad, chicken soup…
“Are you crazy? We’re in the throes of bird flu!” announced my Indian host. “No chicken in West Bengal. Out of the question.”
A ridiculously cute waiter at Fire and Ice agreed. “No chicken, madam,” he sounded very apologetic, his accent oddly non-Indian, almost French…
And so, on my first night in Kolkata, we had Italian. Penne with basil pesto, spaghetti with wild mushrooms, grilled eggplant and a seafood pizza large enough to feed a small village in the Bengali countryside.
Yet something didn’t seem quite right. The place sparkled with lights, the food was delicious, and the atmosphere – almost festive. A few moments of welcome respite in the heart of India’s most chaotic city.
From the speakers, Harry Connick Jr was crooning gently about Christmas time in the city. Christmas? Wasn’t it last month, or something? Our fellow diners, chowing down their carbonaras and tiramisus, didn’t seem to care. Or even notice.
“More garlic bread?” the handsome Indian waiter with the French accent gave me a killer smile while opening another bottle of Diet Coke in front of me. Ice cold, but no ice. As always.
Outside on the sidewalks, the masses of humanity hurried along. The ever-present Kolkata smog morphed into a Kolkata night. And the sounds of the Little Drummer Boy muffled the incessant honking and the spittle of two-stroke auto rickshaw engines.
The waiter was patiently waiting…
“Yes, please,” I said.
I didn’t worry about bird flu anymore. Instead, I began to contemplate dessert…
