A fantastic break

Posted by Mikkel & Janine
After many weeks of hard work (see for instance the pictures from previous posting of which the text unfortunately went missing due to dehydration of our bodies in a very hot and musty internet cafe as well as a nearby beach calling us :-)) we really felt we deserved a holiday. Besides, we had a highly distinguished delegation of 6 Danes to attend to! Two of them, Kenneth and Sarah, were even brave enough to come to Chennai. So we had the honour of showing them all the beautiful sights of our present home town. That is unfortunately done pretty fast so the second day we went to a quiet (and clean) beach just south of Chennai.

After the weekend here with Sarah and Kenneth, we took the night train to Kerala on the west coast where we would meet the rest of the Danish delegation. Kerala, “a stunning region of coconut groves, astonishing rivers, paddy-fields and idyllic palmfringed beaches” according to our companion “the Lonely” [Planet], proved to be a great choice. The 8 man strong delegation now existed of Sarah, Morten, Oskar (their 2-year old son, hereafter referred to as “the baby”), Brian and of course Sarah and Kenneth and the two of us. In our first week we floated along palmtrees while eating delicious masala style tiger prawns on our deluxe houseboat; we rubbed down elephants in a river; saw a traditional (but also rather boring) Indian dance performance, got a traditional rather intimate Indian massage (could have been more boring), got sunburned on ‘secret beaches’ (some more burned than others) and walked through cute villages where cute people always wanted to touch the cute cheeks of ‘our’ cute baby.

The second week started a bit more “off the beaten track” as the Lonely would probably call it. Mikkel had read about the small village where people were crazy about football; quite a rare case in this cricket-focused country. After almost endless questioning about this rare phenomenon of Indian football maniacs we finally found someone who knew the place. It turned out to be a very poor village. They were indeed crazy about the sport, although their only place to play was an old slaughterhouse or the beach. They didn’t really have enough footballs or clothes but they did have 12 clubs and knew (better than Janine) when the dutchies won the world cup! Our visit didn’t stay unnoticed: we were accompanied by a whole crew of reporters including a cameraman, two journalists and a photographer as well as somewhere between 50-100 local people. At the end the tv-crew wanted to finish off with a couple of questions for us in front of a running camera and a crowd of 50 people: “What are you going to do to help this village?” … You should have been there to hear Mikkel’s and Morten's mumbling replies!

We never got to see our 15 minutes of fame, because we were taking the night train to Goa that evening. This train ride in itself turned out to be quite adventurous, since the “5-minute stop” at the station 6 o’clock in the morning suddenly turned out to be a 1 minute stop instead. And you can’t get 5 people, 5 backpacks, a number of smaller rucksacks, a baby trolley and a baby out of a coupe through two narrow train doors in such a short time. Or…can you? (We leave this part up to anyone’s imagination, but we like to give some hints: only one person (and no luggage whatsoever) remained in the train although this was mostly due to the train personnel holding him back, one person learned the hard way how you are not supposed to jump out of a moving train, and the baby got out safe and sound due to the responsible and spectacular moves of a white superman who must have watched too many action movies set aboard running trains!)

After all this hard work of performing on tv and jumping out of trains at 6 in the morning, we opted for the “do-nothing-on-a-beach-for-five-days-plan”. Goan style: sun bathing (the only place in India where you can swim in bikini without Indian male audience), a bit of yoga on a rock, a book, some cocktails, playing in the sand with the baby, seafood, seafood, food… Did we mention it was a wonderful holiday?

We are now back in a rain drenched Chennai. The real rainy season started off this weekend with 24 hours of constant rain leaving 7 people killed from collapsing walls, large areas also in the center of Chennai flooded with up to half a meter of water in the streets and an unknown number of people homeless…and this is maybe just the beginning of a so far normal rainy season! So far our biggest problem has been to get our washing dry…

What a wonderful day!

Posted by Janine
Today, as I walked from the bus stop to our home, my foot suddenly (literally) kicked into something mushy. ‘What the heck?’ I thought. Then I saw the fresh brown drab between my toes, proudly produced by one of the many cows that wander on the roads. Great. At least I was on my way home so I could wash it off quickly, although this also turned out to be a bit of a challenge as the power was cut off once again, so I had to manage in the dark. This was my first day after the 2-week holiday we just returned from. What a day! It started with the realization that I had caught a cold, probably during a chilly tuktuk-ride in the rain, so I felt pretty miserable. This mood was soon worsened by the discovery that my wallet was gone. It must have mysteriously disappeared on the train or bus -or anywhere in between- on our way home yesterday. Perhaps it happened while I was holding someone’s baby in the bus (because I had a seating place and the mother didn’t) and my bag ended up under my seat? But it cannot be – the old cute lady next to me seemed to be carefully defending it by keeping her feet strongly tight around it. That’s the way people help each other here (at least I thought?) Anyway, the fact is that I lost 120 euros, which equals 2/3 months income for some people her. My only hope and consolation now is that it didn’t get stolen but that I lost it instead and that some person has a wonderful day (or week, or month)…

Janine @ work, in a school with 1000 pupils and 16 classrooms!

Our home (and a hardworking man)

Community involvement tandoori style

(Posted by Mikkel)

Our downstairs neighbour Ashok asked yesterday if I wanted to join him and a friend to see a planting project at the beach nearby our house. Apparently a certain type of palm tree works as a really good tsunami barrier. The Indian government wants to test if this plant actually can grow in the beach sand of the Bay of Bengal.

The majority of property along the beach here to the south of the city is owned by wealthy Indians who bought it as investments the last 5-10 years as the city started growing rapidly. In between these walled empty plots there are a number of poor villages and slum dwellings. After the tsunami the real estate prices close to the beach plummeted. They have apparently risen some again, but with the latest tsunami warning a couple of weeks ago they once again took a dive.

Now these palm trees that the Indian government wants to build as a tsunami barrier happen to have a flower with a very special smell. Among the Indian snake community (male and female alike) it is supposedly on a par with the most expensive ones from Dior, Hugo Boss and Calvin Klein! Cobras in particular are supposed to be crazy about the scents of these flowers, and the palm trees even offer a lot of nicely shaded area for the snakes to linger in, while they soak up there preferred perfumes.

So as you can imagine the villagers actually living here are not too thrilled about the palm trees. The day I went was a sort of inauguration of the whole thing. The project manager was there overseeing the planting (of course done by casual workers). To win over the hearts of the locals the plan was to get people from the local community to participate in the planting. The project manager’s driver was send to a nearby school to get some “locals”. Unfortunately the kids that came back with him tempted by free pepsis and seven ups where too young – there was a fear that the project could be seen as supporting child labour! The teacher that came with the children had a different agenda. She was trying to put pressure on the project manager to lobby for a new building for their school.

Luckily another batch of “locals” was summoned. This time young engineering students. Photos were taken with the students getting their hands dirty in the sand and the community involvement part of the project was considered over! My own hopes for a few minutes of fame were unfortunately killed immediately. A white face, I was told, in the middle of everything could cause confusion about who funded this tsunami project!

kameleon in our garden