Mera Mendi

Big-like.

Getting Schooled

Three things I learned today:

1. Always try to help people.
2. Often it hurts when you try to help people.
3. Always order cheese naan with your butter chicken dish. They go fantastic together. Delish.

Today Is...

I have nothing more to say.

Update: Get it huge-like here.

John's Karnataka Friends

I promised more pics from my weekend Karnataka trip. I lied. Something new has taken priority. John, my fellow co-worker is engaged as of Tuesday night. John is on the right and Dina is in the pink and blue. In classic Indian style, John talked it all over with the guy standing left of Dina. This is Dina's sister's husband. John asked this man permission and this man said yes. Since Dina's father wasn't available, this is how it went down. It would conflict with Indian culture to discuss such delicate things with the actual girl. Oh, this family was visiting Goa for a wedding and were staying at the center for a couple days. The wedding date is not posted yet. So John will get a new wife and we will get a new co-worker. India.


Update: This photo makes me laugh. Everyone looks pretty normal except for John on the right. John looks like he is doing some kind of awesome robot dance.

I Left Goa...

... and nothing will ever be the same again.

Sorta cryptic, no?



I hopped on a bus on Saturday heading out of Goa. The clever eagle-eyes will notice the writing on the side of the bus. Not to be mistaken with Hindi, Kanada is the state language of Karnataka.

A planned day trip with a friend to visit their family turned into a weekend of hectic adventure and confusion. Due to circumstances out of my control, we were stuck for two days which opened up an opportunity to attend my friend's church for their Sunday service. And what happens when you go about visiting new churches in India? You end up preaching in front of people you have never met, naturally. Saturday night, I got the hint that I might be asked to come up front and say something on Sunday morning. I asked if it would be like one of those little four minute introductory talks where I would share about my work in Goa. No, it would not be four minutes.

After some wonderful singing, I was invited up by my friend's father (the pastor in this story) to share something with the group of 40ish people sitting on the family's living room floor. I started by sharing about a conversation that I had with an America buddy a week ago. This conversation with my buddy got me thinking about a statement that I have been hearing lately. "It would be much easier to believe in God if I was living during the Old Testament time when he was working all of those sweet miracles for everyone to see." A similar one is this, "It would be much easier to believe in Jesus if I was living during the New Testament time when he was working all of those sweet miracles for everyone to see." A simple theory, yes. But with a big flaw. The old testament is flooded with examples of people quickly falling into disbelief after being witness to miracles. And it wasn't too different while Jesus was on the Earth. Matthew speaks about entire villages of unbelievers. Villages that had seen his work and refused to accept it for what it was, God trying to get his people's attention. I spoke about how if we had the chance, we probably would have done the same. It is too easy to forget the things that God is doing in our lives. Inner things or amazing-natural-law-defying-miracles. We see, we experience and then we forget. But this is why the bible speaks about living by faith in such great detail. Faith is when we try our darnedest to continue having hope in what we can't see. For some reason, it would just be too easy if God came along and showered your front yard with rainbows while countless frogs came flying out of nowhere during an eclipse. This is God doing a lot of things to get our attention, but it leaves us with not many responsibilities. We just sorta sit there and watch until we decide to run inside to find our camera. I danced around with the idea that if miracles didn't catch our interest, maybe God was trying different things now. Like how He likes to teach us new things by putting us in interesting situations with new people and new friends with unique experiences. How it can be encouraging to hear a story of how God has been faithful to someone you don't know. And how this story can remind you of times that He was faithful in your own life.

Anyways, this isn't even really the line of thinking that I spoke on so I will stop with that. It ended up being 45 minutes of me talking up front with my friend translating on my side into Kanada. It was really a strange experience and I don't even know how it was received. After I sat down, the pastor elaborated on what i had said (I think) and then everything was over. A lot of people came up to shake hands and speak to me. I caught none of what they were saying to me, in Kanada. I didn't know what I was feeling. I didn't know what anyone else was feeling. Very strange.

I got to have a bucket bath for the first time in almost 3 years, since leaving Honduras. I learned how to cook green bean baji. It's only good when you find yourself drinking a lot of water after eating it. (read: hot and spicy) I saw a Hindu temple. I saw thousands of enormous bats sleeping in trees in the afternoon sun. Most importantly, I feel like I have a new family that lives and works in Karnataka.

I am obviously avoiding some key details in this story. It is best that I wrap things up now.

Update: No, I am not quitting my work in Goa and running off to Karnataka. That flame should probably be put out before it is even started. And more photos tomorrow. I still gotta get the second roll back from Rite Aid.

Thursday Film Day and John's Cooking

We had a good turnout at the center this afternoon. Thursday at 4 is film day. Here is how it normally goes down... A bunch of kids come rolling in at 3:30 (always early, these kids), we play some carroms, color, sing, pray, then cozy down for a short film. The only problem is that the past two Thursdays, barely any kids were showing up. This is mostly due to families heading out to visit families in different states and it is officially "marriage season" in India. But, today we had a good turnout. Today's story was of Moses and his two stones. So, I go through this nice little book in English and John translates it into the appropriate language. This helps to prepare the kids for watching the video, which is in English. After the book, we watch about 15 minutes of a cartoon depicting Moses walking up the mountain to talk to God in the clouds, then walking down only to destroy the tablets. I pause the film to explain what this is all about. Play. Then Moses walks back up the mountain and gets some more stones. This time he manages not to drop them and everyone listens. After the film, John and I recap and try to show the relevance of these things that happened so long ago. Like, how God is so interested in developing a relationship with each one of these kids and what efforts he goes to for this to happen. Then snacks are inhaled and everyone goes home. In previous posts, I wrote about how attendance has been low for all of the daily happenings at the center. I think we are coming into the upswing now as many people are starting to come back from their travels.

And who is this big cheese face below? John, one of our leaders, invited Prakash and I over for a nice dinner tonight. Prakash is his buddy from Karnataka. John likes his beef (which can be hard to come by here) so he took the opportunity to serve us some cow. He made beef keema, which is bite sized bits o' beef mixed in with good green stuff and spices. Also on the menu was veg curry, chapatis, salad and rice. Also some incredibly spice chilies.


Somewhere along the way, John learned how to cook up some mean tasty food. This was the first time for me, eating his food, and it was amazing. My mouth was on fire.

John, Prakash and Cameron

Still no more rain. Too hot and too humid. All is well.

Dinner at Rukmava's

In John and my continuing efforts to eat dinner in every household in Colva, tonight brought us to Rukmava's house. (That sentence is way too complicated and I think I put the comma in the wrong place. Ha!)


Above is the family pic. The father and mother are Ragesh and Rukmava. And starting up top and going clockwise are the children; Somitra, Laxmi, Prema, Suresh and Megraj. Rukmava has a wonderful grasp of the English language from working a shop near the beach for the past 5 years. She does have a strange way of saying "she" instead of "he" whenever referring to a man. This is a pretty common mistake that can lead to some confusion and interesting conversation.

I have been posting a lot lately about different people heading out of Goa for the next few months. Well, there are also people coming back in for the monsoon season. This family is one example.

We had a wonderful meal prepared by the oldest daughter. Several chicken dishes, chapatis, rice and salad. I always love the "my house is your house" mentality when I visit people. These people do not have much but you are always being forced to sit in their only chair and then you get the difficult task of trying to say no to seconds and then finally succeeding at saying no to thirds.

Good times were had by all.

We still haven't had any more rain since the heavy storm of two weeks ago.

Closing Up The Week

To quote Geri, my Hungarian fire-breathing friend, "at my age every day is a present."

I normally go into these posts with a little idea of what I want to write about. Not so today, folks.

Today was the first cool day in quite some time. It was a bit cloudy and breezy for most of the morning and afternoon.

Dinner at Nermala's round 2. Tonight John joined me for an excellent dining experience at Nermalas. We had rice, chapati, cabbage/cauliflower curry, potato/calamari curry , fried fish and watermelon for dessert. Nermala is a machine in the kitchen.

Above is John and I getting ready to chow down. John normally eats twice as much as i do in about half the time and he looks really tired when he is finished. Like he just ran a race. And then I laugh at him while I finish the rest of my meal.

The bandh in Margao, that I spoke about yesterday, continued through the first half of today. It sounds like shops started opening up in the afternoon.

Looking forward to a very lazy Saturday.

"Margao Comes To Standstill After Eve Teasing Turns Violent"

Yesterday, I heard word of some problems in Margao. Margao is the smallish city next to where I live. It's where everyone goes for their shopping needs. Well, I went in for my shopping needs today and the entire city was closed up. All the shop gates were down and the streets were empty. No buses anywhere. Later, I found out that it was related to yesterday's violence in the Gandhi Market. I will avoid pointing out the obvious ironies here.

Click HERE for a link to the news article about this event.

In short, there was a problem concerning a guy flirting/harassing a girl. The girl's brother got upset. Fighting ensued. The article is a bit unclear on the end result of the fighting but the rumors going around the village is that a knife was involved and one or more people may or may not have been injured or killed. Again, not sure of the truth here. Sadly, I have grown to trust village rumor over the local newspaper.

Today, Margao was in a state of bandh. Bandh is when an entire city decides to close up shop for the day. The paper states that this was because the police had failed to find all the people involved in the fight on the day previous. I think the more practical reason for this is to keep the city empty to let things cool down. From a look at the names in the news article, this could easily turn into a Hindu vs. Muslim kinda thing. I would really, really not want to see that.

Puffed Rice and Snot

As promised, yesterday, here are the cute baby pictures. The baby is trying to eat a plate of puffed rice. First, he dumped the plate, then crawled over it for a while and tried to put some of it into his mouth. Puffed rice clings to snot nose very well.



This morning, I met with John and Sangita to decide what to do with our mornings sans the kids. We decided on working through 1 and 2 Timothy, one chapter a day. It made for good discussion and sharing. There is a lot of good stuff about leadership and improving church life, perfect material for a growing church like us. Again, we are learning that flexibility and adapting is a very important part of life here.

Bahhhhh!!! I Forgot My Bag!

And because of this, I do not have my camera. So, no photos tonight. John and I went to Sangita's for dinner, as we normally do on Tuesdays. After finishing our yummy dinner of cauliflower eggplant curry chapati rice we headed home. It was not till I looked at my laptop that I noticed that I didn't have my bag. No harm done and I will get it tomorrow.

But I had a really awesome photo of this little baby with food all over his face that I wanted to put up!!! It will just have to wait.

Good Deals at the Fish Market and a Silver Necklace

Today had a few more goodbyes to it. Two more families are heading back home to Karnataka. The kids I was taking to the center for church and English classes and such will be back in five months. I will talk about the changes that will be happening at the center in the next couple of days.

This afternoon, I went into town with my friend, Renuka. (May 4th post/ ugly green wall pic) She was needing to hit up the fish fruit vegetable market and I was needing to buy some new jewelery. If you have never been to an Indian market, they can be pretty intimidating. No price tags and a lot of guess work as to what things cost. But this was nice because I was only observing. I was also able to follow the price haggling in Hindi quite a bit. Now, I have no clue what food products cost here in India, or in America for that matter, so I was able to pick up some good pointers today.

After Renuka's business was finished, we went to a different part of town for my errand. I was wanting to find a thin silver necklace at a fair price. Below is a pic of a pearl pendant given to Bonnie by her mother. I really like it but am also quite aware that it is a very feminine piece, so I was looking for a necklace that was long enough to keep the pendant hidden inside my shirt. Surprisingly, we found just the right thing at the first shop we entered. I got a price quote that I wasn't too happy with from the woman behind the counter. My friend and the woman started talking in Hindi. They talked for quite some time. When they were finished, there was a 50% price reduction. !!! I couldn't believe it! I asked no questions and paid up.

An all-around good experience.

Sunday Morning and You Can't Eat Fish All The Time

Below are two photos from today's service. The first is John playing the jembe and Stephen playing guitar during the offering time. The second is a girl collecting the offering while John and Stephen play.

John and Stephen

Offering Time

In other news, I had a pretty unappealing dinner tonight. Mmmmm, mutton. I'm not sure what mutton is really supposed to taste like, but this one was a lot of rubber and odd bits. I also knew it was an extra special dinner and this made it all the more difficult to sit through. I downed about 84% of the meat. Everything took longer to chew and I think they noticed. I felt bad, it was awkward but I didn't die. Afterwards, I followed through on my promise to buy myself a candy bar as my reward. Ha! Mmmmm, Twix!!! You can't eat fish all the time. So true.

Bollywood Tunes and an Ugly Green Wall

I went into Margao today for a light lunch at Bread n' More and stopped in at Vibes Music. Bread n' More is where I go when I have a hankerin' for something simple to eat, like a sandwich. They also have an extensive variety of tasty pastries. After beefing up on carbs, I took a short drive over to Vibes. Vibes is where I go to find the latest Hindi movie tunes. I used to really dislike Hindi music (especially the songs with the high squealing female vocals) but now am quite fond of it (especially the songs with the high squealing female vocals). Strange, huh. So I picked up three cds. Actually, India has a pretty good thing going right now with music. You have the option to buy a less expensive disk that contains more music in mp3 format. And since I normally just take my cds home and convert them to mp3 anyways, it's a winning situation for me. Less money, more product and more convenience. The music industry in America wouldn't do wrong to learn from India a bit on this idea. Now I have 150 new Hindi songs to digest.


Ha!!! This is the ugly green wall of death and destruction. It has the special power of making anyone who stands in front of it look frighteningly orange on photograph. With a little tweaking and editing, I think I managed to get my two friends (Ansia and Renuka) back to their proper skin tone. So after all the green wall mess, we all had some nice chai and chatted about the cost of gold in India. Seriously. Then we ate curry egg chicken rice and drank Coca Cola.

Siara and Tukaram

Siara is a cousin of the landlord and Tukaram is the brother of Ansia. I like that this photo shows two people unaware of what the other is doing. Other than that, nothing too special about it. Yeah, later on I found out that Siara was changing my ring tones.

Nermala's and Goodbye Chai

A couple days ago, I caught up with Nermala while having dinner at Sangita's. She and her children came to the center pretty regularly about four months back. Then we didn't see much of Nermala for some time. Welp, I accepted a wonderful invitation to come over for dinner tonight. And, wow!!!, what a dinner it was. I think she forgot that I was only one person because there was enough to feed five of me.

Akash, Nermala, Sabnam, and Gunraj

Below, is a nice stack of chapatis and three varieties of fish cooking in tasty oils. Again, way too much food going on tonight. There were six different dishes to pick from.

The food was great and the conversation was awesome. I learned about Nermala's experience growing up in Mumbai/Bombay. She moved to Mumbai at the age of 11 to work at some family's house for 9 years. She told me about her first experience of eating beef and pork, which is a big no-no for Hindus. Basically, I enjoyed having the opportunity to chat with someone with a good grasp of English. Before I left, Nermala hinted at my coming back for dinner next week. No complaints here.

I think that almost all of my posts have something to do with me going to someone's house and eating food. HA! My excuse is that it's a great way to shed a bit of the tourest identity that clings to me and a wonderful way to get to know peoples better. All good things happen over food.

After dinner, I stopped by at Sila's to say goodbye. This the family from my post on April 23rd. They are heading to Karnataka early tomorrow morning. That means two less children to take to the center in Colva and less good conversations with Sila. I was given a nice tall glass of hot chai, drank it down and headed home.

Back From Karnataka

Sangita and her family came back from Karnataka today. John and I were very happy for their safe return. Basically, Sangita is awesome with the kids and it was missed for the past two weeks.

Today was Tuesday Kids Up at the Boot. This is the same location as the wedding photos from from April 26th. Below is a photo of the kids starting their coloring. There are too many kids here so I won't bore you with their names.

And being Tuesday, John and I came back for dinner at 7pm. Tuesday dinner started up a couple o' months ago and is a highlight of my week.

Gudnat, Somitra, Busaraj, Savita, Sangita and Renuka

For the longest time I thought the four kids in this family were John's cousins. John would say, "These are my cousins." But this is not completely accurate. Somitra, the mother, is John's cousin. He calls the kids "cousins", I think, because they are closer to his age. "Cousin" is used very freely in India.

36°C (97°F) | 26°C (78°F) Humidity 53%