Christmas on the Horizon

With it being sunny and a constant 80 degrees, it is hard for us to fathom it is Christmas season.  With Hinduism being the major religion in the area we live, Christmas doesn’t appear to be a major holiday.  Besides a random collection of small shops in an alley Mike and I ran into, we have yet to see any Christmas decorations.  We decided early on we had to put in effort to make our apartment feel like Christmas to lighten the weight of missing it back home.  Luckily for us, my mom had sent some fun paper and ribbon to help us out.  I started by decorating our door with snowflakes and ribbon:

One of our friends who works for Sahara, Tanya, was going to be gone for Christmas so she gave us all her Christmas decorations. The random collection included sparkly snowflakes (which we hung on the living room ceiling), a small, fake Christmas tree (which is now has candy canes from Annie piled high on it!), some snowmen, and Santa Clauses.  It also included the classic elf hat that is fashioned in some of these pictures.  It has a rigidity that I’ve never seen before in a hat. 

The next feat was creating stockings.  My mom made us beautiful stockings for a shower gift last year, but we didn’t want to ruin them by carting them off here.  So we had to be creative.  We found a needle and thread in our apartment and bought 10 Rs (~20 cents) handkerchiefs.  I ended up buying a smaller one because I liked the design better but somehow Mike’s creation turned out a great deal smaller than mine.  I guess I’m expecting more stocking stuffers than him!  (mine is the bigger, plaid one)

  

There you have it: our attempts to decorate Christmas style.  We are starting to brainstorm the actual Christmas celebration, but honestly I will have my own personal Christmas on December 30, when my favorite sister in the whole world comes to visit.  We have a paperchain counting down the days, and it is a highlight to take down the chains everyday.  Today: 17 days away.  That’ll be a day to celebrate for sure. 

Cheese Exhibition at ABC Farms

This weekend brought us an unexpected taste of Wisconsin right in our neighborhood in the form was a cheese exhibition held this weekend at a local collective of restaurants near our house.  These restaurants are all part of ABC Farms, which are a collection of restaurants and a dairy that promote the use of local, organic ingredients.  It’s very similar to the Buy Fresh, Buy Local movement that some Madison restaurants are a part of.  Anyways, Saturday there was this exhibition that featured at least 15 different cheeses all made at ABC Farms, as well as local wine vendors from across the state of Maharashatra (the Indian state we’re living in).  All of the cheeses they had spread across a large vertical cross section of a tree and they had people that would give you large samples of any and all the cheeses you wished.  We decided to take home mild edam, boursin with paprika, and colby along with a white wine from Nasik Valley.  We made a night out of it and had cheese, crackers and wine while listening to a Radio Lab podcast.  It was an unexpected surprise that ended up making our weekend quite special.

Sahara Aalhad

I know it’s been a long time coming, but now is as good a time as ever for a post about the NGO that Bub and I work at. We’ve also had sufficient enough time there to give a pretty accurate description of what they are all about.

Sahara Aalhad has been working in Pune since 1998 and is an offshoot of the original Sahara House in Delhi which started in 1978. Sahara Aalhad has been in three different locations in Pune before finally settling about 10km out of the main city. This was because when a neighborhood would find out that they were working with HIV positive people they would kick them out. There are four major projects run by Sahara. The first is the care home itself that has a capacity of about 40 people and is staffed by only one full-time nurse. The other staff at Sahara; caretakers, cooks, accountant, project managers are about 15 people. Ninety percent of them are former patients of Sahara, either HIV patients or drug rehab patients. Currently there are about 17 patients living at Sahara.

The second project run by Sahara is a truckstop awareness program. There are about 18 different truckstops that a staff of about 5 people go to to facilitate awareness sessions, on the spot HIV testing, counseling sessions, and condom distribution. They have identified truck drivers as being an especially high risk population because of their frequent dealing with sex workers.

The third project of Sahara is a drug therapy center about 20km from Pune in a slum in Pimpri. The program is only a few years old and operates out of a small, tin-roof shed about 15ft by 25ft. The program’s main focus is to prevent intravenous drug users from injecting and instead provide them with a government subsidized replacement drug that gives them the same high. The idea here is that these drug users don’t have to pool all their money into buying drugs and that taking the drugs orally will eliminate the risks of infection associated with intravenous drugs.

The last project of Sahara is a program called IGP, income generating project. Trainers are brought in from outside to teach some of the patients at Sahara how to make handicrafts like bags, shawls, books, cards and jewelry. The director of Sahara just opened a store, today in-fact, that sells these products exclusively. These products are amazing and of very high quality and character.

The main things that Bub and I have been helping with is with the office work. So far we’ve done everything from helping with fundraising to writing grants for a the care home and a potential women’s shelter they want to start. No word yet on if those grants have been accepted yet or not, but we’re still crossing our fingers. The experience has been very positive for us. We’ve met so many amazing people from Sahara and from working with Sahara’s partners in Pune.

And some pictures…

These are some of the drug rehab patients playing carrom. Bub and I were able to play with them and hold our own, though the patients that were playing were pretty high on the replacement drugs so…

Here is a picture of Sahara Aalhad. We took this picture for a brochure that we put together for Sahara recently. The building is tucked well enough back from the main road. It takes Bub and I about an hour to get there everyday from home with a 40 min walk and a 20 min six-seater rickshaw ride.

This is Bolla, one of the little boys that lives at Sahara. Him and his mother live at Sahara along with his little 1-month old brother. Bolla LOVED the camera I had and insisted on posing a few more times for pictures. He is very inquisitive, has a lot of energy and loves to do just about anything with Bub and I.

My Students

Here are snapshots of some of my students.  I just have to say photos don’t do these kids justice, they don’t capture all the life that these kids have nor all the energy…but you can use your imagination (though some need less imagination…)

 

 

Sports Day

Last week the school had Sports Day, a great day of fun for the kids.  They marched, skipped, and ran in between building human pyramids and racing between classes with random relays.  The school was split into colored groups, with mixed grades and abilities.   Since I wasn’t really doing anything important, I took a lot of pictures, mostly of my students close up.  Sometimes I got in trouble when the kids got really excited to have their picture taken and started being rowdy.  oops.  Here are some pictures from it.  (fun things to note: 1. they had a “mom run” at least in my terms, but the fourth picture down is random moms running.  2.  they had a ribbon dance.  the song the played was also played for every other race or event, and it got stuck in my head.  3.  if you take a picture of one kid, five or six other kids try to dive into the picture) 

 

Library Mural

Anne has been remodeling and reorganizing the library in a big way.  I wanted to contribute in a way I know how—painting a mural!  I still have to add a book title and a fun library quote over the top but it is essentially finished.  I took a combination of clipart I found and then drew a mural with the different animals.  I drew it on the wall and started painting away.  Mike and Anne helped a lot as well, it’s a result of everyone’s efforts.  I may be partial but I think it adds a little life and fun to the library.  I also painted a little mouse reading in one of the corners that will be posted shortly I’m sure.