Thursday the 22 (Thanksgiving)

“Between the worlds of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field; I will meet you there. “ Rumi, Sufi Poet

It is 12:45 a.m. on a Tuesday night and I feel great, on my bike, the cool night air stealing the sweat from my skin, leaving goosebumps like the Joker left a playing card. In through my nose, out through my mouth, I breathe deeply, punctuate my exhalations by adding some voice to them. These AHHHS fall into rhythm with the movement of my pedals. Things seem like they are in slow motion, the world for me, a higher definition than high definition, crisp. Shinning almost at full, the moon looks close, like it’s snuck in for a peek, closer and bigger than usual, perfectly round, pulled in tight by the full tide of my happiness, the peace I have in that moment.

Thousands of miles from home, I think of Thanksgiving. On Thursday evening my family will gather, eat more than they should, talk about school, work, the delicious mashed potatoes, watch football, wash the dishes, joke. Most people that pass the piano will hit a few notes. Chairs will be brought up from downstairs. My grandfather at his happiest – his reasons for living all around him. Someone will set the table. My father will cook a whole extra dinner and bring it to the soup kitchen. Like a slideshow, I see the images in my head. My mom teary eyed as B.C. talks about another year of good health but the absence of people, his wife, his son and family in Israel. My uncle and father sandwich my younger cousins with their corny but fun routines, my sister braids hair. A nap on the white couch after dinner. My brother will say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. Cinematographers change the lighting for scenes like this, they might call it ‘candlelight warmth,’ an attempt to capture emotions darting about in the air.

A left outside of the gate, my peace is assaulted. There are no cameras or microphones – the circumstances lob grenades and difficult questions at my core. In the shadows of the 12-foot high retaining wall marking the perimeter of India’s premier business school, families sleep, children curl into the valley between their parents to avoid a draft, small fires smolder, dirt continues its slow chemical reaction in the shirts, pants, saris, blankets, actually bonding to their fibers. Sidewalk beds. Jerry can sinks. No toilets. No light switches, street lamps and passing cars. These men and women, boys and girls, have a home, they have family, they have a community, people they love and who love them in return, feelings, somewhere they belong to. They matter. They have a network to rely on, but immediate concerns of eating, drinking, staying healthy and surviving dominate and persist, constant in their minds. Clothes hang against the walls, pots, pans, and little more, the easiest observation is that they are homeless, manual laborers, beggars, the people that do what no one else will, this is true but too easy, the severity of the circumstance blurring the strong social networks in place, the support, familial bonds that exist even in this big, unforgiving city. It is hard to see their parents, their village homes, farms, games they played as children, rivers they swam in, the places they’ve left for whatever reasons -- caste, finances, natural disasters, illiteracy, dreams of a better life, marriage. They have homes, years of tradition, a place of belonging.

My brother is really bad at this part. Before we eat we go around the table and ask everyone to take a moment and say what they are thankful for. Without me there he should be better, he can’t say something like: “I am thankful for Aaron’s gas,” or “Really big adenoids.” He can’t help himself. Susan just had heart surgery. Someone will say ‘good health.’ Family. Secure finances. Safety. Staring at the food on the table staring back, ‘Food.’ Diana will make everyone cry, the sound of her child’s voice piercingly sincere; she says it just right. A home. A job. A mixture of personal issues and larger World Peace type topics will be said and everyone means the words they say.

The moon’s disappeared. I know these people have family next time them and in their villages, but they are still sleeping on the ground, in the cold, outside of the walls. This is the first time I have missed Thanksgiving, thousands and thousands of miles away from home and I miss my family, that warm, familiar scene, but never on this day have I been more thankful. Yes this is an unoriginal comment from the young American living in the face of poverty. But it is true. The absurd amount of wealth, social capital, support I have in my life is, at times, unfathomable; the glasses I wear cost more than that man makes in a year, the credit card in my pocket can mobilize more money than that woman will make in the rest of her life, this bike costs what that boy will earn begging in a month, the ice cream I ate costs more than the whole family will earn today.

I think about the rationalizing barriers I build in my mind. Maybe this is an observation to offer, wondering about how I build that same wall between business school and destitution, plush green grass, and a lack of drinking water, somehow telling myself that the little I do is good enough. I sit in rickshaws for the longest 70-second intervals one can bear. As the clock counts down from 70, red to green, a woman taps my arm again and again, asking me for 10 rupees. Again and again all she says is 10, 10, 10. Her infant child, with snot exploding from its nose, perched on her hip. Ten, ten, ten. Ten rupees is $.25. I have that much and more in my pocket. She doesn’t ask me for a house. She doesn’t ask me why I am healthy, why I have a home, why I can get a job, why I don’t have to beg. She asks me for 10 rupees. Somehow, for that entire 70 seconds I find ways to tell her no, to look her in the eye as I feel my spine melting and my head pathetically sinking into my stomach, my torso like a jelly fish, no integrity, flapping like a plastic bag filled with water. I stand behind some wall I’ve built in my mind.

You should give it to a street children’s organization instead. It is likely that her husband will take the money and use it on alcohol. Sometimes there are beggar mafias that operate, and some goon will demand a cut of her money, basically renting her a certain corner to beg on. It is better if she goes to school and learns to get a real job. It is just a band aid, not a solution.

In that moment right there, there really is no good reason not to give money to that woman.

If she were sat at our table, I wonder what she would say. Besides, “Where is the rotti?” I wonder what things make her smile, what she appreciates, what she is thankful for this day.

The black and white of the contrast is too stark for my mind to process, to really understand. Why me with this and you with that? I am used to more shades of grey, space to interject ‘buts,’ and modifying clauses, usually not venturing too far away from a wall to duck behind.

The last 5 seconds on the clock switch pace, engines race all around me but the slow motion of my mind returns. I get lost in my thoughts, trying to think of the next steps from this place of appreciation to the action of showing it, to try and shatter the walls that I’ve managed to build on foundations of excuse, avoidance, and the preference for comfort. Actions instead of words. When I say I am thankful, instead of saying it with a tone of resignation - I am thankful I have this, that I am not them - to instead try to take action to show someone who might be farther from their support network and family, home, closer to the baselines of reality and survival, preoccupied with more pressing concerns, without a support network at all, that my appreciation is not a comparative one, but a true one, thankful for what I have because I am lucky to, not because you don’t. Before the light turns green I push myself to do more, to act, refuse to be passive, attempt to slowly rebuild my spine and moral standings on actions and not words.

These Eyes

After a half and hour, I found the office. Before getting in the rickshaw I asked the driver if he knew where he was going and he didn’t answer, set his mirror to zero and motioned his head for me to get in. He didn’t know. This is common and sometimes so frustrating and sometimes really fun – you know a landmark, get there and ask around, get pointed in every direction and somehow end up right where you needed to be. Normal. Here we are.

Everything about this doctor’s visit was different, mostly in ways subtle, a touch unnerving but I am in India, not bad just unfamiliar. But, so too were there differences that stirred me deep in my stomach – not bad, just too adult for me to handle.

I walk up the stairs, take off my shoes, approach the counter, tell the secretary that I have an appointment with Dr. Dipan Desai for a Lasik surgery consultation. Hindi is her first language. Gujarati is her second language; English her third. I pay in cash, Rs. 200. I sit. I wait and look at the monkeys outside the window. Sunlight beams in. After 3 minutes my name is called.

The walls are not white. The floor is not tile. None of the staff are wearing scrubs, it doesn’t smell like bleach, the couches are not made of vomit resistant material. We walk past examination rooms and offices, staff hustle about, don’t knock, prepare for their afternoon patients, dropping something off, asking a question, not interrupting, just working. Normal. The cadence of office operations play on, a different rhythm in a different tone from what I know of eye examinations and doctor’s offices, but this is the best eye clinic in the state, treating people how they do, in a way that is new to me. My feet are clammy. I am adjusting.

There are no other patients in the office. I am alone. As I walk down the hall behind a woman wearing a salwar kamiz and bindi, I am alone. I am 22 and my mother is not with me. With my head high trying to fool people, I hold the strap of my bag a little tighter. People make fun of me because I went to my pediatrician until I was 21. Familiar, I liked his bow tie and he was the doctor who knew my body best. When I had surgery during my freshman year in college, I had it in the Children’s Hospital. Since I was three I’ve been seeing the same two doctors for my eyes.

With my teeth clattering in the waiting room of a clnic in Kibera, I was not this nervous. You have malaria, take these tablets and if you are not better in three days, come back. Done and done. Back to work in 2 days, no big deal. Something about having my eyes worked on by a new doctor is hard to face on my own.

It’s been a long journey. Since birth this has been an issue for me, a constant, nothing too traumatic but a something to deal with. Not seeing the corn on my plate, my lazy eye, wearing a patch, the chiropractor, more broken frames than stars in the sky, bifocals, surgery in 8th grade, contacts, really thick lenses, that stupid fly, slow improvement, astigmatism, strabismus, the flirtatious introduction of the idea of Lasik, more contacts, poor binocularity, shitty depth perception, more glasses, getting my eyes dialated, and the beat goes on. Standing in the smalls pools of my sweat from my feet, I am getting ready to talk to a doctor about ending this, a surgery that will fix my eyes. Just like that. 22 years later. Out patient, some drops, 3 days later back at ‘em 20/20. My parents aren’t with me, here I am as an adult facing decisions that feel really important, all on my own. The color of the walls don’t matter – it is this that is unsettling.

Arrogant, this doctor is a surgeon. Daily he plays god, knows it, and wears his hubris in his smile, posture. He calls me Boss. This is his normal sales pitch, a confidence that is meant to be overwhelming and irresistibly reassuring. He doesn’t get how long I’ve been waiting for this appointment, that it is important to me, but that I could just as well wait another 2 years. He has the best machine and is the best at doing what he does, and this makes it harder to dismiss him with my normal response to people who are this smug. He talks a lot, some of it bullshit, a lot of it not, his tone hasn’t changed – this is who he is, a surgeon who is proud of himself, broadcasting.

Today I will go back to his office, have my eye mapped, cornea analyzed, eyes dilated and examined, and he will study these results, after which he will tell me if he thinks he can perform this operation.

It is possible that my vision is still too bad, the technology, despite its advances in the past years, is not ready for my eyes. So too is it possible that I could be in a position to make a decision, here, on my own, alone, an important one, a touch overwhelmed. No support system here, no one to sit in the waiting room with. 22.

A painful irony bubbles up, his surgical hubris met by my American ego. Surely, without question, we in America have the best medical technology, the smartest doctors, latest techniques. Right? No. I know this. I know that technology in other parts of the world is way ahead of what we have in the U.S. We send our computers to be fixed in India. India produces some of the smartest scientists and engineers in the world. One third of practicing doctors in the U.S. are of Indian descent. I know this. And yet, I am a little uneasy. There is no good reason to support this. This man is trained in Germany, indeed has the best machine in the world right now for this procedure – the same machine that FDA bureaucracy and medical supply company infighting prevents from reaching American markets – a machine developed in Germany, tested in Sweden and Japan. Tested. Proven. Accurate. Succesful. Still uneasy.

I spent last summer combing the slums of Kenya looking for brilliant and innovative new designs among the ‘base of the pyramid’ – the poorest of the poor. I read development literature praising the resourcefulness of non traditional ways of thinking, alternative knowledge bases. Oral traditions. Collective memories. Homemade solar panels. Self constructed prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs. All sorts of inventions and ways of capturing knowledge that are non-Western. Call them what you will – they are not practiced by surgeons. Parts of me admire this thought processes, innovation. But, there is a stark contradiction in my appreciation and acceptance of lessons from non traditional places and my refusal or discomfort with lessons, advancement, medical treatment in traditional places that I trust with other ways of healing me. Maybe I do some yoga, drink certain types of cleansing teas, pour water through my nose, consider my energy and that of other people. But, if I get sick I am going to go to a doctor, not take ayurvedic treatment. If I have a headache, I take advil.

So why is this doctor any different from the advil I take. Why am I suspicious of his technicians? There are some really stupid technicians in the US, no? Are the patients that he has operated successfully on over here any different than Americans? How can I rationalize my discomfort when I will spew water through my nose or do yoga as a way to tend to my health for some things, but trust western medicine far more for sickness and disease? Here this man lies at the pinnacle of his profession within that tradition of medical treatment I trust most, the only difference is that he practices in India and not NYC.

It is stupid, but I am still uneasy.

Maybe it is because I am doing this on my own, maybe it is because I am being stupid, I don’t know. This afternoon will let me know if I really need to push this forward, or if it was just another exercising in exploring my independence.

Doing This Work

It’s been a while since I posted last. This, I think, is a good thing, a sign that I am growing more comfortable, a comfort that is sincere and grows from my core, not from my desire to communicate messages of surety during a time of insane personal transition. I know I have this tendency, to bluff my way through talking about deeper things despite my very real experiences with them, writing instead. So, not writing is a sign that deep down, I’ve arrived to a place of less emotional volatility. Maybe.

This is not to say that things are any smoother, just that I am coping better. Work remains a shit show but the bowel movements are a tad more predictable (this wordplay seems tasteless in the context of work with sewage workers). People won’t meet me for breakfast meetings before work, the days won’t be full of productive meetings, there are no agendas or minutes, tea interrupts, no consistent email access. Orientations can’t prepare you to be a new person. Call it culture, call it the American college graduate working with an NGO in India, call it what you will, blame it on the visceral forces that be, my experiences remain. Non-native english speakers don’t write well in english. Workshops can’t fix this. The staff don’t really understand how to relate to other NGOs, funders, keep proper documentation, think strategically – this is the reality, and I am learning what is set and what is open for change. These problems were here before me and will be here. And then there are other things that I can do, that will take a lot of work and prodding, but I know will be helpful. Above all, I am learning a lot about NGO politics - that in the same way that no good deed goes unpunished, no initiative goes uncontested. In India, there are expressions to the same effect – that you only get into trouble once you start following the law.

For my first six weeks in Ahmedabad I worked patiently with people, sat in three-day workshops where I really didn’t understand a single word, took tea and more tea, went to the field, helped with grants as they came up, talked with the staff, conducted impact assessments, participatory observation at my best, trying to make sense, mold my edges to fit into the puzzle. When I made a move to try and shake some things up, to take initiative, to split my time between the hair splitting, but important work here, and a different, equally important, related project to be overlooked by a partner NGO, New York, in the nicest, most sensitive, political, guarded NGO speak, came down as clearly as things come in this arena. Aaron: There were many options to explore, feelings to be sensitive too, caution against haste, dynamics in play, precedent to be wary of, mutual learning experiences to be cognizant of, cultural differences, norms and expectations, pride in play, power dynamics that need to be addressed and considered in going forward.

Yes, there are all of these things and they are important. But, this is exactly what I had been doing since arriving. Admitted: I ranted on emails and phone calls, left the office early one day so that I could ride around on my bike and scream my frustration, and approached my wit’s end many, many times. But, at work I was patient, responsive, did what was asked, sensitive and bla bla bla, assessing the situation as best as I could and coming up with a plan that I sincerely feel would be the best for me and the organizations involved.

New York says that conference calls are going to get to the bottom of it -- meaning well and intending to create the best of the situation, but effectively stating that my efforts are not relevant and that they, from NYC over the phone in an hour, will get to the bottom of the exact complexities their terms warned me of. Chosen because I would be a flexible volunteer who would work well in an uncertain situation, I was quite confused; Wasn’t I doing exactly that? I must have followed the law or done a good deed.

This is tremendously frustrating. It doesn’t, however, make me furrow my brow – my telltale of stress. Initially, it did, and as this was going down, I was going bizerk, writing more emails and making more phone calls than an agent on draft night, trying to guide the situation in the direction I envisioned, trading this for that, bluffing a little here, liberally interpreting phrases there. Now, I just do my work, work that I understand to be needed and important, work with the community, with my organization, putting my time and energy into the progress on the ground and not the titles of that progress or headings of the project it falls under, the MOU that guides it. I am learning; sometimes egos are managed best by sacrificing yours, telling people what they need to hear, and going ahead. I will go ahead.

On Sunday night, crawling through traffic on the overnight bus from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, I was thinking of the weekend. It was a nice weekend. Nice to see some of the other people on the trip, to joke, share common memories, hear gossip, eat nice food, take a hot shower, go swimming. Of course we talked about our work. Some of the details are different, but the premises largely the same – lack of clarity, not much work, no communication, and a large amount of uncertainty. Wide awake in the plush leather chair of the air conditioned Volvo bus (the roads are so bad that every 10 minutes it felt like the bus was hit by a mortar round) thinking of conversations from the weekend and news of other fellows throughout the country, their posture bothered me, the tone of some of the things said, an acceptance, a complacence. Placing a distance between their organization, its work, and the people it works for, they’ve retreated in large part to a disconnected place that relieves them of responsibility, any implication to the reality on the ground, a bystander. Whether they actually have a stake in the ground is another question, but the point of this year is to at least explore, engage, see, feel, react, work hard, make things happen. Or, maybe its not and that’s why I feel very different from most of the people on this trip.

Regardless, all of us are struggling with what to do, adjusting to a new country, living, and working situation and this is not easy, but with seven months to go it feels that people on this program are accepting the situations they are in, content to do what comes up, forego initiative because of daunting circumstances, jamming excuses or matters of convenience between achievable work and possible accomplishments, and ideas of what is ‘realistic’ or ‘sensitive’ or ‘their role.’

Banksy, a British graffiti artist, has a quote in his book to the effect: people don’t take initiative because no one ever told them they could. This bothers me and I don’t want to be one of these people. It is this thought that was in my mind Sunday night on the way back from Mumbai. It is time to get shit going.

--

I am happy; I smile often, and feel peaceful with where I am, what I am doing, what I am trying to do. At my nucleus, there is balance. So too is there a lot of activity, energy, ideas shooting around, a healthy amount of discomfort and confusion, schemes for projects and initiatives, a couple more protons than neutrons, doing my best never to be neutral and always be positive. Sure there is volatility, electrons bounce around and sometimes this strikes me deep down, but for the most part I am dealing with what is before me, doing my best, and when that is not good enough, working harder or from a different angle, but aware too that there are things I can’t change no matter how badly I want to.

Pakistan is insane, I feel lonely in the ok and usual way that I usually do, desiring companionship but afraid to make the sacrifices that it requires (and unable to meet any single women here), loved the package, appreciate the emails, hope the field hockey women win the championship, am glad the Yankees signed Jorge, miss my friends, fart, look forward to moving into my apartment and my new, green room, am going to see my first Bollywood movie tonight, try to grow a beard while not becoming the guy with nasty facial hair, think often about jobs next year, dream of the trip I will take before returning to NYC, read a lot, eat too much mango ice cream, consider Lasik surgery, love the food, ring the bell on my bike, and do my best to smile all the while.

I am a very lucky young man.

Training

Surprisingly, the day was scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m. Our office normally opens at 10 a.m. and even then we normally just mull about, read the paper and drink tea until about 11 a.m. Nothing in Ahmedabad is open at this time. I don’t expect the staff to be open. On my way to work the coffee shops hibernate through the dark winter hours of night and show no signs of stirring for the approaching Spring day of business. Days are jolted to a start, and jolted again and again, not with a caffeine narcotic in a coffee form, but a different, more saccharine British version – a cup of tea, and it is these tea stalls that start the day. Throughout the world, this combination of water, milk, black tea, and sugar sustains millions of people as breakfast lunch, a welcoming offering, a medicine, and a snack. The day revolves around tea. It is made in the office, on the street, in homes, in stalls, on the sidewalk, served with the natural ease of a pendulum’s path.

Around 9:20, the staff begin to trickle in. Some are bleary eyed, visibly tired from the long journey on loud uncomfortable busses, likely sat next to fat coughing men. I so much appreciate the effort they’ve made. By 9:32, I am being chided to begin, to start my training to a half empty room because, the assistant director tells me, the staff were told to arrive on time and we should start without them. For a second, because of the dust in the air, I couldn’t see just right. Punctuality? Is that you? This is like the first sighting of land, a beacon of hope in a sea of confusion that lies between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer as the goalposts of punctuality. Whether you touch down at 9:30 a.m. in Panama or 10 a.m. in Costa Rica, it doesn’t really matter – you’ve made it, you’re here. Where’s the tea? And, the training is not for the empty white plastic chairs staring at me, it is for the people who will sit in them.

A boxer before a match, I mull about, jump a little rope through the slides of my presentation, break a sweat not on purpose, and try to think of my best, really bad Hindi. More sweat now. Am I trying to fit too much in too little time? Will they understand? How am I going to communicate?

Who cares – it is time to start and like all anti-climactic New Years countdowns, I realize that 9:47 is not that different from 9:48.

Thank you all for coming. This training is for you, so please please please, if you have any questions, just ask. I am really happy to be here and want this to be a conversation more than a lecture, something helpful that you can walk away with, an introduction of a skill that will translate back to the field…

Blank stares. Great start. I really wowed ‘em.

My workshop is on work plans. All week I’ve been planning a program on how to plan programs, hoping to introduce a more logical, long-term, specific sort of thinking. I know I am between Capricorn and Cancer, but the Equator is gone, there is no direct line of communication. With the hopes of getting as much across as possible, I continue.

Anjali and I stand at the front and while I flounder in the ocean of blank stares, she calmly extends a life jacket from the rescue boat. It isn’t easy working in translation, but she is so familiar with the staff and understands what I am trying to communicate that she really if a lifesaver. Slowly, we start to move., a few notes jotted down here, a request to hold that slide just a touch longer, a question.

We talk through some more things and then I just skip a couple of slides to get to the exercise. In developing this training I was trying to think of an example that was relatable, that would get the women involved, and require detail but not be too excruciating. Cooking – a perfect example of my ineptitude that would allow the staff to laugh at me and the women to stand in a position of power.

Screaming in capital letters at the top of the screen, the slide read: I need your help!!! The premise: I was having 10 dinner guests but don’t know how to cook. Develop a work plan (goals, objectives, activities, needs, timelines, person responsible, deliverables) for this event.

Buzz. Confusion. A few smiles.

And then, one of the most brilliant 15-second interactions, a marvelous exchange that summarizes the millions of pages of development literature on the importance of women in the ‘third’ world.

Above the hum of giddy voices, one man belted out: “Tell the women to do it.”

No sooner than the T was pronounced, without missing a single beat, one of the women said: “Order in.”

Game. Set. Match..

In break out groups, the women scolded the men on their stupid suggestions of starting the rottie before the vegetables, or cleaning the table before the cooking was complete. Teams worked together, creating grand ballrooms and five star hotels out of my house, creative and imaginative to an inspiring degree.

Once tea was served, we came back together. This took a long time, people comparing notes, scrambling to add something last minute before handing in their exam, see what other people were serving, what they forgot. Everyone wanted to present first. I was hoping to “just run through some stuff,” in an attempt to get to the next step, of making the connection between this exercise and their work, but there would be no such running. Each group had to speak and with time, pride, and eloquence.

A feast of work plans prepared, we moved forward, overfull with the practical applications of such a process. It was awesome, divine intervention I am sure. I asked if this was helpful and, after the delay in translation, a dramatic pause that allowed me to notice each drop of sweat as it crawled down the side of my body from my armpit, the staff erupted in nods and smiles.

That moment was euphoric. I felt very proud of that work, to have provided something that was fun and useful. Asking how we could go forward, the staff demanded that I do a training once a month at the monthly staff meetings.

Later in the day, I pulled one of the staff aside and asked him if the training was good, of what I could do better next time. He just smiled at me and said, “Very usefiul.”