As always, I can say the trademark phrase, "The past few days have been exciting." I suppose there is rarely a day that goes by where I can say that and not have it be true. Then again, that requires having a fairly loose definition of "exciting." So perhaps Thursday was not all too exciting. There was sitting around waiting for the owner to fix the lamp that had fallen. The owner is definitely something, to say the least. He has fun with this power trips, and he loves drama. He is a drama king that feels that he is incredibly important because he is doing everything to help the foreigners. Right.
My first encounter with him was on Tuesday night, I believe. I love how he takes thirty minutes to say what should only take thirty seconds. And by love, I mean hate. When Nick had received a notice that he was supposedly living in the other flat illegally, the owner seemed incredibly excited to be able to deal with this. Oh the politics in India. I would make a sarcastic remark about how that probably hinders development and just progression forwards, but that would just be insensitive.
Anyhow, we were able to have business cards printed. They are definitely very sexy business cards.
We have also been having some meetings with the Rotaracts in Mumbai. The Rotaract is basically the Rotary club for people under thirty. It seems that the Rotary club meets and gives away money to worthy causes while the Rotaract actually goes out and helps out with these worthy causes. It is actually pretty exciting since these people seem to be extremely reliable, and they even call and say that they want to move the meeting fifteen minutes later than the planned time. ...Fifteen minutes late is on time for Indian Standard Time (IST)!
Friday, five of us, Mary, Elaine, Anu, Emily, and I went to the Holy Family Hospital Navjeet Community Center. We were able to meet the doctor there, and I really liked her. She was very articulate, and friendly. Then, they brought out a bunch of bags hand-made by the women there in the community, and the group of us had the urge to buy everything there. They are definitely amazing bags,and they are also very good quality. They are definitely relatively extremely cheap, too.
Everybody else went shopping afterwards, and I went to Genesis Labs to acquire the necessary lab supplies for water quality testing. I will be collecting water and conducting these tests on Tuesday from the slums in Sion. Hopefully I will be able to find somebody to join me, as I do not want to carry around a ton of water samples while also testing for chlorine demand, while locking myself up in a lab filtering water and plating membrane filters all day. Such an exciting week to look forward to.
Today, Ajit and I went on a went on a wild-goose hunt, walking around Southern Mumbai for who knows how many miles, or rather, kilometers. I left home at 10:45 in the morning, and did not reach home until 5:00 in the evening. I love how you go one place, and then they refer you to one place, where they further refer you to another place. It's okay, after four hours, we know where not to go. At least we found some vendors for the M.E. coli broth, but even that was a ridiculous search. I really have some doubts regarding the sustainability at least regarding the technology part of this project.
The education portion seems to be going full-speed, and we have been recruiting an amazing amount of students from different colleges, and there seems to be an awesome movement towards working to improve the slums, and just India in general. That has been amazingly refreshing, but with regards to creating a low-cost technology to treat water and store it safely, I do not know how that will turn out. The lack of resources in Mumbai, or just India in general with regards to water testing and reliable water filters and chlorine manufacturers is frustrating.
Nobody uses membrane filtration to test for E. coli and other coliforms, even though that is the international standard. I cannot seem to find a lab that can test for cysts and protazoa because that requires resources that most labs do not have. To have a quantitative test for cysts and protazoa, it requires Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which requires expensive machines and primers that you cannot find here, or immunoflourescent anitbody tagging, which also cannot be done with the equipment that they have.
Ajit and I had an interesting discussion regarding the lack of resources and the resulting brain drain that happens. It seems that it is either an upwards spiral or a downwards spiral, without an actual beginning or an end. We have professors who do amazing research in fields such as microbiology, which means that there is more funding for facilities and equipment, which allows for more research on the graduate level, which means that there are more undergraduates who learn more. This in turn create more people in research doing more top-notch research. Unfortunately with the lack of professors, there is a lack of funding and lack of trained people, and you can see where that leads to. Ajit also mentions that there is a lack of trained professionals because those who are better trained end up leaving for places with better funding and better facilities. I wonder where all this will end up leading.
Anyhow, I think that I am not in the best of moods, which is too bad for my team-mates. Oh well, they went out shopping all day. We are supposed to go to a "disc," or a club, tonight. I am tired, and I do not know if I really want to. We will see. I am sure once the music starts, I will love it, but until then, I really do not feel like spending more money on good food and the rickshaw and taxi rides.
I am homesick, but at the same time, I am not the biggest fan of doing things like going to a disc or going shopping all the time. It feels strange. It reminds me of how in Kenya, I did not feel like going out all the time with the other interns. I like keeping more of a low profile around here. That is not to say that when I get back, I will not be spending way too much money on baking and fancy places and doing things such as kayaking, rock climbing, etc, but right now, I would not mind if we did not go out to Americanized restaurants and going shopping all the time.
I am done for now.
Lesson of the day: Trying to find anything will take at the minimum five times longer than you'd expect. Also, Chacos leave a really odd tan on your foot, but they are awesome for kayaking and walking around in India.
This is Edith signing out.
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