Dear friends and family,
Kalai vanakkam! (It is morning there, isn’t it?)
I’ve been delighted to receive all of your emails – thank you so much to everyone who has been responding with support and encouragement. And yes, all your emails have been coming through – I just don’t have much time to respond to each one. Please continue to keep me informed, particularly on the changes in autumn – that’s one thing I know I’ll miss.
I’m all recovered from my run-in with the demonic Indian bacteria and I have a newfound determination to avoid ALL the unpeeled fruit Clara keeps giving us and to use mouthwash after every shower.
A brief description of the past few days (it’s all recorded with much more justice in my journal): we visited the Kalyani Hospital in Chennai and were shown around by a nurse named Juliet who was eager to show us _everything_. We saw babies being vaccinated, patients on dialysis, and people laid flat by the various things you can die from in India. While we were there a construction worker fell off the roof and had to go to the emergency room.
We also visited the Shore Temple, a centuries-old Hindu edifice on the ocean. We waded in the waters of the Bay of Bengal and three of us met two boys on the beach who, if I understood correctly, wanted Lauren and Michelle and I to give them money to eat, to buy their fish, to give them our water, to take their picture, and to help carry their boat somewhere. We didn’t oblige on any point.
After that, a crocodile park! Amazing. This morning it was the Women’s Christian College. Our hosts at these institutions are so welcoming and happy to give tours even when they forgot we were coming.
A summary of what’s next for us:
We’re wrapping up our orientation in Chennai (a city of 7 million) in a week and heading to a rural public health center for a three-day rural orientation, as a group of nine.
After that we split up into groups of two or three as we head off to the sites of our first 4.5-week research projects. Jamie and I will be in Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary (please google it or “Western Ghats”). Our project will involve some aspect of conservation or monitoring within the national park (which has tigers!).
Then, it’s a two-week travel break! Our group of nine will split up. Four others and I are going to the Taj Mahal, Mumbai, and then to the backwaters of Kerala, on the Western coast. We’re also going to check out some of the amazing national parks and jungles in that area. And hopefully see a Kathakali dance, a regional specialty in which they re-enact some of the Mahabharata (an Indian epic seven times longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined).
Then, it’s off to our second 4.5-week research project. I and two others will be in a vector control research center called Vector Control Research Center. They research vectors (such as mosquitoes) that transmit diseases (such as dengue fever). My project will likely involve mosquito control, pesticides – we’re not sure yet. It will be laboratory work.
After that project ends (on 16 Dec) we have four days of travel before heading back to the United States! Hopefully we will make it to Goa, a former Portuguese colony within which we can – gasp! – actually wear swimsuits and go in the ocean.
Well, I’m off to bed. It’s a hot night here in Chennai – luckily the sound of the fan drowns out the fighting cats, the autorickshaws, and the mysterious buzz saw which always seems to be used nearby around midnight.
I am so glad to be in your thoughts and I am ever your loving
Isaac H.
pseudoisaac 