Off to Narsupor! (Oct. 27)

Well, it’s pretty late here, (12:40) and we leave for Narsupor bright and early for a volleyball tournament so I guess I’ll write more later! Things have been challenging here but also amazingly fun and exciting! We’re counting down the days until the dentist arrives so we can get involved with the dental clinic but until then we’ll hold down the pharmacy and out patient department like champs! God has really been blessing us and I’m sure that’s due to the many prayers from home. Thank you to everyone who’s been following our blog and praying for us, it means the world to us!

Blessings,

J and Z

DIWALI!!!! (Oct. 26)

So here in India the Hindus seem to have a festival every month or so and this month is no exception! We’ve had 3 major Hindu festivals since our arrival 7 weeks ago! The festival that fell on this day is the festival called Diwali. It’s the festival of lights as well as fireworks and firecrackers! This sounded great but experiencing it was what really made it absolutely incredible!

We were playing volleyball like we do every evening here and as the sun set the firecrackers could be heard all over town. Thirty minutes or so after sundown our tiny town of Nuzvid sounded like Baghdad on the night the US started the Iraqi war…

Needless to say Zach and I couldn’t resist the urge to head into town and see what all the firecrackers were about! We started walking into town and almost immediately we knew this was shaping up to be a crazy evening. What people do for Diwali is light candles and put up strings of lights and then the best part, they buy boxes of fireworks and shoot them off in the streets!

Now these fireworks aren’t anything like the pansy fireworks we have in the US… These things have 10 times the bang with a tenth of a fuse! Also, safety is not even thought of. People toss lit firecrackers out in the street regardless of who is walking, driving, or crawling by! We immediately saw it was our responsibility to make sure we didn’t catch a firecracker in the face by watching every side! The streets of Nuzvid were extremely hazy with smoke from all the firecrackers and you couldn’t walk 50 feet without having a firecracker blow up 15 feet away from you!

As we continued through the streets we finally found some shelter at our favorite street food vendor who sells some of the best samosas I’ve had for the price! They cost 5 rupees per samosas, which is about 10 cents. So Zach and I always get 2 or 3! As we sat there under the awning eating the frenzy of fireworks only increased.

We finished eating and heading down the main street. This is where things got a bit more nerve wracking. A guy threw a firecracker into the street not 5 feet in front of me and maybe 8 feet from Zach and it went off. You could feel the shockwave from the explosion and my left ear was immediately ringing! It was pretty crazy but we kept walking and finally decided to head down to one of the icecream shops in town to buy cookies for our trip to Narsupor in the morning.

The shop was closed, but as we turned around to head back to the hospital a family waved us over to their house and asked if we wanted to shoot off some “crackers” with them. Of course we did! They told us in broken English how to light the firecrackers and IMMEDIATELY throw them into the street. There was quite a bit of emphasis on ‘immediately’ so that’s what we did. It was soon apparent why immediately was so important; the firecrackers had the most deceptively short fuses I’ve ever seen! The fuse was over an inch long but burned for only 1 second at the most! It was amazing how loud these things were and sometimes they exploded no more than 5 feet from where you had thrown them! It was so much fun lighting and throwing these things because you really did feel like one little slip up could hurt really badly!

The mother of the house suddenly invited us into the courtyard of the house and made us sit down. She then proceeded to bring out sweet cakes and a sweet noodle and yogurt treat, which we ate with spoons out of metal cups. The cake was “burfi” and the noodle stuff was “simya”. It wasn’t half bad but I didn’t feel like I could have eaten more than she gave us. We chatted with them some more while one of her sons set off more firecrackers in the yard about 10 feet away, that was safe! We then headed back out to the street to intending to leave and head back to the hospital but they handed us more firecrackers to blow off so we stayed a bit longer.

Now several things happened while we were blowing these things off. I threw one into the street but it didn’t go off and we thought it was a dud. It wasn’t though, and about a minute after I threw it a lady was walking by it and it exploded right before she almost stepped on it! She jumped, turned around and began yelling at us. I’m assuming she was swearing at us but she kept walking. It was so funny but I did sympathize with her since almost the same thing had happened to us earlier. Also, whenever one didn’t go off immediately our gracious and crazy hosts would run over and check it and try and light it off by lighting a piece of newspaper on fire and putting it next to the wick. This seemed a bit dangerous to me but hey, like I said before, safety isn’t really thought of here in India.

Another thing that was really crazy was when one of the girls in the family lit a firecracker and didn’t through it fast enough. It ended up exploding 1 to 2 feet from her hand and Zach and I were standing right next to her so of course we felt the whole thing. Thankfully she was fine but we were pretty scared! Also, our ears were now ringing like gongs!

After setting off a few more we said goodbye to our new friends and headed back towards the hospital but we literally had to run from safe spot to safe spot until we got off on a quieter street and even then every once in awhile someone would be lighting off more firecrackers.

We finally made it safely back inside the hospital compound and the safety of our room! It was by far the craziest thing I’ve ever experience with firecrackers and I pretty sure this is my new favorite festival! I think we should celebrate it back in the US just for fun!

Prisons and more impromptu speaking (Oct. 22)

While eating lunch at Enjati’s house Uncle William Moses received a call from the prison ministries coordinator asking if anyone at his house wanted to go help with the prison outreach that afternoon. Since Zach and I were the only one’s under the age of 30 there we agreed to go.

We hopped in the tiny van that the coordinator drove around in and headed to the prison. I would tell you his name but when we asked him his name he told us we couldn’t pronounce it and so we should just call him “uncle”.

Upon arriving at the prison we headed in to see the prison director who we were told was the youngest the prison had ever had. I would say he wasn’t even 30… but the prison seemed to be doing it’s job with the barbed wire and 20 foot high rock walls so hey, no worries here!

We chatted with him for a few minutes before signing in on the register and heading into the prison yard. The walls were from the original prison built by the British back in the time of British control in India. We of course had been asking about the prisoners. We wanted to know what they were in for and how long most of them had been in, etc. We were told that all types of criminals were put in the same prison here. Everything from murder and rape to theft and cheating… I’ll admit that surprised and caught me off guard since that’s not necessarily how I envisioned it being but in we went. The prison was quite nice. The prisoners bathed in the yard in showers that were nicer than the one in our room at the hospital! The prison yard was a medium sized courtyard with the cells built into the outer walls of the courtyard. There were women with babies right in the mix of the rest of the prisoners. It was all organized in a very efficient way but not anything remotely close to the prison I had envisioned in my mind.

They put out chairs for us and all the prisoners sat down on mats in front of us. I counted somewhere around 60 prisoners in total and they all seemed to be eagerly waiting what we had to talk about. The coordinator got up and began leading song service in Telugu which neither Zach nor I am proficient at… About 10 minutes after we had left the hospital the coordinator had asked me to give another impromptu talk for the inmates. Fantastic! I’m getting pretty good at the whole “make something up on the spot” thing! I’m starting to wonder why Zach never gets asked though…

The song service lasted just long enough for me to get my thoughts together and then we had a solo song by one of the inmates. The coordinator told us later that he couldn’t read or write but he loved to sing but he had to sing by himself because he basically made up the words and song as he went since he didn’t know them by heart. He sounded quite good for apparently not knowing what he was doing with the words. It was all in Telugu so Zach and I couldn’t tell the difference.

I got up and gave my talk which was strangely close to the one I gave at midweek prayer and at the churches we visited a few weeks back… It’s nice having different crowds to preach to because you can keep the same sermon!

After the sermon the prisoners wanted Zach and I to pray with them so we prayed with each one individually. It was great so pray with them.

The prisoners had to eat then and then head back to their cells so we left the prison yard and went back to the prison director’s office to have a nice cold Sprite! The prison director wanted to know all about us and why we were in India and such. It’s funny how every person asks the same 3 or 4 questions when we first meet them. “What is your name? Where are you from? Why are you here? and For how long are you here?” Without fail, these questions are asked in rapid succession here in India by almost anyone you meet.

After our chat with the prison director we headed back to the hospital to eat dinner. Then we decided to get a jump-start on laundry! It was a good Sabbath full of surprises and good experiences!

White people after 7 weeks!!! (Oct. 22)

Now I mentioned in the last post that the best part of Sabbath was church… Now normally I wouldn’t be the one to say that but as we sat there between Sabbath School and church 6 Caucasian people walked by and up to the front of the church! Zach and I were both stunned! We didn’t know they were coming and it was definitely a shock after being the only white faces we’d seen since arriving!

It turns out that near here in Ibraham Patnam there was a group of pastors putting on some evangelistic meetings for two weeks. This Sabbath they had been invited to come and put on the church service here in Nuzvid!

It was amazing! The sermon flowed in an organized manner that we hadn’t heard since arriving here and one of the pastors was a very good soprano saxophone player who stayed on pitch the whole time he played!!! I had almost forgotten it was possible! The man who spoke was William Miller, which is ironic because he was speaking on Oct. 22 (Great disappointment thingy in 1844?) and also because as he began introducing himself and telling about his 3 children (2 boys and a girl) I realized that I had been in Argentina with his daughter! The Adventist world shrinks the more I meet people all over the world!

Anyway, it was great to talk to them after the service and make more connections. Pastor Miller’s sister was on the trip and she’s from Wenatchee so there are some more things to connect everything.

The Daily Grind (Oct. 12-25)

Well, not much has happened since we last added to this wonderful little blog we’ve got going here…We’ve really settled into the monotony that is everyday life here in Nuzvid. Don’t get me wrong, everyday has it’s new set of challenges but truthfully there isn’t much to do is this little town so we’re entertaining ourselves as best we can! Two weekends again, (Oct 14-16) we simply stayed in Nuzvid, went to church and enjoyed AY in the afternoon. (We still haven’t gotten used to being in meetings every weekend for a total of 8+ hours from Friday vespers to Sabbath late night prayer meeting) Anyway, we did laundry on Sunday and played some volleyball. It was a pretty dull weekend but a relaxing one at that.

Sunday night our good friend Raj Pitta came by with his wife and asked us if we wanted to go to Ranchi on Wednesday to preach on Sabbath and help with music. We were excited about the whole thing but skeptical since Raj is a planner and not a logistics kinda guy, if ya know what I’m talking about… I love Raj but he has great ideas that rarely seem to become reality. The waiting list for the train tickets was up in the 60’s so it was a slim chance that we would even be able to get tickets, but we tried. A couple days later we found out it wasn’t going to happen but no worries because we hadn’t really gotten our hopes up.

The rest of the week didn’t really have much going on with it. (Oct. 17-21) We did get invited over to the registrar’s, Robert Franklin’s, house for dinner on Wednesday. That was definitely something to look forward to! Wednesday afternoon I (Jeff) also had a great surprise from Dr. Prahbudas… He called around 4:30 and asked if I could give a talk at 7:00 (yup…2.5 hrs ahead of time) at the midweek prayer meeting. I initially told him yes but had forgotten about our dinner plans. I remembered Robert Franklin’s invite about 15 minutes after I told Dr. Prahbudas yes and immediately called him back to explain the situation. He answered and I began to explain that I couldn’t do it but he didn’t even let me finish… All he said was something to the effect of, “Don’t worry, no problem, you can go to Robert Franklin’s after giving your talk.” In dealing with Dr. P I’ve come to understand that to mean, “Don’t worry, what I want you to do is way more important than dinner at Robert Franklin’s…” Basically everything Dr. P does is the most important so this really wasn’t surprising. I ended up giving the same sermon I gave at the three churches we visited a few Sabbaths back so it was all right.

The talk went well and it was actually nice to give it without using a translator since midweek prayer meeting is really only for the nursing students and they all have class in English so I just gave my talk.

Right after the meeting Zach and I rushed over the Franklin’s house thinking we would be late…we weren’t. Mr. Franklin had gone out to get some last minute groceries so we sat and talked to his wife. It was really nice to sit on a couch again!

Mr. Franklin arrived and got right to work making his specialty, “parata”! It’s basically another form of naan or chapatti’s but so much better! He rolled out the dough on an oiled granite slab and then picked them up and slapped them down on the stone again. He oiled his hands between each parata by dipping his fingers in a bowl of oil. After slapping them down he bunched them into little balls by half folding, half rolling them. After that he rolled them back flat and put them on the flat, metal cooking plates on his stove until they were golden brown. The smell was amazing and the paratas came out light and crispy. Right after that Satir, the chaplain here at the hospital, came and so did the Franklin’s niece who is a nursing student and lives with them. She is from Maryland and speaks English with absolutely no Indian accent! It was really nice to speak English without having to listen carefully to what the other person is saying!

We sat down to eat and as expected it was phenomenal! We ate so much food and then sat in the living room and chatted for a bit. We then headed back to the hospital and headed off to bed. Eating at people’s houses here is where all the amazing Indian food is at!

The rest of the week went by without incident. We did however meet a man named George Kaligithi who is the brother-in-law of our good friend William Moses Enjati and also the grandfather of Anisha Sukrutham! He lives in Eugene, OR but is here visiting family. He also happened to be in the hospital due to his diabetes so once he found out Zach and Anisha had gone to UCA together and we had all been at UCA at the same for Anisha’s graduation we were instant family. He invited us over to William Moses’ house for Sabbath lunch so we headed over there after church. Lunch was great but the greatest thing about Sabbath was actually church this week…

New stuff!

There's a bunch of new stuff up now! Enjoy!

Blessings,

J & Z

Suicides and Snakebites (Oct. 12)

Things have moved back to normal this week now that Dussehra is over but you never know what you’re going to encounter in a hospital. We’ve become accustomed to snakebite cases coming into the ER but one thing I won’t get used to are the suicide attempts. This week we’ve had one every day this week with the most traumatic being today. Most of the time the people they bring in have taken some sort of poison ranging from pesticides to household cleaners but today they brought in a guy who tried to hang himself. I needed to get the pharmacy key from the ER so when I headed in there they had just finished in abating him and were using a bag to keep him breathing. Of course he had a neck brace on and looked to be in pretty bad shape. They worked on him until about 5 when they decided he was stable enough to be transported by ambulance to Vijayawada.

It’s really sad to see so many suicide attempts in a city that only has 50,000 people. I’m not sure why there are so many here but the reasons they give are dealing with problems at home, spouse abuse, or even as simple as they got into an argument with their husband or wife. We’ve talked to the doctors and staff about why there are so many here in Nuzvid and they don’t understand it either. Evidently the number of suicide attempts seen here is extremely high and abnormal for the rest of India.

I don’t understand and I don’t think I ever will. The only thing you can do is help them when they come in to the hospital and of course pray. It’s hard not being a doctor and going on rounds and seeing patients who have problems and all you can do is pray for them. That’s much better than nothing though…

Impromptu preaching… (Oct. 8)

I can’t say I relish the idea of speaking up front. I can do it but wouldn’t consider myself amazing at it. I also like having a good amount of time to prepare for it to ensure I don’t get up there have no idea what I’m going to say. Well, after our surprise trip to Machilipatnam we were treated to another wonderful surprise when Pastor Kumar Pitta knocked on our door at 10:30 PM. He’s Raj’s older brother and they are definitely related. We had talked about maybe going with him visit the 3 churches he pastors some Sabbath but we didn’t know it was going to be this one and we certainly didn’t think we would be speaking at them. Pastor Kumar had a different idea. We would be speaking at all 3 churches in the morning! We tried to explain that we would prefer to speak another weekend so we would have more notice and more time to prepare. Normally that would have been a good enough reason to get out of speaking the very next morning but Pastor Kumar countered with, “Well, I’ve already to the church members that you’re both speaking”. This guy was good! He’d covered all his bases…. We were absolutely exhausted from traveling to Machilipatnam and back and running on little sleep with it being festival week and all so we headed to bed intending on preparing our sermons the next morning. The problem with that was, we were tired and we slept a bit to long and so when 8:30 rolled around we were still just looking up texts to use for our topics. Thankfully Kumar was in fine Pitta form and came a half hour late. We still really only worked on our sermons for maybe…10 min?

Anyway, we set off to the first church and Zach somehow weaseled out of speaking. I spoke there at the first church to an audience of 8. The church was about 15 ft by 30 ft and was decorated with crazy streamers and banners. It was really nice to have a small audience but still it was certainly nerve wracking. We ended up not singing at this church and I almost fell asleep while Pastor Kumar gave his talk since I was perfectly hidden behind the pulpit. I was pretty thankful for that!

We finished up with the first church and moved on to the second church, which was a couple kilometers down the road. The 2^nd church was identical to the first with the layout and decorations except that this church still had it’s Christmas banner up behind the pulpit with not only a picture depicting the manger and Mary and Joseph but also Santa Claus in all his red suited glory. This church had a few more people but the attendance was still under 25 people total. Here Zach and I both spoke as well as sang a couple songs, which we came up with on the spot. I ended up pitching “Teaching the Truth in Love” by Acappella about 2 steps too low so that ended up being kind of a disaster but hey they didn’t know the difference!

Here was the first church that we had members wanting us to pray with them and give them a blessing. This part of the day really had an impact on why I was here. It made me realize that even though I was falling asleep from lack of sleep as well as hungry and tired from the heat, this was a phenomenal way to witness. I hope that we represented Jesus.

From this church we ended up stopping at one of the members house for chipatis and potato curry, which was absolutely amazing! Zach and I were talking about how if we were able to get a motorcycle we could come out here to this ladies house and learn to cook this stuff! Zach and I both ended up drinking the water they handed us to wash our hands with…oops. But hey, it’s been a couple days now and no vomiting or diarrhea. I think we’re in the clear, hopefully.

The third church was identical to the first two and we did the same thing we had done at the other churches. There were more kids at this church though and that made it really fun. Here we prayed with more people than the other two churches combined. It was interesting to find out that most of the members we saw were Hindu Christians, that is they held true not only the beliefs that SDA’s hold to be true but also any number of Hindu teachings they have chosen to follow. It occurred to me that this would not be a weird thing to do if you were a Hindu because Hindus are polytheistic to begin with so in their minds, what’s one more god to add to the list. While this is true, I also found kind of sad. It’s almost like they have the concept of religion all jumbled.

One interesting thing about these little village churches is that they have sound systems…but not for the inside. They have speakers that are on top the church and project out to the entire village. I’m sure the villagers have mixed emotions about that. I know I would!

Our day ended around 4:00 PM when we got back to the hospital. We didn’t really do much after that since we were so tired after preaching and traveling and not sleeping…but it was certainly a good experience for us. I think we are both going to prepare some sermons though so we’re not unprepared when we get asked to speak less than 12 hours before we have to speak. Although when you’re using an interpreter to speak it does give you a few seconds to gather your thoughts and figure out what you’re going to say next. So maybe less preparation is okay!

Blessings J & Z

Another surprise trip… (Oct. 7)

We got up Friday morning expecting a normal half day at work but of course the administration here love throwing us curve balls periodically. As we arrived at the chapel for worship, Dr. Prabhu Das and Robert Franklin met us in the hospital entryway. Now if you remember Dr. Prabhu Das is the “helicopter administrator” and Robert Franklin is the extremely helpful school registrar. They informed us that we would be leaving for Machilipatnam in 10 minutes for yet another fun filled trip to the state police headquarters! Now keep in mind we were running on about 4 hours of sleep after being up until 3 the night before partying it up in the streets of Nuzvid for Dussehra. This was not especially fun to find out but at least we would have the opportunity to sleep in the car.

This time we took the same “Ambassador” type car as we had taken the first time but this time we only had 3 of us plus our driver which gave Zach and I plenty or room in the back seat. It is actually a really comfortable car if you only have 4 people in it.

We set off and Zach and I were out before we were out of Nuzvid. We stopped after about an hour and a half for breakfast, yogurt over rice cakes, with coffee to wash it down. I can’t say we liked the rice and yogurt combo…

We headed into Machilipatnam and straight to the police headquarters. Of course the guy we needed to see wasn’t there so we went out to make some copies and then back to the same restaurant we ate at twice the previous time we came here to Machilipatnam. Thankfully this restaurant is really good so that wasn’t a huge burden for us!

After food we headed back to the headquarters and actually finished up our paperwork in about an hour. It was really nice to finally hold the finished permit in our hands and walk away knowing we wouldn’t have to come back here again!

After that we headed to find the fish market because our driver wanted to find fish to take home. We found the fish market and it was quite the experience. Most of the fishermen had come and gone already but a few people were still there trying to get rid of the last of the days catch. It was really disgusting around the stalls, because like the rest of India, cleanliness is kinda on the back burner. There were only a couple types of fish being sold along with shrimp, crabs and small sharks.

We then headed off to find some papaya, which we found but Robert Franklin must have forgotten we had asked to stop for some because we buzzed right on past a million papaya stands! Oh well, next time.

We then headed back towards Nuzvid but were still in search of fish to buy for our driver. We stopped at little villages along the way home, but it was no use, the fish we were looking for were not around.

Suddenly we pulled off to the side of the road about 2/3’s of the way back and got out of the car. We thought we were looking for some more fish to buy but it turns out the place we stopped was on a manmade lake that they use to farm fish. At the time we stopped there were around 30 or 40 people unloading these long metal boats of hundreds of 2 to 3 foot long fish. They would load the fish into crates and then 2 guys would each put a crate on their heads and then haul it over the bank and onto a tarp to the guys packing the fish in ice. There was a big pile of ice that the truck had brought as well as a couple scales. We were told this fish would be taken to Delhi where there was a great demand for this type of fish. The truck was no refrigerated of course so the drivers would work in pairs and drive all the way to Delhi nonstop.

It was really cool to see as they unloaded all these fish. There were several young boys working and they all wanted us to take their picture and show them.

When we first arrived the boat they were unloading was about half full. As we were leaving another boat was being poled up to the unload point and it was loaded all the way of to the edges of the boat. It was only a couple inches above the water!

This was one of the most interesting things I’ve seen so far in India and I’m glad we stopped even though we didn’t find any fish for our driver. Actually have fish in the car would have stunk so I guess that’s a good thing we didn’t find any!

Dussehra! Partying it up Hindu style! (Oct. 6)

This week has been the week of the biggest festival here in Nuzvid. The festival celebrates the Hindu holiday of Dussehra. This holiday is to remember the goddess “Durga” who, in Hindu fables, was created by the gods when they needed a being to defeat the demon King Mahishasura. The gods all gave Durga their prized weapons to do this task and so Durga is portrayed in Hindu temples as the goddess with all the arms each holding a different weapon. I still think Hinduism is the strangest religion of all time but the people are so nice and they certainly know how to throw a festival! It is sad to see modern day idol worship be this prevalent.

Anyway, here in Nuzvid this is the festival to beat all festivals and it did not disappoint! The festivities have been building all week in the form of preparation for the big crazy parade and celebration on Thursday night. We headed out with some friends around 8 to go see what was going on. As we walked from the hospital down through the town streets there were definitely more people on the streets than normal and this number of people only increased as we moved closer and closer to the main street in town which has a Hindu shrine built beside it amongst the shops. Very quickly the crowd became so thick that you weren’t able to walk you could only shuffle along and the entire mass of people moved around like waves on the ocean. The air was filled with the sounds of people making noise with noisemakers as well as the pounding of drum brigades. Needless to say, it was extremely loud! We moved through the crowd and once we were close to the center of the action we squeezed off to the side to watch a group of drummers and also this dude dressed up as the Indian goddess Durga. He was parading around holding a trident and eating fire! It was pretty cool! Then he hopped on his ox drawn cart that was decked out with hundreds of bright lights in a big design that resembles a male peacock all fanned out. The oxen were actually huge bulls, the white ones with the hump that are the most common here in India, and when I say huge bulls I mean HUGE! The backs of the cows were as tall as Zach and I! I felt pretty small standing next to these huge animals.

We enjoyed the craziness there for a while and saw many of our friends from the school in the crowd. We even ran into Dr. Rao and his wife as well as one of the older guys who plays volleyball with us. It was funny to see Dr. Rao in the crowd because it seemed to unlike him to be out at the festival! We then headed back towards the hospital since the procession actually didn’t start until 11 or 12. I had no idea how crazy this festival was! People had told us it was the biggest of the year and it didn’t disappoint!

We got back to the main street near the hospital and then headed out past the government hospital to the estate of one of the grandsons of the original king of Nuzvid. This is where the procession always starts every year and there were probably 10 or 12 tractors pulling carts with the same type of float we had seen earlier in the main part of town. The lights on these floats were powered by generators, which were being pulled behind the trailers. You would think the noise from the generators would be annoying but these generators also powered speakers on each float that were blaring the ceremonial Hindu music heard all over India so you really couldn’t hear the generators. And don’t forget the drum people… We looked over the floats and then walked back into town to watch the procession. By now it was 11 or so and the procession should have been starting soon but it was late so we ended up waiting until 12 or so. While we were waiting there were different groups performing in the streets. One group was doing synchronized sword fighting with bamboo sticks, which actually looked more like dancing that anything. This was all done to the beat of a drum of course. Other groups were just dancing and drumming.

Finally the floats and people began moving through the streets around 12:15. The first thing in the procession were these giant doll looking things made out of paper mache that people wore and then danced around as they walked. This is one of the famous parts of the celebration that is unique to Nuzvid, so it was really cool to see it first hand. Every couple hundred feet the participants in the parade would stop and do their thing while not moving for 5 or 10 minutes before moving on through the streets. This was really nice because by now we had climbed up on a rooftop and were watching the craziness from above. It gave us a really nice view of the celebration!

The procession slowly moved past us with each “float” having roughly the same things on it: a dude dressed up as a goddess with several maids who were also dudes dressed up to play the part. Evidently here in India males play the roles in spite of the fact that most of the characters in this festival were female. We also were told that one of the groups was not just acting but were cross-dressing eunuchs. You kinda have to expect the unexpected here in India because everything goes!

The procession continued past us until around 2:30. We were told that this procession would move around the town until around 7 AM but we didn’t follow it around for that. We had work in the morning, so once we had seen it, it was off to bed! The pictures are really the only things that do this festival justice and even then pictures are nothing compared to experiencing it first hand! The bottom line of this festival was that Hindus know how to party!

Busiest week yet… (Oct. 4- Oct. 7)

As the title states it’s been busy… We’ve had so much happen over the past few days! The week started off slow with a regular start but soon started to get interesting! Many of these things were good but several of them were very sad.

I’m going to start with the sad and finish with the good stuff. First off, whenever a snakebite case comes in to the ER most of the hospital knows it, especially for me working in the pharmacy because we handle all the antivenom. This Wednesday, a family brought in an 11 year old boy whom had been bitten by a cobra. Cobras are the most poisonous snakes here in India and I believe the world, if I’m not mistaken. So this case was especially dangerous, not only because it was a cobra but also the size of the boy. The prescription came in immediately to the pharmacy and we quickly got all the drugs needed for this boy. It had only been a few minutes since we sent out the meds that we heard screaming and crying echoing through the hallways of the hospital. The hospital is rather big and the pharmacy and Out Patient Department were on the other side of the hospital but the crying could be heard clearly. It turns out the family had waited too long to bring this boy in and he had died upon arriving to the ER. It certainly put a solemn haze to the rest of the day. So far we have had many snakebite cases since Zach and I arrived but this was the first death from one.

Sometimes families in the small outlying villages try and take snakebite victims to magicians or shamans but of course that doesn’t work. It turns out the boy had been bitten 2 hours prior to arriving at the ER and he simply had gone too long without treatment. I think the saddest part of this whole thing is that he could have lived. We’ve asked the doctors here how often snakebite victims die and the answer we’ve always heard is almost never. Most of the people hear understand the importance of time when rushing to the hospital for treatment but not every does. This was one of those cases.

The very next day before we were doing rounds with the doctors and were still in the ER/ICU checking on the patients there when another family brought in a 4 or 5-year-old girl who had been hit by a bus. She was unconscious and had a large gash in the side of her head. They began patching her up immediately but were worried about the head trauma so she was sent off to Vijayawada for CT and MRI scans. The facilities here at the hospital are fairly rudimentary. We only have an X-ray machine and I’m pretty sure its from the early 90’s and so if we need any other kind of tests done that involve some kind of imaging, the hospital is forced to refer patients to Vijayawada.

Anyway, that those were the two traumatic cases that came in this week. Things like that are common but not for us so it was a little bit crazy from our point of view this week.

Thursday brought on a whole new type of excitement though!

Exhibition! (Carnival) (Oct. 4)

Our friend Raj has been telling us about this “exhibition” for the past week and how he wanted to go to it with a group of students from the school. He kept telling us that we’d do it all of last week and that didn’t happen. Raj is a great guy with tons of good ideas but you don’t really know if what he says is going to happen until it actually is happening. We also figured out that the “exhibition” is really what we would call a carnival or fair back in the US.

Anyway, we actually ended up leaving for the exhibition around 7 PM and headed over right after stopping by Raj’s house and picking up the rest of the group in the family toy car. (It’s super small) Zach rode in there with the family and I hopped on the back of Raj’s motorcycle and off we went.

The exhibition was pretty cool for being so small. There was a row of vendors selling the usual cheap festival stuff. There were also carnival games, but much more rudimentary than in the US. They had a BB gun shooting booth and a booth where you throw rings at little blocks of wood and if you ring one you get a prize. Another popular one was where you had to try and roll 6 ping-pong balls into little numbered slots and add the numbers up to see what prize you would get. Zach and I played the ring one and the ping-pong ball game a couple times and each walked away with a really cheap LED flashlight that broke literally the 3 time I used it during a power outage…that’s not an exaggeration.

There were also rides like you would see in the US at the fair but with much less of an emphasis on safety. For instance there were no attendants walking around checking to see if you were properly buckled in, but that’s probably because there were no buckles. There were only bars on 2 of the rides we went on but not even a chain across the side of the Ferris wheel that went super fast. You actually achieved a slight feeling of weightlessness on that one! It was super fun to walk around go on the rides but the best part was the food! We had amazing samosas and this other dish that I really wasn’t sure of but it tasted good and they said it was veggie. There were also these crispy “Elephant ear” things that they put chili powder on. It was definitely different but pretty good. We stayed there for a couple hours and then headed back to the hospital.

I thought we were done for the evening but on the way back Raj stopped and picked up some chicken street food that is unique to Nuzvid. Zach and I tried a bite but didn’t eat the rest, partially because we were stuffed and partially because we still haven’t really enjoyed eating meat here…It’s just a bit different when you walk past a couple butcher’s shops around town and see the chickens hanging there in all their glory…

Anyway, it was a pretty fun evening and definitely one of those “India experiences”!

More white people in India! (Oct. 3)

Since we’ve arrived we have been the only Caucasians we’ve seen. That’s totally fine and I really do enjoy it, but for some reason it is comforting to know that Sidney Krall, Brooke Bauer, and Trevor Carstens are in India now! We chatted on FB with Trevor and it was good to hear about how things are going for them. It sounds like we’re having many similar experiences. We figured out we’re about 9 hours or so away from them so we’ll definitely have to head town for a weekend trip soon. I think Zach and I are stoked to know we have other amigos relatively close by (by Indian standards).

Blessings

Monkeys, Motorcycles, and Hindu Temples (Oct. 2)

Well, Sunday morning sometime between our 2^nd and 3^rd loads of laundry our good friend Raj Pitta stopped by our room to chat with us. He’s does that on occasion but today he wanted to see if we were interested in heading to a village about half an hour from Nuzvid to see this Hindu Temple. The temple was on top of a hill but started at the bottom with a small temple and then from there were 1300 steps straight up the mountain with 5 smaller temples equally spaced up the 1200 steps on the way to the top! It was quite amazing! Now that was exciting but the ride there was even more exciting!

We started off from Nuzvid on 2 motorcycles, Raj and Zach on one and myself and Johnson, another friend of ours, on another. We zipped through traffic for 30 minutes weaving in between trucks, buses, cows, goats, other motorcycles, etc. I thought all my scary moments on roads had been used up while teaching drivers ed but I was sadly mistaken… It was definitely fun but none the less a bit nerve wracking. I think that was mainly because I was simply a passenger, not the driver.

Anyway, we made it there and climbed up to the top of the hill. It was really amazing seeing the village below and all the surrounding countryside, which is normally hidden from view. The Hindus know how to build sweet temples! I love the architecture and thought that goes into making these impressive structures but at the same time it’s humorous to me to see their gods and realize how ridiculous the religion is. I want to respect these people’s religion but I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.

One great thing about this temple is the fact that it is home to hundreds of monkeys! They were hilarious! There were monkeys of all sizes, mothers with little baby monkeys riding on their backs and hanging from their stomachs as well as full-grown adults swinging from trees. We got close to one adult monkey who was close to the edge and he turned and leapt to a tree branch about 30 feet downhill! They were super entertaining to watch!

After we climbed to the top and chatted with the police radiomen stationed at the top next to the temple we headed back down. While we were waiting for Johnson to catch up (turns out he has bad knees after a motorcycle crash almost killed him 7 years back), we were looking out over the village when all of a sudden the power came back on and all the lights in the valley turned back on! It was amazing to see the entire village come back to life just as the sun set and power was restored.

We got to the bottom and headed into the village for some street food. Now up to this point I haven’t had any problems with the food disagreeing with my stomach or intestines but I wasn’t sure how this was going to go… We had battered and deep-fried chili peppers and these deep fried dough balls with chutney. I wasn’t worried about the deep fried stuff but the chutney was cold but absolutely amazing! I decided to tempt fate a bit and so far it’s turned out all right. Raj told us to slowly start eating the street food and in a couple weeks we would be totally fine. I hope he’s right! At this point I think Zach and I are getting braver with the street food and so far it’s going well and is absolutely amazing! Fingers crossed!

We also had some chai, which is made right on the street by tea and coffee vendors. That is something I may become addicted to by the end of our time here. It’s only 6 rupees for a cup the size of a shot glass but that’s all you need! It’s sooooo good!

Power had gone out again right as we were getting food so once we finished eating we hopped on the bikes and started out for Nuzvid. Now at this point Johnson hadn’t really talked to me while driving because I thought he needed to concentrated on the driving but evidently once the sun goes down the driving is easier so he was able to chat the whole way back while weaving in and out of the same traffic…(Sarcasm) He also thought this would be the best time to tell me about his motorcycle accident and 32 minute 4 AM motorcycle runs to Vijayawada. (It normally takes at least an hour) I definitely enjoyed the ride back but it was more nerve wracking then the ride in the daylight. I really do love how they all use motorcycles over here. It really easy and super fun! I’m thinking I need one for when I get home! Haha!

Anyway, that was our Sunday activity. I wish we had a motorcycle of our own so we could explore more, we’ll see how that goes in the next couple of weeks. Raj says he’ll help us get one for cheap! Hopefully that works out!

Blessings, J and Z

Another Week, Communion, and Trip to Vijayawada (Sept. 29-Oct. 1)

Another week has passed here in India. Work has been going good, although I’m praying they hire a dentist soon. Once a dentist is hired I’ll move to that department and assist there. Until then I’ll keep on handing out drugs like candy and hopefully don’t get any prescriptions wrong! =)

This weekend was full of good surprises! We originally planned to head to Narsapur, a town about 3-4 hours away from Nuzvid. We’ve actually been planning this trip with our good friend here William Moses Enjati (Uncle Moses) but there was a funeral that happened here on Thursday and many of the people visiting for that stayed here through Sabbath so we ended up not going. We were going to play in a volleyball tournament there which would have been extremely fun but again the funeral put a damper on that. The man that died was a principal of one of the nearby Adventist schools and so it was quite a large funeral. He was only 55 and died from complications of kidney and liver failure coupled with tuberculosis. It was quite sad and the family stayed in the room next to us so all Thursday it was pretty solemn and sad on our wing of the hospital…

Not to worry though, we’ll head to Narsapur another weekend! We headed to vespers Friday night and ended up getting asked to help out with a skit on Sabbath for Sabbath school as well as sing with a group during the foot washing part of church when people were returning from washing their feet. (Sabbath turned out to be communion…) Needless to say it was probably a good thing we stayed here for the weekend and had the opportunity to get involved with church.

Now there were a couple things that turned out to be hilarious about being involved with the church service. For one, we’re head and shoulders taller than 99% of the girls here so when we stood up front to sing with the group we stuck out like David Bowen does all the time! Also, we’ve discovered that most people here are tone deaf. I’m not trying to be mean or anything but even the musically inclined people we’ve met sing many of the songs we know with at least a slight degree of “off keyness”. We kept trying to sing the tunes correctly but as we did some of the people we were singing with would look back at us with a look that said, “Come on guys, stay on key with us here!” And in our heads we were thinking the same thing! It was funny to see the dynamic but it went well. Okay, another thing that was funny about our involvement was the skit. Again, we’re quite a bit bigger than anyone here and so we were naturally asked to play the part of robbers who kill a missionary couple in the skit. Our friend Vijay kept telling us, “You really have to make it look real! Really bang me hard!” (That’s how they use “bang” here) So we made it look real! The other thing about this that made it funny was that we normally sit in the first third of the church but never in the front row. For this skit they wanted us to just come up suddenly and start “banging” Vijay without any warning. So the audience didn’t have any clue what was going on! The guys sitting next to us told us they were really scared when we ran up there! It was pretty hilarious!

Anyway, the service went well but oh my goodness it was long… They do communion Sabbath here almost identical to how we do it in the US but here they take about twice as long. Normally back home the pastor will cut down his talk since the breaking of the bread and drinking of the juice takes up a large part of the service but not here. The pastor rocked his sermon for about 45 minutes and then the communion service lasted about an hour… We sat in church from 9:00 until 1:30 on hard church pews with no AC, and did I mention the entire service was in Telugu? Normally they translate everything but for once I’m glad they didn’t because we would have gotten out of there around 4 if they had!

Anyway, the service was very nice and extremely reverent. I was very impressed with the amount of seriousness they put into communion.

We headed back from church and were eating lunch when Uncle Moses knocked on our door and asked us if we wanted to go with him to Vijayawada to drop off his brother in law at the train station and then go shopping after sundown. We were all for it and told us to meet him at the front gate “at 3 o’clock SHARP!” That last part was music to our ears since it definitely implied he was not a fan of “Indian Time”. Uncle Moses lived in Canada for 40+ years and so he really is more Canadian than Indian. We were their at 3 on the dot and he pulled up in his air conditioned SUV at 3:05. It was super nice to have someone be pretty much on time for once!

His SUV is a top of the line Tata Safari that is amazing by Indian standards! It is decked out in leather, AC, and LCD entertainment systems in the back. It was nice to kick back for a trip to town in such comfort! He doesn’t drive though, he has a drive he hires for about $7 per day to drive him around, that also comes in handy when we went shopping because the driver just waits for us on the street instead of having to find parking! Score!

We took off and made it to the train station in Vijayawada in about an hour. We dropped off Uncle’s brother-in-law and headed into town. About halfway to Vijayawada the AC stopped working in the car so we headed straight to a repair shop. Evidently here in Indian fixing the AC on Sabbath equates to pulling the old proverbial ox out of the ditch! ;)

It took about 2 hours to get that fixed and by then it was sundown and we headed to the shopping places. We first headed to the fruit market and loaded up on fresh fruit, which will probably be gone in about 2 days. That’s something we’re trying to do as much as possible here since our diet has so little variety otherwise. We then headed over to the “Big Bazaar”. This store is 5 floors of packed craziness! It makes Andy’s market on a Friday afternoon look like a quiet dinner party! It took us about an hour to figure out what all we wanted and get it and then another 45 minutes standing in line before we finally finished up. By this time it was 9 PM or so and we hadn’t eaten since about 2 so needless to say we were starving. We headed to one of Uncle’s favorite restaurants in town and feasted on biryani and buttered naan with this amazing tandoori fish dish! We didn’t know it was fish until after finishing it…but it was really good!

After dinner it was quite late and we headed back to Nuzvid. It was fun to get out and see something other than the small streets of Nuzvid and the hospital compound. We had a good trip and Uncle Moses is a fantastic tour guide. Although he did try and convince us to go to dental and medical school here in India… =)

It was a good Sabbath filled with new experiences and surprises that we’ve come to expect here in India. I really can’t wait for some stuff like this! It will come for sure!

Blessings, J and Z