DelhiBelly strikes us all, sometime

Journal entry from 31July:
Attached here is a picture of the boys enjoying a video game in ou livingroom – all the floors are bare concrete, though the livingroom should be getting a large coir mat soon, from the school.


Actually, Coleman started feeling sick Friday evening, as we walked from the school to town with Melanie Smith (helpful PCUSA friend who’s been here a few years). A taxi came by, asked if we wanted a ride—Melanie negotiated a short ride to the top of the hill near the tailor.

Barb and Melanie stopped at the tailor with Barb’s recently-purchased material, and she got measured for her new “salwar kameez” , while Chris and Cole and I walked on down the hill. We stopped at a small electrical shop to buy some extension cords and electrical tape. As we all continued walking down to the stationery shop where Cole bought a pencil case and Barb got a nicely framed color print of a maharajah elephant hunt in the monsoon…. For hanging over our fireplace. By this time, Cole was really drooping. I asked the shopkeeper to call a cab to take us home, while Barb and Melanie and Chris walked on down through the “bazaar” to Domino’s Pizza place (at the other end of town).

Coleman was really sick: diarrhea and severe stomach cramps, from 9pm to 9am. I phoned the health center: the nurse on duty said we could bring him up there, or if really serious, she could arrange to get him to the hospital. We had some “buscopan” left over from a previous episode, so she said that was appropriate to help with the stomach cramps. No nausea, no vomiting; just stomach cramps off and on, until 9am. Then sudden recovery! So we didn’t take him (or his stool sample) to the health center… but then again around 9pm, the cramps started – not as bad, but still disruptive, and still continuing occasionally even through 5pm Sunday as I’m writing this. The nurse on duty asked us to bring him in tomorrow morning, along with a fresh stool sample.

DelhiBelly diagnosis and treatment? Because the local hospital is so close (both physically and socially), the school health center can readily get samples tested in the lab. So far, the diagnosis seems to be between bacterial or amoebic causes. Bacterial gets treated with cipro; amoebas, with flagyl. Stomach cramps are treated with Buscopan. And a few lactobacillus capsules are given, so as to help restore the gut’s normal flora. And of course they urge the usual bland diet: bananas, rice, crackers, and the awful-tasting oral rehydration stuff.

This weekend has therefore been a resting time at home, getting more unpacked and organized. We also unpacked a big tin trunk full of miscellaneous kitchen items like tupperware, silverware, a juicer, some pans, some picture frames, that we bought for forty dollars indirectly from a mission family that just moved from Woodstock to go to Thailand.

Here is a picture of our house, from the outside, during a few sunny moments today.


--j.t., 31july2005

Woodstock views

A couple more pictures taken in July...the school gate (from the inside), and a rainbow scene, assurance that the incessant rain and mist and damp and gloom is not permanent!

Newbies at Woodstock

Mid-July 2005: We complete a wonderfully organized week of orientation for new staff, though we are still woozy with jetlag and altitude and new water and new food. Jeff then got the first case of traveler's diarrhea, which simply kept him in bed for a day, then a bit hesitant. Next, Coleman got it -- so Barb stayed home while Jeff and Chris traveled with the new-staff group for the scheduled shopping trip, down the mountain to DehraDun.
DehraDun was a reminder of the heat and dust and crowdedness of India. We each bought a few hundred dollars worth of kitchen and household supplies, and were exhausted from the effort and the heat, by the end of the shopping day. We loaded everything on the bus and on top of the bus, including our 4 Thomas foam mattresses (most mattresses here are simply coir fiber, neither springy nor soft).
On the drive up the mountain, the monsoon reasserted itself: foam mattresses soak up alot of water! We took the next 2 weeks drying them out, as the next 2 weeks rained every day, most of the day.
And yet, attached here is a photo taken then, to the south from the back gate of the school, during a few hours of dryness, showing the beauty of the mountain view.

The Bus to Woodstock

The Bus to Woodstock School

The train arrived at Dehra Dun before noon – a small city’s train station.  The weather was merely hot, like Texas in summer; and traffic was merely crowded.  The school’s yellow bus holds about 30 students.  We crammed into there, and a couple of taxis besides, and drove to a nearby restaurant for lunch, then back on the bus for the hair-raising ride up 1000 meters in about 20km of a narrow twisting two-lane road.   Further delaying us was the fact that the bus had to take a long detour route along some very narrow mountain roads because of its size.   But, by 4pm, we arrived at the school, now shrouded in mist, where the administrators were standing to greet us (How long had they been standing there waiting?).  I was impressed by their hospitable greeting.

We filed into the cafeteria for a spot of tea, then walked to our respective houses, with our pre-assigned “buddies”.  As our buddies lived near us, we walked together first to our house, where we dropped our bags and delightedly found all of our suitcases awaiting us.  The house was solid but old and a bit dusty, barely-furnished.  And the kitchen and bathroom were a patchwork of occasional cabinetry and cement.   Our buddies invited us for dinner, along with another old-timer couple.  Very friendly, but as with many old-timers, they all regaled us with stories of spiders and scorpions and accidents and monkeys and how much worse it used to be.   This frightened and demoralized us, when returning to our empty house, especially as the monsoon rains finally started falling.   We collapsed into bed, worried about this commitment we had made.

New Delhi to Dehra Dun

As the train pulls out of the station, we see all aspects of life close to the tracks -- walking, washing, selling, talking, working, planting, shepherding, arguing, harvesting, pulling, pushing, praying, drinking, eating, riding, leading.
And inside the train, the attendant serves us a hot meal -- with our choice of "veg." or "non-veg." Christopher and Coleman remark on the unusual (but now typical) categorization, and eat heartily of their non-veg. lunch.

Heading north on the Shatabdi Express

July 8th, at dawn: our groggy group left the hotel in a nice air-conditioned bus. Our suitcases were going to school on a separate baggage truck. The large bus cannot drive into the train station proper, so we walk single-file through the lively dusty helter-skelter crowd of pushcarts, pedi-cabs, auto-rickshaws, various street vendors, and other train passengers.

It was Hot -- probably 35 degrees (95F) and 95% humidity-- and bewildering, with few signs or pathways. And we were not protected from scenes of poverty. But it did not feel dangerous, and we did not see any beggars [We have seen very few beggars throughout our stay thus far.], nor obnoxious salesmen.

Perhaps the early hour, with its reduced crowds, allowed us to all make our way to the platform for the Shatabdi Express [Shatabdi=Century] to Dehra Dun.

OnBoard the train, in our 2ndClass A/C seats. [In an expression of equality and fraternity, the Indian Railways abolished the term "3rd class". Now, most people ride 2nd-class: 2nd-class regular, or 2nd-class sleeper, or 2nd-class A/C seat, or 2nd-class A/C sleeper. ]

Arriving in India

We arrived in a group of a dozen or so new teachers on the same Air India flight from JFK, all quite groggy from the lengthy flight and the timezone difference. We met several others arriving from Europe, struggled outside to the blasting heat and made it to a comfortable hotel for 2 nights. This picture is of our group of "newbies" ready at dawn for the trek to the Delhi train station.

Final departure

Departure on 07 July 2005 was amazingly harried, but we managed to get all the suitcases packed and the household goods stuffed into the attic, with the help of Ossining friends and Jeff's dad. The ladder to the attic was heavily used, but is now closed for a few years!

At last we depart, in two vehicles, in good time for JFK airport. Thanks to Charlotte for driving us there in our van (now hers!); and for Jeff's dad accompanying in his rental car, on his own way back to his flight to Texas.

Farewells to New York

Family and friends visited, and helped greatly in the last-minute flurry of packing and sorting.