Butterflies, toads and jumping frogs

I want to give my readers more of an idea about my life here, its all been a bit much but I am calming down, I am getting a bit more used to this relentless heat (42C tops so far) and 70-80% humidity (phew-ee), my pores have never been cleaner, sweat cascades over my skin all day every day. I feel happy though. I arrived in Kovalam on the 18th april and I had my 1st weekend off this last weekend. I have a room in the 'Protected Community' for 60 destitute women with varying degrees of 'Mental Illness'/mental health difficulties, or 'Mental Retardation'/learning difficulties, it has 24 hour security, but the women are free to go out whenever they want to, they don't though cos they are so institutionalised they are terrified of going out of their 'prison'. The women do not think they will ever live independently, there is no emphasis on recovery like in Scotland, which now seems amazingly advanced in its approach to mental health care. The community is quite remote, maybe 20 mins walk to the village, its surrounded by paddy fields and the pond opposite the gate has lotuses growing in it. In the village is the Health Centre, which is funded by The Banyan, its a community health project, and has a special interst in mental health, I am also paticipating (and innovating) here.

There is a lovely dog called Puppy who has recently had 6 puppies, they are gorgeous too, she comes with me on my morning walk, through the tropical environment where we see flocks of Parrakeets, Gheccos, Toads, huge butterflies/ Pathi Bouchie, coconut and mango trees, and the snake trails in the sand, in the moments before the sun rises high enough to scorch us.
I had a wee jumping frog in my drinking water tray last night.
Feels great to be so close to a tropical version of the natural world that I know so intimately.
Learning Tamil from scratch has been a wonderful and unique experience for me. Everyone is so pleased with how much I have learnt and encourage me heartfully and patiently. I can understand what the women say to me often now, but then aswell as having more command of the language I have developed relationships with them too.
A wonderfully rewarding experience.
I have a bike now too, which is a perfect way to get around, the locals love seeing me cycle past, as the only foreigner and a cycling one at that its pretty awesome. Getting used to riding much more sedately.
The heat is pretty much unbearable for me to do anything beyond sitting in a room with fan, its going to get hotter, May starts today and is referred to as the 'fire' month as it is supremely hot!! Uh-oh.....
I have all sorts of dreams about how I can input into these projects, and have found some ways of getting them across, which is very important of course.
Dreaming requires sleep too, and as I mention it..............zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Savaal (challenge) is here and now and very real....

Here I am struggling in this hot hot hot humid part of India pushing myself emotionally and professionally to the max. I met with the manager here for the 1st time today and she was a motivational force. My task for the next 5 weeks is to create a document on how The Banyan operates, to enable more forward thinking projects to get established. I am broken hearted at the Banyan's operations but I am told (and I believe) that the Indian state MH projects are much more backward, the ancient asylum system still operates in India. My task is a dream actually, its my chance to let India know of a more positive approach to MH care.

I have made some friends today, and learnt a new dance for a street theatre performance we will do on saturday in a nearby village, this is part of The Banyan's attempt to educate Indian society about MH issues. I am giving them more ideas too. India's MH care is similar to the UK 59 years ago, I plan to be here untill mid- late May, hopefully I can manage the heat, its 35C and rising and I'm not sure of the humidity level but its pretty intense.

I will write more soon as I will have regular access to a computer now.

Reflections on Pakistan

Here I am on my last day of freedom before I start working. I am taking things real slow, this heat is pretty exhausting 35C and rising, its just the beginning of the hot period here and I am taking time to adjust. It'll be interesting and challenging to see how my body copes after enduring a winter of extreme cold this is the other extreme.
I have realised that I picked up Guardia in Pakistan, and am taking a course of metronidazide, hopefully that'll sort it.
I wanted to write about the people of Pakistan because they really touched my heart, with their generosity of spirit, tolerance and abandonment of selfishness in the place of complete surrender to living harmoniously alongside their community. I met one man whose story depicts this quality, Tanveer Akber, a man whose age I could not tell, he could have been younger than me, or a lot older. We met him on a train from Rohri to Lahore, I commented on how small he had made himself in a very overcrowded carriage (Pakistanis generally make themselves very small to pack onto public transport, me and Tess were like western heffalumps in comparison and took up the space of at least 2x Pakistanis!), and Tesse said that she thought he was very humble. I spoke to him later on when he showed me that he spoke some English, he had such a beautiful heart. He told me that he was the only male in his family that could work so it was his duty to look after both of his aged sick parents, he worked for the railways as a platform attendent and showed me a letter that he had written to his senior in English asking to be considered for a promotion to ticket conductor as this meant more money, but he was very poor, he was religious too and when a beggar came onto the train he gave him some money, I didn't, when I have so much in comparison-? I gave him my prayer beads as a gesture of my respect for him. Such a small, and hopeful act- almost desperate?
I arrived in India on 13th april. It feels so much more developed than Pak. I spent a night at the Golden Temple, which was gorgeous, and met lots of sikhs, whom I found startlingly attractive. Then spent sveral days on a train to Chennai and here I am, I found friends immediately of course, in a travellers den in central Chennai, with rooms situated around a leafy neemy courtyard and a free flowing breeze through my room.
Tomorrow I move into Kovalam, accommodation provided by the folk I will work with. So more goodbyes, and hellos.
Lessons come to me in many forms already, these will be experiences of many magnitudes I have no doubt.

Forging frontiers

Greetings from NWFP (North Western Frontier Province). I am with my friend Aziz, who is showing me fantastic hospitality. It is nice to be with a local who can give me a view from the ground as it were rather than the tourist's eye view that has been wonderful but maybe not very real. I was beaten for a couple of weeks by an attack of a horrid Gastro sickness but I am just soaring again now. I have just been told to post this as a power failure will come but I have much more to write, please wait for next installment.
Aziz says that I am the first woman to step foot on the soil of NWFP with no hair!! I have so many different stories but I have to chose... I fell in love with Pakistan, the people welcome me everywhere with open hearts and the land is glorious and ever changing.... It is so precious to get this chance to take a peek into a world so different from the one I know.
Starting from the beginning a conversation that has stuck with me was with the Germans who we got a lift with from Taftan to Quetta. The scene.... a spaceship in the form that westerners would recognise as a caravan rolls up in a small village in Balouchistan and is soon surrounded by wide eyed boys, all peering in, "they have one thing we in the west dont have, time" -"wealth eats time" -"I'd prefer to have wealth , at least when we are sick we can get a doctor" So the life west is set up for when things go wrong? My immediate thoughts on arriving in Pak on 20th March in those 1st few days were that I could never live in the west again, but then I got really sick and I feel less strongly now. I feel wiped out by so much philosophising, but it goes on as I am yet to come to any conclusions...eek!!
I still absalutely love it here, I can't wipe a huge face splitting grin off my face when I am walking amongst the hecticities.
I return to Lahore tomorrow for my final days in Pak to party Sufi style with some other travellers before crossing the border into what will be again an all sensory explosion for all 5 of my massively overstimulated senses.