French Fries and Field Studies

Here is another little something for the create aim of my blog.

It is called a French fry.  It looks like a French fry—but alas, it is not a French fry.  

In the same way that Skype is almost like seeing people from back home, the toilets are seemingly functional, and English hopes to be standardized among English speakers across the globe—a French fry is just not a French fry here in McLeod Ganj, because, well, it is just not home.  

This has been one of the largest frustrations I’ve had with this location for a field study.  Maybe it is because I keep comparing it to Ghana (which I recognize is a bad move—apples and oranges), but I have found that living in a village without the possibility of such luxuries is easier to stomach than having the possibility of them taunting you—posing as something familiar, but in reality, being more foreign than you could ever imagine.  I have no problem with being in unfamiliar territory and living without French fries, cell phones, hot showers, flushing toilets, and electricity for months or years of my life, but why are they pestering me here?

In “Street Hauntings,” a personal essay by Virginia Woolf, she identifies with a moth batting at flames or a light bulb—constantly trying to get to the core, but always condemned an outsider.  I can’t help but feel I can also relate in this moment.  Last night I was keenly aware of it.

I got home later than usual and decided to sit in the back room with my host sisters to watch some of their Hindi soap operas.  Bonding time.  I tried to squat next to them.  One sister insisted that I take her seat cushion.  I wouldn’t take it.  Neither did she.  It stayed on the floor between us.

Snot and Stories

I have a snot flinger for a host grandma.  We sit on the balcony together while I read and she flings visible amounts of mucus off of the second story of our complex with one swift motion with the back of her hand.  The leftovers she wipes underneath the chair without shame.  She is an eighty something year traditional Tibetan woman with unusually large pupils, long wire-like hair, and has facial features oriented not unlike a Picasso portrait.  I speak no Tibetan.  She speaks no English.  The barrier is so blatant it feels physical sometimes, reminding me that India, like all of us really, seem to be both defined and divided by religion and language.  

Our language setback does not discourage her from trying to communicate in some way or another.  The first week I was here she came walking into my room with a pair of woolen mittens.  She tossed them on the chair, looked up and appeared in shock that I was actually in the room, and backed out.  That was all.  The next week my host sister removed the mysterious mittens from my room.  

The next morning she stuck a bracelet on my arm, her wrinkly hands shaking as she tried to tie it securely on my wrist.  I did not know what to say.  I didn’t even know if it was actually for me or not.  I tried to show my appreciation with an awkward side hug, and that was probably the beginning of our relationship, because later that afternoon she felt free to tell me to move to a seat farther away from her because she was expecting a family friend within the hour.  

This woman walked across the Himalayas to escape Tibet, but now she cannot walk down the congested street without waving her cane at oncoming traffic in a futile effort to get them to stop.  I want to talk to her, but no one translates.  She is a walking coffin of untold stories.  Probably a bit senile too, but there is still something about her that makes me want to sit near her and soak in her narrative.

For now, we are just balcony friends.  Me with my books and half formed thoughts.  Her with her snot and silent stories. 

Virginia

"Every Adventure Always Looks Like a Mistake Somewhere in the Middle:" Social Situation Triangles and Finding My Place Here

There is a point when traveling- sometime after I stop caring if I wear black and brown together, quit wondering why I am not with my fellow English majors on luxurious London study abroad programs, and finally embrace freezing bucket showers, that I stop waking up in the middle of the night wondering where I am and what the heck I am doing. 

I’m not there yet.

At my honors thesis orientation the instructor told us that "every adventure looks like a mistake somewhere in the middle".  I think I somehow managed to forget how hard field studies are.  I got so used to simplifying my Ghana experience when I got home, like a Band-Aid wrapped too tightly around a wound with no oxygen.  Some things were never given space to heal, or room to just be!  People would always ask, “How was Ghana?”  It was not necessarily an invitation to really talk about it (not because they didn't care, just because it is hard to relate to), and I became so accustomed to the typical “it was good” answer that I also started to over simplify the experience.  Especially this part.

Don't get me wrong.  It was good.  It was amazing!  But it was also really hard.

Getting integrated into a community and gaining access was my biggest struggle in Ghana.  Turns out, it is also my biggest struggle here.  I am beginning my third week and it is about time to feel a bit more adjusted.  These things cannot necessarily be planned, but I did some social situation triangles to help brainstorm some ideas for how to find the people I need to meet in order to write the creative project I was planning on.  Social situation triangles are just ways to think about different social situations that I could encounter as a way to generate more ideas about where I can get more material. 

Side 1- Subjects

McLeod Ganj at Long Last

Delhi was a big, angry blur.  Despite our fair share of difficulties we managed to get everyone there, limbs and all, and endured another bus ride.  First time out of three that it did not break down in the middle of the night. 

But here we are!  Mcleod Ganj! Home sweet home.

This morning we arranged host families.  By arranging host families I mean we all piled our luggage into a giant taxi, met at the State Bank of India, and I had to rely on quick prayer and intuition to match up different names with members of my group.  So far so good.  My host family is very kind.  And big.  Five kids, a dad, uncle, grandma, and even a dog.  I have my own room.  Which I think can be a good and a bad thing, but mostly I think I am happy about that.

More updates soon.  I just need to find my feet.

Virginia

A Bus to Dharmasala

If the flight to India was short, the bus ride to and from Dharamsala makes up for it. 

I have few regrets, but not taking the train is one of them.  Jodha and I arrived at the bus station at dusk, the night heightening our suspicions of the other travelers.  In a cloud of confusion we boarded, clinging to our backpacks sitting protectively in our laps and waited for our 12 hour journey to begin.  We made it about an hour out of Delhi before the bus broke down.  It was midnight.  Too scared to leave the bus like everyone else we sat there, half waiting, half sleeping, and half eaten alive from the malicious mosquitoes.  Three hours later another bus, a plain old city bus, showed up and took us the rest of the way.

It did not take long before I realized that my intense fear of needing to use the bathroom was in fact a reality.  I thought about a Ziplock bag for a few hours, but luckily someone else had the guts to ask the driver for their own sake.  We got off, stumbled around in the dark, half fancied there would be some kind of restroom nearby, and finally concluded that the nearby tree would have to do.  It did.  And boy it was a world better than the real rest stop.  Jodha tried to use it.  She was in there about five seconds before she came hurtling out, wide eyed, with an expression of pure terror all over her face.  I can't help but laugh just writing about it.

Somewhere down the line something happened with the tire.  Some men got out to help.  One was thoughtlessly left behind.  I am not a gambler, but if I could bet money on a car race I would not hesitate putting in all my savings on our bus driver.  We swerved in and out of traffic like there was no such thing as lanes, the driver laying on the horn like it was his last wish.  It sounded like beginning trumpet players warming up for the first time.  He stopped for nothing, not even the cows mindlessly lounging in the middle of the road, never having to worry about being made into hamburgers.  The whole back row was throwing up, especially by the time we got to the mountain switch backs of the Himalayas.

We got there.  Fifteen hours later.  I enjoyed watching the gradual sunrise, noting the faces of the other passengers.  Hours earlier I did not trust them, mere shadows and projections of my own fears, but now I recognized them as fellow travelers and normal people.  The annoying, foul mouthed teenage girls were now our friends, helping us figure out the right area codes for calling Delhi.  There was the boy who woke us up when the new bus came.  A guy from London that finally warmed up to Jodha, and another friend who made sure that we got our refund.  (Yes, refund, it was that bad, even for the natives). 

No longer such strangers, they became people, and if there was anything good to take from that bus ride it was that lesson. 

Virginia

Avatars I am Taking to India

I have already mentioned in my blog intent my plan to use different avatars of my personality to document my experience in a variety of ways.  This is a way that I generate a variety of material to offer a more holistic representation of my experience.  The name, I feel, is very suiting, especially since this time around I will actually be in India where the name originates.  However, I think it would be beneficial to explore my Ghana avatars a little bit more.  Since I am hoping to do more with the connect aim of my statement, I would like people to read this and know that Myra, Adela, and Virginia are all a part of me, so do not freak out if you see one of their signatures at the end of a blog post. 

My first avatar, Myra, is going to be the name I use for all of my photography.  I did a lot with this avatar during my field research in Ghana last year, and since it was so successful I decided to keep the name the same. 

My second avatar, Adela, will be the romantic anthropologist in me.  She is a variation off of Ava, another avatar I explored last year.  I decided to change her name to Adela for a number of reasons.  First, I think that she reminds me a lot of Adela from A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, a kind of thoughtful but also naïve character I think I resemble a lot in the “romantic anthropologist” state of mind.  Adela is also the name of a main character in La Dama Del Alba, a Spanish play that I just finished reading.  The character in this play was at an interesting point romantically where things were either going to go really well or pretty terrible.  I can also relate to this.

My third Avatar, Virginia, is going to be the postmodern travel writer in me.  She is a new and improved edition of Gipsy, another avatar from Ghana.  My more aesthetic writing will be under her.  Her name is Virginia because I am hoping to implement a more stream of conscious style, like Virginia Woolf, one of my favorite authors. 

Sometimes I will be all of them.  Sometimes none.  But every so often I will be just one, and exploring that mindset is always a beneficial experience for my kind of project.