OMG! I made food!!

Ok so this is a very special occasion for me, although it may seem silly to everyone else, as most of you know me as someone who cooks on a fairly regular basis.

But today...I COOKED!!!

This is exciting for a couple reasons.

a) it is the first meal that I have cooked in India that hasn't consisted of rice and some boxed curry mixture (aka Ready-to-Eat) or leftovers that I steal from my roommate

b) in order to make this meal, I gathered the courage to buy veggies from a real live Indian woman who worked at a real live Indian vegetable stand (aka not a store. And not in English.) This is a step that has intimidated me a fair bit, largely because I haven't had time to wander around and discover such a vegetable stand. This woman was cool though, I imagine we will be becoming fast friends.

c) I made CHAPATI. From SCRATCH. I rule.

So what was this wonderful meal? Well, I was excited enough that I took a picture of it, which you can see below.


The curry is essentially garlic, onion, green chillies, ladies fingers (okra) and tomato all stewed together with curry and coriander and red chilli powder and then cooked down (borderline too spicy for me, but we push the limit on that every day). I'm still working on my technique with the chapati (the bread - it was a little bit chewy) but I'll go ahead and declare this a stellar first effort. The rice is pretty straightforward, lol. The fun part? It's so damn healthy. The chapati is whole wheat flour and water, essentially, with just a little bit of salt. The veggies were cooked in just a little bit of coconut oil, but basically just enough to saute the garlic and onion before the rest got tossed in. I can't seem to find brown rice here but whatever.

I feel like an adult again! As if I've regained just a little bit of independence. Small steps, small steps. I'm toying with the idea of showing this to my Fellows, but they'll probably think it looks awful and laugh at me. Which is fine. I'm learning!

Finally: Boston people who are obsessed with Haymarket? Today I got like 10 onions, 10 tomatoes, 3-4 generous handfuls of green chillies, like a kilo of okra, a big bunch of bananas (like 12 small ones), and 3-4 handfuls of garlic for less than $2. The food I bought today can feed me for like a week (awesome).

Miss you guys! Stay tuned.

Papers done - time for some real blogging!!

Woo! I am done with Ireland! Who knows what the results of all the stress will be but I am just happy its over. I am celebrating saying a final "goodbye" to Ireland (the bad part) with a Facebook photo album commemorating our "goodbye" to the good part! You can find that here.

This is going to be a lengthy, lengthy deal, as I intend to be explaining a lot in order to give a good picture of my life here. So, I'll be splitting it up into parts and posting them over the course of this week.

PART ONE

Key terms for beginners:

NGO - Non-Governmental Organization. "NGO" can be used to describe a lot of things, but usually it is used to describe an aid agency that, as the title implies, is independent and not affiliated with a national government. Some famous examples? Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch. They can be action-based, research-based, or publicity based. Basically they can do anything.

The Sandbox - The region in which the Deshpande Foundation primarily operates in India, essentially the northwestern portion of the state of Karnataka (where the Deshpandes originally hail from)

I figure it's well past time to actually talk a little about what we do here in Hubli at the Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship. So the Deshpande Foundation is a NGO that seeks to foster a spirit of "social entrepreneurship" which basically means entrepreneurship with a conscience, or, from the other side, philanthropy with a brain. For example, taking a small, poor village who make their living off of craftsmanship. The village lies in a part of the world where they are blessed with a specific breed of sheep, who in turn are blessed with a very desirable type of wool. The village people have long been able to use the wool to make beautiful bags and clothes, however the only people they can sell it too are the people who know about the village, as there is little technology and no one in the village has extensive education or knowledge of marketing. This means they are not making enough money to sustain their craft, and the village heritage and economy is threatened because they start having to raise other livestock, or mix the breeds of their sheep for more production of lesser-quality raw materials for sale.

How does "social entrepreneurship" apply? An NGO goes in, and instead of just recognizing the poverty in the village, recognizes the potential. Instead of just feeding money into the village as a form of aid, the NGO uses their resources and training to create a network for the village crafts. They scale up the production by providing training for the villagers in more efficient methods (looms, for example) and they scale up demand by marketing the materials nationally and even internationally at such venues as fair trade shows and the like. Within a relatively short amount of time, they have created a sustainable economy for the village and a more-than-sufficient source of revenue. In this way, they have given the villagers back their independence while allowing them to maintain their traditional livelihood, and have done so in a way that the NGO is able to easily recoup their expenses in the process. This is just one example - there are a great many good examples of this just within the Sandbox region.

That's what the Deshpande Foundation does in a nutshell - usually instead of getting involved in a particular charity case, they will instead get involved in an NGO, providing training and resources so that the NGO can scale up their project or enterprise, become more self-reliant and less reliant on external resources such as donations. This allows the NGO to have a wider impact while becoming more and more self-sustaining.

The Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship, during Development Dialogue 2010

So what do I do?? Well, I work at the Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship (DCSE) which is the hub of the Deshpande Foundation's activities in India (they are primarily based out of Boston). DF sponsors numerable fellowship programs. The two main ones are: the Sandbox Fellows, who are usually American young professionals with training or background in some area of development studies who come to the Sandbox to work for a particular NGO, and you have the Deshpande Fellows, who are Indian young professionals from various places and fields around Karnataka who come here for a 6-7 month residential training program in the ways of social entrepreneurship. The point of the program is to give them the skills to succeed and make the impact that they want to make, and then some. The program is competitive and generally the graduated Fellows go on to a wide array of jobs and other opportunities.

When they arrive at DCSE, the Deshpande Fellows are put through an intensive pre-training program to make sure that they all have the skills they need to continue on with the remainder of the program, which is a combination of specialized classes meant to make them better thinkers and innovators, and more effective workers and leaders. Because of the variety of backgrounds represented by the DF Fellows, many of them are in situations where they have only rarely had to speak English, or where they have never in their lives had to use a computer. The purpose of the pre-training is to provide them with the tools they need to get started: fluency in English and the basics of IT.

I am the English instructor for this batch of DF Fellows (Cohort IV). The group of 30 or so Fellows is split into 2 groups, both of which I meet with for at least 3 hours per day, from 9-12 and from 2-5. Usually I arrive at the DCSE before 8:30 am and leave after 6 pm, only to go home and work on correcting assignments and preparing lesson plans. This basically means I'm working...all the time. However although it is hard on me, it is hard on them too, and I find myself wanting to give as much of myself as possible to them because I respect all of them to the highest degree - every one of them is inspirational and amazing in their own way. I've said this before, but I consider it a huge privilege to be working with them at all.

Me with a few of my Fellows (left to right: Shalini, Avinash, Laxmi) during Development Dialogue

Of course, giving as much as I've been giving (as I have been warned by my colleagues) means that I might burn out. The limited amounts of sleeping and eating that I've been doing may have had something to do with the fact that I've been sick...pretty much since I've been here.

But now after a week of not having to teach classes and having to be pretty much bed-ridden I am rested, feeling healthy, and ready to go again! Bring it on! Alas, while this week of Development Dialogue was restful for me, it was quite the opposite for the Fellows, so we'll see how all of them due with class starting up again tomorrow.

Stay tuned for my (limited due to illness) accounts of Development Dialogue (discussed briefly in a previous post), and for news of my first trip outside of Hubli!

Mail Protocol

OK, so we all know I like mail. A lot. Many of you have been kind enough to send me things in the past, and a few of you have been asking for my address so that you can do it again. Thank you! If the spirit so moves anyone else, always know that a surprise letter (non-bill) will always brighten up my day.

Alas, the procedure in India is a little bit more complicated. Things like "infrastructure" and "efficiency" which we could take for granted in Ireland are slightly more elusive here. For this reason, providing you with my home address is futile. The post man might just see that its out of the way and to a foreigner and decide not to deliver it. Or not know where the house is. Or Deshpande Foundation might on one of their whims just move me to another location.

For this reason I can only provide you with my work address. But this also has limitations. Not that I expect to be flooded with mail, but...yeah. I can't be flooded with mail. So this is what I recommend. If you are moved to send me something such as a letter or a small package of something, please do so! That' awesome! If you are like my grandmother and would like to do so more than once per week, please refrain OR you can send things to my mother (small things like postcards or things that will come in higher volumes, like birthday cards, are ideal for this - aka things that might get lost in the mail) and she will happily send them along bulk-style via certified mail once things pile up a bit.

So! on that note:

The Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship
attn: Elisha Clark (this part's important, obviously)
BVB College of Engineering
KLE Society
Vidyanagar, Hubli 580031
Karnataka, India

If you think that your mail would be better served getting the forwarding treatment from Deb, and you don't have the address, shoot me (or her) an email or fb message, as there's no need to be all cavalier and throwing personal info up on the internet.

Also, USPS First Class (aka basic post) is legendary for taking a very, very long time to get to this particular part of the world. Just an FYI, if you're going to be waiting with bated breath for my reaction to your mail (not that I expect this of any of you, lol) you might want to consider an upgrade. That way we can be more sure that I'll get it while I'm still, you know, in India.

Love you guys!

Ps, 2 papers down, 1 to go til last semester is officially behind me! Woo!

...To within an inch of my sanity!

Yeesh!

So this might be the first time in all of my travels that I have experienced the peaks and valleys that come with the transition. Emphasis on the valleys. I suspect that the reason my spirit is effectively killed and my mood is almost constantly in the dumps may have something to do with the consistent 12-14 (spiking to 18-20!!) hour days that I've been working at the DCSE, from which I have to immediately transition into student-mode to write the papers that if you've been reading you know have been haunting me for nearly a month now. Naturally, after working for 14 hours, my natural inclination is to do something like a) sleep, b) eat, or c) turn on my computer and engage in mindless activities like facebook, texts from last night, and following the latest developments in the Conan O'Brien situation. Usually "c" wins, followed soon after by "a". Sometimes "a" wins outright. "B" seems to have fallen by the wayside almost completely.

Anyway, I have never before in these experiences had the feeling like "Ugh, this blows. I want to go home." It seems as though at all times, at least 50% of my brain is concentrating on home. What would I be doing if I was home? (sleeping). What would I be eating if I was at home (food that I could identify). Who would I be talking to if I was at home? (someone who could actually understand me and talk back).

Simple, under-recognized luxuries like knowing where to buy food! So you can cook! Like not having to lock your bedroom door - with a padlock - every time you leave the house. Like not seeing men peeing in the street at least once per day. After nearly three weeks I am still in this kind of limbo, where people need to take care of me and show me where to go to accomplish the simplest things, for no reason other than I simply have not had time to figure them out myself. When she was taking out the trash yesterday, our housekeeper pointed to the box from some of the pre-made meals I have been making (basically just curry that you heat up and put on rice). She very clearly disapproved and made some remarks in Kannada that I couldn't understand. I tried to explain - "no, I don't WANT to eat it. I like fresh things! Fruit! It's all I can do right now!" My explanation was lost on her.

Not having food/time for breakfast every morning (increasing sleep deficit makes it harder and harder to get up on time) means that the antibiotics I have to take every day while I'm here bring on a pretty miserable variation of morning sickness, daily. When I am able to eat - the DCSE staff gets lunch delivered on most days, which I can usually sneak a 10 minute break for - its a crapshoot whether or not the food I eat will bring on all sorts of fun symptoms with it (yep, still adjusting.)

Basically - yuckyuckyuckiwannagohomeyuck .

But like I said, I've done this enough and been exposed to enough literature and lectures on "adaptation" and "culture shock" and the like to know that this very probably is, like I said before, just a phase. And it seems like maybe, just maybe, the heavens have shined upon me and given me a chance to recharge. Development Dialogue, an annual international conference on development that the Deshpande Foundation hosts in Hubli each year, begins Wednesday. This same conference which has been demanding I work 14 hour days for the past 2 weeks in order to prepare AND teach also means that all of my classes are canceled all week so that the Fellows (my students) can act as volunteers for the program. Woo! It would seem that everything I'm able to contribute to has already been finished.

Example: How many publications do you think need to be put together for an international conference? As most of those publications (speaker bios, brochures, case studies, flyers, invitations, letters...) were written by people who speak English as a second language, they all need to be proofread before they can be released. Who is the resident English expert at the Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship? That's right, yours truly. On the bright side, I am now extremely well versed in the who's-who of the social entrepreneurship field as well as extremely knowledgeable on some of the Sandbox's most successful development initiatives and NGOs. The downside? I no longer remember what it feels like to be "rested", and my eyesight may have been permanently damaged from excessive reading.

But like I said, it seems like at least for a short period of time, a weight has been lifted. The Hindu gods that I mentioned were hazing me in a previous post seemed to have thought that I've had enough, shown good spirit and commitment in the face of extensive difficulties. So while I'm on my own for the cold showers and the hard mattress and the rogue farm animals and the strange chirping lizards that have made my house their home, they are lightening the load just enough that maybe JUST MAYBE I'll be able to recoup some sleep and get these essays done, finally.

Before I left I had the foresight to smuggle a bottle of malbec into my suitcase, as I had heard that procuring a drink in this particular part of India is somewhere on the difficult side. The original idea was that after I had completed my 30+ hour journey, it would be nice to be able to unwind. But when I got here, I decided that I didn't need it. I'd save it for a part of the trip when I deserved a true reward, when something deserved to be celebrated. It's very likely that I will not be able to think of a better occasion than when the last of my essays is submitted - on Wednesday if all goes according to plan.

Anyway, that's my life at the moment. The coming weeks will bring their own new challenges and projects, but that's for later. For now, send all the spirit of productivity and motivation and endurance and energy that you can spare over this way, I'll be forever grateful and I'll definitely be needing it over the next couple days. If it works, expect an elated, celebratory post in the very near future.

Cheers all, missing you as always.

PS: If you're interested, you can learn more about Development Dialogue 2010 HERE.

ADDENDUM: I thought this was worth mentioning. A little hilarious/absurd anecdote, just so everyone can understand how ridiculous this place is. In preparation for the Dialogue, we have to make sure that all safety systems, etc within the building are working properly. So today, we had a fire drill. Understandable. Legitimate. Called for. Please continue reading.

I have heard different reasons for why this occurred. One version of the story is that the director of DCSE "wanted the fire drill to be taken seriously." Another is "well the systems here don't have a mechanism where you can set it off manually." Both of these reasons seem a little bit absurd to me. The first one for obvious reasons, the second one because you could very easily just light a match under the detector to achieve the desired result.

What ACTUALLY happened was this. Someone went out to the woodsy area nearby and collected a couple armfuls of brush. Which they then carried to the third floor of the building. Which they then LIT ON FIRE. Yes, that's right. In order to initiate a fire "drill," DCSE actually started a real live FIRE in the building. A large one. There was smoke everywhere. You could see the fire on the 3rd floor from the ground outside. I didn't check, but there are probably scorch marks on the floor. Now I'm not up on the particulars of fire drills, but I'm pretty sure that having an actual fire involved negates the "drill" part. Just sayin.

India is weird.

Also: Whaaa?

Come on NBC...

Read this yesterday. Gave me quite the pang for my middle school/high school days. Hope he makes it back onto the airwaves soon!

Conan O'Brien says goodbye to Tonight Show

My oh my, what a week

Hello hello

I remember last year I had to give a presentation to high school seniors and their families on the international opportunities offered at Northeastern. I was participating in a student panel and I was there to talk about my experiences in South America as well as my co-op at the Office of International Study Programs. It was an open house for students who had been accepted to the University under the Early Action program. 6 or 7 1.5-hour long sessions over the course of 3 days. I remember it well largely because it was the first time I'd ever worked with Ketty Rosenfeld, the director of Northeastern's International Co-op program.

"The first thing I ask a student when they come into my office and tell me that they want to do an international co-op," Ketty said to our audience as she started her presentation, "is, 'Why do you want to suffer?'"

I identified with what she was saying. I had gone to a place where people speak a different language than I do, deal with different problems than I do, have different values than I do. I had experienced "culture shock," both when I arrived in Argentina and when I came back to the United States. I had experienced the frustration that comes when taxi drivers and sales clerks try to hustle you because you're a foreigner, when you can't get anything done because of the lax sense of time that the Argentines have, when you spend an hour and a half trying to get to class by taking the subway, 2 buses and a cab only to arrive and be told by the security guard that your professor has decided not to teach that day. I thought that I understood the suffering that Ketty was referring to.

This is a whole new ball game.

It's as if the Hindu gods are laughing with each other at my expense, throwing every challenge and setback at me, putting me through some kind of cruel hazing ritual to humble me. When I arrived last Tuesday, I was informed that the internet in my apartment hadn't been working for a couple days but that steps were being taken to fix it. Every day, nothing was done. I was told by one of the Deshpande Foundation staff that I had to register with the Police Commissioner here in Hubli under the terms of my visa, but was not given any guidance in the process, no matter how many times I asked. How was I supposed to get a document notarized in a foreign city? How was I supposed to get a copy of my rent agreement when I had had no part in the arrangement of the housing? How was I supposed to print out necessary documents when no one would give me the code for the printer? I was promised a cell phone, but none was given. On Thursday, I noticed that a hole was slowly but surely being burned into the cord of my computer charger, a ticking time bomb until I was cut off from the world completely - no computer, no cell phone, no internet, no resources. I called 3 different phone numbers for Apple in India to get a replacement and was told every time that they did not ship to customers here, I would have to go to my nearest Apple store, which was 10 hours away in Bangalore. Working 10 hours per day 6 days per week does not give one time for such journeys, so instead I lost $200 to purchasing one in the United States and having it shipped here to India ASAP. I was charged with creating lesson plans and assessment strategies but given no information whatsoever on the people I would be teaching and assessing. There was no communication, no feedback, no help to be given.

Saturday night, when I had deadlines looming for my final papers from Ireland and still had no internet with which to do research, I decided to check into a hotel nearby which would provide me with "free" wireless. The room ran me approx Rs 2500 per night ($55). Over the course of the next week, I would stay there 4 nights.

My spirit was steadily becoming crushed. I was still jet-lagged - I would inevitably wake up before 5 in the morning and be absolutely exhausted before 8:30 in the evening. I had no energy or motivation to do the essays that were still hanging over my head. I felt as though I had come to a country where with little effort I could live on less than $5 per day only to see my money disappearing at alarming rates. I was frustrated and desperate, anxious because I didn't know what was expected of me at work and angry because I felt as though I had come all this way only to be neglected. I was tired of haggling with rickshaw drivers who were trying to charge me exorbitant rates for a ride to a hotel which was already costing me far too much, then trying and failing to explain to them where the hotel was when they couldn't understand any English at all. Then, on Monday, I started feeling the familiar signs that things were going to start to go south health-wise. The food and water adjustment was catching up to me, just in time for the new Fellows (my students) to arrive. I managed to make it through most of the day on Monday, which was the orientation program for the Fellows, only to have to excuse myself from one of the programs late in the afternoon. By Tuesday I was essentially on a diet of water and cornflakes, however the week before I had arranged to have lunch delivered to me at the office daily (a common practice at the DCSE). On Tuesday, it came time to pay the woman who delivered the food (the food that I was unable to eat). Savita, a former Fellow who now works at the DCSE and has to some extent taken me under her wing, came to me and told me that I had to pay the weekly fee. I opened my wallet and discovered that someone had helped himself to all of the cash inside - approximately Rs 1600 or so, which is equitable to nearly one weeks salary.

So I'm sick, I can't eat for fear of being incapacitated in the middle of teaching a class, my papers are late or on the verge of being late, and I still have no internet in my house and am on the verge of being in India illegally because it's coming up on 2 weeks and I still have not registered with the Police Commissioner. Thursday night I checked into the hotel once again in the hopes of making progress on my essays with the help of the internet there, and after having to request that they move my room in order to give me a better wireless signal, I plug my charger into the wall only to hear a crackling sound that is in essence a death rattle, and my computer dies. No progress was made on the essays, and that no progress had cost me another Rs 2500. If you were one of the "lucky" (yeah right) few that were able to talk to me over the course of this week, you know the state that I was in. I was furious. I was frustrated. I wanted to go home, but at the same time I hated home. I hated Ireland. I hated India. I basically hated everything.

Things are better now. Emboldened by a new ally in the DCSE (Dulcie, another American woman placed higher up in the organization), on Friday I essentially declared war. The day brought a combination of everything from charm and finesse to a good old-fashioned American temper explosion. Lo and behold, at the end of the day, the internet in my house is fixed and I am in possession of a brand-new laptop to hold me over until my new charger arrives. I'm still careful with food - in my experience the sickness that hit me this week is just the "warning" wave - something stronger will surely hit in another week or so. But it's nice to be able to finally settle down in my new home and not have to pack up and go to a hotel every other night. If you've ever wondered what life would be like without internet, I suggest NOT trying it, especially in the wake of a recent move halfway across the world.

Also, after spending a couple days with the Fellows, I have to say that this job has the potential to be one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had, or will ever have. They're 30 of the most brilliant and inspiring people I've ever met in my life and I am privileged to know them, let alone to teach them and help them on their journey to greatness. The fact that they consider themselves to be fortunate to have me here teaching them blows my mind - every one of them is the kind of person in my opinion everyone should aspire to be. Alas, with the inspiration comes anxiety from extreme pressure. More than anything else, I don't want to let these people down. More on them later.

That's all for now guys, its time to buckle down and get some real work done. A lot of you checked in via facebook this week asking about India and life and such so this is kind of a response to that - don't worry, I'm not so discouraged anymore, I will just be happy when things are settled and Ireland academics are left behind me and I can devote all of my attention to my class and making a temporary home here in Hubli. Thanks for the messages and wall posts, they really brightened up my life when I was finally able to see them last night! Keep it up :)

Hopefully I'll be able to post more soon...say...tell you something about what India is like? Explain where I'm living and what I'm doing? Do more than just complain about things? Yeah I think that'd be good.

Take care for now, all!

New place, new look

Hello hello all

So I wish I was able to spend time putting together a proper post for you, but suffice to say I've spent enough time procrastinating and really need to get to work. For now, take a look at the new format and let me know what you think!

But just briefly:

I've been in India since Tuesday afternoon. We are 10.5 hours ahead of those of you who are on the East Coast of the U.S. I started work at the Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship on Wednesday, creating an assessment protocol to evaluate the English levels of the new Deshpande Fellows, who are all arriving tomorrow (Monday). It's been pretty busy here, there is currently no internet in the house where I am living, so I have not had much opportunity to work on the several research papers that I still have left over from Ireland, the most urgent of which is due on Tuesday. It is this paper, on the legacy of populism in Latin America, that is my mission today.

In order to better equip myself to accomplish this mission, I checked myself into a hotel here in Hubli yesterday, so that I may take advantage of their speedy internet connection and have the opportunity to do research and write in a comfortable, reasonably quiet environment. I have found that so far I've been using this opportunity to catch up on Facebook and give this blog a makeover. Typical.

While I am excited about access to internet and the opportunity to communicate with people, I dislike the fact that after less that one week here, I found the need to check myself into a hotel with all of the fancy comfortable Western amenities that I could desire. I was hoping that when I arrived here, I would be able to just jump right in, rip off the band-aid if you will. But alas, a consequence of only having one foot in the door while the other is still stuck in Dublin is that I feel I am being pulled in several directions at once. Not the most fun of feelings. Quite stressful and certainly not making this adjustment any easier.

And what an adjustment it will be! More on all of this later, but my lord! Squat toilets, rickshaw, large livestock roaming the busy streets freely, people hanging out of brightly colored loud buses that look like they're going to fall apart any minute, unpaved, dusty roads, the constant need to monitor where your water is coming from...man oh man.

Well, hopefully in the next couple days (doubtful, probably next weekend) I'll be able to give you a proper post, perhaps with pictures, explaining what my life is like here so far. For now, I will be more than occupied with my incoming class of Fellows and the 6000+ words that I need to write this week.

Missing you all as always and hoping very much that everyone's new year is getting off to a good start!!!

Take care people. Love, Elisha.