Proud to be an American, sort of

I’m on the last leg of my three-flight journey home to Boston. After my time in India and Nepal, I flew to Australia for a month to visit my sister Tali and do some traveling. When I landed in Brisbane, Tali greeted me at the airport with a loaf of gluten-free bread and a sign with my name on it. We didn’t really need the sign, since odds were that we’d recognize each other, and in the end, she greeted me in the airport with a running hug anyway, but having your name on a sign makes you feel nice. Everyone should have their name on a sign at some point.

A nearly empty residential street in Brisbane

Tali took the brunt of my stream of observations as I got familiar with my surroundings that first week, including the ever insightful, “There are barely any people here,” “It’s so quiet,” and “It smells so good!” Australia does run a good ship, from what I can see. Which is sort of funny since the country was basically founded by convicts and sailors. It’s very clean, people don’t jaywalk (which made me crazy, given the lack of cross-walks), and the buses run on time with functional air-conditioning.  I would have filmed traffic on a street corner in Australia, but I didn’t think anyone would be interested in footage of nearly empty streets with cars going around rotaries in the wrong direction.

The thing about traveling in a foreign country, as opposed to living there, is that you spend much more time with other foreigners than with locals. Consequently, most of the people I met were European and Asian.  I met people from Germany, Switzerland, Scotland, England, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Brazil, and China, among other countries. The questions people asked me about quality of life in the US were really fascinating. I played pickup-basketball with some Chinese students at Tali’s school, and afterwards, one asked if I own a gun, because he heard it’s really dangerous in the US. Europeans were particularly interested in our healthcare system and comparing it to how cheap and easy it is for them to get care anywhere in the EU. A Korean asked me about why Obama says that our educational system needs to take cues from schools in Asian countries, which made for a good conversation about the gap we have between available jobs and the skillset of our workforce. We even talked about why there aren’t more women in technology, one of my favorite ever topics! See Tali’s article about this here.

It started to strike me how the geographical isolation of the US (as opposed to a European country) has made Americans much less aware of the rest of the world, not in terms of events, but culturally. Speaking English as a first language is surely a blessing, as English is the language that people use to travel, and sometimes even work, all over the world. But it isn’t really fair that I am able to articulate my thoughts exactly as they’re formed in my head, while anyone for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language may have to drastically simplify an idea in order to express it to me in my language. Beyond this aspect, there is so much more communication behind a spoken sentence than the plain translation of the words. By not speaking other languages, Americans are implicitly telling the rest of the world that we expect them to meet us culturally as well. The gesture of saying “Good morning” or “How are you” in a foreign language seems to be the American feeble attempt at international bridge building, and many of us don’t even do that.

Which brings me to my actual point. American travelers have a pretty bad reputation, and I’ve gotten a few glimpses at the reasons why. Everyone thinks we’re loud and obnoxious, and that’s probably because there are a lot of loud, obnoxious Americans on the travel circuit, fresh out of high school, probably thinking that everyone wants to be American and move to America. I think I was subconsciously under the same impression, and it might have something to do with the number of immigrant families and first generation Americans I know, and the fact that more people want to stay here than the government wants to keep.  Well, newsflash, people like their own countries too. The loud, obnoxious Americans kind of drown out the introverted, low-key Americans, to the point that on a bus tour in Melbourne, after my turn during a round of introductions, the bus driver shouted, “Well I never met a quiet American before!” People like to point out that when someone asks where an American is from, the American will answer with the name of a city and not the name of our country, unlike every other citizen of the world, thus implying that everyone should know what an American sounds like and where all of our cities are located. Add these generalizations to the foreign impression that Americans like to start wars wherever they want and can’t speak any languages but English, and I start to understand why Canadians get offended when they’re mistaken for us.

During my first few weeks in India, I had this new sense of patriotic wonder, thinking to myself, how did I never appreciate all of the freedoms and privileges I had just by growing up in my country? From the clothes I wear, to the education I got, to the different opportunities I was lucky to even entertain, I took a lot for granted. But after this time away, I see that the US has its faults and shortcomings as well, ultimately making it just like any other country. Figures I had to fly to the other side of the world to see that. 

On Passover, Defining Affliction

Although I haven’t yet written about this at all, my friend Rebecca and I have been traveling in Nepal for the past week or so.  While it took a good few weeks to begin to appreciate India, we were surprised at how much we loved Nepal, even on our first day. (Maybe it had something to do with being able to get a visa for $26 at the airport, as compared to negotiating four weeks of Indian bureaucratic nightmare plus over $200. Just saying.)

We found ourselves at the Kathmandu Chabad for lunch on Saturday afternoon, surrounded by an overwhelming number of Israeli travelers, and we experienced the joy of finally hearing a foreign language that we actually understand. The rabbi made some rounds asking for volunteers to give a short talk in honor of the upcoming Passover holiday, and somehow he zeroed in on Rebecca and me. So, here is an expounded-upon version of the mini speech I gave:

Passover is coming up in about a week, which means that we will be limiting the foods we eat in order to “afflict” ourselves, in honor of the biblical Children of Israel fleeing Egypt with nary a loaf of bread. But when you have celiac disease, Passover is actually just an extension of your regularly scheduled diet, and in fact, it is an easier time of year to eat gluten-free. Every kind of product comes out gluten-free on Passover, from cake to matzo balls to marshmallows. So far from feeling more afflicted than usual, I’m actually thrilled when Passover rolls around.

While I’m not the kind of person who looks for extra opportunities to deprive myself, I still think that reflections around affliction during Passover are an important part of the Jewish calendar. For the past few years, I’ve been thinking harder about how I can still capture this essence, given that food-wise, I’m not any more limited than usual. Even beyond my personal situation, I think we’d be hard pressed to find a person in this room who is actually truly afflicted by the Passover diet. While the loss of pizza for a week may seem tragic… cry me a river.

Earlier this week, Rebecca and I spent a few days in Chitwan National Park near Kathmandu, where we watched baby elephants play and took in a beautiful sunset, before deciding to splurge the equivalent of $10 on a massage. At the massage studio, we met P, who is twenty years old and one of ten children. He is about to finish his bachelor’s degree in business, and he’s working at the studio part time in order to pay his tuition and rent in Chitwan, as his family of sixteen lives in a one bedroom dwelling in a village a few hours away.

In the middle of the massage, the power went out. While Nepal has the natural resources to generate plenty of hydro-electric power, the existing grid isn’t robust enough to support the amount of electricity it could be generating. Consequently, even modest demand exceeds supply, and the grid “load-sheds”, which causes power outages for anywhere between eight and fourteen hours a day. P and I got to talking about the power situation, and I thought of the flooding in Manhattan during Hurricaine Sandy, how uptown shop owners opened up for stranded New Yorkers to charge their phones, how my sister didn’t have power for six days and everything in her refrigerator went bad as she bounced between her friends’ apartments. P informed me that his family doesn’t have a refrigerator, and that they grow their food and cook everything as needed. Smart-phones are useless in his village, as they can barely hold charge.

We talked about his plans after finishing school, but it wasn’t a very long conversation: jobs are scarce, and he figures he’ll keep working at the massage studio. He needs to pay rent in Chitwan, and in order to open up his own business, he would need a lot of money up front, which he doesn’t have. He’s considered going abroad to do any kind of work, service, labor, anything, and I pondered that idea. Given minimum wage, he wouldn’t be making a whole lot if he were to somehow come to the US. But even if he could scrape pennies together month by month, it would sum up to more than he’d save if he stayed in Nepal. The next day I read a few articles about Nepali men and women leaving for Gulf States to make a little more money for a few years, and how many of them come back physically and emotionally broken. Damned if they stay, damned if they go.

The plight of the kids I taught in Mumbai was hard for me to witness, but meeting P touched me in a new way. I hadn’t yet spent time with someone close to my age who was both so driven to make something of himself, and at the same time, so stuck in an impossible system. The government here is still barely on its feet after years of regime change, and the electricity problem is only one of many challenges. It took us five hours to drive from Kathmandu to Chitwan, a distance of one hundred ten miles. Infrastructure is something I completely take for granted, but the lack of these basic services is crippling a nation of men and women burning to make something of themselves.

This is affliction. It is being limited in a way that is beyond one’s control, that all of the willpower in the world won’t be able to change. My students, P, and people all over the world have obstacles that have nothing to do with the intelligence they possess, their work ethic, or their desire to succeed, and without any intervention, these limitations will necessarily keep them from reaching their aspirations and from ending the cycle of poverty.

The Children of Israel did eventually make it out of Egypt, but there were several pieces that had to fall into place in order for that to happen. They needed Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and Nachshon to inspire them and lead them into redemption, and they needed an opening, a path to follow. If God had provided a path and no leaders had been ready to take those first steps, nothing would have changed. If the community had been ready but there were no openings, no hint of what might lie beyond the world they knew, nothing would have changed.

Here is how I think about what still needs to be done.  If we were created in God’s image, then we are meant to do God’s work as well. If there are people who are ready and willing to follow a path to a better life, then they deserve for that path to be available. My obligation is not to drag people by the nape of the neck into the life that I think is best for them, but to create as many opportunities as possible to whatever extent I can, just as doors were opened for me by my parents, my teachers, and my greater community. Especially today, when we depend on people from around the world to help us achieve the quality of life we desire, we are even more obligated to ensure that everyone in our global community has a fair shot at living a life of hope and dignity.

My Passover wish for myself and for you is that we strive to create opportunities of all kinds for the people around us, so that one day, every afflicted person, if he wishes, can leave his Egypt behind. 

Beauty

For two weeks, I’m traveling around India and Nepal with the girls from my Gabriel Project volunteer group. Our last day in the slums was Monday, and after teaching, we packed up the apartment and hopped on a plane to Kerala, which is India’s southernmost state. We had a busy day, and now we’re sprawled in front of the TV watching Bollywood music videos. Bollywood dance moves are dramatic, rhythmic, and expressive, so it’s really fun to watch. Beyond that, though, we are all entranced by the women who are featured as lead singers or backup dancers. They all have plenty of curves to shake and jiggle, which just isn’t seen on western TV.

I have mixed feelings on standards of beauty here. I absolutely didn’t anticipate it, but being in India has been a refreshing break from the skeletal western ad campaigns I’m so used to at home. I distinctly remember driving by a billboard advertisement for a Bollywood movie, and registering that the actress in the picture was curvy, with a little bit of belly exposed above the waist of her skirt. It struck me as so dramatically different from the airbrushed twig women decorating our highways. I mentioned it aloud, starting my sentence, “You guys probably didn’t notice…” I was wrong; everyone had noticed.

While perhaps there isn’t an obsessive focus on body fat here, there is much attention paid to skin tone. My friend Adina went to a salon, where a woman told her she ought to get exfoliated to remove her ugly tan. Yeah, right.

Even for a white person, I’m pretty white, and plus I wear SPF 85 sunscreen every day. (No surprise that I’ve never been told to exfoliate.) So for the first time in my life, my light skin is causing me to embody a cultural beauty ideal. On top of that, the clothing we wear here is loose and flowy, so I’m less aware of my body that I would be at home. Overall, my body image has probably never been better, and I haven’t even exercised in like six weeks.

I shouldn’t feel any more or less pretty based on who is dancing on TV. I suppose I'm no more or less immune to such things in India than in the US, so it is nice to really understand that beauty public policy is not as objective as American culture would have me think. 

Sad to go

Today we left Thane to embark on a tour of India. I’ll miss it here. I loved how our street is full of people even at 10PM, and that I could go around the corner to buy mini-bananas any day, any time. I loved the fresh pressed sugar cane juice I discovered two days ago by the train station, and the sweet, mild mosambi juice I’ve been chugging for two months.

The Thane synagogue is a fifteen minute walk from the apartment down a busy street. I made the trek pretty regularly in order to teach a Hebrew class for the local Jewish community, one of my favorite parts of the week. Walking down the street meant dodging merchants pushing their wares on carts around torn up potholes, taking care not to stomp on stray dogs napping on the sidewalk, and avoiding autorickshaws creatively weaving through traffic. I would pass small, booth-like businesses and watch employees go about their day’s work: huddling over a sewing machine, tinkering with motorcycle engines, measuring fabric, making photocopies, selling vegetables. Staring idly out at the street from behind a counter, and double-taking at the foreigner staring back. There is something intimate about seeing people do their work. In Thane, on the synagogue street, no one disappears into mysterious, air conditioned sky scrapers, to emerge shivering and squinting eight hours later. Women tend to children, men congregate on the corner where autorickshaws pull over. Life is so visible in a way I’ve never experienced. At home, even our car windows are tinted. We northeasterners notoriously need our space, but now I’m understanding some of what we may be missing, how we can disappear into our spaces in a way that humans aren’t meant to live.

A friend and I decided to do some last minute shopping by the Thane station during our last week here. Thane station is the greatest ever open market, plus no tourists come to Thane, so everything is reasonably priced. We stopped at a stand, its shelves stacked high with sparkling glass bangle bracelets. The shop owner must have pulled fifty bracelets off the shelves for us to try on and admire, and we each bought a few different sets. When we finally chose, he wrapped our selections in newspaper, then motioned for our wrists. We outstretched our arms, and he slid two green bracelets over each of our hands, as a gift. This man probably makes the equivalent of two dollars per customer, max. His gesture represents why I’m feeling so bittersweet about the end of my time here. Everything people say about India is true: people are corrupt, they take advantage, they don’t care about each other. But all of the opposites are true too: they are generous, they always want to help, they are humble. Everyone I’ve ever smiled at here has smiled back. I’ve never heard anyone complain about studio apartments for whole families, or one room metal shacks, for that matter.

If you have a job, you do it well. If you’re the guy down the street who photoshops passport photos, then by god, you will remove every digital forehead blemish you encounter, if it’s the last thing you do. If you’re the guy who stands between the tollbooth and the cars, passing money back and forth, if you’re one of four waiters for the same table, if you’re the woman who delivers my nail polish to the customer service desk at the grocery store so I can literally follow behind to pick it up because that’s how things work at the grocery store, then you do that job, and save up some money, and buy a motorcycle, get an education, and keep doing life. 

India isn't a simple place, but there is clean simplicity in Indian values: being with family, being devout, respecting elders, respecting education. 

I'm excited to see how I'll be different when I'm back home, cause you can't spend time in a place as crazy as this without letting it touch you. I'm really happy I came, and I'm really sad to go. 

Thinking about the end

A short essay:

I cross the railroad tracks into the Kalva slum, just outside Mumbai, India, along with my fellow volunteer teachers, our translator, and a security guard. The reek of garbage and feces hits us immediately, as though we just passed through a scent barrier that separates the slum from the rest of the town of Kalva.

We walk through a clearing covered in a film of fraying cloth, plastic bags, small trash fires, and stray dogs before arriving at our classroom. As soon as the four of us duck into the dark, tin enclosure, twenty children leap to their feet, shouting “Good morning teacher!” They reach out their little hands to yank on our arms and perform fancy handshakes.

This morning we are teaching a lesson on tadpoles, frogs, caterpillars, and butterflies. I sit on the end of a straw mat laid out on the concrete floor next to one of our students. He chatters to me in Hindi and looks perplexed when all I can say back is yes, no, the numbers one through ten, and teacherly requests: pay attention, move back, good job. The kids all imitate us, chirping “Sunoh, baitoh, listen, sit down!” and laugh at our pronunciation.

Our children are beyond eager to please, and they treat our smiles as rare treasures. Kids with dirt-streaked cheeks and non-ironically torn jeans, who don’t go to school, gather in the classroom doorway, and I ruffle their hair and shake their hands as well.

Later, I am seated on the mat next to the same student again, and when asked what baby frogs are called, he shouts “Tadpole!” I raise my hand to give him a high five, and he jerks away. I feel ill when I realize he thought I meant to strike him, and even as he sheepishly offers me his hand while I clutch my chest in apology, horror and misplaced guilt settle over me in a clammy sheen. I know there is much more to our students’ lives than what we see for an hour a day, and the bits I do glimpse can make me catch my breath.

But there are so many sweet surprises as well. I play a nature video on my laptop, and the kids scrunch together on the mats, leaning on each other’s shoulders, each nearly in his neighbor’s lap, in our laps. A little girl with red ribbons braided into her pigtails sits between her two older brothers, the eldest gently stroking her hair. When I grin at her, she smiles back, then at her brother, tickled at our exchange.   

I have been teaching in India for a month, and in a few short weeks, I’ll leave these lovely children and return to lawns, air conditioning, and carpets. I’ll think of them here when monsoon season begins, as a sea of plastic bags and crushed cartons washes down the road, and they settle onto a mat in a classroom where I will no longer be.

Food and bonus rush hour video

Food in India seems to fall into two opposing camps: exactly what you’d expect, and nothing like you’d expect. Every Indian restaurant offers a nearly identical menu listing every common Indian dish, including a “Chinese” section. Indians love Chinese food. I haven’t tried this Indian Chinese food myself, but I hear it’s either really spicy, or really salty. The Indian restaurant dishes fall solidly into the “what you’d expect” category, once you recognize the dishes by name.

On the other hand are dishes named in English, where the name conjures up an image of something an American would understand and be familiar with. Veg sandwich, for example. You’d think you’d know what you were getting, but a friend ordered that and ended up with something kind of pasty on a spongy bread. And it was spicy. Veg soup sounds pretty self-explanatory, but what arrived was a thick, deep brown kind of broth with noodles. A green salad means a plate of sliced vegetables, with no lettuce or leaves of any kind. Ginger honey tea was a slice of dried ginger and a ginger gel, partially dissolved into the hot water.  So weird.  And again, spicy.

One exception to this general rule was a meal at a Mexican restaurant in a really touristy area of Mumbai, near the Taj Mahal hotel. The meal was actually reminiscent of Mexican food, and plus, the staff knew what gluten was. The more dishes they told me I couldn’t have, the more delighted I became. It sounds ridiculous, but I always feel like I’m in good restaurant hands when a waiter is telling me I shouldn’t eat anything. (I got fish.)

Veg Pulav

So, I’ve decided that the safest thing to do is order the common Indian dishes where I know what they’re made of, vehemently gesticulate and repeat, “nehi maida, nehi atta, nehi hing” (no wheat flour, no other word for wheat flour, no spice that often has flour in it), and hope for the best. I’ve basically given up on trying to avoid dairy in restaurants, since ghee just pops up out of nowhere. For the record, I almost always order veg pulav, which is basically rice with cooked vegetables and considered to be on the less spicy side. It still sets my face on fire.

I guess the third category is food we’ve been cooking at home. It’s kind of like a camping diet plus fresh fruits and vegetables. Rice, potatoes, tuna, other canned food, cereal. One of us just graduated from culinary school and has turned out some fantastic meals from the above ingredients.

Recently, two of us attempted to replicate some canned salmon-potato patties our chef had invented a few meals earlier. We mixed together canned salmon, mayonnaise, mashed potatoes, and caramelized onions. Instead of frying them, as she had, we spread the mixture in the bottom of a glass dish and baked it.

Our attempt at dinner

I’ll digress here to mention a story which has become family lore. When my mom was a kid, my grandma prepared a layer cake for dinner. My mom and her brothers were so excited; cake for dinner seemed like such a treat. It was tall with white frosting. When they tasted it, though, they were hugely let down to discover that the layers were tuna salad, salmon salad, and egg salad, and the frosting was sour cream.

So the dish we attempted in our apartment reminded me of what a single layer of that cake must have been like, even down to the taste of disappointment. Our chef roommate got a huge kick out of our attempt, at least. My next couple meals were the ever reliable boiled potatoes and ketchup.

Mosambi juice

Mosambi display

Mosambi juicer

I’ve included some pictures of my favorite exotic juice. Mosambi is kind of like a yellow orange, but it tastes slightly milder. The juice is sweet and tangy, and they sell it fresh squeezed right on the street. I bought some today and sat on the stoop of a store, sipping and taking videos of rush hour in the intersection right down the street from our apartment. I actually laughed out loud a few times. I've included the video for your viewing pleasure. 

Story Time

First of all, PSA, if you’re interested in receiving an email every time my blog updates, just submit your email address in the box at the top of the blog, and you should be all set!

Second of all, to lighten things up (even though I'll get serious again afterwards), a story of adding money to my phone here: I went around the corner to the store/booth/street-front room where you can both add money to your phone plan and drop off your dry cleaning. Obvious business plan, why did I never think of that? So I gave the guy my phone and a 100 rupee bill and told him the name of my sim card carrier. He said to me, "100 rupees, 86 rupees of talk time." I said, "Where do the other 14 rupees go?" He drew me a little chart that looked like this:

Paid rupees  Rupees of talk time

80                        80

100                      86

110                      110

Then he said, "So either 80 or 110." I said, "Why?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "That's crazy!" He said, "Yes. So 110?" Naturally. This is just the latest in a series of strange and amusing quirks about India. 

         

This week, we’re running lessons focused loosely around the theme of self-expression, and today’s lesson was about stories and storytelling. First, we explained the difference between fiction and non-fiction and had the kids categorize some stories, including a biography of Ghandi, a movie starring the Indian heartthrob Salman Khan, and Life of Pi (our synopsis: tiger and a boy are trapped on boat, tiger is hungry, tiger doesn’t eat boy, real or not real?).

Next, we read them a picture book that I put together yesterday. I thought it would be a breeze to write a children’s story, but all of the illustrations took forever! Fortunately, I had some help coloring them in. Our plan was to read them the story and translate it line by line, but for each line I read, the translation seemed to turn into a paragraph. So I ended up asking the kids what they thought was going on according to the pictures they saw, and then I added in bits of the plot that they missed. Interactive is definitely the way to go here.

The next part of the plan was to have the kids create a group story, where one student starts with one line, then another student adds another, then another, and so on. In our first class we ran out of time for the activity, but we gave it a shot in the second class. At first, I was really nervous the game would fail. First of all, the class seemed more antsy than usual today, maybe because it’s been getting so hot. Plus every time the train goes by (multiple times per class), the noise is super distracting. Getting them to sit in a circle was a whole to do.  Then, I called on a girl arbitrarily, and she thought I was asking her to tell the story I’d just read to the class. Commence confusion.

After a couple more false starts, a girl who is a frequent and enthusiastic contributor stood up and proceeded to begin a story, that kept going, and going! I don’t remember it exactly, but it involved a boy and a girl drawing in a garden and ending up at a lake. Her younger brother, who is usually very quiet, volunteered to continue the story. He stood at attention with his arms tight at his sides, and in a slight, lilting voice, he told of how the boy was thirsty, and he wanted to drink some water from the lake. The problem was that there was a hungry crocodile swimming in the lake as well. The boy didn’t know what to do, because he wanted to drink some water, but the crocodile was going to eat him.

At this point, the first girl took the story back, saying that the boy decided to trick the crocodile by taking a stick and throwing it in the water. The crocodile couldn’t tell the difference between the stick and the boy, so he ate the stick, and meanwhile, the boy was able to drink some water and get away safely. THE END.

I was so shocked and relieved that this sneaky story came out of our generally rowdy classroom. Even though the kids were messing around while I was trying to explain the instructions (granted, in English), they were engrossed by the tales of their own classmates. I felt like a proud mother!

Running lessons where you aren’t sure you’ll really reach the kids is scary. It’s overwhelming to have to answer to perplexed faces, and failing feels like a waste of the little time we have here to make an impression. But all the same, I’ve been saying to myself that if even two or three kids out of a class of twenty decide to read more stories, write more stories, or read a newspaper instead of play with it, that it counts as a step to success. The lessons that are the hardest to teach might be the most important. 

לא עליך המלאכה לגמור, ולא אתה בן חורין להבטל ממנה.

It isn’t your job to complete the work, but you are not free to ignore it, either.