Dave's Travel Blog

As much as I love baseball and am entirely engrossed in the omnipresent war between Boston and New York, they have never fought a real war. India and Pakistan, however, have fought several and are seemingly always on the brink of another. For one night at least, the tensions between these two former brothers and geopolitical rivals were constrained to a proxy battle on the cricket fields of South Africa.

The ICC World Twenty20 cricket tournament kicked off last week to a surprisingly small amount of fanfare given the nearly unhealthy level of obsession with the sport here in India. The tournament boasted a slightly new form of cricket, and India responded by holding some of their veterans at home; choosing instead to field a lineup of youngsters. Heading this group was MS Dhoni, the newly christened and surprising choice as captain. As the tournament progressed, India won several matches and the momentum and excitement began to build around Mumbai. Meanwhile, sneaking through the opposite bracket was Pakistan, improbably setting the stage for an unexpected clash of the fiercest rivalry in the world. On Friday, after Pakistan rolled over New Zealand and India trounced heavily-favored Australia, the match-up was set and the build-up began.

I got up at 6:00 this morning so I could ride to Pune, the second largest city in Maharashtra, to pack some testing kits and send them to Delhi. It was not the most exciting work, and the four-hour drive each way was not made more bearable by the fact that I had to wait several hours for the courier to arrive and take possession of the goods. I didn’t return to Mumbai until around 8:00pm, well after the 5:30 start of the final match. Luckily for me, the match started late and I arrived in time to witness a furious Pakistani comeback. They were on the verge of victory, and nationwide depression was beginning to take hold, until India salvaged a miraculous win! No sooner was the final ball caught than the firecrackers began exploding all over Mumbai. Laura and I took to the streets with the cheering masses, and as I write this the firecrackers are still popping and the streets are clogged with hordes of deliriously happy fans waving the Indian tri-color.

I think I’m beginning to become a cricket fan.

Today started with a visit to a slum, home to 4 lakh (400,000) people, reached its zenith at a support group meeting with 7 gay and transsexual Indian men, and culminated with watching a group of kids build a human pyramid that was nearly 4 stories tall. And I'm still not sure what to make of it all.

Laura and I have scheduled a bunch of meetings for this week with various NGOs in an effort to find children who might be infected with HIV but have been unable to access treatment. Most of the organizations we are meeting with target and work with high-risk groups, such as commercial sex workers or men who have sex with men. Our mission is to find out what they are doing to help the children of their target populations and to help where necessary. This morning we met with a group that works with floating sex workers (based on street corners rather than in brothels) and live almost exclusively in a large slum in the north of Mumbai, which, as previously mentioned, over 400,000 people call home. After a very productive meeting, the head of the NGO took it upon herself to show us their treatment clinic and give us a brief tour of the surrounding slum. The featured sight was the local hospital, which looked to be worse than derelict and would have been fortunate to have been condemned. The whole area managed to exceed my worst expectations of a slum in every category, most noticeably in overall odor.

After our auto-rickshaw tour concluded, we holed up in a cafe to type and submit reports for a few hours until our next meeting. This one was with one of the few organizations for gay men in all of India, and the only one in Mumbai. They work with over 60,000 men; a remarkable figure considering that homosexuality is illegal. Of these, untold thousands are married and have children due to societal pressures. After meeting with the director and planning ways to help them get their spouses and children tested without raising suspicion about their hidden sexual identity, he invited us to sit in on a support group meeting for HIV+ gay and transsexual men. Despite our reticence, owing to the fact that we were entirely unprepared and had no idea how we would communicate with the Hindi and Marathi speaking members, we agreed. The meeting ended up going better than I could have hoped, as two members spoke English and served as translators while we had an incredibly fruitful discussion about how to provide access to HIV testing and treatment to gay men and their families without compromising their identity. There was such enthusiasm from this group, despite their HIV+ status and position in society, about helping children, that I found it positively inspiring.

Finally, on our way home at 8pm (after getting up at 7:30am), we found the horrendous Mumbai traffic to be even more congested than usual. We finally figured out that this was due to the fact that today is Krishna Janmashtami; the day that Hindus celebrate the birth of the Lord Krishna. The festivities are capped by roving mandals, or districts, of children who travel around the city on chartered dump trucks. Seemingly every community sets up a handi, which is a string, garnished with flowers, suspended high in the air, usually between two buildings and around 3 stories tall. These mandals of children in dump trucks go to each handi and make a human pyramid and attempt to break the clay pot suspended on the string. The highest pyramid in each community receives a fairly substantial cash prize. In practice, it amounts to roads being closed and huge crowds of singing and dancing people watching these pyramids go up, one after the other, all night long. What a country, and what a day. And now I'm going to bed.

I apologize for this all-too-lengthy delay in updating my blog; especially since I know you are all breathlessly awaiting each installment. The reason I have been unable to write recently is simply that I have had no internet access. Laura and I are now in Mumbai, and our office does not have internet. We were issued data cards, by which we can access the internet via mobile phone signals, but the ones we were given were slightly deficient, to put it nicely. However, we have now procured functioning data cards, the internet has been restored, and you can all relax knowing that you will again be able to enjoy the sublime intricacies of my prose.

But on a serious note, these few days without internet has also given me a backlog of work which, shockingly, takes precedence over updating my blog. So a full update will be forthcoming, presumably this weekend, and until then thank you for your patience.

And now that the serious note is over, I have a question for all of you. I am shocked and appalled at the lack of snarky comments left by my loyal readers. Why is this? How come nobody has yet to make fun of me or my writing? I'm looking at you, Derek Mullins, and you, Katie Macelbner.

CHAI, unfortunately, does not, in this case, refer to the delicious form of Indian tea. Rather it stands for the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative; the organization with which Laura and I will be affiliated for at least the next six months. As for what exactly we will be doing as a part of CHAI, we are still somewhat unsure.

We have been in Delhi, the capital of India, for a full week now. Since our unexpectedly adventurous arrival we have been logging 10 hour days at the office while trying to see the city, meet our co-workers, and get over jet lag in our spare time. We have volunteered to become a part of the pediatric (or paediatric, as they spell it here in this formerly British colony) division of CHAI; a rapidly growing department since children are difficult to diagnose and treat for HIV/AIDS and are thus disproportionately under-treated. Much of our exhaustive work week has been spent meeting with various staff members throughout the pediatric program in an attempt to understand the structure of the organization and what we will be doing. So far it seems as though we will be working extensively in a program to identify more children who are infected with HIV and help them get to the treatment which the Clinton Foundation and the Government of India provide, free of charge. I'll write about how this is done when I actually understand how it is done.

At the end of this upcoming week, Laura and I will depart Delhi for Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where we will be stationed during out tenure. Mumbai is a nice, relaxing, calm town of about 20 million people. That's right 20 million people, which makes it the largest urban area in the entire world. Needless to say, I don't actually expect it to be relaxing or calm. Mumbai is the capital city of the state of Maharashtra, which as a whole clocks in at an astounding 96 million people. If it were its own country it would rank 12th in terms of population, and in terms of landmass it is slightly bigger than Norway and just a hair smaller than Poland. In other words, it's a bit bigger than Rhode Island. Once we arrive there we will be working in the CHAI field office, responsible for the entire state, with a goal of getting several thousand sick children on treatment. The work promises to be challenging and exhausting, and I can only hope it also proves to be rewarding.

Next installment: An Introduction to India

I'm writing to from our hotel in Delhi - it's been quite an adventure since we New York. The flight was fine (albeit long), and Laura and I both managed to do a good bit of sleeping and have read most of Harry Potter. However, when we arrived through customs there was nobody to meet us. After several hours of frantic (unanswered) phone calls and patrolling the welcome area for our driver, we gave up and retreated to a (very nice) hotel. We managed to log on to the internet and found an email from Vishal, our director, asking us where we were since his driver was unable to find us at the airport. Luckily he provided us with his correct cell phone number, and we have now been able to make contact and sort everything out. We still have no idea why we missed the driver who was allegedly at the gate waiting for us, but they will come get us from the hotel in the AM and take us to where we will be staying. All is well now that this has been fixed, and now we are going to bed.