Alf's blog

This blog from me is looong overdue. Warning, this is a long one so grab a pillow, some popcorn, and get comfortable. The last time we really got to "rest" was the 36 hour train ride from Bangalore to New Dehli. 36 hours...*gulp*...I really had no idea what to expect. When we got to the station, it smelled like one ginormous porta-potty. I later realized that it's because the bathrooms on the train (both Eastern and Western) had holes on the bottom which is where your business went out and onto the tracks. The car we rode was a sleeper car that could fit 8 people in a section and had no AC. No AC with the news that a heat wave was to hit Northern India, *gulp* We got through like brave soldiers. The funniest thing that happened was when Smitha threw her leftover dinner, veggie curry, out the window (no trashcans on the train, so passengers are to throw any waste out the window), she forgot to throw her food straight down while the train was moving fast. You can probably figure out what happened...as in where the food ended up.
To keep ourselves entertained, we played card games with some Indian guys that we befriended. In a game of Egyptian Rats, one of the Indian guys was getting playfully frustrated about losing each hand and started punching me in the arm and slapping the back of my head and my face...not all at once, but occasionally throughout the game. The fact that he slapped my face...not a gentle slap, I literally felt the bones in his fingers wake up the pain nerves in my face....I was shocked! Why would this Indian man slap an American woman's face that he just met? Over a game of cards? Wyatte and Bus looked at me in shock too. We didn't really know what to make of it, but we eventually found out that, that behavior is common as playful guesters.

There was a big difference between Bangalore and the villages we saw during our trip up. Mostly farms and slums. We saw people bathing in polluted puddles...I say puddles because the water level was so low considering how it used to be a big river. Shelter was made out of trash, tarp, dried vegetation. There's no concept of a land fill where there's one place for garbage...there's trash everywhere. The smell wasn't very pleasant, but its everywhere and you kind of have to get used to it.

When we finally got to New Dehli in our sweaty, 2 day old clothes, we all unanimously voted to find a flight back to Bangalore. We found a hotel with the help of a young man who was on his way home for the summer from college. Once we all showered and changed clothes, we checked out and went to Pizza Hut. I told myself that I wouldn't eat any American food during this trip, but after the train ride and some of us getting the big D, the doors opening to the smell of Pizza Hut pizza was like the gates of heaven. Later that evening, we all went to Vaibhav Kothari's house. Vai is currently an RIT student who grew up here in Dehli. When I talked with him, we hit it off really well. What really surprised me was that Vai had been to Fremont, CA and lived in the same housing complex that I live in now. When I first moved to Fremont to start my new job teaching at CSD, my neighbors mentioned to me about how a deaf guy who is Indian used to live there. Little did I know that I'd be flying half way around the world to meet him. Like I said in my last blog, this world is tiny! For those Fremontians who know Vai, he says HI!

Vai's family was really generous to us as they made dinner and socialized with us all evening. Their hospitality was much appreciated. Vai's family owns several successful business in Dehli and their home is beautiful with one of their office buildings next door that focus on designing and buliding dams. Their home is located in what you could call a "gated community". It's very different than what we have in America. There's a wall that surrounds the area with a military guard with a rifle. The walls had shards of broken glass cemented at the top to prevent trespassers from coming in. It almost looked like a concentration camp from the outside. Kinda scary.

Over the next two days, we took a rented bus to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and to Jaipur to see the "Pink City" which was actually more like a brownish-peach city. Seeing the Taj was neat, but it was pretty simple. I kind of expected to see something more elaborate. Despite the simple, beautiful, white marble structure, the reason for it's existance was moving. Would you build something as magnificent for the love of your life? In Jaipur, we did some shopping and visited an ancient fort that was high up on a hill. Guess what color it was?

We came back to Dehli late at night and had to use our tour book to find some last minute sleeping arrangements. There were only email addresses for 3 hotels in the book. We were able to make arrangements with Namaskar Hotel right across from the New Dehli station. It's not quite the safest part of town so we were very alert when walking over there. The hotel was down this really narrow and putrid-smelling alley. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the hotel was the movie "The Beach". The hotel reminded me of the hotel that Leonardo Di Caprio's character stayed in before he moved to the island in Thailand. The narrow hallways glowed a dim lime green, the doors were locked using pad locks, hot and mucky inside, just eerie. We were all a bit creeped out and considered moving to another hotel. We ended up settling there anyways because staying there was a safer option than walking out at night. When we all awoke the next morning, it was like we woke up to a different place. There were many other foreign travelers staying there and the creepy factor disappeared. At the end of the street is the main street that is filled with a gazillion vendors selling all kinds of things from clothes, accessories, henna tattoos, mostly touristy stuff. This street reminded many of us of Khao San Road in Thailand.

The location of our hotel turned out to be a coincidence because the NGO that we planned to visit was around the corner, the Dehli Foundation for Deaf Women. Once we stepped into their building, we saw that the women there spent their time making crafts that were displayed on the walls and used to sell. Their art work was on tapestries, leather, stationary. The room was filled with sewing machines, buckets of art supplies for painting and leatherwork. We were so taken aback by their craftswork that we started buying some of their work without any hesitation. After we all satisfied our shopping urge, we talked about GRO and the history of the women's organization. I really enjoyed myself as it seemed like we had met these women before. I still marvel at how fast and easy it is to befriend complete strangers from another country through our mutual understanding of Deaf Culture and use of sign language. One thing that surprised me is that the women who make the crafts/artwork for the organization get hardly enough money; 20 rupees a month. 20 rupees a month!? That's equivalent to 50 cents!

We stayed another night in Dehli, but it didn't last very long. The power went out and we were stuck in a mucky, hot room waiting until it was time to leave for our 645am flight back to Bangalore. Let me emphasize the word FLIGHT!! Yes! We found plane tickets back to Bangalore instead of taking another 36 hours back by train.

On the 19th, we had the opening ceremony at APD (All People with Disabilities, a school and facility that provides services and equipment for the disabled) to mark the beginning of our fieldwork with the Indian delegates. A hearing woman sang a prayer vocally to Saraswathi which is a goddess that they seek guidance to better education for the deaf. It was interesting to see a cultural ritual that they do, but it felt out of place because none of us could hear her and I didn't see the connection of that as to how the Indian people celebrate their Deaf Culture. Now I apologize if I make any misspellings with the names here because remembering these big names is brainwracking. Each of the directors and coordinators were introduced and gave a brief statement about what they do and their visions. Smitha was the only coordinator from the US. Hiramanth, the program coordinator for..............wants to, "combine Indian and American ideas" to help improve education for the deaf.
Anantadev Das, a well known leader in Bangalore's deaf community who founded SDD (Sanatana Dharma of the Deaf) and coordinator of our fieldwork program, talked about his background and history. He came to Gallaudet to give a lecture on religion and philosophy and that experience marked the beginning of his networking between the American and Indian deaf community.
Chandramouli, the coordinator for the Indian delegates mentioned that this is the first time in history that a program like this has happened here in India. It feels good knowing that I have the opportunity to be a part of it.
Kripa, the sign language cell coordinator at the Institute of Speech and Hearing talked about how she has been working hard to spread the awareness of sign language and to get sign language to be respected as a language despite the fact that different sign languages are used in different parts of India. Her biggest goal is to work hard to ensure that the language of instruction for the deaf is in ISL and ASL, not together but separately. That was a relief for me to hear that someone in the room understood that the use of two languages should not be mixed up, but rather used separately. I had studied and learned a lot about language acquisition during my masters program in Deaf Education and for me to witness a mixture of languages being used, its no surprise that confusion and miscommunication occurred often. Unfortunately, I found a comment that Kripa made about Smitha's speech to be a bit contradictory to what she said about avoiding the mixture of two languages. She commented on Smitha's method of communication (Total Communication) to be "signing in one box" and speaking in beautiful English and now she wants to see that more. Smitha was using ASL and English simultaneously, not separately. The reason why 2 languages should not be mixed is because neither language is produced fluently. Spoken English has to be modified to fit the structure of ASL and vice versa. It causes some gaps in the fluid production of both languages.

Overcoming the language barrier between 2 different nations will be the biggest challenge during this week. Even though we had 2 Indian interpreters who used a mixture of ASL and ISL, there were deaf participants who understand only Kannada. Kannada sign language has not been formally developed yet and these participants are just starting to learn English and ISL/ASL. I was somewhat bummed to find that the deaf community in Bangalore uses a mixture of ASL and ISL because I was hoping to become more immersed with learning ISL. It's quite easy for us American delegates to understand them, but for the Indian delegates, they're still acquiring ASL and with us not knowing many signs in ISL, making sure they understood us was a challenge.

Shri V. S. Basavaraj, the director of APD, said he is "all about change" and has been waiting for a moment like this to happen and that each one of us delegates, American and Indian, are considered to be role models for the deaf. He has a strong desire to change the way society sees people who have a disability, to see them as capable human beings just like everyone else.
Shri Rama Reddy, the director of the Department of Welfare of Disabilities and Senior Citizens, mentioned how deaf people face different issues than other people with disabilities due to the fact that we use a visual language.

On the 20th, we visited 3 local schools for the deaf. At Adarsh College, we met with a group of deaf college students and we had a discussion of what challenges they face at the school, mostly related to needing support services, interpreters (they only have 1), better notetakers, desire for direct instruction,etc. At RV Integrated School for the Disabled, which is an oral school, 50% of the day is spent in classes for deaf students and 50% of the day is spent in classes with their hearing peers. It was amazing to see that every child had hearing aids, even the old box with hard plastic molds model are still being used today. The last time I saw those kind of hearing aids was in '86.
While observing a math class where the younger students learn with their mothers, it was difficult for me to watch a deaf child guesturing to their mother and instead of receiving feedback that was visually accessible, the child's eyebrows crinkled down, eyes squinted, trying to make out the word that the mother was mouthing. It just looked really unnatural.
At the Sunaad Institute for Speech and Hearing, they teach some English and have a sign language class. We spent the afternoon learning some ISL and teaching some ASL and reciting ABC stories. Earlier at that school, I observed a class where the method of instruction is oral. Even though the teacher normally teaches maths/science/dance, he was teaching an audiotory training class where the kids were learning how to recognize high and low frequency sounds. The kids were sitting at their desks eager to impress us with recognizing the difference between a bell chime, a horn, a drum beat....I was in awe because not only was a student way off with her recognition, but the fact that it was obvious that no matter how many times she practiced this sound recognition, she probably will never be able to recognize the sound outside the classroom. The children looked like robots during that activity. In fact, the kids had already figured out who has the best hearing and would follow that kid. I also felt like a fool standing up in front of the classroom with the teacher talking to me really slowly, emphasizing each consonant expecting me to understand him. If only these kids could truly express how they feel doing this everyday......*sigh*

Oh! I forgot to mention, one of the highlights of the day was when Wyatte got hit by a cow on his buttocks! We were walking back to APD from ISH and there was a cow standing on the sidewalk. The cows here are considered sacred and are free to roam around as they like. Right when Wyatte passed the cow, it swung its head real hard and whacked him on his butt. Wyatte's face expression was permanant for the rest of the day.

On the 21st, yesterday, we stayed in at APD and had a workshop on Leadership, Deaf Rights, and prepared a workshop on Teamwork that we're going to do today at the Sheila Kolatta School for the Deaf (SKID). We all learned a new outdoor game called Koko, which is a mixture of baseball, bowling, and dodge ball. The object of the game is to knock a tower of rocks down with a ball and rebuild it without getting hit by the ball by the other team. It was a lot of fun! We just came back from visiting the Amruthavani Kannada School for the Hearing Impaired. It's a free school that was founded by a teacher who used to work at SKID. On the way to AKSHI, we had to cross a railroad track and the train was coming as some of us were crossing it. Smitha, Wyatte, and Chandramouli were behind and ran to try to cross the tracks before the train passed. Chandramouli didn't feel like he was gonna make it and tried to stop Smitha and Wyatte, but his eyes widened with surprise when he saw Smitha and Wyatte determined to cross and quickly followed. It was insane! Not only that, but the train choo-chooed right by where we were and released thick, black exhaust from the engine car. We all ran for cover and covered our face. You couldn't see anyone in front of you.

What's next?

Alf
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