lice, ants, dancing...

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September 22, 2008

Update: my roommate and classmates are full of lice, my laptop has become home to a family (extended) of ants that live under the keyboard and crawl out of the USB and headphone holes, I’ve got this bizarre illness I can’t shake that involves sharp, twisting, and grinding pains in my stomach and abdomen every time I consume food, BUT, Kolkata nights have become bearable.

I mean, it sucks that Barret can’t get rid of the lice she acquired at Shishu Bavan from those kids, and that Natalie and Taylor now have it as well, and it sucks that not only my laptop, but Roxana’s clothing, our granola, bedsheets, and bathroom are infested with ants, and that I feel physically awful most of the time. It totally rules that the weather and seasons are changing so that night time brings coolness that sometimes leaves me pulling my bed cover over my body when I wake up in the middle of the night with a bout of this sickness. I’m… cold? I try to think about my reveling in this coolness in the context of the coolness I will be shocked with when I get home to Michigan in December. The cave temperatures of my room will probably warrant more than just a bed cover.

To further update you, all of us, the international brigade, that is, are being taught a choreographed dance to perform in the upcoming Pujas. It’s pretty ridiculous and our host sisters and their bossy friends have taken us under their wings in an effort to make Bengali dancers out of us. Aside from teaching us our dance, our sisters are also dancing in an additional two, performing a Bengali play, buying new clothes and presents, and trying to go to school. It’s basically like Christmas around here. The sentiment for this four to five day celebration isn’t the same as our Western Christmastime, but the preparation and elaborateness is similar. Each neighborhood around us constructs these big bamboo stage-house structure things. They covered with fabric and crazy decorations, and then they make idols to be worshipped and then submerged in the river at the end of the fest. I’m not sure what our place of celebration will look like—it has only just entered the first phase of its construction. To undergo a task of this sort, the builders leave no regard for the road, businesses or homes that are blocked, or caution tape, signs, or anything. They just kind iof start to dig holes in the pavement and plant big bamboo poles in them, creating a structural frame. The one outside of our house takes up nearly all of the road and the sidewalk on one side. Cars can get around, but definitely not two at a time…which makes the already interesting traffic habits of Bengali’s even more interesting.

All of this excitement goes down the first week of October (5-8 or 9) and it is the major marker in our time here. I’m trying hard to research and write all of the papers I need to write, but I, and the rest of us, are having trouble focusings when all we want to do is sleep or lay lifeless and void after a long day of service and class. At least we have these cool nights to save for resting.

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Comments

[GLENO22]

Take care dear
thats the way the things are here, suggest you take good medications for your stomach ailments and have some kind of powder sprayed in your room for the ants, also suggest that you gift your room mates some medicine for lice, so they can get rid of the same-Regards Gleno