adventures of a spicy indian

woke up with 3 bug bites. one on each eyelid & one square on the nose. all swelled each subsequent body part into soft pillows. giving me a slight quasimodo effect.

even when i return to a place i’ve already been, new adventures await me. for the first time ever, i tagged along with two guys who deliver needed food & even greatly needed companionship to elder orphans in titanyen. the average lifespan for a haitian is a mere 52 years. for the select few who live into their 70s & beyond, their friends & family have long since passed, making them orphans of sorts.

one woman, the ripe young age of 70, upon learning her picture was about to be taken insisted on changing her clothes first. when offered privacy, she scoffed, saying we are her children & proceeded to strip naked in her 10 feet by 10 feet home crowded with strangers to put on her sunday best, complete with a head scarf decorated with sparkly silver sequins. which just confirms women all over the world, no matter their age, color or economic status, are very conscious of how they photograph.

being with these older souls reminded me of my grandmother, who lived for the days when her grandkids had off from school, so she’d have company during the long, uneventful days. turns out nothing brings joy to a person who has lived for more years than most than youthful voices filling up a room.

back in cité soleil, i discovered a giggling gang of 5 young women, all friends having grown up together under the same harsh conditions their lives have given them. through the universal language of girl talk, consisting solely of hand gestures, laughter, dancing, hugs & admiring each other’s nails, i made 5 new zanmis fi, or girlfriends. each was simply dumbfounded at my 33-year-old unmarried, non-motherhood existence & lamented over my status. little did they know my mother laments alongside them.

creole word of the day…ti bebe, which is a tiny newborn baby. upon hearing of my empty womb, one of my new zanmis fi put her hands on my stomach & whispered in creole that she’ll pray for me so the next time i return to haiti, i do so with a ti bebe. a prayer she unknowningly shares with mwen maman, my mother.

with an entire world to explore, rarely do i return to a place i’ve already been. and never returning within just 8 short months. but i broke the rule of a true travel addict with haiti. for i find myself once again doused in a sunscreen bug spray sweaty concoction. i’m back to photograph, to experience the work of my favorite charity organization, healing haiti.

i’ve discovered there are groupies following the water trucks that deliver free clean drinking water in cité soleil, stop to stop, day to day, week to week. my camera is my selling point. kids remember me & i remember them. literally a slideshow flashed in my mind of the pictures i captured on my last trip, placing their smiles, their mannerisms, their personalities. they all have grown in the past 8 months, as kids are wont to do. some lankier, some healthier & sadly some sicker. & there are new stories to learn, the kind that hurts your heart. a boy from a family of 5 boys talked of his excitement to be 17 & almost done with school with dreams of becoming a doctor. only to reveal that just he & one other brother attend school. for his parents cannot afford school for all five. can you imagine? picking which of your children gets an education & which remains ignorant?

woke at 5.15 am to attend a 6.00 am baptist service. all in french. roosters chased us down the street, crowing to remind us of the early hour. as if i’d forget i don’t tend to wake before the sun. i’ve listened to hindu brahmins praying, tibetan monks chanting, and now haitian pastors singing. no matter the language, the faith or the color of the skin, all possess the power to change your being. the sounds flow into your body, purifying all the tiny dark crevices inside. enough to bring me to tears. the down side of which being i cried away my bug spray & got bit. of course.

traveled to wahoo bay, a beach so gorgeous you know the first person to lay eyes on it said “wahoo! a beach!” spent the night at the appropriately named wahoo bay resort. which is just down the street from the obama beach hotel. wonder if obama knows he has his own beach complete with an appropriately named obama beach hotel?

funniest ah-ha moment…during a 45 minute trip back from titanyen full of numerous potholes, honking trucks, wandering donkeys, police check points & UN patrol convoys, our driver was pretty much silent after the initial “where are you from? how many siblings do you have?” conversation. until the last 30 seconds of the trip when he spots a rather rotund female. equal to 5 of me in circumference. constructed of all curves & soft padding. her womanly bits jiggling & bouncing with every step. the previously mute driver simply uttered a low & appreciative “BIG SEXY.”

creole word of the day…zanmi, which means friend. something all the familiar faces have become & something all the new faces will become.

• • • click here for even more pictures of port-au-prince • • •

no words.
just pictures.

• • • click here for even more pictures of haitian orphans • • •

and now comes the orphans.

between the two different orphanages print 4 change supports, there are almost 80 kids from the age of 10 months to 17 years with no parents, no siblings & no bedrooms of their own other than the ones they’ve found at the orphanages.

my job as the resident photographer on duty was to photograph each individual kid so we can showcase each one on P4C’s website. that way when you donate money at print4change.com (HINT! HINT!), you can see the gorgeous faces helped by your generous contribution you so graciously donated right at this very moment before returning to read the rest of these ramblings. i’ll wait while you go get your credit card.

back? great. cause i loved my job. to spend time with each kid, trying to capture their spirit through my lens. some have super infectious sunny personalities prone to laughter & delight. others, a bit more serious that simply do not find me amusing. no matter how badly i humiliated myself to get a flash of a smile. and i tried. really hard.

it was here at the orphanages i graduated from being a racially ambiguous person in haiti to a fully blanc. that’s a white person. after being pointed at & declared a BLANC BLANC, i asked our interpreter if the kids know i’m not blanc, but rather mawol. that’s, you guessed it, brown. he said compared to the haitian kids, i was white. so i guess it really is all about perspective. then i looked at my team members & noticed the haitian sun tanned them darker than me. making me blancier than a blanc.

i’ve discovered all haitians love to see their images captured on the LCD screen of my camera. for people who have next to nothing, they certainly don’t have a mirror & therefore don’t know what their reflections look like. can you imagine taking a picture with your friends & staring at the 2 inch screen on a camera & only knowing which one you are in the crowd by process of elimination? for you know which ones are your friends & which one is the stranger. i can’t imagine it for myself. but i have witnessed a haitian kid discover his own face. and that realization is full of pure innocent giggling glee.

haitian creole word of the day: souri is smile. & for the camera sky kids, i’d say show dal. show teeth. a phrase my father says to get people to laugh. which apparently works just as well in haiti as it does in america. thanks dad.

• • • click here for even more pictures of cité soleil • • •

i came to haiti to work with a friend’s non-profit, print 4 change. a printing company outta minneapolis that donates half of their profits to ending poverty in haiti. that’s right. half. as in 5-0 percent. think about that for a second. imagine giving HALF your paycheck EVERY payday to someone who needs it more than you.

before leaving new york, i knew P4C helped bring water to the slums & supported two orphanages. but then you come down here & someone causally gestures & mentions “oh, we dug that well.” or points & says “we pay the teachers’ salaries at that school.” or motions towards a covering they put on a school building’s roof so the high school kids who have class up there wouldn’t have sun or rain affecting their education schedule. can you imagine? plotting geometry graphs while baking in 100 degree weather? or stopping your english lesson in mid sentence because it starts to downpour & you need to run for cover?

today we joined one of the water truck’s daily runs to cité soleil (that’s sun city to you), the largest slum in the western hemisphere with over 300,000 people living together without sewers, electricity, any sort of healthcare or stores to buy life’s necessities. and forget having any clean drinking water. 2 trucks bring 6,000 gallons of fresh well water 4 times a day, 6 days a week. that’s 500,000 gallons a month. sadly, even with that much water, not everyone who needs water gets water. which is a pain acutely felt by P4C. especially since P4C is the only source of free water in cité soleil. other people come here with water, but they charge for it. cause after all, water is a commodity. for the rich & the poor.

each time you pull into a neighborhood with the water truck, your presence is announced by the herd of kids, dressed in rags or sometimes in nothing at all, that run in the wake of the truck’s exhaust pipe shouting with glee. and then the buckets come out. huge 5-gallon buckets stacked on top of each other, stretching far beyond the reach of the water truck’s hose. the buckets fill up & women from the age of 11 to 71 balance 5 gallons of water on their heads often while carrying another by hand & start the trek back home. their grace at walking without spilling a drop of their precious liquid gold puts us wimpy americans to shame. for there simply is no workout at the gym that would ever prepare us to live with the kind of strength these women possess.

being with these joyful children & laughing adults in cité soleil felt spiritual & a blessing. and completely safe. despite the shooting that happened the day before. a much loved man who lived there & brought in food to feed the starving was gunned down in the street. the shooter then ran into the tent city part of the slum to take refuge. but the supporters of the victim banded together & started to burn down the tent city to suss out his hiding spot while cutting off any possible escape route. yes, people who have nothing to sleep under but the foreign-aid provided tent over their heads sacrificed their own homes & burned down their own neighborhood all to capture a criminal. with no concern for where they would sleep that night. they just wanted to get the guy that killed one of their own. and it worked. within 24 hours, evil was rotting in jail.

haitian creole word of the day: dlo means water. kinda hard to pronounce & sadly for some, even harder to get.

• • • click here for even more pictures of jacmel • • •

i’m in jacmel, a beautiful port city in the south of haiti. an old french city from haiti’s colonization days. in fact, the french quarters of new orleans got its look & flavor from jacmel. oh la la, sacre bleu! the draw of the city is the gorgeous coastline, slower pace & cooler temps. only 91 & muggy with nightly downpours.

funniest thing is to see haitian people’s reaction to me. one look at me & they say “you are from haaaaaaaaiti” dragging out the last word with a slight inflection to turn it into a question. i can see their thought process. you’re not black. you’re not white. so what exactly ARE you???

there are two modes of public transportation: school buses & tap-taps. yes, school buses. as in the big, yellow ones you took to elementary school, donated by america & turned into the national bus service. there are so many on the streets, you think the final bell just rang at school. but no, it’s just the locals paying to get from point A to point B. tap-taps are pickup trucks with a nod for the intense sun or intense random rainstorm by providing a metal cover over the truck bed where customers sit. people pay a small amount to get a ride going in the general direction they want to go. and you guessed it, you tap-tap on the truck to hop on & hop off.

jacmel is full of descriptively named hotels. from the shady hotel, bar & restaurant to the peace of mind hotel. and of the two, i’d prefer the shady hotel. at least they’re honest about their business model.

and for the heartbreak bit, you still see the results of the earthquake. from cracks in the asphalt where the world split apart to the random building that is just a pile of rubble to an iron beam holding up a wall that lost its support to the entire countryside dotted with tents provided by foreign aid organizations for the displaced. but it’s heartening to see the newly built row of one room houses with doors & windows & locks & curtains–the work of numerous non-profits in haiti creating homes for the homeless.

and now the work really begins, working with & photographing the work of a wonderful NGO (that’s non-governmental organization to you) in port-au-prince. stay tuned for that adventure.

• • • click here for even more pictures of mumbai • • •

the past few days in mumbai have been full of absolute loud, crazy, religious chaos. of the good kind. the people of bombay love to celebrate ganesha chuturthi, an 11 day festival in honor of the hindu elephant-headed god ganesh. it’s full of spontaneous music, dancing in the streets, random parades, colorful powder, flashing lights, beautiful flowers & millions upon millions of ganesh statues traveling through the streets on gigantic floats.

at sunrise one morning, my mother & i walked 15 km barefoot through the streets of mumbai to a ganesh temple as a pilgrimage. and no, your eyes do not deceive. i said barefoot. the streets of mumbai are much like NYC streets. cept where the city is all about dodging piles of doggie doo, here it’s all about dodging cow poo. will say this though. bovine excrement is bigger, greener & mushier. which makes avoiding it an obstacle course of epic consequences.

and yes, i do feel sorry for the woman who’s giving me a pedicure the day i return to western civilization.

the ganesh festival ends with the resurgence, where all the ganeshes are paraded to the beach & walked into the water. i joined my aunt’s parade in bringing her 5 foot 8 inch bejeweled ganesh statue to juhu beach & submerging it in the waves. needless to say, partaking in this centuries old tradition was truly powerful & simply spectacular, never to be forgotten.

the past three weeks in india made me realize one thing. just how much i love my toilet. it’s white & clean. it has a seat & flushes on command. and there’s always a roll of angel soft toilet paper nearby. oh, i’m getting weepy.

• • • click here for even more pictures of gujarat • • •

there’s a weird phenomenon occurring during monsoon season. the rivers are not very full. as in, you see more of the actual ground at the bottom of the bed then actual water. and apparently during the dry season, there’s absolutely no water in the river beds. so people just walk across them to get to the other side. but drive 50 km down the road & you see water on both sides of the road all the way to the horizon line. so after asking what’s the name of the lake, the response comes back with “uh, those are fields.” fields upon fields that are completely flooded with rain water. and the weirdest thing, the water isn’t still. but has tiny little waves like it wants to be the ocean. so you’re driving down this straight road that leads to infinity, completely surrounded by moving water. and if the world was flat, i swear i would have driven right off it. just like the pre-galileo people insisted i would.

my mother spent one exceptionally long car ride explaining to our driver the differences between the roads of india vs the US. chiefly how american highways are paved with lane markers. there are no cows, dogs, goats, camels, ox, or people roaming around on them. the grassy sides are not used as public toilets. the asphalt is not one big spittoon. and of all these mind boggling declarations, the one that boggled the driver’s mind the most was “no cows??? there are no cows on the streets of america?” uh no. the only way americans know cows exist is by the picture of one on their milk cartons.

oh & one of the aforementioned indian cows butt-butted my mother. butt-butted. as opposed to the more commonly witnessed head-butt. and yes, i laughed. really loudly. for a long time.

indians are fearless. while sitting in my idle car at the train tracks waiting for the train to pass, people just walked willy-nilly across the tracks. some pulled their goats. others carried their babies. all while the train was coming. not in the distance. but eminently. as in the headlight was a bright spotlight featuring the jay walkers. at first, i thought it was all sheer lunacy. but then i realized, i cross in front of speeding NYC cabs. indians cross in front of speeding trains. and really, what’s the difference? other than the sound of impact of an ill-timed jay walk?

oh & ps, turns out, peeing in a hole in the ground while on a moving train is not such a good idea.

• • • click here for even more pictures of tj college • • •

in the village my mom grew up in, there’s a college built in my grandmother’s name. basically, all the money from my grandparents’ estate built the first commerce college in english medium in the state of gujarat. which apparently is a big deal. especially for when indians take over the world. along with chinese.

in india, every child takes their father’s name as his or her middle name. but once a woman gets married, she changes her middle name from her father’s to her husband’s. since she is now the property of her husband. yes, the thinking is a little convoluted, but hey, it’s tradition. so in naming the college after my grandmother, the college has both of my grandparents’ names. kinda special if you think about it. which i have, so it is.

there’s some pretty amazing bits bout the college. the design of the school alone is impressive. especially for india. almost a blend of art deco & swiss architecture. the art director granddaughter in me highly approves. the reputation of the college is also pretty reputable. found this out when my mom & i stopped by my grandparents’ home & talked to the family renting it. the daughter is in her last year of high school & when asked if she wants to go to college next year, she gave this gorgeous bright smile and said “i want to go to TJ college!” i actually got the tingly shivers hearing that declaration, thinking to live in the house of the college’s namesake has into translate to good karmic forces for her future.

i do love visiting my grandparents’ house. even though they’re no longer there, i’ll find a gorgeous old photo of my grandfather hanging on the wall of an empty room. or portraits of my great-grandparents over a doorway. and walking around on the roof, my mother pointed out where she & her siblings would jump a good 10 feet down onto adjacent houses to go fly kites as kids. when i asked if i could jump off, she said absolutely not. that i could break my arms, legs, back & neck. and no, she did not see the blatant hypocrisy in her mothering.

rumor has it as a direct descendant of my grandmother, i get automatic acceptance to the college. which is rather useful since only a few hundred get accepted out of the thousands upon millions upon billions of people who apply. (there’s a lot of indians in the world. especially in india.) not sure if i’ll take advantage of this offer since i’ve seen the girls’ bathroom and was not impressed. i have no shame in admitting the quality of a country’s sanitation department determines how long i will last in said country. and this is not a problem that can be solved with some airwick plug-ins in a nice floral scent.

but seeing my grandmother’s name on the college & the bust of her in the entryway of the school made me realize that while my grandparents are no longer around, nor are their children or grandchildren or even great-grandchildren ever going to live in india, my grandparents will forever have a presence in the village that my family has been a part of since the year 1300 A.D.

yup, pretty damn cool.

• • • click here for even more pictures of maharashtra • • •

something has happened to the india i remember. this one doesn’t smell. before, the doors of the plane would open & the smell would physically hit you. that overwhelming stench. (and let’s face it, you know what smell i’m referring to.) you just wanted to stay on the plane & go back with it. you were even willing to help the flight attendants clean the plane so it gets ready to go back even faster. but now, there’s no smell. only clue you’re in india is the overabundance of indians. although it is monsoon season. so everything is wet. the air is wet. the smell is wet. this keyboard is wet. oh wait, maybe that india smell is just masked by the wet monsoon smell. i hope i make it out before monsoon season is over.

the benefit of monsoon season is everything is a luscious green. so green, it’s radioactive, almost yellow. but that yellow could be due to the number of men i’ve witnessed urinating on the side of the roads. even with india’s obscene population count, there’s a disproportionally large number of men peeing 5 feet from my passing car. contributing to that brilliant yellow hue i’ve grown so fond of.

and no one riding a motorcycle wears a helmet. i wonder if there’s even a law for the use of one. or maybe the indian gov’t considers the lack of them a form of population control.

my driver does have this fond habit of spitting out of the car. as in, while flying down the freeway, and i do mean flying, he’ll open the door, lean all the way out & hawk up a big one. and while he’s kissing asphalt, i’m watching him kiss asphalt. which means no one in the car is watching the road. and i’m okay with that. if i’m to become indian roadkill, i’d prefer not to be forewarned. i kind of like the idea of a surprise ending.

and why oh why do i keep visiting countries that qualify a hole in the ground as a worthy toilet?

• • • click here for even more pictures of phuket • • •

i didn’t think it could get worse than 103 hot & humid.
i was wrong.

• • • click here for even more pictures of everywhere else • • •

before booking a trip to an exotic location, you’d think the first thing on the to-do list would be to check the weather and figure out the best time of year to go. and if that happened before boarding the thailand-bound plane, i definitely would not have gotten on. cause it would have been discovered that thailand has 3 seasons: hot, hotter & mind-meltingly hot. and april is the HOTTEST month of the mind-meltingly hot season. now check the date, folks. and now, take pity on me. take pity on the puddle formerly known as babita patel.

now that we’re outta bangkok and into the northern hills of thailand, it has just gotten hotter. so i’ve spent the past week hopscotching from one sliver of shade to the next. from standing in front of one oscillating fan to the next. fantasizing about my next shower. and please, if i don’t make it home, send in the army, navy, US coast guard, anyone to clean up the spill that is bp.

and now for a vocab lesson. thai means freedom. the king changed the name siam to thailand (“land of freedom”) to reinforce the pride of being the only southeast asian country never to be ruled by a foreign nation. pad means stir. so pad thai means stir freedom. kinda funny in a sweet way. and somehow makes the act of congress to change french fries to freedom fries seem even more absurd.

and i firmly believe every restaurant in thailand has only 1 chef. cause meals come out 1 at a time. so to feed a table of 8 people, it takes a good 2 hours. and you’d think you’d want to be the first one to get served at your table. but not really. by the time the last person gets served, the first person to get served is usually hungry again. and you’re completely outta luck if another big group gets to the restaurant seconds before you. they work on a first come first serve basis. but last night, went to a five star restaurant. could tell the rating cause 2 meals came out at a time. translation: 2 chefs.

or maybe restaurants have multiple chefs, but just one pot. hmmm….

now, it’s time for me to go sit on a block of ice.

• • • click here for even more pictures of the elephant farm • • •

spent the morning at an elephant farm. elephants are incredibly sweet, gentle, intelligent, playful giants. they just want to eat & make friends. and if they get a good mahout to take care of them, they can live 75, 80 years. usually outliving their owners.

i shook hands with an elephant today. and by hands, i mean my hand to his trunk. after which he sneezed on me. little friendly advice. if given the choice of getting sneezed on by a horse or an elephant. pick the horse. always. pick. the. horse. i know. i now have experience with both encounters. go with the horse.

cause A: a lot more comes out when an elephant projectiles. and 2: elephant snot is goopier. so as it slides down your arm, it leaves a slimy track on your bare skin. which is actually rather convenient. you know exactly where to scrub the bleach. and whether you missed a spot.

i also rode on an elephant that meandered thru a river. there’s nothing like looking down, seeing a brown spherical object float by, pointing and exclaiming “oh look, a coconut!” only to have the response be “that’s not a coconut.”

• • • click here for even more pictures of burma • • •

so i just spent the day in burma. excuse me, myanmar.
and omigod, am i coming back. and i’m not just saying that cause it’s 5 degrees cooler here than in thailand.

it’s stunningly gorgeous in that hole-in-wall way only a hole-in-wall country can be.

course, it is the poor man’s thailand. roads are not paved. dirt everywhere. standard of living sucks. the difference between the 2 countries is noticeable the second you walk across the river. everything just looks more run down. esp our mode of transportation. didn’t think the motorcart was going to make it up the hill. started taking bets when we’d have to officially get out and push it. at one point, it went backwards down the steep hill. and yes, i feared for my safety. esp since there was only one helmet and the driver decided he should get it.

the junta military gov’t is def as scary as they are made to seem. saw some men in uniform heading in one direction. they shot back a fierce look. decided to be glad i was heading in the opposite direction. up that hill in a motorcart that wasn’t going to make it. and if you question the extent of the gov’t control, just know they confiscate your passport at the border. as in, you hand it over to get it stamped and they don’t give it back. so if you get thrown in jail while in myanmar, the gov’t can take your passport and sell it on the black market. and since the US passport gets top dollar, it’s not a bad way to rule your country. if you’re the crazy-dictator-bent-on-keeping-basic-freedoms-from-your-people type.

def the shortest visit to a foreign country by far. spent more time in canada to see the canadian side of niagra falls. but i will be back. to burma, not canada.

til next time, burma!

• • • click here for even more pictures of bangkok • • •

have to start off by saying that any airline that got rid of their smoking section—which should be every airline by now—should convert those areas into no-kids sections. there’s nothing worse than a kid screaming for 14.5 hours out of a 15 hour flight. actually, correction. the only thing worse than a kid screaming for said 14.5 hours is her mother SCREAMING in mandarin for said 14.5 hours for said kid to stop screaming for said 14.5 hours. and if this no-kids section offends parents out there, deal with it. i don’t have a kid cause i don’t want do hear him screaming for 14.5 hours. what makes you think i want to hear a stranger’s spawn scream for the aforementioned 14.5 hours?

that said, bangkok is a beautiful, clean, modern city. almost surprisingly so for an overcrowded, tropical, aisian metropolis. the taxis come in all colors too. magenta, electric blue, canary yellow, kelly green, fire engine red, bright orange. the fun comes from trying to decide which color taxi to take that day. much like the fun in trying to decide which color underwear to wear that day.

there are political demonstrations going on right now. the red shirt party has taken over huge sections of BKK, creating huge traffic jams. although it’s all super organized and peaceful. the rallies feel more like st patrick’s day parades, minus the debauchery. everyone is smiling & waving & cheering. even the ladyboy protesters.

their grievance…the ex-prime minister took all the taxpayers’ money and skipped off to london to spend it all. obviously, he no longer has his job in this country, but the protesters want him back in power. course if he sets foot in thailand again, he’s going straight to jail, so the red shirt party isn’t going to get what they want. but hey, they’ll keep protesting. mainly cause the ex-pm is paying each demonstrator 500 baht per day of protesting. not a bad gig for a farmer who only makes 50 baht per day. that’s a buck 66 in american speak. it’s nice to see another country’s political whims reach levels of absurdity that match our own. wonder if the tea partiers know they got a raw deal by not having bush pay them for all the ruckus they create?

now it’s off to the north, where rumor has it the morning temps reach a cool 103 F.
oh joy.