Dugan in India

Monsoon Rains Pour

2009-07-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

HAPPY 4th of July!!!

2009-07-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July!!! This morning my roommate (wrapped in a dress made from our red dorm curtains) and I paraded into breakfast blasting Boston's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner on my laptop! Listening to patriotic songs and lots of Bruce Springsteen, we all ate banana pancakes and made sure to invite all the Scandinavian students sitting around laughing at us to join in our celebration of love and freedom. Hand drawn cards on every table shout our pride for the red, white and blue. Makeshift decorations created out of pants strings, a mosquito net full of balloons and markers sit in anticipation to be hung up in the commons. They will have to wait until we get back. Now we are out the door to pick up our American flag cake that we ordered...the cooks are making french fries, corn on the cob, kababs, grilled chicked, watermelon, jello.....an international celebration with Americans, Scandinavians and Indians!!!! Happy 4th of July, America!!!

2009-06-29T01:55:00.000-07:00

Update 2: I am so happy to report that the student who collapsed and collided with the wall yesterday is healing well and attending class today. The student reports, however, that their experience at the "Health Center" was with personnel no more qualified in health care than the janitors in the Tagore International House. Frightening. I can only hope that everyone from now on maintains great health for the duration of our stay at the University of Hyderabad.

All the while, there is someone here whose intellect and conviction inspires analysis during so many moments of confusion and frustration (although I desire to dole out due praise, until I get approval, I will refrain from using their name as well). This person brought up at lunch today that the irresponsibility of what occured yesterday is not the result of lacking nor neglecting protocol. This is an issue of morality. To add to that, one's status as an authority figure does not inherently bear a greater sense of responsibility in such a matter. When injury exist, employment status is exempt. There does not need to exist any section in the rulebooks titled e.g. Article V.I.XI which states "If persons are injured, contact medical professionals immediately."

All living are their brother's keeper.

Seeking help for another is a moral obligation. Strike that. A moral necessity.

Care is propagated solely because we are humans, driven internally to help fellow breathers immediately. Ethics of the human condition. No hesitation. No excuse. No rulebook article necessary. React. Save. Love. Everyone.

Janitors are NOT doctors.

2009-06-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

Update: A student collapses in the common room, is pale and bleeding (for their privacy I will not reveal their name). I watch as janitors take the student's pulse. They come to the conclusion that they just have dehydration will be okay with rest. JANITORS and a house manager, unqualified in any medical sense, give their diagnosis as if with some authoritative knowledge. They know nothing of his current health status or past medical conditions. I can't believe this! Janitors are NOT doctors.

This is a student who has just stumbled and fallen hard and hit their head and neck against the wall. They were in good health this morning (no prior issues with heat exhaustion, had taken dehydration pills as a precaution earlier, drank water, ate and were out of the sun today). Now this student has a green complexion and is bleeding down their neck still sitting on the grey overchemicalized tile floor in the same spot they fell twenty minutes earlier.

The manager sits at his desk ten feet away with mild concern and continues to read the daily newspaper (to spare him embarrassment for his irresponsibility I will also not reveal his name).

Isabel (a Texas Lutheran University student) and I see the ordeal from collapse to amateur prognoses. At first, I stay out of the way. Then we grow in outrage that nobody is calling for help. Interjecting, we plead with the house manager. "We need to call a doctor, we are not medical professionals, please get a hold of the Health Center..."

I learn right then that there are no doctors available on campus on Sundays. Do students and faculty not need medical attention on Sundays???

We start spreading the word of what's happening to the other students in the house. We keep approaching the house manager (4 times to be exact). The house manager remains sluggish with his calls and our worries increase. We start making every phone call we could think of ourselves with Isabel's phone ( to the director, coordinator, etc.). We have no luck getting a hold of anyone. We keep checking on the student and sitting with them. Finally!!!! We are taken seriously and a taxi is arranged to take the student to the Health Center where some personnel are called in.

I really really really hope this student will be okay, I care about them a lot and I am waiting to hear back. Even if it turns out to be a case of simple dehydration and a minor cut, I know us students who banded together to get them professional medical attention did the right thing and I am once again appalled at the actions of this university.

This is UNACCEPTABLE!!!! This is our safety, our lives. I informed the house manager that I will be reporting this lack of response to the director of the Study India Program when I go to class tomorrow, with the aid of other witnesses. I am concerned about the safety of all students now. There should most definitely be doctors on campus on Sundays. The protocol when someone is unexpectedly ill and injured should always be to seek a doctor no matter what.

So much needs to change to make the University of Hyderabad and India a safe environment.

"Take me home, country roads...."

2009-06-27T21:44:00.001-07:00

On Friday June 26th I went out on the town in Hyderabad with the Nordic students who arrived at UofH last week for their program on Contemporary India. Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish, and Finnish students and one American (me) set out to laugh, share stories, investigate cultures and make memories. As we got to know each other over hookah, beers and a little tequila at Coco's Bar and Grill in Banjara Hills, I fell in love with all of them. Talking, laughing, pictures and a little bit of impromptu dancing (Vanilla Ice Ice Baby) fills the night. Those who took the taxi back to Tagore International House on campus left early. The rest of us taking rickshaws home stayed to the end. As the bar shuts off the lights, a not so subtle hint everyone knows well, we spontaneously bust out singing "Take me home, country roads, to the place I belong, West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home, country roads....." While swaying and belting out the lyrics, an adjacent table of Indian men chimed in at the top of their lungs. So it happened: one American, a handful of Nordics and a party of Indians resounding together those great lyrics in a dark closed bar with accent flooded harmony. Together for one moment, we were not distinguished by nationality, we were all mankind and we love love love music! Thank you sincerely John Denver for giving me a favorite and unforgettable memory abroad. That is the power of music. This is what traveling and people are all about: common understanding and bonding no matter your background. I love the world.

It was hard for me to think of how to start this blog today. I have been deliberating over it for days. Do I share a great positive memory or the anguish I feel for the hopelessness of such a great nation stricken with poverty, disease and corruption? I finally chose to share that great memory above, but it is a buffer for the pain I feel for this city, state and country. Over the past 3 weeks, I have witnessed contradiction beyond compare here in India. Poverty neighbors excess. The children hurt to see. Young kids begging, sleeping in the medians of the highway, living in squatter villages all around (even on campus), child labor (also on campus), surrounded by garbage (everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, on campus too). This is Hyderabad. This is Hi-TECH city. This is a booming town of history and progress but so many live in makeshift tents that I can't imagine offer much protection from the Monsoon rains, the snakes, the mosquitos, and so of course the pain and disease. I catch glimpses of unexpected happiness of those suffering this way of life. There is a satisfaction with just being alive. Do they not need saving? Are they not seeking release from perceived hell?

I am trying to understand the principles of Hinduism, Islam (Muhammadanism), Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism... and so much is about coping and suffering. I hurt for them and I don't have the tools yet to suffer satisfactorily. I want soup kitchens, homeless shelters, welfare, healthcare and worker's rights for these folks with so little. The more I talk with others about the issues, the more I realize what these conditions indicate and how these systems seem successful elsewhere but here would only patch up the symptoms of deep, dreary and fervent issues that have festered for centuries. There are these poverty pimps in town who control the poor and send them out to beg and offer protection for their earnings, and it is not just in the movies, they do in fact intentionally disfigure their subjects. This is especially done before the great pilgrimage to Mecca. The beggars are permanently mangled and then sent to sit along the way so that the poverty pimps can capitalize of the Islamic practice of giving alms. This practice is part of the scriptures in the Quran. This holy showing of love for another has sometimes now been twisted into a system of corruption and evil by those few who do not know how to love. How can this end? Can this end?

I was warned by Geeta, a Hindi instructor and fellow Sanskrit student back in Kansas, that I must try hard to not get frustrated and intensely overwhelmed by the things I will see here. Witnessing homeless families, starvation, water shortage, garbage, public urination, child labor and nonexistent or unreliable services everywhere. These sufferers deserve our tears and action. I study languages that I love here and am surrounded by the entertainment of new friends and sights, but I feel the most important experience I will have here is digesting suffering.

I wish the University of Hyderabad did more to stop these issues. There are workers on campus with such poor conditions the school should be ashamed. I don't feel right enjoying the luxuries that we get as international students. I just found out this morning that our cooks and servers in our dining hall, who take care of us so well, setting out the meals orderly, pouring our water and handing out our accompanying sodas and smoothies, serving our deliciously spicy food and giving us ice cream every night, they sleep on the floor in the kitchen. Where are their comforts? Where are their families? We have beds and are surrounded by unoccupied rooms on both sides of the huge dorms and they sleep ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR. I wonder what good it would do to bring this up to the school administrators because the workers have no rights. Nevertheless, I am going to write my paper for Contemporary India class about these conditions on campus and end my observations with a plea to change this now.

I know this was a long and partially depressing blog entry, but I reassure you that I am loving my time here, my studies and the people I meet.

Just as I wrote that last sentence, sitting in the common room of the dorms, I witness a student stumble uncontrollably, fall and collapse into the wall and then onto the ground. People are standing around.

He is conscious and sitting up now, drinking water, but he looks pale and I am scared and upset no one is calling a doctor. This is probably dehydration, but he is bleeding and we are not medical professionals, we need to get more help.

I will write more later. I have been staying out of the growing crowd around the student but I can't sit here and witness this delay in action anymore. We have to call the doctor right now.

Don't worry though, I love you all and you will hear from me again soon!!!

2009-06-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

2009-06-09T02:21:00.000-07:00

2009-06-09T02:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to India

2009-06-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

At 10:30 am Thursday June 4th 2009, I left Lawrence, Kansas, USA. I arrived in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India at 9:30 am Saturday June 6th. It took 4 flights and two days to get here: Kansas City to Chicago to Frankfurt to New Delhi to Hyderabad. There were only minor delays and the flights went well (thanks to Nyquil gel tabs and the existence of few passengers which allowed me to stretch out across 3 seats on the 8 hour flight from Germany to India). I had lost contact with the other students (thanks to spotty wireless in the airports) and didn't finalize plans for how I was going to get to the University of Hyderabad. My mind was racing, don't get scammed by taxi driver, hope the others I had been talking to are safe, what if I can't go to the dorms early, where will I stay?

While in Chicago, I was informed via Facebook by Katie (another KU student on the trip!) that the terrorist alert was raised in Hyderabad because 3 LeT (Lashkar-e-Toiba) terrorists were caught in the city. This organization has been around since the early 90s and was responsible for the terrorist attacks that occurred in Mumbai last year that killed 173 people, wounding 308. We were not supposed to arrive at the UofH until June 7th, so I was a day early and worried about finding a place to stay in the very city that has been identified as a target for terrorists because of it's recent high-tech urban corporate development. Hyderabad has even been dubbed "Cyberabad" and has a section called "HITEC City." Here there are the India headquarters for Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Bank of America (in India? really?), Motorola, Verizon, Texas Instruments, etc. Needless to say, my nerves were on edge and I did not know what to expect when I arrived.

All these worries stayed with me until I flew from New Delhi to Hyderabad. I sat next to a beautiful 25 year old Indian woman named Inanna who had never met an American before. She knew English well and asked all kinds of questions about America regarding independence, racism, family, friends, relationships, etc. I loved it. We even watched a movie together about an Indian woman and an American man falling in love (the title escapes me now but it was NOT the movie Outsourced). At first she was hesitant to laugh at the jokes in the movie about Americans but when she saw that I was laughing too, we both cracked up together!

I asked her questions of my own about India, Indians, Hindu, Muslim, family, love, etc. She told me about the significance of the five elements that Hindus believe in (wind, fire, sky, earth and water) and I began to forget all my worries of terrorism and how I was going to get to school.

Continuing on about culture, we talked about why people live with their parents and grandparents in India even when they are older and married. I explained to her that this is considered not very cool in America. She told me that because Indians stay so close to their relatives they can always be there for each other. For this reason, loved ones are less likely to experience tragedy and death on their own. We talked about Hindu death rites and the connection to the five elements. I could not help but reflect silently on the separation between myself and my family members. It has been a very long time since I have seen my ma, dad, grama, siblings, cousins, etc. The last time I saw a family member of mine was 7 months ago when my little sister Staci came to visit me in Kansas. I must go to Minnesota and Virginia when I return from India.

The plane lands and on our way to baggage claim together I met her brother, sister-in-law, sister and nieces and nephews, all nine or ten of them had flown together! I could feel their love for each other as I, the American, pull out my laptop to check the status of the other students. Nope. Still no working wireless or cell phone. I felt welcomed thanks to the soulful encounter with Inanna but stranded without any connection to the other students or the University.

I said bye to Inanna and promised to Facebook her. I walked out of the baggage claim area, fully expecting to be ripped off by the first taxi I try to take alone. I began to get a little choked up and overwhelmed but I tried my best not to let it show. I walked outside and looked in the eyes of all the foreign faces waiting for loved ones and then I saw it, a sign held by a very friendly looking man that read "University of Hyderabad." The school knew of the terrorism scare and my flight delays and sent their own private driver to pick me up free of charge! VICTORY! I was safe and surrounded by fantastic bright colored trees, huge rock formations and water buffalo blocking highway traffic. I was safe. I was on my way to school. I was ready to experience India. Thank you Inanna and the University of Hyderabad.

The photo above is the view out of my dorm room window and the site of a new building being constructed on campus. The tents are where the workers stay. I feel strange photographing them from my air conditioned bedroom. They work ridiculously hard in this heat and watching them I am no longer exhausted because of my two day journey.