Update from India

What's this? Wifi at a midrange Indian hotel? Wonders truly never cease. I'm in the home stretch of the trip now. The last week will be very busy, and I am taking a few days off before throwing myself back into the thick of things. My host and I are doing a quick tour of some tourist-type places before meeting the rest of the team in a few days. I'm taking photos and looking forward to my weekly sweet treat in the form of a lassi tomorrow afternoon. There's supposed to be a legendary place to get one near my hotel. Mango or banana, or both! That is the question. I suddenly have the luxury of choice after living in villages for most of the past thirty days, and I find that Barry Schwartz was on to something when he wrote that too many choices can lead to unhappiness.

Thirty days. As a concept, it sounds great. Thirty days on the road to travel and do truly meaningful work, meeting people and seeing incredibly unique things along the way. But when you are traveling without a steady companion and hindered by a language barrier at every turn, the trip feels long sometimes. This trip, as a whole, has flown by, but there have been individual days that felt like they would never end, if that makes any sense.

I'm grateful, though, that my traveling has been done with a definite purpose. Traveling for missions or humanitarian purposes is always more fulfilling than just shouldering a backpack and wandering for its own sake. I sit now in the breezeway of a hotel as clusters of free-spirited Europeans amble by with enormous backpacks and the ubiquitous male pony tail that instantly identifies a Bohemian on the road. They will go out today and visit palaces and forts, see museums and artwork, and if the boxes of empty Kingfisher beer bottles in the halls are any indication, they will return in the evening for rollicking good times of beer, spicy food and possibly some "liberating" herbs. They will get what they came for: a good time. But their purpose will not last beyond the trip.

That is what I realize now, as I reflect on the past month. 12,000 miles away from home, making a great circle through a subcontinent whose culture could not possibly be further from what I am used to, I have traveled with a purpose that will last. What I have seen here--the poverty transcended by strength of spirit, the Love that can override caste hatreds, the hospitality and care extended by so many people to the gora with the camera whose stomach can't handle their curries--it has all taught me so much. There are parts of the culture here that still drive me crazy; I still have a hard time extending human courtesy to pushy cab drivers, and the Indian use of the head-wiggle instead of plainly-spoken answers to simple questions always puts my knickers in a twist. When it comes to resources, the population has placed India at risk of collapsing under its own weight.

But the people of India, with very, very few exceptions, have beautiful souls. I am no "hero from the west" when I come here. As much as I help, I am very much a student of their humanity and character.

To close, some iPhoneage from the R&R of the past day or two. Most of the working shots are on my DSLR, and will begin to surface at the end of this month. I filled my travel journal a few days ago, and I was elated to be able to return to my favorite leather shop in The Lake City to purchase a new one, as pictured below. It's fun to be a repeat customer of an establishment so far from home. The staff was even kind enough to pretend to remember me, haha.

Update from India

Some notable experience thus far:- Meeting one of the oldest tribes in India and helping fit them with eyeglasses. - Riding a motorcycle through monsoon rain. - Being accosted by husky-voiced hermaphrodites on the trains. - Riding on India's iconic trains period. Every ride is like a field trip into bedlam. - Teaching English to orphan children (call it damage control after the less-than-perfect methods of the local English medium schools.) - Being stopped in marketplaces all over India by locals who wanted to get a picture with the visiting American. My complexion makes me a novelty. - Arriving just in time for the end of mango season. Delicious fruit in the markets for less than a dollar per kilo (usually 10 fruit per kilo!) - Driving over roads that would give Wolverine scoliosis during my trips to outlying villages. - Inadvertently eating an entire dried naga viper chili in one bite. I mistook it for the milder king chili, but I maintain that my tears at the dinner table were shed with manly stoicism.

Throughout the entire trip, I have been in and among some of the poorest, most backwards villages and communities I could never have imagined. The poverty and the squalor that so many people know as "normal" in some areas of the country is unbelievable. The ministry opportunities never end.

Even so, India never ceases to amaze me with its diversity. After the first half of the trip was spent giving aid to people who lived in utter depravity (in every sense of the word,) my journey took me across the subcontinent to visit a school in an area of India that is not only cosmopolitan, but extremely, one might say "comfortably" Western in its local culture. It's like benign in a totally different country, and it brings up feelings not unlike the verse culture shock I had the last time I returned home from India. Stepping off of the plane into Houston airport last time was like time traveling to the future. India, steeped in poverty on one hand and pop culture from the Reagan era on the other, was suddenly on the other side of the world, and I felt strangely alien to my home. To have similar feelings while still in India itself is very disconcerting.

This will likely be my last blog update for a couple of weeks. I begin my northward train ride to a new location tomorrow to return to village work with my next local contact. It's full steam ahead for the next few weeks, and I probably won't have wifi again until I fly to London, where I will decompress from India by spending some time with a few friends in the area before going the rest of the way home.

Update from India

For the past few weeks, I have been traversing the length and breadth of India on a missions/humanitarian journey. It has been life-changing, and will continue to be for a few more weeks. Through the erratic weather of the summer monsoon season, I have worked with remote tribes, the poorest rice farmers and gypsies in the country, orphan children and local workers. With the exception of one day in which I became dehydrated to the point of blindness (blood pressure drop when I stood up), my health has been good and I have worked steadily. Internet is rare, and wifi is rarer, so most of my photos will have to wait until I get back to a city and can upload the growing roll of photos on my iPhone. When I arrive home, I will have another 70GB or so of photos from my SLR camera rig to unload and create some awesome recap posts.

In the meantime, send up a prayer for me as I continue to work and travel the road.

(And, seriously, stay tuned or subscribe via email for pics!)

India By the Numbers

8,252 miles

• Pensacola to New Delhi.

6 locations

• The number of unique places in India where I will serve.

3,375 miles

• Number of miles I will travel within India.

6 meters

• Lowest elevation I will visit.

2,205 meters

• Highest elevation I will visit.

1,028,610,328 souls

• Total population of India.

827,578,868 (80.5%)

• Hindu population.

138,188,240 (13.4%)

• Muslim population.

24,080,016 (2.3%)

• Christian population.

19,215,730 (1.9%)

• Sikh population.

7,955,207 (0.8%)

• Buddhist population.

4,225,053 (0.4%)

• Jain population.

6,639,626 (0.6%)

• Other religious affiliations.

727,588 (0.1%)

• Population of unstated religious affiliation.

There is work to be done.  It's wheels up for India in a matter of days.

Why India?

I've had a lot on my mind as I prepare for this summer's adventure.

Very soon, I will depart for India, where I will spend the rest of the summer working with Indian pastors across the country in their respective ministries.  Unlike my previous trips to India, I will not be traveling with a group of people, but will be going there alone and staying with host families until the final week, at which time I will meet up with some dear friends for a medical outreach.  At the moment, life feels a bit purgatorial as I refrain from starting new projects and basically kill time before wheels up.

Am I nervous at the prospect of going solo to dive into the frenetic country of India?

Yes and no.  I don’t relish the twenty-hour (including layovers) airline journey from Florida to India.  I have plenty of reading material ready for the trip, but it is still going to be a devastatingly quiet trip without any traveling companions.

But actually being in India again, doing work that is truly meaningful, is a prospect which I am greatly looking forward to.  I am never as confident in my purpose in life as when I am ministering in India.

People often ask me why I feel the need to go as far as India to share the gospel.  And, honestly, I’m still not sure how to respond sometimes, because there are a lot of reasons why I feel I need to go to India.  A major reason for this is that I can’t think of any institution outside of the Christian church that goes into India to reach out, form individual relationships and provide relief.

The biggest reason I can think of, though, is that India not only needs the gospel, India is hungry for it.  India has been under the rule of the caste system for so long that the freedom of thought and spiritual uplift offered by the gospel is a deeply moving concept, and one which they are eager to share with their friends and families.

It’s funny, really.  If you had come up to me three years ago and told me that I would spend two consecutive New Years in India, and would even go so far as to devote an entire summer to an epic missionary journey across the country, I would have laughed at the idea.  Not out of scorn, but out of sheer disbelief.

Me, go to India?  Why?

My first trip to India began in a picaresque way.  I logged into Facebook one day and found the following message waiting for me.  It was from a good friend who had already been to India for missions work the year before:

Find your passport

Need you to go on an expedition with us, December XX- January XX, to India to deliver the Christmas backpacks. Need someone who is not afraid of travel, weird food, sketchy legal situations, and who is strong as a horse. This is not missionary tourism. This is the real deal. You in?

How could I turn down an invitation like that?  It was a classic "offer I can't refuse," worded in exactly the sort of terms that I respond to favorably.

The trip was every bit the adventure the message hinted at it being.  But it was also the start of something bigger.

Prior to India, I had traveled, but never with the kind of purpose provided by ministry.  Stepping off of the plane into India was like leaping into a snowbank after languishing in a warm sauna all my life.  For the first time in my life, I saw real poverty among real people.  Not from a distance--it wasn’t a documentary or a movie--I was overwhelmed, overstimulated and in the middle of everything.  It changed the way I looked at the world; it made me fully cognizant of the freedom and sheer number of choices I had always enjoyed in the States without even knowing I had them.

But my experience wasn’t limited to observations on third-world living conditions.  India re-introduced me to all that is good in the human spirit.  Most of the people of India seem blissfully unaware of their poverty.  It is simply their way of life, and as such, they greet visitors with the biggest smiles and the warmest welcomes I have ever seen.  The Indian people are kind in the extreme, and their beauty of spirit is exponentially magnified when touched by the love of Christ.

My first trip to India was one of culture shock.  So much was new and different that I was glad for the relief of coming home.  My second trip, however, was the opposite.  I was prepared for India, and the culture shock hit home when I arrived back in the US.  After barely more than a week in India, seeing beauty of soul in people who had next to nothing, I returned to the United States and was greeted by a spoiled culture of wealthy, overweight individuals who couldn’t make it from one gate to another in the airport without complaining the entire way.  To make matters worse, I had school to return to at at the time, and could look forward to three months of busywork in the homestretch toward my diploma.  I was experiencing reverse culture shock, and it made me angry.  I wanted to go back to India at that moment.

And now, I want to go back to India because the work I have done there represents the only times in my life to date when I had complete and total confidence that I was doing was the right thing.  When in India, I wake up every morning with the knowledge that the work I do each day is for God and will help others.  It is a far cry from the standard-issue drudgery of the daily grind in America.  It makes me question the core values of Western culture.  For Christians, ministry and outreach should be action items every day, but we allow ourselves to get caught up in the tedium of everyday life, and outreach is pushed to the back burner, or even worse, it is viewed as something “for other people.”

Evangelism in its pure form, sharing the words and love of Christ, is not an option if you identify yourself as a Christian.  Christians are, by definition, already called to share God’s love with the world.  Not judge the world, not to scream at cars from street corners--to share love.  It is a travesty that we allow our divine purpose in life to be relegated to a once-a-week event instead of daily practice.

In the end, I think that is why I love working in India so much.  It is a complete and total separation from everything that I see as lopsided in American culture, and blocking out time to be totally removed from the obligations of home, work and school lets me experience the joy of full-time service.

I recently saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  While the film’s depiction of India was a bit too clean to ring true, there was a very stirring line spoken by Tom Wilkinson that sums up my own feelings about India.  Wilkinson’s character, Graham, is asked a pointed question by Jean, played by Penelope Wilton:

Jean: "How can you bear this country? What do you see that I don't?"

Graham: "The light, colors, the smiles, it teaches me something."

I have to agree.