AC 3 tier

We've made it to Thanjavur!

We departed from Chennai last night on the 6177 train. We rode in style in the AC 3 tier sleeper cars. Which basically means that there were three rows of bunks, one bunk per person. Given that the ride was an 8 hour overnight excursion, the bunks came in quite handy. And, to my great relief, I had no bug friends joining me.

The train was slow and made several stops, but it was a smooth ride. It was very quite; everyone was sleeping. The gentle rocking of the train along with the rhythmic sounds made it easy.

When we arrived in Thanjavur I was struck by how much it reminded be of Hohoe, Ghana. The smells, the goats, the roosters, the shops. I've been thinking a lot about why there would be these similarities, despite the very different cultures of the two places (both being former British colonies, both being in the global South, both being rural, etc, etc)...

Besides all this musing, though, Thanhavur seems much more laid back than Chennai. Clearly it's smaller (about 300,000 people compared to about 5 million), and I also wonder if some of the rural character of the city makes for the pace being a bit slower. The rickshaws are still whizzing, the buses are still honking and the bikers are still zooming precariously through traffic, but it's just on a lesser scale.

So, we got settled in our hostel, which is great! It's really clean and painted pretty colors (Leslie and I have pink, yellow and orange walls). We have AC and a nice shower too. Not bad. The best part, though, is the balcony on the third floor. It's shaded and breezy and is a peaceful place to think, read or catch up on some NPR (by the way, all my fellow NPR-ophiles feel free to send me great stories I might miss. I'm already in withdrawal).

Audra and Whitney and I also took a bit of a walk into town to check it out. We explored one of the Thanjavur temples, Brahadhiswara Temple (the big temple) which was pretty incredible. It's free to get into, for one. It's over 1,000 years old and was built by a Tamil emperor. It's one of the tallest of its kind. When you walk in, you take off your shoes (it's Hindu, which is the most prevalent religion in the city). It was kind of nice to walk on the hot stones and think about what this place was like in its hay-day. Not to stay that it isn't popular now. There were several people coming to be blessed. We ourselves were blessed by the priest there, and we placed a white mark on our foreheads as part of the blessing.

Now, for the work part...

We then visited the Sugha Vazhvu (the local provider we are working with) offices for orientation. We enjoyed lunch there-roti (wheat tortillas, essentially) with several different sauces and rice. I wish I could remember the names. The best one was a traditional southern Indian lentil sauce. I was finally able to eat spicy food again thanks to the plain yogurt that was available for desert!

The facilities are top notch and should provide a comfortable environment for when we begin our coursework and intervention planning. And, as always, the food they will be providing for us makes everything even that much better.

A few students and I also enjoyed an interesting conversation with our professor about the roles of social workers and public health professionals. It made me think of a lot of questions--are we two separate professions, where do we overlap, what do we need to do better together? Where does international work fit in, in terms of the educational component? How do we teach these skills and how can we make for a more experiential dynamic in the program? How do we teach people to think instead of just teaching them skills to apply in a formulaic manner? All interesting to ponder while thousands of miles away from the Brown School...What an excellent opportunity we have to consider this in the real world (or at least the world of someone wanting to do international work in developing countries). I hope the Brown School is able to provide such an experience in the future...