Hanging On For Dear Life

When driving through the streets of Coimbatore, it can be very tempting to hang your hands out the window. Doing so, however, puts you at risk for ending the day with one less hand than you started with. As I mentioned briefly in yesterday's post, traffic in India is crazy. I have never seen anything like it. It makes Times Square seem like a peaceful country road. Saturday June 2 began with a ride in an auto rickshaw across town to our house!

Becky, Kaitlyn and I getting ready to go in our auto.

Indian people are short and Taylor is tall. Therefore, we quickly discovered that most things in India are too small for him--including the auto.

Riding in one of these three-wheeled open air vehicles was definitely on my India bucket list, so I was really excited that we got to ride in one! Riding in an auto gives you a completely different view of the city. Since there are no sides, I not only got to experience my first "hang on for dear life" situation, I also got to see the sights, feel the traffic whiz by, and hear all the crazy honking horns [they literally never stop honking]. Oh, and smell the...interesting...smells.

Anyways, the house we stayed in wasn't really a house. It kind of reminded me of the housing at a summer camp. There was a common area, 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and a kitchen. And one air conditioner. I had honestly prepared myself for really horrible living conditions in India so I was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the house. Sure, it wasn't a 5-star hotel, but we only saw a handful of cockroaches and it was relatively clean-ish.

Our house was across the street from an underwear factory! Nothing says "welcome home" like a creepy guy in his undies. 

After moving in, we headed over to Miracle Garden to pick the kids up. We had plans to take all 20-something of them to a water park for the day! Somehow, we stuffed all 12 of us, all the kids, and a few of their teachers into the bus and we were off to the waterpark.

First off, I should tell you that bathing suits are a big no-no in India. So I was rocking Jill's hot pink knee length basketball shorts and an old blue t-shirt. I looked GREAT. Everyone just swims in their clothes there though! Women go on slides in their sequined saris; men wear jeans and button down shirts. It's quite the sight. The park had a few non-water rides, so we started the day with those.

And OH MY GOODNESS, those rides would be the subject of so many lawsuits in the United States. There are no seatbelts or safety bars. Those suckers just whip you around and you hang on the edges for dear life. [In case you haven't caught on to the trend yet, you do a lot of hanging on for dear life in this country.] I actually only experienced two of these rides: the bumper cars and the ferris wheel. The bumper cars were your typical bumper cars. Nothing too extreme other than the lack of seat belts. The ferris wheel was absolutely crazy though. The baskets have no doors and no sides; it's just a hanging, rocking, safety constraint-less bench. Once you're on [and hanging on to dear life], the thing whips you around and around and around at an impressive and nauseating speed. I LOVE ferris wheels, but even I didn't like this one. It was intense. In my car were three adults and one little boy. Our poor little boy was shaking, crying, screaming, and wetting his pants. Oh dear. Even though the ride attendant didn't speak English, we eventually got his attention and got him to stop the ride so the little boy could get off. I felt so bad for him but was kind of thankful that he was so scared so I could get off too! The last ride before lunch was the "pirate ship." I decided to sit that one out and was glad I did. I don't think there were any brakes on it, so it rocked back and forth for a good 20 minutes.

Here's me driving a bumper car in my oh-so-classy outfit. There's two little girls in the car too, but they're so tiny and dark you can't even see them! This is the only picture of me that I've seen from the waterpark because most of us left our cameras at Miracle Garden so they wouldn't get wet.

After a quick lunch break [my first of many meals consisting of vegetable fried rice], we brought the kids into the water. Some of them jumped right in and loved paddling around; others sat on the side and dipped their feet in. Unlike American water parks, there was not a life guard in sight--just a few militant looking police officers with whistles. I'm not much of swimmer and I was a little scared of what exactly was in that water [do they clean it?] but it smelled kind of chlorine-y so I took the plunge [heh heh, I'm so punny...].

I played with a bunch of the kids, but of course, the one I distinctly remember playing with was Manik. After going down some slides and splashing around, the mean looking police guards blew their whistles and literally commanded us to head to the wave pool. It wasn't like "hey the wave pool's on if you want to swim in it." It was more like "GO TO THE WAVE POOL NOW!!!"

Naturally, we went to the wave pool. And that thing was crazy! Like most everything else, I had never experienced anything like it. Those weren't your normal run-of-the-mill wave pool waves. They were more like intense, tsunami, tidal waves that slammed you into the wall. Also the bottom of the pool was a tile floor. It was really slippery...

The water park was the first place that Indian people came up to us to hello or ask for pictures. White people are extremely uncommon in that part of India, so a group of 12 doesn't blend in. At all. From that point on, pretty much everywhere we went, we had people staring, not-so-discretely taking pictures, grabbing our hands, and asking for photos with us. I loved it because it made me feel like a celebrity. Some people could have done without it though. Remember that outfit I was wearing? Let's be honest. It was hideous. Despite that, some woman came up to me, grabbed my hand and said "You are so beautiful." I couldn't believe it since I clearly was not looking my best. But that gives you an idea of the reaction that people had towards us everywhere we went.

After the wave pool experience, we called it a day and brought the kids back to Miracle Garden. They gave us "spaghetti" and chicken for dinner, which I was SO excited about. I wrote a whole paragraph in my journal about it, but it was just spaghetti, so I'll spare you the details.

"The kids wear clothes with broken zippers, no underwear, and rope as a belt. It broke my heart to see that."

When I realized that the kids' clothing was so worn and tattered, I began to truly grasp how little they have. This realization only became clearer as the our time in India went on. I have SO much and they have SO little. My desire to help them began with that realization and only grew as the week went on. And it's grown even more since I got home! I'm so thankful that RWC SIFE will be continuing our work with Miracle Garden and Chandra Bose in the coming years. It gives us a great opportunity to continue supporting them financially while also raising awareness of their needs to other people in our community. It'll be exciting to see what we can do for them in the coming year.