First Day Off and Tales of Sickness

October 11, 2009 ~ Sunday

The Indian work week is from Monday to Saturday, so I only get one day off per week – Sunday. Today is my first day off and while Andrew and Gabriel got up early to play soccer and go to the office to the use the internet, I slept for 10 hours and am pretty much not moving from my bed today except for meals. While I am not experiencing any unusual digestion issues, I have developed a cold but it's not my normal type of cold. Once a month for the three months I was at home, I fended off a cold. I guess that means my immune system has been compromised in some way and now I have a cold that lacks congestion but merely consists of a very sore throat and a sinus headache that won't go away. I'm hoping my lack of activity today will help me get better before Diwali, which is on the 17^th and has many festivities on the days leading up to it. The heat obviously doesn't help anything and there is no AC except for in hotels and restaurants. Before I could deduce what this cold was, I thought I was allergic to India with all of the dust and dirt, so I hope that at least that is not the case and that instead merely, "Mujhe zukam hai" or I have a cold in Hindi. The great thing about being a sick person is that you can easily master body parts and basic health complaints.

On about my second or 3^rd day here, this headache took over my life and I decided to stay in at the hotel instead of going to an awesome drum concert at the fort. I went to sleep slightly early – so 11:30 pm instead of midnight – and then the next day, Smitaji decided that I should stay at the hotel and sleep until lunch to see if that helped. So I went back to sleep at 11, but when Veenaji came to pick me up for lunch, she rang the doorbell to my room. This woke me up and I knew it sounded like a doorbell but I didn't know that there was a doorbell to my room. So I got up and got ready but Veenaji thought I was still sleeping and left. So then I slept for a couple more hours. At 4 o'clock we had a Hindi lesson with Mahduji who is a young and lively teacher. She tries to make things as simple as possible and I appreciate that because it gives me the chance to catch up on what I missed in speaking. I am much better at reading and writing Hindi than I am at speaking because Umaji was my only speaking partner in the US. But at this point, I am happy to say, especially to Umaji, that I think I know more Hindi than either Gabriel or Andrew. I definitely have more vocabulary memorized but my grammar is horrible. I think we will end up meeting with Mahduji about 3 times per week so hopefully this problem will go away rather quickly. I also hope to get more help from my host family but that is another story.

Anyway, back on track from that tangent. We had Hindi for about an hour. Before leaving for India, I refused to buy new sandals. My flip-flops have been on the verge of death for some time and at the Marwari Festival on our first day, they finally died. So after Hindi I said to Andrew that I wanted to see if I could walk to National Handloom to buy some and I hesitantly asked Andrew if he wanted to go with me. He said yes and laughed because he was surprised that I hadn't asked him explicitly to go with me. But me being an incredibly stubborn independent Western woman had trouble saying, "Hi male friend, will you please escort me to National Handloom because I am a Videshi woman and have not ventured out by myself and feel that I need a male with me so that I don't get lost or perhaps harassed?" (Videshi means foreigner.) I didn't want him to feel like he had to escort me just because I am a female foreigner. I don't like imposing on other people's time and I'm not used to "needing" someone to go places with me. (Now that I few more days have passed I don't think that I need people with me all the time. I have no problems and the most people do is to stare at you and ask you where you are from. So far there has been no "eve teasing," which is what sexual harassment is called in India.)

And so Andrew and I ventured out into the great semi-unknown of Jodhpur on foot. I remembered my way around quite more than I had expected and it was great to feel independence from a car, rickshaw, and our FSD entourage. We never found National Handloom but we passed a nice looking shoe store and decided to look there. There were about 3 or 4 men sitting around a tiny shop about 10 feet long and 8 feet wide. There were shelves along all of the walls displaying shoes and a bench along one side where we were encouraged to sit down. When we came in a man scurried up a ladder through a hole in the ceiling and immediately started throwing down shoes in their boxes. I immediately understood why we had to sit, because otherwise one of them would have landed on my head. Instead of picking out shoe types myself, they threw them down to show me suggestions. I got to practice my Hindi and express like and dislike and when the shoes were too small. And the man putting them on my feet would shout up to the man throwing down the boxes. It was really kind of exciting with the constant falling boxes crashing down onto the floor around us. Eventually I found the right pair at a reasonable cost. The only disappointing thing is that I had bought my previous sandals on sale for $7. These cost around $8 but oh well. Still a good price for nice sandals which later Veenaji and Smitaji gave me a lot of compliments on. They caused some blisters at first that are still healing, but I think they are now broken in and I am walking around with band aids covering my blisters until they heal. But the band aids are held on by medical tape which is wrapped around my foot so that the band aids don't fall off, so my feet look a little ridiculous but comfort over vanity I say!

We kept walking around after successfully purchasing the shoes for about an hour. I tired rather quickly but up to that point is was my favorite experience so far, even though as the following story will show it was probably not the wisest choice I have ever made in my life. We successfully found our way back to the hotel and I changed into my fancy new Shalwar Kameez for Garrett's goodbye party and then went to wait for Andrew in the hotel "lobby" which is actually the really beautiful living room of the house. Sitting in the heat, even with the fans on, was not pleasant. I returned to my room where I threw up while still wearing my new fancy Shalwar Kameez but successfully kept my clothes clean. I think I made the mistake of taking my medicine and cold medicine on an "empty" stomach and it was too much for my poor tummy to take. Smitaji told me we would go to a doctor because she thought I needed an iv drip so I changed into my pajamas to wait for her. Then the power went out for the first time since I had been in India. I didn't really care because I was just laying in bed but after a few minutes the matriarch of the family that owned the hotel came around to tell me the power had gone out. She speaks very little English and I speak very little Hindi, especially when I'm queasy, and so I was trying to explain that it was ok and I didn't need anything when the power suddenly came back on. Eventually Smitaji showed up we gathered my belongings and all of medical information (which forms quite a thick little packet with all of my medication information – they really loaded me up at the travel clinic) and I asked if I was dressed appropriately in my Guitars Not Guns t-shirt and my dark blue pajama pants. She said yes and off we went. Veenaji and Andrew also came with us.

We drove to the doctor's house and passed Goyal Hospital, the really nice hospital in Jodhpur which I believe has won a lot of prizes for cleanliness. There is also a medical school in Jodhpur so there is certainly not a lack of good health care and doctors. I can also get x-rays at this one little shop – not a doctor's office, just an x-ray shop – for $1.50. Holla. Hopefully I won't need to take advantage of that deal. We arrived at the doctor's office who had a boy of about 12 as his helper and he came to greet us in a teal track suit, which Veenaji said is unusual so he must have been having a party of some kind. He asked me some questions and asked if I was ok with injections, by which I assumed he meant that I don't faint, so I said yes that's fine. He gave me Zyrcold for my sinuses and then prepared a cocktail of two different medicines in one shot. I was sitting on this chair ready to take it but Veenaji led me into another room that had a medical table/bed, you know the things patients typically sit on in doctors' offices. Then she told me to lay down and that's when I realized I wasn't getting a shot in the arm. And so it came to be that I got my first shot in my butt, its contents unknown, in a dark room (no one had turned on a light), in front of an open window at a doctor's home, whom I had just met, in Jodhpur, India. It hurt a lot but didn't take very long. I don't exactly know what was in the shot so I'm glad I didn't have an allergic reaction to it. I learned this past year that I apparently have many more medical allergies than the average person but at the end of the day I'm grateful that I am not allergic to something as common as ibuprofen, peanuts, or dust (knock on wood).

And so after paying a small fee, we piled back into the car where Smitaji and Veenaji immediately started laughing at the doorman/guard of the doctor's house because he was completely stoned and apparently he gets this way every night and then the next day apologizes profusely to the doctor because he is obviously not of very good use. I didn't even notice him until after the visit.

Veenaji and Smitaji told me that I was coming with them to Garrett's goodbye party because they wanted to be able to keep an eye on me to make sure I was ok. This was how it came to be that I showed up at a very fancy party (the musical choice this time was Rihanna) in my pajamas and met my host father for the first time. Awkward. It was made more awkward by the fact that before we had left to go to the doctor, Gabriel had called me to say that he wasn't going to the party. One reason being that he wasn't dressed well enough and that they will look down on you and heavily criticize you if you show up to a party and are not dressed to their standards. With this knowledge and suddenly standing in front of the man I am to be living with for the next 2 months, I felt embarrassment that I had come to this party dressed in such a way but I didn't know I was still going so what could I do? Garrett of course explained that I was sick and I explained that I was sick, but still, I learned my lesson to just stay in appropriate clothing if I am already in it because you never know what will happen. That night I was able to eat like a rabbit, focusing mainly on cucumbers. Garrett had the waiters bring me sweet lime soda to help my digestion, which I initially turned away because I didn't know Garrett had it sent especially to me, and then he had to teach me how to make it. They put a little sweet lime juice in a cup and then you add the soda water to it. I'm glad I asked Garrett what to do, because it turns out the waiter had brought me water, not soda, so Garrett took care of that as well. Andrew was kind enough to bring me two different kinds of rice in small portions and I passed the time talking to a British woman who quit her job in Britain after visiting India and is now volunteering with Sombahli Trust and living in the guest house there. We talked about Hurricane Katrina and her various adventures around India. I was also seated next to Garrett's host mother who told me that when Garrett first got to Jodhpur he could not speak any Hindi, but now he is fluent in it, which gives me a lot of hope, especially considering my two month head start.

Eventually Smitaji called our driver and Andrew and I returned to the hotel where the next morning I awoke feeling back to my normal self – complete with back aches and knots from the hard mattress and a flatter stomach that mostly resembled the one with which I left the US and has since disappeared.