Leaving India…..ahhhh……with such a heavy heart.

Since I last checked in – getting off the train and arriving here in the quite far south, life has become very routine in the nicest way imaginable. I have developed a little community here in Fort Cochin and the days just seem to whiz by. Here at the Tag und Nacht Guesthouse, people come and go and I don't know where the time has gone but it is soon that I will say goodbye to India and fly off to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) tomorrow afternoon, overnight there and then get back on a plane headed for Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. I have a couple of hours there to sort out a Visa before heading up again into the clouds to the destination of this leg of the Amazing Race, to Da Nang, Vietnam.

The reason for leaving India at this time is twofold. First, my very good friend Sharon, whom I met last year in Laos, had been working this past number of months, in a few very remote orphanages in Lesotho, Africa. She has endured very harsh conditions, physically and emotionally, and to put it bluntly, has simply worn herself out. She has developed some type of illness and just can’t seem to regain her strength. So, I told her I would meet her in Vietnam at our other amazing friend, Laura’s place and look after her until she was better. Laura, an American from Santa Fe New Mexico, who we also met in Laos last year (we three ended up on the Thai-Burma border in an orphanage school and shared some incredible times), moved to Vietnam in November last year, studied to become an English teacher in Hanoi and is at her first posting in Da Nang. Laura and I were very worried about Sharon so we bullied her into leaving Africa early and for once, think of herself first. It worked and Sharon made the amazing zillion hour journey from Lesotho to Johannesburg to Frankfurt? To Singapore to Ho Chi Minh, then a 16 hour train ride to Da Nang. If she wasn’t ill before that journey, she would be now. I have heard from her and she is getting better already, I think (I hope!).

So the time was right on that front and also the weather is becoming quite unbearable. The heat is nearing 40 degrees in the afternoon and only cooling a few degrees in the evening. The humidity is around 80 to 90 percent so it is hot and sticky and one stays wet all day. And my hair!!!! I have more bad hair days than good in a perfect climate, so you can’t even imagine how difficult this is. I had my Swiss army knife hair cutting mini scissors out the other day and was tempted to do something drastic but was too hot to carry through the plan….

The rains will start in a few weeks here and when it rains it pours. The monsoons are really extreme for a few months and it sounds like nothing moves and life basically stops till the sun comes out in the fall. So…..it is off to Vietnam to meet up with my dear buddies and get caught up with each other again. The three of us all made pretty drastic changes after our incredible experiences last year in SE Asia and it is funny that we have all ended up back here, in Asia, again. For the three of us, we learned that joy truly comes from the simplest things…I know we all say that but we had the luxury of living with people who have nothing, yet had so much. The gifts those Burmese children and monks gave us were the catalyst for changing our own lives: last year we three had the gift of time: the time to do what we wanted, when we wanted and with whom we wanted. We lived very simply and cheaply and were able to seize some incredible opportunities that came along. I think, as many of those who jump off the treadmills of their busy lives, we got hooked on the simplicity of the simple life.

 Me? Homeless and wandering: still waiting to feel some anxiety around that but…nada….nope….not yet. I am sure it will come when I have to figure out where home is because I am fully cognizant of the 6 month rule we Canadians face. If it wasn’t for the Healthcare requirements – the six months minus a day rule, I think my mindset would even be broader. Sharon has to return to Canada (Ottawa) sometime in April for that very reason. Guess you can’t have it all.

So, I think I will post a bunch of pictures from the last two weeks and let them do the talking…..It is not even possible to start to describe the interesting people and places I get to experience every day. Indians are very open – not very funny or loud or rambunctious, instead very serious and love to talk, one on one.

Cochin is a port city – with a huge world trade in rice and spices. I have taken to heading down to the trading street in the morning just to watch the dance of the trucks unloading the spices and rice, the traders bidding for the best quality and the goats running and in and out of the warehouses trying to chew through bags before being caught. The smell of a thousand bags of nutmeg or a thousand bags of cloves being unloaded is heaven and the huge warehouses backing onto the sea smell divine in the morning. I also have taken to hanging out with tuk tuk drivers – a thing I came to love last year in Cambodia and Laos. Most of them are real characters and are more than happy to share their lives and family woes with you. There is a lot of English here in this State – it has been Communist for decades and as a result has very socialist underpinnings – the level of education, healthcare and gender equality is very high and there exists a definite Kerala as "God’s Country" pride. The religion is predominately Catholic and there is a huge church on every corner and at the top of every hill. People are very devout catholic communists. Gotta love India – the contrasts are amazing. Every truck and bus and tuk tuk is named after a saint and proudly sports airbrushed replicas of all those Indian saints like Jude and Mathew and Luke. Many many Keralans have Christian names like John, Mary, Marie, Jacob and so on – and they all know my name (Deborah) is from the Bible and love that part.

Kerala is famous for its backwaters and I was out on a boat in the backwater and…..small world story, yes another one – at least one a day…..most of the others on the boat were Grade 11 students – 14 of them and 4 teachers, from a private school in Toronto. They came for March break – three weeks:   two living and working at an orphanage near here founded by their schools founder (a Quebec woman) and then a week being tourists. These teenagers are definitely not going home the same kids who left just a few weeks ago. What an incredible experience – they each brought two suitcases, one with their own stuff and one with supplies for the kids. Their orphanage specializes in the really down and out street kids – the physically and mentally disabled and it sounds like they have some pretty cool things happening there. They got a two week old baby out of the gutter their first week. Not in Rosedale anymore Dorothy!!!

After the boat trip I had some eyeglasses made – don’t know why we have to make things so complicated….I went with an Italian Swiss guy and we just walked in, sat down at the whizzo super sophisticated machine, the optometrist showed up…tests done (free) then I picked out some rimless super light weight lenses that will probably come to Calgary and Rome and Lucerne in a few years, got fitted for my new technology progressives….they showed me options for lenses allocation I am sure our doctors haven’t even heard of yet….plunked down a few bucks and waited for mine to be made in Calcutta and FedExed here in Cochin. My friend Manfred could have just waited one hour while they made his right there but we had things to do and places to go. For he and I, him used to European pricing and me Canadian, the prices were dramatically cheaper – much cheaper than the ones I priced last year in Vietnam.

Ok, back to the pictures….a lot of them are from a three day trip Manfred and I made up into the mountains to escape the heat. They call these places 'Hill Stations” and they are tourist Mecca’s for rich Indians who can afford to travel to see some natural beauty and enjoy the cool air of the mountains. We went to Munnar, an area famous for the Tea Plantations. Around 6000 feet altitude and really lovely, lush and green. Actually the whole state of Kerala is very lovely, lush and green – from sea to hills.

Manfred is an interesting character. A 66 year old Swiss guy who lives just north of Rome. He has spent his life as an investigative journalist uncovering things nasty in the Catholic Church. He is devout believer, hangs out in the Vatican with all the big guys when not travelling around the world rocking the boat and exposing evil in Catholic politics. We have spent many an hour debating all things fundamental about religion – hours of arguments about deviance and why he should convert to Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam…….one of the growing faiths instead of living perpetually frustrated with a Church he loves but the deceit he despises.

As always –I met lots of locals including one family up in a mountain town who invited me in – the two daughters saw me in their small village as I was wandering around creating a stir (not too many westerners came to this village) One of the girls called to me to come to their house. I went – Mom and I started chatting and she started to cry. She told me her husband, in the next room, had cancer and was very very ill. She asked if I wanted to see him…..I wasn’t sure if he was dead or what??? So, of course I said – yes …..how could I not? – she was so nice and so sad and the daughters – aged 12 and 16 were so excited I was in their house……so I follow mom through the curtain – these are very simple places – rooms are divided by curtains, and sure enough – there is dad, laying prone on the bed……I check and he looks like he is still alive – then mom pokes him and he wakes up and is soooo embarrassed to be seen like this – weak and ill. I get the story from him – he has lung cancer and had just had a chemo treatment the day before in the neighboring city – each chemo treatment cost 70,000 rupees…..to put this amount into perspective, lots of people make 150 rupees a day!!!! The cost was destroying the family and yet he was fighting for his life……ah these poignant, raw moments I get to see and feel are the reason I am so fueled by travel……Dad got up and made it through the curtain out onto the plastic lawn chairs in the front room and I told them my story of cancer and chemo and triumph……it was very special and I took their pictures and we all shared in our own humanity…..so different yet not different at all. I stopped cursing the six month rule of our free healthcare for at least a couple of days after that. I so wanted to find a way to help this family – the girls are in private school – I think life was great before Dad was felled down…… remember my rants when I first was ill???……well – all of you reading this please remember, it can be you…it was me….. your life can change in an instant when you are diagnosed with a really bad disease – your priorities change and you figure out it is all about time……getting more of it, using it differently and appreciating the days you can actually do something other than stare at the ceiling and hope tomorrow will be better. Get off the couch and live it up – however that looks for you. Really, you don’t realize how short life is until you are weakened to the point of being a bystander…..I saw it in this Dad’s face and it was tragic.

Oy veh……no time to tell you about the rat in my room up in the mountains the other night…..eating my cake…..with the fantastic icing…… in the middle of the night…..woke up to the sound of the cake wrapper crinkling beside me on the table……. YIKES!!!! The next night – all my treats were suspended from my laundry line in the bathroom, like a bear bag when camping……take that you dirty rat….

I truly love India and the people. So elegant and beautiful are the women and the men……. here in Kerala the traditional and very very popular dress for men is a wrap skirt. They wrap it and unwrap it and fold it and make it in to a miniskirt, then a long skirt and adjust it a thousand times a day…… I so want to start handing out safety pins and freeing up a lot of wasted energy but……the super great thing about this skirt obsession is, for the first time in a long time, I haven’t had to see obsessive penis pulling and adjusting and ball scratching and adjusting, and all over genital handball.……for this reason I think the rest of the continent should adopt these skirt things, maybe the little bit of airflow with each readjustment of the fabric keeps the boys cool and happy? More musing on India once I have time to reflect…...