India 1

Raichur India 6 January, 2008
What wonderful hospitality and an attempt to make us comfortable and feel welcome! Most people here speak 4 languages. One or two of the county dialects (change every 100Km thought ought this vast region), Hindi….the native and much respected thousands of years old language, and English used during the time of the colonization of India by the Commonwealth of India. Most conversations in our presence are in something other than English although in direct conversation all is English (or a form of it. Their accents (King’s English according to them) do not approach what we have heard spoken on visits to England or by our English friends. They tell us our accents are hard to understand because they are so “soft”. We apparently do not lend the importance to word ending sounds that they are used to.
Regina and I are staying with the family of the gentleman who will be my counterpart as Team Leader of the GSE team coming to Southeastern MA and RI from April 12-May10. They have two daughters who are 15 and in the 10th level of school in a Catholic girls school and the other is in her second year of college a few blocks from here for business administration. The other three members of the team are staying with Rotarians with families as well and all are within 5 minutes by motor rickshaw from here.
Streets are dirt for the most part with some deteriorating paving taxis, trucks (mostly carrying bales of cotton…principle crop of this area), auto and manual Rickshaws, pedestrians, dogs, boars, and cows. And they drive on the opposite side of the road from what we do. No speed limits even in town, you pass on the right and gun it if you need to get around a cow cart loaded with branches and pull back in in time to avoid hitting a car coming at you in a similar pattern with you each sharing a lane of travel.
Yesterday they got us all up early and over to the Conference Center to do our presentation to the 800 Rotarians gathered for their annual District conference. We were told we were to be presenting at 11:30 sharp which was a bit daunting since the Team had not yet put together their long presentation from home. Finally at 3PM we took the stage. I thought they did a great job but there were frank conversations going on throughout the auditorium as they spoke, cell phones ringing and conversations loudly ongoing on cells.
Our cells do not work here despite the fact that our phone companies in the USA assured us they would. The homes and hotels and conference centers do not have internet access and no one in the Internet cafes will let us use our laptops on their equipment so it feels remote and a bit out of touch,
Today we meet the INTERNATIONAL Polio Plus team here and do polio immunizations for half a million children in just today then we are free to relax and do sight seeing with our host families. We must do some shopping for clothing that is more appropriate to the climate and people with whom we are working. Our Team Wool blazers are just not going to work in these 80-90 degree temps and women are strictly forbidden to wear sleeveless tops or lower necklines. We are thinking we girls need to get longsleeved lightweight cotton blouses.
I’ll try to send more when I can get to another internet café. Monday we travel to Bidar by train and spend three days there before heading for Gulbarga.