Holidays are over...

Long time ago since I posted the last message… And so much has happened!

Trivandrum, my current home-town

In Goa, we had such horrible weather that both our moods were affected... We decided to take a look on the internet and see whether the weather would be better soon, and if not, where we could go to otherwise. The latter seemed to be the case, no improvement of the weather in Goa soon – in fact all India seemed to be covered with rain – so after long doubting, we decided to take a train to anywhere in the southeast of the country, where it seemed to be least rainy. Chennai was the preferred destination, just almost 1000km away from Goa – but with an easy connection to Mumbai.

It took us more than a day and 3 buses (from which one over horrible roads, through the mountains and hardly to be called a ‘road’ because of all the potholes, which caused the bus to wiggle from the left to the right so much that I was afraid that the bus would fall on one side), 2 trains and one reluctant auto rickshaw (didn’t want to drop us at the hotel we asked for, but we refused to get out at the other 2 hotels he showed us J) to settle down in Chennai. I left straight to the beach, since it was very hot there, while Els decided to take a shower first. Unfortunately, when she wanted to join me, the monsoon had come to Chennai as well and we got very wet again. Because of the heavy rain, the streets even got flooded!

Fortunately, the weather got better the next day, although our health didn’t… I had been sick for a week now, not feeling too bad, but bad enough to have no energy and having to run to the toilet once in a while and getting bad moods all the time – poor Els had to endure a lot! And now Els was sick too, so she decided to stay in bed. I felt well enough to go and explore the city, which was really nice. There were very different areas in the city, all with their own atmosphere: one street you were walking in the more upper-class part with nice and well maintained apartments, and in the next street, the houses – rather huts – were made of mud and straw, people were living outside and loads of animals were running around. Just a little bit further on, I was walking on the beach avenue, with big colonial buildings like universities and banks and churches, and when trying to get into the city again, I found myself in kind of a social housing area, with dilapidated apartment blocks stuffed with people.

In the evening, Els felt better, so we did some shopping – since it were Els’ last days, she wanted to go for souvenir hunting… Afterwards, we went on the internet – we already decided on doing that when we received a telephone call: my parents were relieved to hear everything was ok because they got really worried they hadn’t heard from me for some days – till late at night. After a quiet morning, we had to leave for Mumbai again – another 26 hours in the train! But we had sleeper class so pretty comfortable seats/ beds. We arrived there safely and even in time, so even Els had some time left before going to the airport to explore the city! Mumbai = monsoon though, so in the end, I bought an umbrella too. We walked around in upper-class Mumbai – pretty different from the areas we had seen from the train, and ended up in Mumbai CST, the railway station where our journey started one month ago, and where I said goodbye to Els – pretty sad moment, and end of chapter one…

Chapter two then: Anneke and Vincent. They had troubles getting in India: this alleged terrorist plot had just been unfolded, and security measures were huge… Moreover, they flew via London, where the chaos was biggest. Normally, they would have taken flights at the same times as me, so with very little time to catch the subsequent flight from London to Mumbai. Fortunately, they had been so clever to book an earlier flight from Brussels to London. But when they arrived at the airport inBrussels, they had to take even another flight because their flight had been delayed. This other flight was with another airline company, and maybe that’s the cause of all their troubles afterwards. Due to these increased security measures, they were only allowed to take on board a plastic bag with their passports and money. No mobile phones (which Anneke secretly smuggled in -> bad girl J), no toilet bags, no books or anything else. But the – rather unpleasant - surprise came as they arrived: their luggage didn’t arrive in Mumbai, so they ended up with 2 passports, money, 1 mobile phone and 2 blankets they sneaked from the plane. Lots of time and paperwork later (they arrived at 00:30 and finally came out of the airport at 3:30) we could finally go to the hotel and get some sleep.

The next day, we walked around in Mumbai for a while, shopping for the most urgent things needed. But in the afternoon, we already had to go to the domestic airport, to catch our flight to Trivandrum, still without Anneke and Vincent’s luggage though. The flight had an unexpected in-between stop in Cochi, about 200km north of Trivandrum, so after that first stop, we took off, only to land again after just 20min. Luckily, my luggage DID arrive in Trivandrum. The first night, we could stay at Mr. Shankar’s house – the head of Habitat Technology, the organization we’re working in. His house turned out to be the nicest and most luxurious house I already saw here in India, all rooms with bathroom, but no Mr. Shankar. When asked for explanation, Guru (our contact person, who had worked in Belgium at Architecten Zonder Grenzen for 2 months) told us that this was just one of the extra houses of Mr. Shankar. We could live there for a while, until another house was found. Well, since this one is so nice, we actually hope they don’t find another house too quickly :)

Holidays are over by now, and our internship has started. Working in India, that means from Monday till Saturday, with only Sunday as day off. But so far, our job hasn’t been really tough. The first day at the office, Mr. Shankar received us at his office and somewhere in-between all his phone calls and other people coming in and asking questions – he really is an extremely busy man – he told us about a new project, somewhere in Northern Kerala, where through eco-tourism the existing population (different tribes) would be able to improve their living conditions. He asked whether we were interested and so we were. It all seemed very vague still and we expected more explanation, but the following days we were expected to work on it. But how? We didn’t have any details on the exact location, had never been there, there was no good access to internet and the information we got was in Malayalam, a language we don’t know… There was a deadline of two weeks for the first proposal, but today, one week later, we still haven’t visited the place (they told us we would probably go tomorrow, for four days – but on Saturday they told us we would probably leave on Tuesday, so how reliable this information is, we don’t know), and thus don’t really know what to do. It seems we’re doing the project with the three of us, which is at the same time exciting, but also feels like a big responsibility. We’re all inexperienced and don’t know about the way of working here nor the culture or way of living of these tribes. But we’ll try to manage!

Two out of the three bags of Vincent and Anneke have arrived by now, but the third one hasn’t, because it cannot get cleared. The reason therefore is that it contains 3 laptops – Anneke was so kind to bring one for me too. But apparently, you’re only allowed to bring one laptop per person, and if more, you have to pay duty – in Mumbai, that is. But for us, to go to Mumbai now, that is not possible. And getting the luggage to Trivandrum seems to be oh so hard. Hopefully, there will be a solution soon.

The office is a nice working place. They installed computers for us, so by now, we can ‘do some typing’ (which we were supposed to do after Mr. Shankar told us about the project, without any useful information), and when the connection is working – more often not – we have internet access. Lots of people are working here (remarkably a lot of women – all resembling each other and with names we cannot remember – but we took pictures and are exercising every day :) and they are all very nice, although we didn’t have a lot of contact with them already. They are all very busy (the way we keep ourselves busy with doing nothing, or are they really working?) so we don’t want to disturb them. Viji, one of the girls, is getting married the 3rd of September and she invited us to join the wedding, so that would be great.

Trivandrum is really a nice and cozy city. Although there are about 900 000 people living here, it feels like a big village. Compared to the rest of India, it is very clean, without the usual trash along the streets, and even without animals (cows, goat, monkeys,…) walking around. There are some dogs and cats, but not much. People don’t seem to stare as much as anywhere else – or is it me getting used to it? – and the auto rickshaw drivers are not asking all the time if we need one – actually you have to sign to them to stop them. The weather is very nice too: raining just a little bit from time to time, not too hot and lots of sun. On Sunday, we visited the temple and went to Kovalam, a very popular beach village only 15km away from Trivandrum. Very touristy too, with on the one side lots of foreign tourists sunbathing in their bikini or swimming shorts and on the other hand the Indians, men gazing at all the uncovered flesh of these foreign tourists, and both men and women playing in the water, men in their pants or skirts, and women fully dressed in their sarees. We just walked around there and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings.

Yesterday, we bought bicycles (never say ‘bike’ because then they think of a motorbike) – brand new bicycles for merely 40 euros. We drove from the city to the office, but my health condition is in such a bad shape that I arrived on foot and completely overheated… Definitely need more practice!!!

For all those who were so courageous to read everything till here: congratulations! I’ll try to update more often, but don’t promise anything ;)

Many many greetings,

Els (professional ant-killer)