Railway Tales

Still getting use to my internship at CASA. Each day the organization begins at 9am with a quick prayer session before we start working. Afterwards some of the staff settle down to read the morning's newspaper while being served coffee by a man who runs a tea stand down the street. The Chai guy usually brings his big thermos and sugar to fix coffee for us. I think he laughed the first time I asked for no sugar but since then he has made it a point to let me know that mine is the one without sugar. Work then usually starts  a little after 9:30am

In regards to my office, I work in a small shared space with three of my coworkers. Most of the time I meet with Poul the organization's Project Manager to go over the latest Core Program reports and research some of the political, social, environmental and economic factors that affect our clients. I'm really learning a lot about CASA's different projects. One of the biggest initiatives they are working on is reducing the risk of children falling victim to the child labor system. In addition to this, I am also assisting Poul with UT's  PUC (Projects with Undeserved Communities) program. PUC consists of a group of undergrad UT engineering and social work students in Austin who are currently designing a community center for the village of Packianathapuram. Construction on the building will begin in May but until then the students are skypeing in with Poul to gather some more details about the people, area, materials available and so forth.

As part of this project Poul invited me to come see the village and help gather some of this information for the PUC team. So with his help, I booked a train ticket for an 11 hour train ride to the Packianathapuram. This was my first Indian train ride experience and was super excited to be on train with beds on it. Anyway, I successfully found the train station, my designated train and my reserved seat without a hitch. To entertain myself I looked out at the countryside, and read some books and  required coursework readings for my online capstone class on my kindle.Well, I was eight hours into my journey when everything went pear shaped...

Train riding

Remember in my last post where I mentioned the Pongal festival? Well as part of the Pongal festival, the people of Tamil Nadu hold a kind of run-with-the-bulls activity called Jallikattu where people chase the bull and attempt the grab and hold on to the hump on its back. However this practice has slowly been banned around the country over the past few years, eventually leading to an official ban on the practice in 2014  by the Supreme Court of India citing animal welfare concerns. Since then there have been protests every year around Pongal to legalize the practice but this year's protest was the biggest recorded yet. Thousands of people came together to protest at Chennai's Marina Beach with many others protesting in towns and villages across the state. Which leads me back to my train ride story...

The train had made a scheduled stop in the town of Dindigul to pick up passengers as usual when we were informed that the railway workers, in support of the protests, were on strike and would not let the train go any farther. Uh-oh! So for three hours I sat on the immobile train trying to figure out my next move. I called my supervisor who was waiting for me at my original destination and informed him of the change in plans. After I called him, he quickly contacted a woman who lived in Dindigul and asked if she would take me in for the night. There I was sitting on the train when a woman named Ciliy approached me and asked "Are you with CASA? Come with me". So I ambled out of the train with my backpack and stayed the night at her house until my supervisor was able to pick me up the following day. The transportation strike continued for another three days so nothing was going back towards Chennai. Since I couldn't go anywhere, Poul and his family took me in for the weekend until some of the trains opened back up. To pass my time at Poul's, I toured an old Hindu temple complex and a palace near his home. In the end I eventually made it back to Chennai. Boy what a crazy time though. What was supposed to be a two day trip turned into a four and a half day adventure to say the least.

My rescuer Ciliy in the middle and her family

More of the Hindu Temple

The Palace

Another incident...one that has been an ongoing challenge is finding reliable ways to acquire money here as a foreigner. Since India's demonetization of 86% of their bank notes in November, cold hard cash has been hard to come by. While it impacts everyone here in India it especially effects foreigners because we significantly rely on the act of drawing cash out from the atm as our main method of obtaining money. My credit and debit cards are not accepted in most stores and shops and are only really good for atm withdrawals, however since there is a shortage of cash in the country, there are very few atms with money in them. After three weeks of not being able to draw out money I stumbled upon a magical atm close to my hostel that still manages to dispense cash. In addition to this I eventually was able to get a hold of some emergency money that my parents  sent via Western Union. Hopefully the situation will get better in the future but right now it's a challenge to locate a viable sources of cash

In addition to this last week, I made some new friends!

All I can say is that it has been a heck of an experience so far.