A Visit to India
Growing up as a little Mennonite girl, I never dreamed that I would someday visit far off lands. In our sheltered home, there was no television, radio, or newspaper; it really was a small world after all. I remember poring over the National Geographic magazines that came in the mail, trying to experience life on another continent vicariously through the photos. Perhaps the current issue would feature Mongolian children riding bareback on stout ponies over the wheat covered prairies, or Eskimo babies bundled to within an inch of their lives in thick animal furs, or a Peruvian family donned in colorful woven hats, picnicking on roasted guinea pig, or Indian women dressed in rich hued saris, with a bindi on each forehead like a third red eye. I never found out much about folks in the amazon though, as pictures with exposed body parts were torn out of the magazine by my mom. I tried to imagine what life would be like in each country. I studied the faces to see if they were happy. "How could you be happy in such a strange, foreign place?" my naive eight year old mind wondered.
When I was twenty, I married a man with a severe case of wanderlust, and my world has been expanding ever since. During the first years of our marriage, Larry and I were both students at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio: he was in medical school and I was working toward a bachelor degree in nursing. Larry discovered there was an open window of time during fourth year rotations, where you could study abroad; his mental wheels started turning. We could have an adventure anywhere in the world! All we had to do was decide where to go and figure out how to pay for it.
Two of Larry's heroes were from India. Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun and missionary to India's poorest in Calcutta, pricked his heart with her selfless care for the downtrodden, all done in the name of Jesus. And Larry admired Mohandas Gandhi's humble, non-violent leadership in the Indian independence movement. We discovered that The Mennonite Medical Association, an organization of Mennonite healthcare providers, would sponsor Larry to spend several months in a third world country, in an area where they had an affiliation. There was such a place in central India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in Dhamtari, a rural town of 100,000 people. Many decades prior, Mennonite missionaries had established a church and a hospital in the town. The missionaries had since left, leaving the hospital in the capable hands of local Christian doctors, with Dr. Martin in charge.
And so we decided that we were going to mysterious India; all that was left to do was sort out the details. I was set to graduate in December, having taken classes during the summer for several years. Instead, I took a six month leave from college, and arranged to finish up the last few nursing courses in the spring. To save money, we moved out of our apartment, storing all of our stuff in the basement of some generous friends. Late that fall, we drove to Florida, where Larry did a medical school rotation at a hospital in Tampa. Our plan was to drive to South Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with my mom and several siblings, and then fly from Atlanta to India. On our way north, we were in a car accident that totaled our little Toyota Tercel. We landed on the roof of the car, hanging from our seat belts, shaken to the core, but physically unharmed. As we prepared to leave the country for three months to lands unknown, we felt the protective hand of God over our lives.
On December 3, 1986, we boarded a plane, blissfully unaware that it would take us seven days to get to our destination! We flew through NYC, Alaska, Seoul, and Bangkok; three days into the adventure, we landed in Calcutta (today the city is called Kolkata). It was an assault on our westernized senses. The hot, humid heat amplified the pungent odor of body sweat from the millions crammed into that city, many in unimaginable poverty, and mixed with the sharp scent of curry spices that permeated everything. To our ears, the music had an odd discord sound, like fingernails on a chalk board. Cows roamed freely through the dirty streets. Little children scampered behind them, fighting over the bovine droppings, which were scooped up barehanded and collected in baskets on their heads, with some oozing out and matting their hair. Everything looked so dirty and dingy. It was clear that we were no longer in Hartville, Ohio. In the subsequent three decades, we have traveled enough to be able to appreciate the beauty and unique charm of each place we visit, but at that point in our lives, we were fish out of water.
Since we were overnighting in Calcutta, we decided to gather courage and go out and see the city. Knowing that Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity organization was headquartered here, we set out to find it. The house turned out to be only a short rickshaw ride from our hotel.
A most uncomfortable ride: man-pulled rickshaw. They were so eager and happy for the work.
At the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters were busy mopping the concrete floor. When they understood that we had come just to see Mother Teresa's home, they said matter-of-factly, "Oh come, she's here. You can talk to her!" We got in line behind ordinary people off the street, and waited while she was being interviewed for a magazine article, and after half an hour, these two naive Mennonite kids from rural Ohio were talking to Mother Teresa.
She was less than 5 foot tall, very stooped and weathered, but a giant of a woman, serving mercy to the untouchables, the unwanted, of that poverty riddled city. We spent a few minutes thanking her for being the hands and feet of Jesus to so many, and we told her what we were doing in India for three months. It was a surreal experience. At the end of our trip, as we were flying home, we were able to visit several of her mercy ministries in Calcutta. We visited a home where volunteers cared for the destitute and dying, so they wouldn't die alone and unloved. We also toured an orphanage, with rows and rows of cribs, three toddlers in each. You had to pry the little hands off as you walked by; they just wanted to hold on to you. It was heart wrenching!
The next day, we flew to Bhubanaswer, where we were to get a connecting flight to our final destination. Our flight arrived late, accentuated by a hair raising landing. As we touched down, the plane shuttered violently the whole length of the short runway, and came to a screeching halt in the field beyond the tarmac. We collected ourselves and deplaned, only to discover that we had missed our connecting flight to Raipur. The next flight would be the following day. We assumed that just like back home, the airline would provide meal vouchers and a hotel; wagging their heads, they laughed at that notion. After an exhausting time trying to "educate" the airline employees that this is how things are done in the civilized world, we took a taxi to a hotel.
The next morning, driving back to the airport, our taxi sputtered and died. The driver said it was out of gas, but not to worry. In the middle of the street, he removed our luggage from the trunk of the car, took out a little can of gas and a rubber hose, and proceeded to add enough fuel to the tank to get us to the airport.
We arrived in Raipur, 50 miles from our final destination of Dhamtari. Despite the letter we had sent to Dr. Martin the previous month, detailing our exact date and time of arrival, no one was at the airport to meet us. We took a taxi into the town and tried to place a phone call, but either the phones were broken or the call couldn't get through. With sinking hearts, we realized that we would have to spend the night in Raipur, and take a bus the next day. Being poor students, we were acutely aware of every rupee spent; we found a Christian Youth Hostel for $4/night. That night was a low point for Larry and I. It was a dark feeling to be half way around the world, to deplane at the final airport and walk out into a sea of strangers, many who were clamoring to grab our luggage and make a few rupees as porters, but no one anticipating our arrival or welcoming us. We had a room to ourselves at the hostel, but it was filthy and mosquito infested. There were only metal bars and no glass panes at the window. Huddled on our cots, we shared the last of our western food: a mini snickers bar, a handful of planters dry roasted peanuts, and two tiny oranges. Between the jet lag, the noises from the city, and slapping at the mosquitos, it was a fitful night.
The next morning we didn't even brush our teeth or wash up because the bathroom was so dirty. We smashed into a crowded bus with all our luggage and rode two hours over bumpy roads to Dhamtari. It had been seven long days since we had left the comfort and familiarity of our home. Two months later, when Larry and I left this small town in central India, to sightsee in other parts of the country, we realized with humble pride (that's the only kind that Mennonites are permitted to experience!), that we had actually acclimated and were able to navigate decently on our own. We learned not to be so impatient and expect things to be done in a timely manner; after all, we were guests in their country, and not the other way around. We learned to ask for a glass of boiling water at the beginning of a meal; when you were done eating, the water would be cool enough to drink and the cost of bottled water was averted. We learned that the young, caucasian female should always be the one to negotiate the price with the taxi driver. We learned to love the kind, generous hearts we saw in the poor, rural villagers.
Our hosts in Dhamtari, Dr. and Mrs. Martin, entertained many guests, and apologized for misplacing our letter and simply forgetting when we were to arrive. During our stay, they were very gracious, frequently trying to incorporate a touch of western culture for our comfort. We ate all our meals with them. We slept in some old nursing school rooms a short walk from their home. The hospital was nearby as well.
We slept on cots under mosquito netting. We didn't mind our primitive quarters until someone told the story of seeing a deadly krait snake in our room, two years earlier. Even though it hadn't been caught, we were assured that all the cracks on the floor had been sealed with concrete. Lets just say that we used our flashlight judiciously after dark. They also said there were King Cobras living in the area fifty years prior, but development had pushed them further into the bush.
This was our bathroom/laundry room. There was no shower; the heating element was plugged into an outlet and then plunged into a bucket of water (I always winced, thinking that one of these times, I would be electrocuted), and in six minutes, voilà, you had tepid water to bathe in or for washing your clothes. The doors opened up to an overgrown yard, with a clothes line stretched between banana trees. To my eyes, it looked like the perfect snake sanctuary. We were so grateful for the familiar western commode, instead of a typical, Indian, squatting toilet. Some habits are difficult to unlearn. Once, when we were on a long train ride, I went to use the facilities. I lifted up the lid, looked down the hole, and saw the train tracks racing beneath me. Lets just say certain muscles were paralyzed; I returned to my seat with no relief in sight. By the end of the sixteen hour train ride, my eyes were bulging.
Greta was the cook in the Martin's home. She was a lovely, quiet, and extremely capable girl. We reveled in her chapatis: tortilla-like pieces of dough that she would roll quite thin and then bake over the gas burner. They would fill with air and puff in the middle. We could fill our stomachs with these when we just could not face another curry dish. Being India, we didn't eat much beef. Our protein was goat or chicken, usually stewed in a spicy sauce. We had vegetable curries and rice and dal(a yellow lentil gravy) at every meal. We discovered that Curry is a generic term referring to a complex combination of herbs and spices, usually in a sauce. The curries vary from one part of the country to another. Some really pack the heat. I grew quite fond of those tastebud tingling spices. Larry missed familiar American meat and potatoes; his already thin frame got even thinner on this trip.
A local girl grinding spices together for a curry.
We learned to eat like the locals, without utensils. This southpaw discovered that in the frequent absence of toilet paper, Indian left hands are reserved for functions other than eating. Oh well. We couldn't adapt to everything. And we did take a suitcase full of toilet paper with us!
Our stay in India spanned Christmas; the Martins and their extended family treated us as if we were their own kids. Such warm hospitality!
Of course we made cut out Christmas cookies!
Yes, this young domestic goddess was certainly in her element.
We picnicked with their family.
This gentleman was a masterful chef. Here we are grilling his yogurt and spice marinated chicken. He was an uncle whom we all called Didi. He and his wife came from their home in New Dehli to visit the Martins in the country. He just happened to be an employee of Indian Airlines. He told us about a special ticket we could purchase: for 21 days, ticket holders had unlimited flights to anywhere within the country. He and Larry worked up an itinerary for us to see much of central and southern India, when we were finished at Dhamtari. His knowledge and direction was an amazing gift to us!
Downtown Dhamtari.
We spent two months at Dhamtari Christian Hospital, observing how medicine can be the same, and yet very different the world over. We spent time in labor and delivery, where nurse midwives handled everything expect the complications.
We observed surgeries together.
One operating room had side-by-side areas for efficient, simultaneous surgeries. The power went off routinely; sometimes an intubated patient had to be manually ventilated until the generator kicked in.
Debridement of a wound.
Larry participated in a number of outpatient clinics. Here he is examining an infant.
Inpatients brought family members along to care for them during their hospital stay. They slept under the beds at night.
Behind the hospital was a mass cooking area, where family members prepared food for their patient. You can only imagine the smell of this place!
Someone forgot to tell the cows that it was laundry day at the hospital.
This future doctor did a lot of light reading while we were in India. He saw patients with diseases not commonly seen in the states: leprosy, tetanus, and tuberculosis.
Occasionally, we drove with a medical team to smaller, outlying villages, to provide service.
We often stopped at a roadside stand for chai, strong black tea mixed with boiled milk.
Some villages were inaccessible by car, so we improvised.
This poor, unlucky baby had a nursing student to give him his immunization with a very dull needle.
In one village, Larry politely asked if he could take a picture of some men sitting together. This matriarch took charge, called even more men to come, and then placed them all in order. Fifteen minutes later, Larry got his picture. That's me, behind the building, laughing.
Lunch at the drive through.
Part of our stay in Dhamtari overlapped the visit of another Mennonite medical couple, Titus and Deb Dutcher. Titus was a fourth year medical student at Wright State in Dayton, Ohio, in the same class as Larry. We enjoyed many wonderful times together. We gladly shared our status of "only white folks in town", more than doubling the number of foreigners to stare at. One year old Andrew survived, despite eating Indian bird poop off the ground, much to the horror of his mother. Here we are all gussied up in our salwar kameez, a dress-like tunic worn over loose trousers, which are cuffed at the ankle. I practiced putting a sari on, but never quite got the hang of making all the pleats.
We were invited as honored guests to a number of weddings. The local customs were a source of endless fascination to our western eyes. All the ones we attended were arranged marriages. They were lavish affairs, where families spent years of life earnings to host an unforgettable party. Here is a bride, resplendent in a gold threaded sari, being presented to her husband. Perhaps they are seeing each other for the very first time.
At this wedding reception, what did we hear blaring out of the speakers, but Madonna's hit song, Like A Virgin?!
Local barbershop. Some things are the same, no matter where you are in the world.
The Martins took us on an adventure to Kanha National Park, a Bengal tiger reserve. We drove all through the night, arriving at dawn when the park opened.
Scouts rode elephants through the forests, trying to locate the resting tigers. We were told the tigers feed at night and are sedate and sluggish during daylight. When they found one, they would take groups of people, perched on an unstable platform on the back of an elephant, to view the magnificent, orange cat. They told us that we were safe because a tiger will never attack an elephant. Being young and naive certainly helps in such settings. We had a thin cable to hold on to; the guide directed the elephant by thumping on his ears with his feet.
This snarling creature was ten feet from our dangling legs. I am reminded of my favorite limerick:
There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
Fortunately, our elephant returned us unharmed.
After several months, we grew comfortable navigating life in rural India; we were ready to venture out on our own and see more of this mysterious country. To be continued ..............