I suppose, Dear Readers, that I should catch you up on the last two weeks (in roughly chronological order).
At the drop in center, I picked up a brother. This guy actually considered himself gay, unlike most of our clients who consider themselves to be women or just sometimes like to have sex with men. He kept asking me if I knew any gays. Especially any American gays. I said I did, so I’m pretty sure he’s going to steal away to America in my luggage so he can go to gay bars in Chicago. Everyone called him Posh, because he’s their only westernized gay. He decided to make me his sister, which apparently involves hand feeding a person large quantities of rice (actually hand feeding, since we don’t use utensils). And he gave me a bracelet! Yay!
ALSO big news, I had an Indian date/hangout/social activity with a boy. This was pretty durn difficult to pull off. I met this 25 year old who works for Penske at church, he was nice and fun to talk to although probably not the love of my life, if for no other reason that I’m about to leave. He wanted to meet up, so he gave his aunt (my coworker) his email address. Phone numbers were exchanged, and he called to suggest that he take me to the McDonalds by the IMAX (a cool western-type place to go, also I’ve been dying to try a McAloo Tikki burger). This idea was totally shot down by la familia. It ended up with me giving the phone to my eldest male cousin, who advocated on my behalf (yelling, in Telegu, too far! Too far!) Eventually I brought my (younger) host brother as a chaperone and we went to Café Coffee day (another cool western-type—read: overpriced—place to go, closer by). This sat well with all male and female relatives. It was fun, we just chilled.
Then the dreaded Dengue descended. I was in bed Monday night to Sunday night. I had a fever (chills/sweats), rash, muscle aches, weakness, nausea, vomiting, fainting, blah, blah, blah. I basically lied in bed comatose, staring at the ceiling, occasionally rolling over and moaning. I also didn’t really eat for a week. Unfun. At the moment, I’m just exhausted, and my legs are covered in purple spots but that’s about it. Lowlights: because we are experiencing a drought during rainy season and we run on hydroelectric power, there are a multiple power outages a day. Then the fans go off and the mosquitoes come. I lay in bed, sweating and slapping mosquitoes and cursing a lot. Also, everyone wanted me to get some injection for fever that everyone gets. Luckily, one of the American doctors who runs my program was in town. When I asked him about the injection he laughed and said “we moved beyond witchcraft a long time ago.” Awesome man, saved me from spending any time in an Indian hospital.
Peace out kids!