All things nuclear!

Living in the nation's capital comes at a price - you gotta contend with the city shutting down when 40+ heads of state descend on your town!

The subject - all things nuclear.

In one of the largest gatherings of heads of state in history, President Obama invited more than 50 presidents/prime ministers to discuss how to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent acts of nuclear terrorism.

The city hasn't seen this large a security curtain since Inauguration Day. It is said enough downtown streets are to be closed to cause two days of gridlock! All I can say – watch/read the news to see what action steps result from the summit. And thank God for ‘working from home’!

All talk..

So..it's been an interesting time since I got to Washington, DC to work as a project manager for a small Christian NGO on reproductive health/family planning grants. In the short time I've been here, I’ve met congressional staffers from Senators and Congressmen’s offices, met a Senator (!), participated in high-level meetings at USAID, met with the vice-president of a multi-national public health company. It’s amazing who you run into here. My next-door neighbor for two weeks was the Chief of Staff to a Senator!

In the whirlwind of meeting and being introduced to ‘important’ people..and learning how to talk the talk and walk the walk, I’m realizing that there’s a lot of TALK here! On a daily basis, I participate in at least one conference call or go to a meeting where people get paid BIG money to sit around a table and talk! Makes me wonder...how much the talking is helping. How much difference is it making on the ground..in the life of the child who is suffering from hunger and the woman who couldn’t get to the nearest health-clinic on time while giving birth, and the man who has to make a choice between food and medicine for his family. Really...how much difference does it make what old white men sitting in air-conditioned offices in Washington, DC say?

Am I jaded already, you may ask? I don’t think so...at least, I hope not. Am I wary of all the ‘politics’? Heck yeah! But I am here. As wary as I may be, I am here to do a job – and do it well. I am called to bloom wherever I am planted, so I hope to bloom. Hope to speak for those from the field who may not have an organized voice, and may not have glossy paper reports but do do good evidenced-based public health work from a faith persepective. Wish me luck! :-)

DC Life

So folks, I'm now in DC! My endless roaming around this planet has to come to an end someday...and it shall soon, but for the next few months, I'll bask in our nation's capital. It's weird place, I must say. Here's some random observations to date:

• DC's Metro is incredibly efficient! After living in Boston, it seems to be almost sinful to have a subway announce it's arrival in spans of minutes!
• Speaking of the Metro, I love the architecture of the underground stations. Very snazzy. Although, I'm not the biggest fan of the LONG escalators going down underground. My fear of heights come in full-swing every morning!
• Black. It's everywhere. This city has NO sense of style! Aiy..yai..yai. Everyone wears black coats, black suits, black heels, black skirts, black everything! I mean, don't get me wrong, I think black is cool. But come ON, people! Where's the sense of style and color?! I'm no fashionista but I do like to look pretty. Almost felt like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde in my non-black clothes.
• Clean. In contrast to some of the places, I've lived in - this seems to be one of the cleanest cities. In fact, it's a sin to eat or drink on the Metro! I remember landing in New York from India and walking around in Harlem and thinking THAT was clean. Ha!
• Personalities. I haven't quite made up my mind on this one yet. Still wanting to be proven wrong on my initial assessment that DC attracts certain personalities. And it's almost incestuous how everything is related to politics and development. I'm so not sure about wanting to be a part of that world...
• Layout of the city. The grid of the roads and the layout of the city is incredible. Makes it easy for newcomers to find their way around.
• Spring in DC is BEAUTIFUL!! :)

We'll see. This city is yet to woo my little heart. Will keep y'all updated.

Happy Pi Day!

Pi Day

Happy Pi day!

Go ahead..be a nerd and enjoy some pie today! ;)

Quotable Quotes

Random sentences that have made me laugh..

If I can navigate around cows and dogs and their respective poops in India, I can make it in anywhere!

- ha!

You just don't stink. You stank! (insert ghetto accent)

- my sister's trying to tell me something.

You are so much more than a grant-proposal. You are a person!

- an attempt to cheer up a friend

You don't know John Legend??! Have you been living in a cave? Oh..wait, India IS a cave!

- again, my sister trying to say something. (I'm ignoring her..ha!).

Devina: What day is it? The fourth?
Emily: Yup, the fourth.
Devina: Of July?
Emily: That's a holiday. You know if you weren't brown, I would think you were a blonde.

- enough said.

Devina (singing at the top of her voice): Sweet Alabama... oops, I mean Carolina.
Emily: You mean Sweet Caroline?"

- Again, enough said.

His Timing. For My Good.

Why does God wait till the money is gone? Why does He wait till the sickness has lingered? Why does He choose to wait till the other side of the grave to answer prayers for healing? I don’t know. I only know that His timing is always right. I can only say that He will do what is best...Though you hear nothing, He is speaking. Though you see nothing, He is acting. With God, there are no accidents. Every incident is intended to bring us closer to Him. (Adapted from Max Lucado's Grace for the Moment)

Depend on the Lord; trust Him, and He will take care of you. (Psalm 37: 5)

While I have trouble trusting in these truths on most days, I do know that things always happen in His timing. And for my good.

Oye!!! Merry Christmas!

Since I missed out on the holiday season this past year...

a friend saw it fit to send me the above video! It's now stuck in my head..and I see it fit to share the love! Enjoy!! :)

Oh...how much I missed thee.

Dear Cinammon Swirl Bread, It is good being reunited with you. Sincerely, me.

....and in no particular order, some things that I have enjoyed this week since I got back from India...

1. Cinnamon Swirl bread (the Pepperidge Farm kind..with Smart Balance butter! Yum!)

2. Plush couches (the kind that you can actually sleep on!)

3. Hot showers with water pressure that actually creates wind in the shower!

4. Dark green salads out of a bag that won't make me sick

5. Phone customer service representatives that actually know what they're doing

6. A kitchen! To make my own food - just the way I like it. (not that I've actually done any cooking thus far)

7. Momma's tender loving care. Got sick on the trip back and have been unwell since I landed. Its nice to be taken care of..

8. Basil-mozarella-tomato sandwich. Been eating this non-stop! You'd think I'd want some meat. Go figure.

9. TP in public bathrooms. Gone are the days where I carry my own personal stash of TP everywhere I go.

10. Netflix. I can play catch-up on my TV-less state and watch some good ol' movies/TV while sipping on whatever culinary goodness my mother conjures up to nurse me back to health.

11. Internet. I get to use 'unlimited' internet as opposed to 'pay-per-use internet'. Which means, I get to stalk friends gloriously on facebook when I should be job-searching ;)

...in short, I'm a fallible human being with a propensity to be gravitated towards the luxuries of life in America. Yes, living in India was wonderful - for all the experience had to offer. But being back is good, too. :)

Back home!

'Welcome to the United States of America'.

Something about these words at the immigration post on Newark International Airport on a cold dreary wintery Saturday morning had a soothing comforting ring to them. I was back. After a short stint working for an NGO in India, I was back.

I could write much to reflect on the past year - could fill tomes on the experiences, the work, the sheer joys of helping people, utmost periods of loneliness away from family and friends, the beautiful places that I saw, the delicious food that I ate, the many conversations that I had with the wonderful people I met, and the sheer diversity that is India. Great life experience - as a friend recently told me. I wouldn't trade it for a second!

But for now, I'm glad to be back home.

Yes, I said home. America has strangely become home in the short time that I was gone. Kenya will always remain home - place of my birth, and India will always remain the country of my roots, but America is now my home. And I'm glad to be home..where those that I call my own live.

To give or not to give

I landed in India in late August. Almost immediately...all five senses were tantalized. From the plethora of food options that teased my taste-buds, to the smells and sounds (talk about the ubiquitous honking of cars!) And the sights! India is a beautiful country...with mass disorganization and chaos, but with raw beauty and warm people. To say that India is capable of bringing out every single emotion out of you is an understatement.

One of the sights that has haunted me since I landed in this wonderful country is the sight of children begging. I took the picture above many moons ago.

I cannot reconcile proximity that stark poverty has to ultimate opulence. To see people living in shanties on the sides of roads in Mumbai and the sight of little ones with tattered rags in New Delhi doing little tricks in the hopes of procuring a few rupees simply breaks my heart. And right next to the largest slums in Asia are high-rise apartment buildings with every single amenity that money can buy. I had read that the divide between the rich and the poor is great here – but to see it in actual terms is quite disconcerting.

And mentally – I still haven’t reconciled what to do when a child comes up to me to beg for money. What is the best thing for that child – to give or not.

Does giving away money serve as a temporary solution akin to a bandaid over a leaky faucet? Or does it serve an immediate need to feed an empty stomach? Or does it simply sooth our conscience that our daily quota for a ‘good-deed’ was met?

Growing up in Kenya, even as a teenager, I used to pack simple sandwiches whenever I went out to give away to anyone that came up to me to beg for money. It was so deeply ingrained in me that money could be potentially used for things other than basic survival tools (such as drugs, etc), that food was the best option to give.

Extreme poverty is such a complex issue and tackling it from any one angle requires much thought. Do the said-beggars in places like India and Kenya even have a choice to do something other than begging? Or is structural violence so deeply entrenched that a vicious cycle of poverty and lack of access to basic needs such as food, clean water, and education do not facilitate ability to do anything else but beg?

I think of donor agencies who give development assistance to resource-poor countries in various forms – food aid, technical assistance and expertise, hard money, etc. How is that different from a single person giving a few rupees or shillings to a single child? Therefore the ultimate question, does giving serve to encourage a culture of begging and dilapidate a person so much that they feel they do not have a choice but to ask for help? Or does it truly help to meet some basic needs?

Having been here five months – I am still nowhere close to the answers. As I continue to work as global health professional in India and beyond, my ultimate aim is not only to set up new projects, but to ensure sustainability of any work that I do. To train capable people and transfer knowledge to ensure that someone can do the work that I do after I leave. Knowing that I do not have all the answers and do not understand the complexity to local problems in the global context, I choose to give.

Praise you in this storm

This song has provided much comfort to me over the years...

and most recently while I live in India.

Delhi, India

Random shots from my trip in Delhi, India.

Nov 2009

Why people honk in India

My first few weeks in India were full of new things. New sights. New smells. New sounds. Particularly taxing was the sounds emanating from motor vehicles (everyone from truck drivers to motorbikes to auto-rickshaw drivers).

Honking. Everyone does it.

I sought to understand why people do it so much. Now, three months into living here, I came up with the following list of hypotheses as to why the Indian (and non-Indian alike!) has to be assaulted with the daily sound of a vehicle-horn. Please note the following is based on my own observations. Any resemblance to any traffic laws that may or may not exist is purely coincidental. ;-)

• One honks to signal that they are about turn left or right
• One honks as they are approaching an intersection to warn incoming traffic of their presence on said-junction
• One honks at the behest of signs such as this one above
• One honks to alert other drivers of intent to overtake
• One honks as they perform above-mentioned act of over-taking
• One honks on a curvy mountainous road to alert on-coming traffic
• One honks to shoo livestock off the road
• One honks to shoo pedestrians off the road (mind you, pedestrians have an equal right on the roads. As the sidewalks are usually filled with dog poop, humans take it upon themselves to simply walk on the roads, hence yet another reason to honk).
• And finally, one honks in place of the classic road-rage “I’m about to flick you off” gesture.

In other words, honking has taken precedence over all traffic rules. What I fail to understand is how on earth the average driver is meant to distinguish between honks. As in – if I were driving, how am I to decipher whether the dude/dudette behind me is honking because she’s annoyed at my driving or honking at the cow on the road...or honking to let me know that s/he is about overtake me?!

Let’s just say – I’m thankful that I don’t have to get behind the wheel and drive here!! I’m more than happy simply sending up prayers asking that the rickshaw driver won’t get me killed! ;)

Things I’m thankful for

“Black Friday sale!” “75% off deals” “Save..save..save”

These were just a few of the emails that landed in my inbox this week. Reminded me of another world approximately 10-13hrs behind my current time-zone. A world where shopping and buying and accumulating ‘stuff’ takes over the minds of every sane person.

I feel like I’m in an alternative world right now. I mean, as I’m typing this – there are children dying of diarrhea (a relatively simple disease with low-cost remedies) and there are people spending enough money on gift-wrap that could feed an entire family for months.

Living in India definitely has its ups and downs – I can’t seem to get past that. At times, I feel at home here. And many days I can’t wait to get out of here. I’ve definitely grown in different ways and alternatively there are things that have remained stagnant. But this post is not about the crazy thought-world of Devina. It is about the holidays.

While I feel like I’m a world away from the holiday season (India doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving – which marks beginning of the craziness that is the Christmas holiday season with all it’s commercial glory), I am also looking deeper to realize what the holidays mean to me.

While I have actually traditionally hated Christmas since I moved to the US, (I could write a whole another blog post on why!), this holiday season – I’m reminded of so many things to be grateful for. I’ll attempt to list a few here – in no particular order.

• My mother: I could write a book on her life and all the lessons that she’s taught me.
• My sister – my little sister is one of my best friends. Though we hardly talk much – the little Googlie bear is growing up fast and teaching me a lot.
• My life in the US: I appreciate the niceties in the US – living in India has taught me to appreciate even the simplest things like hot showers, clothes dryers, green salads and clean water.
• My friends – I have people in my life that I call my own at varying levels of intimacy. I pray for a lot of them on a regular basis and am grateful for them.
• The opportunity to travel – I have been blessed to grow up in a developing country, move to a more developed country and have an opportunity to go back to work in a developing country. While the upheaval with each move was not easy, I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.
• Ability to speak four languages – I’m SO grateful for my language skills, and ability to pick up languages, especially in India! It comes in useful when haggling with the auto-rickshaw drivers. Ha!
• Spices: I love to cook! Mainly because I love food. I’m lazy about cooking for myself – but love to entertain and have people over. Living in India has been in living in food heaven! I’ve been tantalized with every possible spice combination!
• Education: There was a time that I would have laughed if you told me that I’d one-day have a masters degree. I’m grateful for the schooling that I have received. Especially when I see how much thirst for knowledge is there in the people around me.
• My Lord and Savior Jesus: who continues to be there for me in spite of who I am. Who teaches me on a regular basis how to live fully, how to laugh often and how to love sacrificially.

I hope that this year's holiday season is a meaningful one for you – wherever you may be. Either sitting in cold wintery weather, or hot sunny tropical weather. I hope you are able to take a few breaths and step back from the commercialization that the holidays have become and look around you. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘Whenever you’re faced with a doubt/difficulty, look into the face of the weakest/most vulnerable person that you may encountered. Ask yourself - is my next step going to benefit them or better their life?’. Things will be clear and you'll learn how much you really DO have..

Happy Thanksgiving!

Acclimation and identity

Two months! I just said to a friend! It’s been two months since I got off the plane and landed in Bangalore, India! I don’t know where time has flown, but I can say this one thing: It’s been fun! Full of ups and downs, but fun nonetheless.

Living in India has definitely taught me a lot – I normally do a lot of thinking and contemplating about things on a day to day basis, but being here has kicked my thinking cap into over-drive, much to the consternation of my close friends who have been great sounding boards during my time here. While I try to figure out this first-time-living-overseas-without-my-family-thing, I have appreciated SO much all of you who have called/emailed/facebooked and sent me thoughts in every so often in every small way.

While I am acclimating to life here, understanding my role at work a bit better, getting to meet new people, I still miss home a lot. It’s funny because I never considered America as home...I always thought Kenya as home. Perhaps it is because I have never stayed in one place long enough to strike down roots, or perhaps because I never identified myself as American.

Strangely enough, I do think a lot like an American. In my interactions here with Indians, I do come across as an American. And while I completely get the Indian mentality and way of doing things and even though I introduce myself as a Kenyan living in the US, perhaps a little bit of the US of A has rubbed off on me. And I’m learning that that is okay. (Talk about tri-cultural confusion!)

And while I am enjoying being here, and experiencing all the new places that I get to see (India is SUCH a beautiful country!), all the new people and cultures that I get to interact with (I get to hang out with Singaporean, Filipino, Swiss, Rwandan, Tanzanian AND Chilean people at my church!), I still look forward to going home.

Perhaps it is because my family – my closest people – are over there now. And home is always where the heart is…

As I write this, I am listening to one of my favorite artists – A.R. Rahman. In the background, I hear the dogs barking, the train hooting, and the cars honking. Life here definitely has its fair share of chaos, and India is a great testament to that! But I maintain that there’s peace in the midst of the chaos. Learning to look for that peace in the middle of the chaos can be challenging at times. Especially when nothing seems to go well. But learning to take each day as it comes and live it to the fullest is worth doing.

More random musings later…

Aaahh...Technology Gripes!

So I love being in India so far - it's crazy as heck at times, and many a time I have wondered what I'm doing here. I feel very misunderstood in most of my interactions with peeps here. And at other times I love it here - especially when I feel like might have some sort of impact on some individual somewhere.

This past month and half have been full of ups and downs - perhaps more downs than ups. But I always look for learning opportunities and try to make the most of every situation and 'not complain too much' but life here is VERY different. Simple things take forever to figure out. Take, for example, this wonderful invention called the Internet.

So, I am currently renting a room from a family. Living in another person's house - under someone else's rules - is definitely interesting. For example, I have a 10.30pm curfew. For the record, I've never had a curfew since I was a teenager. It's definitely interesting - especially when I'm (now) starting to make friends here and want to go out and such. The other thing is internet. This family have their own high-speed (wireless!) internet connection but refuse to 'share' it with me and want me to get my own connection. Given that I'm only here for less than six months, I'm finding it a tad difficult to get my own broadband internet connection!

But no worries - I'm the queen of 'research' so, after a month of being here, here's some options I found - I could get a data-card and connect remotely without a land-line. Oooo..but where do I get one? Endless hours of research online, and some help from peeps in my office resulted in a few names of companies that have data-card options. BUT, here's the catch - out of the five companies that serve the Bangalore market, only one has a data-card that fits my budget and has speeds above 256kbps (most of you who are reading this in the US have a standard T1 cable connection with speeds upto 8Mbps!) 256kbps is painstakingly SLOW! On top of that, most companies have a limited use data-cards. Meaning you have a limit as to 'how much' internet you use! Aiy yai yai!

But, no worries - I'm persistent and keep searching. Finally (by fluke), found a company with a datacard with UNLIMITED (woo hoo!) usage and a data-card that'll give you UP TO 2Mbps! (the 'UP TO' is very much bolded/underlined in their promotional material - which gives me reason to believe that I'll probably be accessing much slower speeds. :(

But no, worries - I'm all about finding out how to get my hands on this card. So, I had found out about this via a tele-marketer! And I was like 'yes! hook me up!'. He even came to my home for to check out the data-card but then we realized ONE more glitch! I have a Mac!! (I'm ready to cry at this point!!) And he doesn't know anything about the driver for the software compatible with my computer. He went away saying he'd find contact me again. That was Tuesday. A whole week has come and gone, and I haven't heard back from him. :(

But, no worries - again, online research is my forte, it seems! A few hours (again) on the internet today YIELDED results. I figured out which model of the data card, which company manufacturers said-card, and WHERE on the world-wide-web to find the driver for Mac OS X Tiger!! I have to say, I AM the bomb! I found it! BUT..(there's always a 'but'), I lost the phone number of Umesh-the-telemarketer! So I now I don't know where to buy the card and sign up for service! :(

Next step of research process is to figure out WHERE to buy/rent this dang data-card. I think I'll figure that out next weekend. I love how people here all tell you what to do, but don't seem to know WHERE/HOW to do said-thing.

Okay, I'm done complaining for the night! ha! I suppose this is really good test to my brain-cells. And you, my dear reader, the next time you complain about a dropped call, 'slow' internet, government beaureacracy, or ANYTHING in general, think about 1.1 billion people in desiland. Most of whom have WAY bigger problems than my internetlessness state. Hopefully, I'll have grow some patience-cells in this microcosm of a land, and learn to appreciate life. Life in all its gory and glory. Adios for now. ;-)

A day in the life of…

I have decided against posting a play-by-play account of my experiences here in India. For many reasons, but mostly – I don’t have time to write about my days and the things I observe on a regular basis. Secondly, most days are mundane. The occasional non-mundane is also further attenuated by the fact that yours truly chooses to think that things ‘are-not-a-big-deal’…prefers not to pay undue attention to how my life in India is different from my life in the US.

But for the sake of dear friends who have asked over and over what I do on a daily basis, and how ‘life in India’ is…here goes nothing…

So, you might know that I am interning for Population Services International – an international health NGO. I’m based out of their Bangalore offices and mostly work in an office environment.

My day usually begins at 6am where I get woken up either by the dogs barking, or the newspaper guy calling out ‘paper!!’ or the sunlight, which falls on my bed in the mornings. I don’t have to be at work till 9.30am, so my morning routine has become very lazy. I take my own sweet time getting ready and love the morning hours where I can think in bed and plan for the day. I have also tried to go running/power-walking in the mornings, and have not been as diligent in working out as I should. Somebody keep me accountable!!

My commute to work consists of a 6-minute walk down a quiet tree-lined street listening to praise/worship music on my ipod. I’m now friends with the dhud-walla (milk-man) and say hello to him daily on my way to work. Pick up an occasional pista-milk (pistachio) or badam-milk (almond) from him in the mornings.

Work consists of desk-research at the moment. I’m usually in the office at my desk reading up and writing about tuberculosis in the state of Karnataka. My main project involves doing a gap analysis on an existing TB project and making recommendations to program managers on how to make things better given current context. It’s interesting work. I’ve been working mainly in the office to date, but am looking forward to field visits and seeing the programs on the ground first-hand.

We break for lunch around 1ish – and technically have a half-hour off for lunch. However, we all eat on the rooftop terrace of our building (there’s a full kitchen upstairs and long tables). The most wonderful thing about lunch is the sharing aspect. So everyone brings something to the table, and we all essentially take a bit from each other. It’s like a daily potluck!

Oh…work would not be work without my mentioning ‘sustenance’ aka chai. This wonderful stuff is delivered promptly by office support staff at 10am, 2pm, 4pm and in between by request. You have an option of masala chai, elaichi chai, ginger chai, black tea, etc..etc. I’ve gotten SO addicted to this stuff, it’s not even funny.

My work-day normally ends at 6pm, but I end up staying later as I have nothing better to do after work than to facebook and catch up on personal emails. Between that and talking on the phone (yes, I do have a lot of blah…blah to say!), my evenings are pretty much mundane. There you have it. A day in the life of. Weekends are a different story – a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump said. I never know what I’m going to get. J

Things I miss about America (in no particular order):

1. A working showerhead – So, it’s back to bucket baths. I wash my hair twice a week and prefer to not get my head wet in between washes. Playing dodge-the-errant-stream of water from the showerhead that barely has any water pressure somehow is not my cup of tea.
2. Kitchen – I miss cooking! Miss playing host to dinner parties and having friends over to try my food. Miss being able to control what I’m going eat on a daily basis and attempting to eat healthy. Miss having my own place. (I currently rent a room from a family and have food delivered to me daily from a tiffin-lady - you should see me when I get the food nightly – I’m like an expectant bright-eyed kid opening up a gift – I never know what I’m going to get!)
3. Efficiency in systems – I am a perfectionist. I admit it. While I take my own time getting things done at times (aka procastinator), I like to do them well. And thus living in India where EVERYTHING takes thrice as long to do is a test to my patience-cells. I could write another blog post titled “It-should-NOT-take-(insert time here) to do (insert activity here)”. In the US, I could (all by myself without external help) move to a different city, find an apartment, move in, set up utilities, cable, internet, bank account, etc...etc, all within 2-3 days of having moved. Not so much in desiland.
4. American banter/humor – people don’t get my jokes!! I miss witty banter about everyday-normal things. Well, people didn’t get my jokes in the US either. (sad face)
5. My family and friends – Enough said.
6. Pandora! You can’t get Pandora outside of the US!! I’ve exhausted my Itunes library…and am tired of listening to the same-old-same-old (anyone want to send me music? Preferably something new that’s currently playing on the hit radio station *wink…wink*)
7. Food – Okay, I love the food I’ve eaten so far – but I do crave the non-Indian food. I’ve never been one to eat the same-old-same-old on a daily basis, so I miss having a kitchen to be able to cook non-oily-low-fat food. The other day, I was craving a plain old dark green salad SO bad!
8. Being able to call people – I’ve moved enough times in the last eight years and have been able to make new friends with each move, but maintaining old friendships is important to me and I miss being able to pick up the phone and call people and yak for hours. (Don’t ask what my phone bills are!)
9. The direct-forthrightness of American people – American culture is very forward. People say what they mean, and mean what they say. Well, most people. Not so much Indians. I’m still struggling with being careful in not stepping on anyone’s toes in the way I express myself.

Ten Things

I read a friend’s blog recently in which she had a ‘Ten-things-list’…and I thus decided to write up about the ten things that I love about India and the ten things that I miss about America. I don’t have a complete list yet, but I shall add to this as I continue to live and work in India.

Things I love about India (in no particular order):

1. Food – Being in India is like being in food-heaven! There are countless things that can delight your palates and stomachs (if you can stand the spiceyness!) Everything tastes so much better here! I suspect, it is because it is produced locally and is fresher.

2. Indian hospitality – Living in the US had me forget what a treat it is to have a complete stranger be so kind to you without so-much-as batting an eyelash. My most memorable experiences have been my interactions with my friend David’s bhai (brother) and bhabhi (sister-in-law). They have been like family here in Bangalore, and I appreciate them opening up their home to me and feeding me on weekends more than I can ever convey. I could write a whole blog post on Indian hospitality!

3. Random noises – You never know what random noises you’ll hear here. I have (now) gotten used to the dogs barking, trains hooting, auto-rickshaws put-putting, cars honking. But the cows mooing (in a very urban environment) and the newspaper guy calling out “paper” at 6am still cracks me up! (Reminds me of scenes from the movie my cousin Vinny!!)

4. Indian signs/banners – I have a whole photo album of random pictures that I’ve taken of signs and banners that make NO sense at all!

5. Chaos – believe it or not, the lack of organization and chaos (especially on the roads) is actually quite soothing. Perhaps it is because I grew up in an equivalent environment in Kenya.

6. The head-bobble (side-to-side head-shake): Cracks me up EVERY time! I’ve taken to doing it, too.

7. Shopping! I’ve taken to shopping on an Indian budget and not think in dollars (only because I’m on an Indian NGO salary here…and cannot afford to live like a normal expat) but things are still fairly cheap, and one can get a decent (and might I add, BEAUTIFUL) wardrobe on a shoestring budget.

8. Traveling – I love to see new places and experience new things. India is a beautiful country. I could live here for years and still not see everything, but the little that I have seen has me simply in awe and worship of my Lord who created it all.

Deriving significance...

Someone made a comment on my blog, so I went today on the site (after a month's hiatus!) to skim over some of my old posts. It’s been a while since I posted my thoughts online. I still need to write on my experiences in the motherland, but first here’s some randomness from today. I reread this post, and something in the second-last para (labeled as 'Listen') got me thinking…

Most of us are active, social people. I speak for those of us who are extroverts who thrive in the go-go nature of life. When we're not doing something productive and not surrounded by people, we tend to get down and out.

Being in India is really getting me out of my element and comfort zone. I'm SO used to being go-go-go all the time. Used to being Miss Efficient. I've always kept busy; love being challenged, and learning new things. This, being in India, away from all things familiar is not easy. Not having 10 million things to do on a daily basis is not easy – don’t even have Internet at home to keep me occupied! (I worked at a full-time job and went to grad school, for crying out loud!) Being in a land where things take an average of 3.5 times longer is not easy. (For example, it took me 5 weeks to get a bank account set up!)

But…I am learning lots here. Learning to sit still...learning to listen...to myself...to others around me. Mostly, I am learning how to depend wholly on my Lord. And find my significance only from Him. Not from people – my family and friends. Not from the work of my hands (macbook?)

I have to admit – it’s not easy to do this. We’re SO results-orientated. At work, we set targets and measure outputs. We’re always ‘delivering’. We measure impact and improve systems and processes. We often feel good about ourselves when we’ve had ‘productive days’. I wonder, is this how we relate to one another? Do our expectations of people derive from the same ‘results’ nature of things? Do we measure friendships with how much we got back?

I suspect that the lesson of deriving significance only from Him is going to be a life-long one. It’s a journey – one with many dips and turns, but when all else fails me, the One who teaches me on a daily basis to live to the fullest, laugh often and love sacrificially, never will.

More on India later!