Back in Dhamtari (finally)

Well after an 8 hour train delay, we finally made it back to Dhamtari after our trip to Goa. It seems that us and travel schedules do not get along very well. Missing our flights on the way to India (all of them), 3.5 hours delayed leaving Raipur for Goa, and 8 hours delayed coming back, we can’t catch a break.

Pastor James leading worship

Sorry its been so long since a detailed blog, its been my turn (KC) and I’ve been procrastinating a bit. The week before we left for Goa was a good week for us. I met with Pastor James again and showed him the plans I had drawn up for his new church, hostel, and parsonage. He gave me some things he wanted changed/moved, and this week I will be revising the plans and giving them to him. We went to Pastor James' church on Sunday (Church of God), and got to experience the passion they have for worship, it was very encouraging. After church, he took us to the orphanage he runs in a nearby town, and we got to meet the children and they performed a song for us. He has 19 orphans total, 9 who are not sponsored, so we agreed to sponsor 2 of them (it costs about $25/month to sponsor 1 child). If anyone else is interested, we can talk when we get home. We are glad we got to see the orphanage so now we will actually know what our money will be going towards, and that it will be used properly.

Pastor James and the 19 orphans

Pastor James also asked me to talk to his seminary students for 20-30 minutes on Monday about my experience with Christianity in the US and what could help them be better pastors. I was quite a long way out of my comfort zone, especially since I’ve had zero theological training, but I prayed about it and felt like I should talk about cooperation and getting along with people in the church, and trying to avoid “church politics”. I used Romans 12 where Paul talks about the different parts of the body contributing and working together, and if one part fails, the whole body can fail. I think it went pretty well and Pastor James seemed pleased. Raina had a good week, she continued going to community health with the nursing students (see last post) and helped Dr. Mousam in surgery one day. She is developing some great friendships with some of the female nursing students and they absolutely love her. I think God is using her more to develop friendships than to help in the hospital.

The happy couple

Doing laps around the fire

We also got to experience our first Hindu wedding last week. It was very interesting to see the different traditions and customs they perform. The ceremony involved tying the bride and groom's hands together and having them make laps around a small fire in the middle of the floor, while the bride's parents threw various spices and oils into the fire, and the guests sang and chanted. It was certainly a new experience for us, and we loved getting to see it. On Saturday, we were invited to go to a "disco" in Raipur by Dr. Neha (one of the residents), which turned out to be a lot of fun (yes, I did dance, but I wouldn't let Raina take a picture of it). Okay, now that we have caught up on two weeks ago, now to talk about last week.

The view from our hut

We left for Goa on Tuesday, and our train was 3.5 hours late. When we finally got there, it was beautiful, as Raina eluded to in the last post. We stayed in a beach hut for 4 nights (which was not nearly long enough to see all of the sights of Goa) at Agonda beach, which is one of the quietest beaches in Goa, and it was very relaxing and peaceful. It was a nice break from the crowds and noise of Dhamtari. We rented a scooter from a boy next door to the huts for about $4 a day, which was a great investment. Driving is not nearly as dangerous in Goa as it is in Chhattisgarh, and I would like to think I held my own pretty well weaving through traffic (although there was one time when we almost d....nevermind our parents are probably reading this). The first day (Thursday) we arrived around 9:00am and spent the day lying on the beach and relaxing, then had dinner at one of the 10+ restaurants on the beach.

Our "trusty" scooter

Friday we spent the morning on the beach, and then decided to venture out on our scooter for the first time to check out some nearby areas. We hopped on the scooter (which had seen much better days) and began our journey. Three things I noticed about our scooter: 1. We probably well exceeded the intended weight limit; 2. The speedometer was broken; and 3. Either the fuel gauge was broken or we were out of gas. It turned out that number 1 and 2 did not cause any problems, however, I chose to gamble on number 3 and just assumed the fuel gauge was broken. So we got out to the “main” road (keep in mind this is the quietest beach in Goa, so therefore one of the most remote) and sure enough, right about smack dab in the middle of nowhere, we run out of gas. Luckily (if you can call running out of gas lucky) we were on a slight downhill so we were able to coast for about 0.5 km (which still left us about 3-4 km from a petrol station). A nice Indian man came up on a scooter behind us and said “petrol?” We nodded yes and he proceeded to make a bunch of hand motions and eventually I gathered that he wanted to push, so I moved into position. He made Raina get off the back and began to push, so then I made the hand motions pointing to Raina who was now getting smaller and smaller behind us, and he stopped and motioned for her to get on with another man who had stopped also (we think he was French). So she did (she claims it was awkward, but I say better than standing on the side of a country road in India), and our little caravan proceeded down the road toward the petrol station. Apparently the petrol station in Palolem in closed during lunch, and wouldn’t you know it we showed up right at the beginning of lunch hour! We were prepared to wait, but another nice Indian man (they are all very nice) offered to drive to the nearest petrol station (about another 3 km) and get us a couple of liters and bring it back. So he did and we gave him a nice big thank you and a tip. Then we drove to the petrol station and filled up (which ended up costing more than the rental, gas is more expensive here than in the U.S.). After this minor setback, we were able to resume our day of sightseeing. We had lunch in Palolem and went to Colomb Bay and Patnem Beach, and it was a very nice afternoon. We got back to the hut in time to play in the waves and catch the sunset over the water.

The vanilla bean - the world's second
most expensive spice behind saffron

Saturday was an interesting day also. Raina got it in her head that we had to go check out this spice plantation in North Goa, just a short 2 hour drive away. In the interest of our marriage, I consented to go (any married man reading this understands). So we set off on our “adventure” and decided to take the scenic route along the coast on the way there (‘decided’ is used loosely, we made a wrong turn but kept going because it was pretty). Road signs, as we know them in the U.S., do not exist in India, and if they do, they are in Hindi, so we had to stop and look at the map about every 15 minutes. Even then, we figured there was about a 50-50 chance we would never make it there.

"Indian moonshine" - the making
of cashew fenney

Finally we made it to Margao (a big city in central Goa) and somehow managed to find the road that led toward the spice plantations. A short time later, we came up to a bridge and I noticed a nice man in a uniform standing in the middle of the road motioning for me to pull over. It turned out he was a policeman, and it also turned out that driving with a license and wearing a helmet is the law in Goa (both of which our scooter-rental-boy failed to mention). He let me off on not having a license, since I showed him my Ohio Driver’s License (then he proceeded to ask if we were Russian??), but he gave us a ticket for not wearing helmets. The damage wasn’t too bad, only 100 rupees (about $2.25), and as long as we showed our receipt, we could not get another ticket that day. Once again, after another minor setback, we were on our way.

Harvesting betel nuts

Three hours after we left Agonda, and after turning around and backtracking about 10 km, we pulled into what we thought was the spice plantation we were looking for. It turned out that it wasn’t, but after 3 hours of butt-numbing riding, neither of us cared and we decided to stay. The spice plantation was less than spectacular, we spent way too much money and didn’t even get to see the actual plantation (they set up a demo plot for the tourists to walk through, and they don’t allow tours of the actual plantation due to security reasons). The coolest part was seeing a little Indian man climb up Betel Nut trees (they look like skinny palm trees) and swing from tree to tree like a monkey, which is how they pluck the nuts. Yes Derrick, they did have Vanilla beans, and they were 3 for 200 rupees (about $5). We only bought 3 of them, so I guess my dreams of getting rich as a vanilla bean salesman were shortlived. After a disappointing lunch eaten off of leaf-plates, we were on our way back toward Agonda. We figured it would be easier on the way back, but we still managed to get lost a few times, although we did make it back in 2.5 hours, and we both did the pregnant woman walk for a few hours because our bums hurt so bad.

Raina spent most of Sunday laying on the beach, while I sat on the porch of our hut because I was sunburned. We tried to soak up as much of the beach as we could since it was our last day, and we ate at our favorite restaurant for the second time. Monday morning we were off on the 9:30am train to Mumbai. Our train was actually on time, and we reached Mumbai at 9:30pm as scheduled.

Mumbai's CST train station

Our train to Raipur was not supposed to leave until 8:00pm Tuesday, so we stayed in a hotel and spent all day Tuesday trying to see as much of Mumbai as possible. Thankfully the hotel offered to let us leave our backpacks in the lobby under watch while we were out and about. In the morning, we took a 1 hour ferry to Elephanta Island, which has 7 caves that were carved out by tribes sometime between 450 and 800 AD. It was nice to see the harbor and the ferry ride was pretty relaxing, although the smog in Mumbai makes it very difficult to see the skyline. After the island, we walked through the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, which is where all of the rich and famous stay, and where the Obama's stayed during their visit last year (also where they had a terrorist bombing in 2008). It was extremely nice and even had high end shops like Louis Vuitton, Doir, Coach, etc. It was the first time since we have been in India that we felt looked down upon, and it was a nice feeling!

Even in India!

We had lunch at Leopold’s Cafe (also a location of the 2008 terrorist attacks), which our guide book told us is a big foreigner hangout, so we checked it out. The guidebook failed to mention how expensive it would be, and we proceeded to eat our most expensive meal in India to date (still only about $25). After lunch we walked back to the hotel to check on our train, and found out that it was running 8 hours late, and instead of leaving at 8:00pm, it was now leaving at 4:00am. We decided to make the most of our time, and took a taxi to Chowpatty beach, which is a nice little fair-type area with a disgusting beach full of trash and toxic water. We steered clear of the actual beach and got some ice cream and did some people-watching. After consulting the guide book, we found out that the most affluent neighborhood (Malabar Hill) with a large park was within walking distance, so we decided to check it out. We walked along the road running parallel to the ocean and tried to enjoy the sunset through the smog. Passing through Malabar Hill without even realizing it (not really any nice houses, just nice high-rise apartment buildings), we finally reached the park as it was getting dark and decided to rest our feet for a while. I would guess we walked over 10 kilometers on the day, so we were pretty exhausted. Unfortunately it was about this time when we think the camera went missing. I maintain it was stolen from the bench at the park, Raina says I lost it, but who knows. So we lost most of our pictures from Mumbai, but thankfully we had already transferred our Goa pictures to the computer (it looks like we'll be buying a cheap Indian camera for our next trip). Anyway, while sitting in the park, we thought it might be a good idea to ask the hotel if they had any rooms available so we could at least get some sleep that night. We took a taxi back to the hotel and they informed us they did not have any rooms, but they could get us one in their sister hotel down the street. He told us it was the “same quality and style”, which turned out not to be true at all, but it was cheaper, had a shower, the beds were comfortable, and it only had a couple of cockroaches, so we were happy. We woke up at 2:45am and headed to the train station, which was just a short walk from the hotel. The train left at 4:15am and we arrived in Raipur at 11:00pm, only 7 hours late.

So now we are back in Dhamtari for 6 days, then we leave again on Wednesday for our trip to Agra (Taj Mahal), Jaipur, Delhi, and Darjeeling (Himalayas and Everest!) Sorry for the novel, but I had a lot to cover in this post! Thank you all for your prayers, we are feeling much more positive and are starting to understand God’s purpose for us! The homesickness is still there, so please continue to pray for that.

God Bless,

KC (and Raina)