Goa
I'm in Goa right now - in Calangute to be more specific - the internet cafe I am in right now is under construction so I may lose this entire post at some point...
It's taking forever to write this consecutively, but for some reason I am still compelled to do it that way.
After the afternoon tea at the Taj Mahal Hotel, I got a cab to Santa Cruz East - the area where our guest house is located. The drive took two hours just to get to North Mumbai from South Mumbai. It was rush hour, which according to my taxi driver lasts from about 3pm to 10pm Monday through Friday. Mumbai is so overcrowded. Humanity everywhere. Over 50% of the population lives in slums - which are basically shacks/tents constructed out of garbage, but the people seem relatively well-fed and happy. A lot of these "houses" have electricity - I've even seen one with a TV, but none have running water as far as I can tell. Children squat over the gutter to take a poop, people use mud puddles to bathe. The women still look beautiful in these poor areas with their colorful saris.
The driver was so nice - a muslim man - the most trustworthy, honest driver so far. I told him I was from Canada because I was told Indians hate Americans, but then he quizzed me on Canada - he wanted to know the capital, which I didn't know - ha ha, what an idiot I am! I know now that it's Ottawa. ANyway, he couldn't find the place where I was staying and he missed his appointment to give his car to another driver and he had to ask for directions like 7 times. I wanted him to be my driver from now on because I really liked and trusted him, but he didn't have a cellular phone, so no such luck.
When we got to the street with the guest house, I had to close my eyes as the driver sped through the crowds of people almost killing people left and right - I could handle the reckless driving around other cars, but around pedestrians was too much to handle.
When I got to the guest house, it was just an apartment building and our room was on the 5th floor. When I got up there, there were 3 Indian men who didn't speak English, they pointed me to a room with 2 girls from the program already in there. The apartment itself is very poor by US standards - but it meets all of the basic needs with filtered drinking water and hot water for showers. My room turned out to be the cleanest one because of the girl who lived there before. A girl from the last month was still in my room - she is a Sri Lankan by ethnicity who was born and raised in Canada - she was really cool - she told me everything she could think of about what I had ahead of me, so that was nice. The next day, she took us shopping in Bandra.
There's 6 girls including me on the program this month and there's a guy in another guesthouse who is doing his second month now. We've done a lot of bonding so far and we've all paired off with our roommates - mine is a the only med student on the program who goes to UCLA, she's mexican by descent and knows Spanish - she is very smart and I'm learning a lot about medicine from her.
The men that take care of us at the guesthouse are Alam, Mohhamed, Ahmed, and Vijay, and a woman named Asha cooks for us and another woman (saboi?) cleans. Sampada is a young cute Indian girl who is our coordinator. Mohammed is one of those devout muslims who hit himself on both sides of his chest and his back with knives/razors and he has terrible scarring from it. They are all muslim. Everyone is very nice - no one knows English, but Alam knows a tiny bit, so we talk to him the most.
I've been picking up Hindi here and there - I got a lot of symptoms down so I could understand patients in the clinic. People seem to appreciate my effort to communicate. I've even got the Indian head wobble down - it's a common mannerism where you wobble your head from side to side to express the sentiment, "yeah yeah yeah yeah" - ha ha.
Well, I should go - we're going to the dance club tonight in Goa.
We're staying at a beautiful little place. I had an ayurvedic treatment - scrub/massage today. Did a lot of shopping - things are so cheap here. Went to the beach and got my feet wet. Tomorrow we're going to the historical area on the way back to the airport to go back to Mumbai. Last night I had Lobster Balchao - yum. Today I had idli and wada and dosa - yum. Been swimming in the pool at the hotel and trying to shake some of the accumulated stress from Mumbai's traffic, crowds, noise (although it's not that quiet here either), etc.
I have more to say about the hospitals and clinics, which I will include next time. I also have a plethora of interesting photos to post, but that takes serious time - I think I'll try to do it tomorrow morning...
Love you all - thank you so much for your emails and comments on this blog! So nice to hear from you.
It's taking forever to write this consecutively, but for some reason I am still compelled to do it that way.
After the afternoon tea at the Taj Mahal Hotel, I got a cab to Santa Cruz East - the area where our guest house is located. The drive took two hours just to get to North Mumbai from South Mumbai. It was rush hour, which according to my taxi driver lasts from about 3pm to 10pm Monday through Friday. Mumbai is so overcrowded. Humanity everywhere. Over 50% of the population lives in slums - which are basically shacks/tents constructed out of garbage, but the people seem relatively well-fed and happy. A lot of these "houses" have electricity - I've even seen one with a TV, but none have running water as far as I can tell. Children squat over the gutter to take a poop, people use mud puddles to bathe. The women still look beautiful in these poor areas with their colorful saris.
The driver was so nice - a muslim man - the most trustworthy, honest driver so far. I told him I was from Canada because I was told Indians hate Americans, but then he quizzed me on Canada - he wanted to know the capital, which I didn't know - ha ha, what an idiot I am! I know now that it's Ottawa. ANyway, he couldn't find the place where I was staying and he missed his appointment to give his car to another driver and he had to ask for directions like 7 times. I wanted him to be my driver from now on because I really liked and trusted him, but he didn't have a cellular phone, so no such luck.
When we got to the street with the guest house, I had to close my eyes as the driver sped through the crowds of people almost killing people left and right - I could handle the reckless driving around other cars, but around pedestrians was too much to handle.
When I got to the guest house, it was just an apartment building and our room was on the 5th floor. When I got up there, there were 3 Indian men who didn't speak English, they pointed me to a room with 2 girls from the program already in there. The apartment itself is very poor by US standards - but it meets all of the basic needs with filtered drinking water and hot water for showers. My room turned out to be the cleanest one because of the girl who lived there before. A girl from the last month was still in my room - she is a Sri Lankan by ethnicity who was born and raised in Canada - she was really cool - she told me everything she could think of about what I had ahead of me, so that was nice. The next day, she took us shopping in Bandra.
There's 6 girls including me on the program this month and there's a guy in another guesthouse who is doing his second month now. We've done a lot of bonding so far and we've all paired off with our roommates - mine is a the only med student on the program who goes to UCLA, she's mexican by descent and knows Spanish - she is very smart and I'm learning a lot about medicine from her.
The men that take care of us at the guesthouse are Alam, Mohhamed, Ahmed, and Vijay, and a woman named Asha cooks for us and another woman (saboi?) cleans. Sampada is a young cute Indian girl who is our coordinator. Mohammed is one of those devout muslims who hit himself on both sides of his chest and his back with knives/razors and he has terrible scarring from it. They are all muslim. Everyone is very nice - no one knows English, but Alam knows a tiny bit, so we talk to him the most.
I've been picking up Hindi here and there - I got a lot of symptoms down so I could understand patients in the clinic. People seem to appreciate my effort to communicate. I've even got the Indian head wobble down - it's a common mannerism where you wobble your head from side to side to express the sentiment, "yeah yeah yeah yeah" - ha ha.
Well, I should go - we're going to the dance club tonight in Goa.
We're staying at a beautiful little place. I had an ayurvedic treatment - scrub/massage today. Did a lot of shopping - things are so cheap here. Went to the beach and got my feet wet. Tomorrow we're going to the historical area on the way back to the airport to go back to Mumbai. Last night I had Lobster Balchao - yum. Today I had idli and wada and dosa - yum. Been swimming in the pool at the hotel and trying to shake some of the accumulated stress from Mumbai's traffic, crowds, noise (although it's not that quiet here either), etc.
I have more to say about the hospitals and clinics, which I will include next time. I also have a plethora of interesting photos to post, but that takes serious time - I think I'll try to do it tomorrow morning...
Love you all - thank you so much for your emails and comments on this blog! So nice to hear from you.
posted by mavis | 10:33 PM
2 Comments:
mavis, you are BOMB! miss you at home!!
Christine - thanks tons for sharing your story and stories; I had crazy busy week, but got caught up again today. Any dental stories?
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