up-date

Dear all,
I hope you are all doing great. I am, as you know, really bad at writing e-mails and the same seems to go for this travel-blog… Life is still spinning fast around here and every day is filled with enough new impressions to fill a new entry. So, I won’t bore you by writing everything that’s happened, but here are some chosen pieces:

1. Monsoon and Malaria
Just as I was (very naïve it seems) thinking I had survived the worst part of the rains, the weather gods decided to come down on Mumbai once more. It’s been raining non-stop for three days and around 60 people have died. It’s really difficult to describe exactly what a mess it is. Since there is no drainage system in place the roads will get flooded in five minutes. In a desperate search for an ATM (oh, the things we do for money!) I decided to try a little hands-on experience and walk out this morning. I ended up with muddy water up to my knees. In a city where half of the population lives in slums without proper toilets you can imagine how clean the water in the street is!
Due to the monsoons, the mosquitoes are having a party, and so, when my new flat-mate Bea came down with a fever last week the doctor right away told her it was most likely malaria. Right now, I am at the hospital where she’s been since Saturday morning. Before we got here though we went between two different hospitals, where she was offered a choice of rooms between “wards”, “single”, “deluxe” and “super-deluxe”! Completely crazy, it’s like checking into a hotel, if you have the money you can buy everything and if not, you’re left in the streets. She’s doing better but the problem has been that they can’t be 100% sure of what it is so instead they are treating her for both malaria and typhoid.
On a more superficial level, the humidity has introduced a new problem in my life: MOLD. During the past few weeks I have spent quite some cleaning everything from my shoes to my underwear from mold. Not nice!

2. Traveling
Since I am not working Saturdays anymore, I am finally able to escape the city once in a while. So I went to Hyderabad for a few days to see my friend Isabel who’s doing a traineeship over there. I of course managed to fall sick but anyhow it was great to see her and just hang out. Hyderabad is supposed to be one of the most organized cities in India and compared to Mumbai it felt so empty of people! Compared to Sweden it’s still a crowd though but I guess my perspectives have changed a lot… A few days after we took the night train to Aurangabad, a place in Maharashtra, from where you can visit two groups of religious caves called Ajanta (Hindu) and Ellora (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain). The caves, which are thousands of years old (ok, I really don’t remember how old ) are full of carvings and paintings. I won’t go on about it but you can see from the pictures what an amazing place it is. Apparently we were also part of the tourist attraction for a lot of Indians as we’ve had to pose on a numerous pictures. As I just decided that my new approach to surviving everyday hassles (and there are a lot!!!) here is to laugh, I happily decided to play along and will probably appear in around 20 teenage boys albums as their white chic….
This weekend we will be going to Goa and from there to this place called Hampi where you’re supposed to rent scooters while looking at ancient ruins. With the monsoons and all this is totally the wrong season for Goa but I can’t wait to get to the sea. The clean sea that is!

3. Work
I can now say that, although it’s been a great disappointment and really hurt my self-esteem, leaving my traineeship was the best thing I could ever have done. Unpaid and broke, but very happy, I am volunteering (placed by my friends NGO that partners with other NGOs on a sort of consultancy basis) for this beautiful organization called Muktangan. Basically what they do is to take young women from the local community and train them as teachers. An amazing school is then set up with the students being kids from the local community. From a western perspective, the concept of education (no school uniforms, playing and singing, training in critical thinking etc) is very natural but from an Indian perspective this is totally new! These women have very few career opportunities and these kids would otherwise never have access to quality English medium education.
The civil society sector in Mumbai is also quite the mess with many very small and very, very disorganized organizations. The idea of Atma is to partner up with local organizations that have a unique concept with potential but that need help structuring themselves. I really like the concept of not just adding another solution to the problem but that as a newly started NGO actually take a look at the local scenario and try filling in the gaps. So, my work at Muktangan basically is about setting up a marketing-fundraising basis including everything from web-site to organizational structure. I’ll keep you up-dated on the results….

Ok, I said I wouldn’t bore you but I guess I have. Sorry about that, just miss being able to discuss all these things with you.
Miss you lots but hope you are well!
Kisses
Maria

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