June 16

5:30PM: I'm really starting to like Mumbai.  Today I had leftovers from last night, some thicker rotis, and some ghi with sugar cane treat.  Of course, we also had Mad Over Donuts again today.  Went by the mall and picked up 2 ties from a designer sari maker, Staya Paul.  At the mall I finally had pani puri.  Hopefully it doesn't crush my stomach.  Having dinner at Zakir Mama's house this evening.  Also did hanging gardens and took some video of the view.  But the highlight of the day was seeing Zakir Mama's store and learning more about his business.

This morning we spent time looking through all of Guli Massi's albums with Safia and Assif.  Noushad was there for a bit, but he left for school.  Seeing everyone from this side of the family has been really rewarding.  Tomorrow we're planning on going to Mira Road to see the rest of the local family.  I'll also show them the family pictures that I downloaded from mom for the trip.

Not sure if I'm getting used to the honking, but it seems like it's quieter today.  the weather has been pretty good today.  It rained for a bit, but stopped.  It was really humid at hanging gardens, but the temperature was fine.  The sheer number of people is still shocking to me.  Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn there are people.  And they build huts and shops in the tiniest of places.

11:51PM: Just got home.  Guli Massi corrected me on calling people aunty & uncle vs Massi & mama. Been trying all day to say the correct thing all day. Yasmin Massi made some awesome food tonight: kichri & khadi, prawn sak, roti, and biriyani. For dessert we had Mumbai mangos. Apparently, Guli Massi had been feeding me Gujarat mangos.  After dinner we watched cricket & some silly arm wrestling reality tv show.  Kaamil's car had a flat, so we took one of his friends bikes home.  He's definitely a faster driver than his dad and Assif, but I made it here in 1 piece.  Tomorrow, off to Mira Road and more family. I think we're going to JK out there.

June 15

8AM: Holy cold shower batman!  So, the bathroom floor is also the shower floor.  The toilet and sink are far enough away that you won't get them too wet by showering in the middle.  I did remember to move my toilet wipes... Oh yeah, did i mention theres no toilet paper here?  Last night when I got into the room, I was excited to see hot water faucets on the wall.  I should've known, they were just for decoration!

Only got a few hours of sleep last night. Guess I wasn't as tired as I thought. I bet tonight will be different.  Gulbanoo Aunty (GA) is coming by around 10 to grab me.  We'll then walk over to her her apartment and get breakfast.  Kaamil's will be meeting up with me later and then we're going to see the city and grab a few odds and ends.

4:45PM: Well, didn't get any odds and ends.  Learned a lot about the city.  Realized I still have a lot of self introspection to do.  Had McDonalds.

GA came by to get me around 10:30.  Khoja standard time is in full effect here!  Breakfast was awesome!  Fresh eggs, fresh roti, fresh chevro, & of course, chai.

Kaamil came by around 11:30.  First stop was Hassanabad.  Sultan Muhammad Shah's tomb was closed since they were doing work & even with the offer of a bribe, they weren't letting us in.  The tombs upstairs were open though.  It's so peaceful inside the tomb.  Even with the heat, there was a slight be breeze blowing across the marble which kept everything cool.

Next we went to different parts of the city.  Saw Diamond Jubilee School & Prince Aly Khan hospital. We parked near the Gateway to India and walked there to see it and the ocean.  Wow!  What a contrast: beautiful clean monuments, filthy ocean and parade grounds.  There was smog so thick, I felt like I was in LA.  From there we walked through the tourist trap shopping areas and saw cheap trinkets being sold to naive tourists for extraordinary prices.  The knock off business here beats China in my opinion.  I resisted buying souvenirs today in hopes of finding more genuine locally made things in Jodhpur.

Drove around a bit more and went to another ocean front view.  South Mumbai is huge!  The skyline was amazing!  Front there we were finally hungry, So being the good American I am, we went to McDonalds.  The Maharaja Mac was amazing!  Fries tasted the same here as they do back home. If I get a chance tomorrow, I'll try the Veggie Mac.

I didn't see last night were the sheer number of retail shops below every residential tower.  The Indians developed the live, work, play, pray concept a long time ago.  The Zoroastrians have similar compounds. In fact, at their graveyard, they don't burry the bodies.  They take them far into the sanctuary and allow vultures and nature's other carrion feeders to take care of the bodies.  It sounds cruel and weird, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of giving back to the life cycle of nature after death.

Rain came and went at different intervals today, but it wasn't too bad.  Tonight is Yeo me Ali, so we're going to Dharkana JK.  I'm off for a quick nap & another shower.  Speaking of showers, there is hot water available.  You have to turn the heater on.

12:25AM: This really is an amazing city.  Tonight, my 62 year old uncle had me on the back of his bike racing through the streets of Mumbai. Experiencing Mumbai on the back of a bike is organized chaos of a different sort.  In a car, the smell & the people don't really affect you and the cars are at least your equals.  On foot, everything is a potential hazard: tripping, people, cars, bikes, bicycles, trucks, pushcarts, horse carriages, etc.  On a bike, everything is a hazard, but you have the freedom of speed.  I finally relaxed into the ride about halfway from GA's place to Zakir's...this just means I relaxed the death grip on the handle behind me and wasn't squeezing my thighs as tightly to my small seat. The smell was the most interesting part.  Each person, car, bike, shop that we passed presented a new smell.  We would turn a corner and BAM!  It would hit you!

JK ceremonies are very different here compared to Atlanta.

After JK we visited with Mumtaz Aunty and then went to GA's place for dinner.  Mutton curry with fresh rotis and mango juice!  Yum yum!  Then it was off to Zakir's place for some visiting time and I showed them all them pictures of our family I brought.

Tonight is the lunar eclipse, so the tide will be high all day tomorrow which means the walk way to Haji Ali Mosque will be closed.

Totally forgot about Mad Over Donuts!  This place is awesome!  It puts all the donut shops back home to shame!

June 14 pics

Here are some shots from the BH Hotel.  The bathroom was all 1 room with a drain in the corner.  Nope, there was no toilet paper, hence the Cottonelle wipes.  It took a little getting used to, but most of the bathrooms in India are like this.

June 14

I flew out of Atlanta 24 hours ago.  Right now I'm sitting in a hotel room, the Bismillah Hotel (BH), in Mumbai.  It's 2:30AM local time, which is around 5PM in Atlanta.

The flights were good.  Had coach from Atlanta to Amsterdam, but had an awoke seat, so it wasn't too bad.  Got bumped to Business Class Elite from Amsterdam to Mumbai.  Let me tell you, if I could afford it, I'd travel Business Elite all the time!  Delta definitely took great care of me the whole trip.  Thanks again RS for the buddy pass!  I owe you bro!

When I landed in Mumbai, Customs & Immigration was a breeze.  Thanks FSD & Unatti for getting me all the info I needed for my Visa.  As soon as I exited the airport, I was looking for my cousin.  Not sure if Kaamil is my cousin, but that's now his title. Kaamil is the son of my mom's dad's sister's son.  I also met Gulbanoo Aunty who is my mom's dad's sister's daughter. Her brother, Zahkir, is Kaamil's father. Mumtaz is their sister.  There's also Assif, Noushad, Yasmin, and 2 other family members I met tonight. It's late & I don't remember their names.  Kaamil set me up at BH.  He figured I'd want my own space to sleep and get settled, at least for the first night. I'm not sure if they don't want me to stay at their place or if I would be in the way or what.  I just accepted it and we'll figure it out tomorrow.

From the airport, we went to Kaamil's place, met all of his family, then went to Gulbanoo Aunty's place to eat and meet everyone else.  To say places are small here is an understatement. I knew I was spoiled back home with my condo and the house I grew up in, but WOW!  Space is at such a premium because of the sheer number of people. Heck, at 2:30AM, there were people hanging out in the streets and traffic on the roads.

Living here is interesting.  In America, we have live, work, play concepts.  Here, they have live, pray concepts.  By that I mean, a lot of the Ismailies live in a gated or limited access community towers and the Jamat Khana (prayer hall) is the focus.  The apartments were built around the JKs. Kaamil's has promised to take me to the major centers tomorrow and I'll snap some pictures on my handy dandy new Flip that my awesome staff at Sutra got for me.

The food here is already amazing.  I have dietary restrictions because of my colitis so gharam masala & mercha are out.  This proved to be a huge challenge for Gulbanoo Aunty and company in preparing my dinner for tonight. But, I must say, they nailed it.  The chicken curry with fresh roti and sweetened mango juice was fantastic!  There was also some penda, which is a sweet dish, that they had brought from their recent trip to Gujarat.  It was amazing!

Speaking of roads, driving here is an adventure!  Since India was a British colony, everyone drives on the left side of the road and the drivers side is the right side of the car.  Very different. It's funny how you theoretically know something, but don't really know it until you experience it.  Honking, hooting, blowing the horn is a way of life.  Driving at night with no lights on or flashing your  brights takes some getting used to.  We did cross a huge suspension bridge that connects South Mumbai to Central Mumbai.  There are actually signs on the bridge telling people to stay in their lane and not to honk the horn.

From reading about India, I was expecting to smell it first... Like right when I got off the plane.  It's a different smell.  Maybe because of the rain (monsoon has already started) it didn't smell that bad.  The humidity took about 10 minutes to get used to after spending 16 hours in a plane that had ample AC, but it's fine now.  We'll see if that's what I'm saying tomorrow.  There's a sweet, cloying smell in the BH.  I'm getting used to it.

There's so much more that's just running through my head, but I need to get some sleep.  Tomorrow seems like it's going to be filled and I definitely need the rest.  My bed for tonight is a 2 inch mattress on a raised cot sized wooden plank.  I like hard beds, but this will be interesting.

Oh yeah, everyone here is very energy conscious. I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to pay or if electricity is a premium and they don't want to waste it. My hotel room, when I looked at it had all the lights, AC, and ceiling fan all turned off.  But, by the time I had signed in and they had documented me, it was nice and cool in here.  At the airport, when I was waiting for my bags, I noticed it was a bit dim.  The lights above our baggage carousel (or belt as they are known here) didn't come on until the carousel started.  And when it stopped, the lights went out.

June 21

Hello folks.

Didn't have a steady internet connection until today, so any brief snippets of time I did get on line were spent answering emails and dealing with other stuff.

Mumbai was amazing!  I'll post some pictures and videos and info later.  My family there is absolutely fantastic!

Got to Jodhour on the 18th.  We've been exploring the city and get orientated and acclimated to the heat!  When I say it's hot, it's HOT!!  105 all day and only down to 90 at night.  The heat actually isn't too bad, but the lack of relief from the heat is what makes it tough.

Just moved in with my host family this evening.  We're getting ready to sit down to eat.  Just wanted to drop an update and let you know more would be coming!

June 10

The pressure is definitely starting to set in.  I leave in 3 days!  It's so surreal!  In a few short days I will be on the other side of the world connecting with family in Mumbai and then on to Jodhpur to hopefully do some good work in a community that needs help.


So, when I leave on the 13th, I'll be flying from Atlanta to Amsterdam and then on to Mumbai.  Sadly, I won't be able to explore Amsterdam as my lay over is only a little more than an hour.  Once in Mumbai, my Mama (my mom's father's sister's son) will be picking me up and I'll be staying with them till the 18th.  I'm really looking forward to exploring Mumbai and seeing it from a local's perspective.  The best part is going to be connecting with a part of my family that I've never had the pleasure of meeting.


On the 18th I fly on to Jodhpur, where I'll be till the 28th of August.  I just got an update on what Unnati wants me to do while I'm there.   Below is a portion of the email sent to me by Sukie, my FSD contact in Jodhpur.

"Since your interest is in Public Health and Disaster Management, she thinks that you can work documenting their voluntary community trainers project under their community-based disaster risk-reduction project that they are running along with a grassroots organization called JBVSS. A description of recent developments of the project can be found here: http://www.unnati.org/sddrr-lastfour-months.html.

In terms of this project, there are already many survey instruments being used but Swapni is interested in documenting the project from its inception and coming up with a document that can outline the lessons learned and recommendations from the future. She is also looking to make a manual aimed at other organizations in the area. The focus of your work would be on monitoring and evaluation of the project, but more-so on assessment, documentation and dissemination of their work in the field than on developing a separate project. Your work would initially involve interviewing staff members and becoming familiar with the project and then going into the field and interviewing the volunteers and the community members."

For most of my time in Jodhpur I'll be staying with a host family, the Wlliams.  They seem to be an extremely pleasant couple and are about my parents age.  They have 2 sons who are slightly younger than me.  And, both the husband and wife are in the hospitality industry in India.  Looks like I'll have a lot in common with them!

My parents fly in at some point this weekend to see me off.  Again, to all of you that have helped me get to this point, THANK YOU!  I could never have taken this step without your love and support.  I'll write more from India and start posting pictures soon!

Nurez

June 1

It's starting to sink in... I leave in 12 days!  It's mind blowing!


Just got notice that my passport has been delivered to my condo.  Tickets have been purchased.  A very special thanks to RS for hooking me up with a buddy pass.  I'm deeply indebted!  I've gotten all my vaccinations, I wonder if there's a vaccination that Jodhpur needs to take in anticipation of my coming!  LOL!  


A good friend recently reminded me that God has made it so easy for me to follow my dreams.  Well, that ease would not have been there without all of your support.  So, I wanted to extend a very, very special thank you to all my friends and family.  Without your constant reinforcements, prayers, advice, and patience I would never have gotten through the first 3 semesters of my MPH/Cert program, nor would I have ever dared to take a leave of absence from certain income and choose to partake in this great adventure.


I recently read something that has stuck with me: "Because of what we gain too easily, we esteem too lightly."  Nothing thus far has been easy and my dreams remain monumental.  But, they will be achieved 1 day at a time and 1 step at a time.


My 2 friends Tiffany and Sarah have also recently embarked on their own adventures: Tiffany to Geneva and Sarah to Cambodia.  My thoughts and prayers are with you both.  I hope you both find the adventures you seek and that your journey is fruitful and fulfilling!