BEFORE MUMBAI

Things here are going great. This is an old video from the handicapped school. The two kids breakdancing are both deaf and incredible at yoga. Contorting their bodies up over their heads, putting our western ideas of flexibility to shame. Today we are headed back to this school to work again with these and other children. After a long absence it will be great to go back. Tomorrow we will be going back to the tailoring school and see if we can get the rest of the order resolved. Then back to Periathachoor for on last program before our two week trip. After friday there will only be me and hilary left as tyler our other intern is going back to the US.

The trip should be great, first to Mumbai (an experience in itself) then almost all the way down the west coast down to Kerala (India's most sw state) Hopefully enjoying the mountains and possible surfing if i can find access to a board. Long busses and trains but i guess it's all part of it.

Enjoying it's vibrance.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

THIS IS THE 6A CLASS SINGING A RENDITION OF HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEFORE A LESSON LAST WEEK. UNFORTUNATELY WE WONT BE WORKING WITH THESE KIDS AGAIN UNTIL OCTOBER BECAUSE THEY HAVE EXAMS FOR THE NEXT 3 WEEKS AND THEN A 10 DAY VACATION. AHHH. SOON ENOUGH I GUESS, THEY ARE GREAT! OUT OF CONTEXT AS IT MAY BE, SEEING AS IT WASN'T ANYONE'S BIRTHDAY, STILL A GREAT SONG.

PICTURES OF WHERE I AM/ HAVE BEEN

Market scene in Pondicheri.

The main after school center in Periathachoor. (4+5 standard)

CALI with one of the girls from the hostel next door.

Me in front of Samsss Where i now live, my room is to the right in the image.

ENTHRALLED WITH IT ALL

I am quite certain I am in the most vividly vibrant and cacophonously insane place i have yet to visit. To talk about intensity would be an understatement. I am coming to know and developing a love for, a place. A place who is as loud as it is bright, as it is chaotic, as it is shocking. It presents complete saturation for every sense. I am consecutively breathing the most awful, followed the most heavenly of smells. The food is as spicy and delicious as the language is foreign and completely incomprehensible to my western ears. The sounds of the bus horns are some of the loudest i have heard. They move, jarring their gargantuan bodies through streets all too small, filled with a people so accustomed they barely acknowledge it’s gait. The cow eating from a mound of garbage, blocking traffic in the middle of the road barley riles a glance from the bus riders. It’s people are poor beyond my comprehension. Yet stirred into it’s blatantly globalized soup, of caste injustices, gender troubles, and political uncertainly, is a radiating beauty that is indescribably growing in with time. I am enveloped in a sea of uncertainty yet simultaneously feeling incredibly alive. On my bus ride home today, I took all of it in. Seated literally right next to the driver, as Tamil pop music blasted out of blown speakers on a rickety bus packed with people I invited these realizations. I am beginning to get to know my new home.

VILLAPURAM + DALIT CHRISTIAN PROTEST

I never thought I would be sitting with Christian protestors. Yet their plight, though initially induced by religion, is largely induced by Caste and economic injustices. The Caste system was set up as part of the Hindu faith. In 1950 a law was passed freeing people from the Caste system (yet after 3,000 years of horrific class discrepancies, it is still very much in place. ) Indians that converted to Christianity or Islam were promised liberation, as the Caste system was a Hindu construct. Black Day is a day for Dalit (untouchable) Christians and Muslims to protest the promise of change never delivered. We sat in solidarity, not for Christianity or any other religious monstrosity, but rather, against a legacy of violence based on constructed poverty. Here is a video of a call and response chant amplified to the government center across the street.

BOOK MAKING/ DRAWING IN BOOKS THEY MADE

THIS is the main after school program. It is in a village called Periathachoor. This is a film from our second visit. We worked with small groups and helped them to make simple 3 bound books. This is a short film of them drawing in the books after they made them. It was candid, i had to sneak the camera out to avoid the theatrics. They enjoyed it and were working diligently!