Virtual refrigerator

Good news all around

Our family is growing. We are sponsoring a young man named Vamsi Devi at the Cuddapah school. He is nine years old and very artistic. He loves to use the computer to make pictures on paint and colors in the lines very carefully.

David has lost weight, a lot of weight. He looks good.

Gina has learned how to tie a Sari

Here's the evidence

Loongies

It's Sabbath afternoon. David and I are sitting on the porch of the principal's house in Cuddapah district (not actually occupied by the principal). We have been be staying here for the last week and a half. There is an academy group coming next week who will move in here so we'll have to vacate to an obscure corner somewhere. That means giving up the nice big bed and putting a couple single mattresses on the floor. I tell him he needs to hang a curtain to separate the small kitchen area and make a bedroom for us. He suggests buying "loongies" (wrap around skirts for men) to use as curtains. We both know it's just an excuse for him to buy more "man skirts." He says they are comfortable. He bought his first pair while I was away in Gurgaon. I wasn't too excited about it because men around here grap the bottom corners and lift the fabric up above their knees. The result is something like a baggy miniskirt. David has resisted the temptation to do this (willingly, see below) for which I am grateful. I suggested sharing clothes but he frowned about that. I think it's going to take some time before he's comfortable sharing. He sure looks manly in a long skirt! : )

Sabbath afternoon is very quiet. The contractors are forbidden to work and the children are forbidden to yell and shout. After church service the teacher told all the children to go back into their rooms and enjoy themselves but not to make any noise. We laughed as they immediately began jumping between the top bunks, swinging on the window bars, and (in the case of the boys) running around naked. Finally order was reinstituted. I think the command to enjoy themselves was revoked.

We went off soon after that to find food for ourselves. If we had not made a timely exit we would have been constrained to eat with the children. Everyone here is very gracious about sharing their food but I can't eat it. Everytime I eat Indian food I hate it more. They use oil as if it were water (often palm oil) and chilis as if they were salt. The chilis are everywhere. I can't escape them. Not all chilis are equal. It's the small green chilis that are my archnemesis. My chest feels heavy and my throat constricts after just one bite. They are in every cooked dish from rice pilaf, to lentils, to vegetable curries.

We have really appreciated the generosity of the principal in giving us a small gas canister and burner so that I can cook. Keeping vegetables around is a challenge. We can't just drive to the grocery store. First I have to find someone to go with me to translate (more bodies means more arms to carry bags), then we have to catch a bus. Once in town we buy as much as we can from vendors who supply bags and try to make sure the tomatoes are stacked on top of the potatos and not the other way around. Then we start stuffing spare things in bags wherever there is room (grandma's crocheted bag comes in very handy for this). Finally I buy whatever papayas we can carry. After the necessities, we usually cannot carry as many as we would like. When we board the bus with all of our bags we hope we can find a place to sit. Usually some of the school boys meet us when we get back on campus and help us carry the well traveled bags to their place on the polished stone shelf that serves as a kitchen counter.

I ran out of gas once, I was right in the middle of frying up some eggplant. David went out to see if he could find someone to help us get more. He returned a few minutes later and told me that the children were dancing. Dancing? I had to see this. Back at the children's home Hindi music was being played on the donated DVD player (that machine gets a lot of use) and one of the translators who had come early was leading a sort of dance class. The kids put up a good cheer when we went inside for a closer look and we were immediately pushed up to the front. I kept saying "We don't know how to dance." but I think the language barrier prevented my appeals from having any effect. David, and this is the best part, was wearing a loongie. Everyone kept making motions that he would have to pull it up and tuck it in to which he turned pale and made desperate hand motions to the contrary. In the end he was pulled into a room and after a long time and much encouragement finally emerged again in a baggy miniskirt. We were then forced to improvise an interpretive dance based entirely on our brief experience with Hindi music videos. It was the first time I have ever regretted not paying more attention to Indian dance routines. Our leader made it look so easy and beautiful! I really have a new appreciation for the complexities of Indian dance now. We laughed a lot and looked like complete fools but everyone had a good time and it was a lot of fun. The children still tell me "Ginaka (sister Gina) dance bagondi (beautiful)". They are such charming little liars. Dinner was very late that night. We ate half cooked eggplant and laughed about what a great adventure we had.

David will be buying three more loongies. We determined that is what it will take to make a curtain across the kitchen area in the principal's house.

Mt. Everest???

Here is one for Mike. I think this is Mt. Everest but I will have to compare the shot to others. This mountain stood out above the clouds while flying. The shot is with my 300mm telephoto lens and enhanced with Picasa2's I'm feeling lucky. Earlier that day I had made to mistake of switching lenses without powering off the camera. I think I have managed to get most of the dust off the ccd. I am still looking for a camel hair brush and need to look at the official cleaning procedure.

Wildlife

Many of my friends already know I have a great love for animals. Here is just a few that I have found.

A little Photo Housekeeping

I'm back with more photos for the blog. Okay, I have a confession. I uploaded these pictures to my server over a month ago so I could post them easier. I figure I had better finish posting old photos of Garo Hills before moving on to our new Cuddapah project posts. Furthermore I have to confess all of these photos were taken in the first two weeks of our stay in Garo Hills. Don't worry Gina and I are headed to the main office where we will once again have an internet connection faster than dial-up.

Let's take a walk down memory lane.
The first night the rains stopped I was overwhelmed by the vast starry sky above me. I pulled our my 50mm 1.8 prime lens and took some extended exposure shots. That was fun, Gina wondered what happened to me for an hour.

Next there is a photo I like of Gina. Getting the internet through the satellite connection was a trick at times.
The next series of pictures are from around the house of our host where we stayed for the first week and a half. Local kids, lots of fruit (banana, palamalo, pineapple, papaya), vinilla bean vines, rubber tree starts, and their open well where we get our water from. I ran into a spider hanging from the tree and had to take the challenge of taking a picture of a hanging object. Grape juice was made for the church by reconstituting resins and squeezing our the juice. Last is a perspective Gina pointed out looking out one of the windows with rain falling.

Like all of the pictures in this blog I do reserve copyrights. Feel free to click on the photo to see enlargements. Please write to me in a comment requesting permission to use any of the photos for any reason. If you know me just write an e-mail for permission.

David

A rambling update, (once a year literary burst)

Life here in Garo Hills has started taking on a sort of a routine. After two weeks we have started making significant progress in spite of short work days other complications. Our upstairs small third of the triplex we will be temporarily staying in when it is finished is located third from the end. The top floor is two dwellings meant for only a couple. It has a small entry big enough for a small couch or a few chairs and coffee table. The next room behind a full height barrier wall is the bedroom. A king bed is out, the whole room is just larger than a king bed. Then another full height wall and the bathroom/shower, has the only door inside the house. Last, the kitchen. Out the back door is a shared balcony with the dwelling on the other half of the house.

That will be home as soon as we have a toilet and running water. For now we live in a room about the size of the guest room Gina and I stayed in at your house, approximately 12'x16'. That includes bathroom, a table with a propane stove on it we call the kitchen, fridge, small table that we have to clear off for every meal, and a bed I am guessing is the size of a full, just larger than a twin and I think the locals call it a queen, we are still figuring out the names for miniature beds.

I have finally given the engineers in the states the information they need to complete the septic design. The seemingly simple tasks of 1) asking people with any certainty how much water each person will flush down the drain for each building, 2) Make a relative elevation (topo) map of the construction site so the engineers know up from down and can make the water flow downhill, 3) take a picture of local water plants that fit the description of reeds, cat-tails, or bulrushes so the engineers know we are actually planting the right plant, and 4) take a soil percolation test to find the water absorption rate, takes a really long time.

Now I am on to designing the water distribution for the campus. There is already one 400 foot well and we will be digging another one on the other side of the campus in light of a water tower for redundant water supply. Digging wells is about 1/3rd the price of installing a tower. Once that is done Gina and I will probably head down to the next school site and start designing the next septic system. I am quickly feeling more like a civil engineer every day and will probably be able to write a book on "waste water management out-side the United States" by the time I am done here. The interesting thing is that Maranatha will probably have me write the standard procedures manual before too long.

Gina and I are hanging in here. The living quarters are a little tight and if anyone wanted a nice QUIET corner to call their own... well India is not the place. We look forward to having our own apartment soon. Until then, we are calling it full immersion as we live in the old bank with about 10 others and we take long walks along the peaceful village roads lined with fireflies at night and in the morning the clouds hang low over the lush green hills and flooded rice patties.

I am including a picture I was thrilled to have captured. In the middle of a 2 hour conversation the three others in the car were having I heard a few English words that threw me into action. "There's an elephant", I looked up just in time to see the rear end of an elephant that looked about the same size and shape as the trucks we had been dodging at 70 km/hr. Already equipped with the camera and zoom lens, I whirled around and snapped the photo out the back window. It made my day.

Lest I give the false impression that life is all frustration and horror, it is not. The people are very hospitable and love taking us on trips to new places and seeing new people. Visiting the 5000 year old Hindu temple was a real treat. The food is good, it will take a long time for us to get used to the amount of oil and hot peppers that are in use. Sometimes, it seems like we are going so many places and doing so many things we cannot get the work done that we need to. This, of course, is frustrating. I have had to learn that shaking my head to say "no" looks strangely like tilting my head to the locals, which means "yes". I am still feeling a little weak as my body recovers from jet-lag. My ears are starting to adjust so I can now understand when people speak to me in English. Hindi is on the list of languages to learn.

Moms and Dads, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, I love and miss you all,

David

The Conquest of Green

I saw it. You won't believe that I saw it, but I did see it. David saw it too. It was buzzing around me and my book while I tried to fight off a headache with some dense George Eldon Ladd theology. I only allow myself the privilege of reading my book if something (like a headache) is preventing any other productive activity. I felt guilty about it for sure. But the computer was giving me fits and making writing impossible (Note reason number two for not writing. One you will recall was a headache). The mutant insect must have been sent to torment me for my indulgence. It was a bee. A bee of unusual size, but only a bee. We have seen them two inches long out here. The most unusual aspect of the particular bee in question was not size, but color. It's stripes were not yellow, they were green! It was too big, too near for me to have made a mistake. David saw it too. The bee was black and green. It was then that I began to suspect a conspiracy of magnificent proportions. I checked the basketful of lemons that I had bought the day before. Sure enough, they too were green. Not a hint of yellow. Have I seen a yellow banana since I arrived? ? ? ? No, I don't think so. Green? yes. Black? yes. Yellow? no. In fact, green is everywhere. The housetops are covered with a green slime. Green plants have carpeted every available inch of ground. The trunks of the palm trees are covered by the green leaves of climbing plants, air ferns, and orchids. Green is completely out of control. I pondered the green back of a kingfisher hunting in the irrigation ditches of the rice paddies this morning and wondered, what is to become of yellow?

Unlike any place on earth

The sun does shine in the land where the clouds come home. We had a clear night last night after a late return from a shopping trip in the city two hours away. We were on a mission to buy all the supplies we would need for our guest house when it is finally finished. We are guests now in the home of a church elder and we are looking forward very much to having our own place. The idea is that we will go far down south to Cuddapah at the end of the week and when we return our house will be finished.

The Garo people are actually the Achik people. I have not been able to discover the story of how the Garo title was imposed upon them, probably by a British explorer with a need to name something, but it seems that for millennia they have known of themselves as the Achik and that is how I will henceforth refer to them. The Achik speak Achiku, a very simple language with verbal forms that vary with the tense but not the person or number. The sentence structure closely resembles Central Asian languages with many verbal suffixes. They say I can learn it in a couple months. So far my vocabulary is restricted to namingima – hello.

The seven states which make up North East India bear very little resemblance to the people or landscape of the Indian subcontinent and there are a number of underground militant groups dedicated to the freeing of the northeast from Indian supremacy. For that reason, I try to watch my tongue and not refer to the North East as a part of India. If you want to really understand North East India, you must forget that you are in India at all and look for the characteristics that make this region so unique. Among the many peculiarities of the northeast people are their round faces and slanted eyes. The Achik claim to have come all the way from Mongolia and they certainly resemble Mongolian people.

Many of the northeast tribes are matrilineal. I’ve been watching family dynamics trying to learn how a matrilineal culture operates. I was curious to know whether I would find the gender roles reversed from patrilineal traditions. To my surprise, women still do much of the cooking and cleaning. A foreigner entering this society would not suspect that this is an example of one of the rarest societal structures on earth. One reason for that may be the long standing Christian influence. Christian missionaries entered this place long ago and taught the tribal people about the humble Jesus, denominational division, the male priesthood, and God’s plan for female submission. Despite the Christian influence, of which I have observed very little positive to write, women are still treated with respect, and daughters inherit the family wealth. There is no walking ten paces behind a man here but neither is there husband abuse. My initial impression is that gender relations in North East India are marked by an extraordinary equality and mutual respect. The great experiment the world was afraid to try, has, in my estimation, proven successful.

getting our feet wet

I'm writing from a temporary bamboo hut on the building site of the future Garo Hills Adventist Boarding School. Internet is delivered via satelite but it's been touchy because of atmospheric disturbance. The rain clouds are laying low over the hills and it has been pouring rain since we arrived yesterday around noon. We asked how long it would rain and they replied two more months. This is really complicating construction but the crews are still out there shoveling gravel into baskets and then carrying them on their heads to the place where concrete is being prepared or pounding boards into forms. Yesterday they tried pouring the second floor of one building but had to stop when the rain got to heavy. Monsoon is really putting a cramp in this construction project. We don't know where we are staying yet but we hope to find out before evening. Yesterday we had to sit all day while people fed us but the camera crew has just arrived and there are promised of hiking up the hill to get some good shots of the campus. I'm looking forward to that.

One week in Gurgaon

I’m up at four in the morning and grateful because it’s an improvement from my first night when I was awake at midnight after crashing at four in the afternoon. Jet lag, it will make a philosopher out of anyone. After I have thought about everything I can imagine thinking about, listened to the air conditioner banging and roaring, and cuddled with David spitefully hoping he’ll wake up, there’s nothing left to do but give up the fight, turn on the computer, and write a long overdue update.

Let me tell you about the air conditioner in our room – it’s set at 30 c. I understand that’s about 92 f. I’ve never tried to measure the air outside but it’s well over 100 f in the morning when the sun comes up and only gets warmer from there. We are grateful for our air conditioner. The air is not only hot, it’s humid. David is dry when we leave our apartment in the morning and looks like he just stepped out of a shower for the second time when we arrive at the office ten minutes later. We waste no time getting inside the air conditioned office. It feels like we are living in a greenhouse. If only we could have brought our orchids with us! They would have been so happy here.

India is extravagant. There is marble everywhere. All the stairways, floors, and countertops in our neighborhood are marble. Even the courtyards and driveways are paved in it. The floors are cut with various colors of stone skillfully laid out in geometric patterns. The women are works of art in their intricately decorated saris. Little green birds dart among blooming balcony gardens and flowering trees. Stately Brahmin bulls amble along the roads blessing everyone they pass with their somber brown eyes. Marigold wreaths decorate curbside shrines or grace lighted nooks in homes and businesses. Vendors stack huge purple pyramids of eggplant in various shapes and sizes. There is a seemingly endless supply of variety.

India is friendly. I have not yet met one unfriendly creature in India, unless, perhaps, you count the monkey that darted at the heels of one of the Indian men who works at the office. I had walked past it just in front of him and it had just sat on its haunches questioningly. Maybe my pink skin confused the fight picking primate. Large brown dogs litter every corner of the city but they whine submissively and follow behind tails wagging expectantly when you speak kindly to them. One puppy rolled around on the dusty road in pure ecstasy when David rubbed its belly. Even the birds and chipmunks do not seem to fear people. Every restaurant sports a vegetarian menu. Nature and humanity appear to have reached a blissful harmony here.

We have had one week to settle in before we travel on Thursday to our more permanent home in Garo Hills. We have spent most of it sleeping through dinner, watching the sun rise in the morning, and trying to figure out how to buy food. I have an appointment on Wednesday morning with an orthodontist. David is settling in well at the office but I’m still trying to figure out how to be useful. With such an ambiguous job description I don’t expect that to change any time soon. I’ve begun making an ambitious effort to learn Hindi but they don’t speak Hindi in Garo Hills they speak a tribal language. When we leave Garo Hills we will go south where they speak Tellegu. It’s enough to discourage the most dedicated language student. We are just going to have to come to grips with the language barrier. I have not, however, given up entirely. I bought a Hindi grammar book and Hindi English dictionary yesterday on our shopping excursion.

David's fotojournalism

David's, yes that is me, posts will take on more of a photojournalism taste as I believe pictures are best described in pictures.

The first morning we arrived there was the most wonderful birds chirping outside our room. We figured out how the open the door to the balcony and found cute little green birds. Our view was extraordinary as we live on the upper most floor of a 3 story house. Counting in the local method it is the second floor, ground first second.

After only two days at work Gina and I headed to the park on Friday for a company fun day. Our first task was to make it past the monkeys. We started out playing cricket and then later went on to soccer, that is 'football' to the rest of the world.

Off to another exciting day in the construction department.

Thanks for the Picasa tip everyone.

crash

Sacramento is one of those citys that looks exactly the same at any given place, big buildings and lots of traffic. I wasn't a very good passenger. I spent most of the time with my eyes glued to traffic helping David drive from my perch in the passenger seat. David is what Grandma Roberts calls longsuffering. I would have told myself to shut up in his place but he only smiled and held my hand instead of the stick shift. The unsupervised stick shift should have increased my discomfort but the real issue was me, not traffic. I've been a little jumpy ever since we auctioned off or packed up everything and started living out of suitcases and relatives' spare rooms. We were in Sacramento to meet the Maranatha team and learn what exactly I was supposed to be doing when I got to Delhi. Thursday we followed Google maps to the KVIE studio and watched filming. Friday We met the office staff and I got a hurried explanation of the job description. The choleric young woman who seemed to be in charge explained that I will be writing scripts and then showed me an example, left column: time prints for appropriate video, right column: audio accompaniment. I explained to her that I do not do visual arts. I was told I was supposed to write. I write. She appeared unshaken by my profession. Not only must I arrange both the audio and video portions of the program, I must figure out how to integrate the two. I think I turned white, recovered slightly, and suggested that there would probably be a significant learning curve.

Now I'm staring wide eyed out of the passenger side windshield, knuckles white, legs braced, preparing my expectations for a head on collision with reality.

restless

After traveling for almost a week and making many stops along the way David and I finally arrived in Reno late last Thursday. We are staying with his parents. We spent a long day Friday shopping for essentials: good close toed shoes, sterling silver wedding bands, underwear, a camera tripod. It looks like Reno will be the final resting place of a good portion of the stuff we packed up for India because a check on the airlines website reveals that our checked baggage weight limit is 50lbs not 70lbs as we had optimistically assumed in the beginning. We are going to have to lighten up yet again. The last couple of months are beginning to look a lot like EGW's dream of the little company traveling on a narrow ledge who had to continue leaving stuff behind and tossing it over to keep going. At least trying to make it all fit is going to give me something to do. I've been involved in frantic activity for so long that the lack of it has been alarming and disorienting. Some of the busyness has dissipated leaving behind it a vauge desperation and swirling memories without any tangible object. I'm almost relieved to have some crisis to direct all my residual anxiety towards.

What's worst is the not doing. People keep asking me if I'm scared? Scared? I'm impatient. One has no time or mental energy after the house is gone and the stuff has all been dispensed with for regret or uncertainty. The decision has been made. It is no longer up for review. Such determination and single mindedness does not attest to any saintliness on my part but just a good dose of choleric. If I were a saint. I would go more patiently. I would go more quietly. It was alright when I was surrounded by to do lists and piles of boxes and paint cans. It was awful, but I was busy. This sitting and waiting is much harder. This limbo world between the worlds where nothing moves and no one belongs is terrible. If I were a saint I would not be afraid of the silence.

introducing googlegroups

I'm still discovering the wonders of Google (not just for searching anymore). Check out our new google group below. It's like a blog but anyone can post or upload to it if they are part of the group. Wanna join? Send a request.

 


 gulkiz


 Visit this group

Paid to have tea

Every time David is asked what we will be doing in India he waxes eloquent on the needs associated with installing third world water and sewer systems and his experience with coordination and design. If anyone is courteous enough to query what I will do there is an admission of awkward uncertainty. Pastoring? Chaplaincy? There's no position yet, but they'll make one (we hope). It's been a point of discomfort. Especially delicate is the looming question of what I will do during his 7-10 days a month spent on the road touring building sites and doing inspections. I haven't been looking forward to those trips.

A phone call from Maranatha today settled the awkwardness better than either of us could have hoped. A sudden vacancy in the media department has created an immediate need for a journalist to prepare human interest stories for regular television features and magazine articles. "Would I, could I, maybe possibly be interested in trying..." the request was cautious and apologetic. Would I! You mean I get to travel around, have tea with people, write, and get paid for it? This isn't pastoring or chaplaincy in the traditional form at all but who would pass up the opportunity to have tea with fascinating people from all kinds of different places and cultures and then share that with others? "So, I asked casually, is this the kind of thing we could combine with David's inspection trips so we could travel together?" "Oh, of course. I mean, we didn't plan it that way but it just makes sense." YES! Thank you LORD!

I'm getting paid to have tea with people. That's almost as good as being paid to be a pastor, maybe even better, because I don't have to talk as much. Teachers and professors have been suggesting publishing to me for a long time and this is a perfect way to get some experience. If all works out you should see some of the new friends I am going to make show up on 3ABN and in Maranatha magazine soon.

down to business

Our destination is West Garo Hills in the Indian state of Meghalaya. Maranatha has a school building project there with special sewage and sanitation concerns. David will be working with plumbing coordination and also reviewing pictures of other church building sites all over India through remote access. The nature of his job means internet is mandatory for us. Hooray! My job description is less defined but my education is in pastoring and I'm sure that is what I will be doing with or without a title or church. If you would like to learn more about West Garo Hills I have found an excellent government website for the area. http://westgarohills.gov.in You can find a description of the people, government, and wildlife there. We will only be in Garo Hills until the school is completed then we will either be moved to another building site or settle down near the Maranatha office in the city of Gurgaon near New Delhi.

We plan to leave our college town by August 12 and visit some family before we fly. It's been two yard sales and a few hundred dollars since we first verified we were going. Some furniture and three vehicles are gone but a glance around the house tells me we still have a long way to go. What I can't see is the piles of stuff in the borrowed garage that didn't sale last Sunday. What a burden stuff is. How difficult to pry oneself free of it. We can take only what we can fly with and store only what will fit in the small bedroom I used to occupy in my parents' home. Everything else must go, even if it means enduring the humiliation of strangers pawing through my things and bickering with me about 50 cents for the third Sunday in a row. I hate yard sales. Still, there is something cleansing about seeing it go. There is something freeing about allowing the miserly housewife to give me a quarter for my glassware and not caring. It all came from the thrift store anyway. I can't take it with me. It's a strange ritual David and I have been caught up in. We went in to the conference office earlier this week to make our wills and set up a power of attorney. We are putting all of our estate in order and I have never felt more ready to die or prepared to live.

The most difficult thing to give up has been the dogs. "Robin", found his way to us a few months ago when we were camping. He followed us on a five mile hike and we discovered that he had been abandoned near the camp ground about ten days before. He had a number of behavioral issues related to abuse and abandonment but he improved a lot under our care and was great friends with our miniature poodle "Teddy". After many posters and prayers and mass emails "Robin" has finally found a perfect home with a man who loves him and takes him everywhere he goes. We are hoping and praying the same will happen for "Teddy". We will visit with a family this evening perhaps about taking him. Meanwhile, "Teddy" does not understand why there is no longer any "Robin" for him to play with and he has been moping around the house for the last couple of days. Poor sad poodle. How do you help the dogs understand?

We had hoped to move into the spare bedroom in my parents home this weekend so that we would have a couple weeks to finish the interior painting project I started when we moved in. We promised the landlord we would do it if he bought the paint. But since we are not packed yet I don't think we will be out of here as soon as we had hoped. We'll have to paint fast. Anyway, here we sit, with a million loose ends to tie up and a checklist counting the few remaining days till we bury our life in America in dusty boxes and begin a brand new ones. We are glad will be sharing the adventure with us.

Wandering Aramean

Deuteronomy 26: 4-9

"A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.

When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.

The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey."