you can't be any trouble in kerala

greetings from kerala! also known in india as god's own country. we arrived after a seven hour van trip, which went by surprisingly quickly, and we'll be here in alleppey (god's own town) through saturday. ruby and i are staying with a christian family, thomas, his wife mali (or molly, we are unclear on this), their son and daughter-in-law, sheba (or something like that). alleppey is on the beach and is the gate to the famous backwaters of kerala; it sounds like we'll spend saturday on a houseboat, complete with a floating rotary meeting. we present at a rotary meeting pretty much every night (it's getting old), but we've never done one on a boat, so it will be a nice change of pace.

there seems to be a different sort of atmosphere in kerala, though we haven't quite been able to put our finger on it yet. the social climate seems more open. people in tamil nadu warned is that the men in kerala drink more, so we should watch our purses and our backsides, but i am not sure that's the difference we are noticing. so far i think it's been easier to interact with the men here, though that might come back to bite us (hopefully not literally). i guess for now i'll say that things are much less formal here. we even listened to some indi-pop in the car.

pictures are still not working in any sort of manageable time frame, but here are some highlights of the last few days.

first, i never posted about my newspaper visit in tirunelveli, now two towns ago. the city has three local language papers and i visited the largest. being a local language paper, there was definitely a communication barrier between me and the employees, but i got some good information. they put out a daily with only three full-time reporters and 60 "news correspondents" who submit handwritten stories with hard-copy photographs stapled to them. quite a different operation. i get the sense that papers here have much less enterprise-style reporting, and lack interviews in general. it sounds like a lot of information comes from the same sources without much variety or verification. this paper also had on-site printing facilities, which i was allowed to tour, and the general manager asked for my autograph. a lovely visit.

yesterday in nagercoil was a massively full day, but well worth the fatigue. the coast on which nagercoil sits (southeast) was the only portion of india affected by the tsunami of a few years back. the local rotary clubs built 43 brand-new houses and moved in some affected families and we were able to tour the compound. we were totally mobbed by children and even adults got all giggly when we shook their hands. the houses are free, but residents pay for utilities and upkeep themselves. most of them are fisherman and still fish, though it is now required that they live a certain distance from the beach. we visited some of the worst hit beach sites as well. one of them was crammed with tourists who ran out to collect fish and sea shells when the tide suddenly receded right before the tsunami hit. one of the rotarians with us said the beach was completely deserted for a year after the tsunami, and fewer people go there than before, even now. it is sobering to think that everything you have ever had and known could be gone in minutes.

we also visited a program called the center for social reconstruction, basically an AIDS awareness program targeting HIV-positive women and children, and educating commercial sex workers. as i am sure you can imagine, the local rotary clubs are involved in that project as well. workers train prostitutes to educate eachother about how to keep themselves and their clients safe from disease. the center also runs an awareness program for the family and neighbors of HIV positive people. there is still a major social stigma in india about HIV and the way it is transmitted, and most openly HIV-positive patients are forced to stay in their homes with no outside contact of any kind. patients themselves are often just as confused about their condition and what it means. the program sends workers to HIV-positive individuals' homes, to educate their friends and family about what the disease really is and what it means. we met with several clients of the program who told us stories of how their lives were changed, first for the worse and then for the better, thanks to the program. all of them contracted HIV from their husbands, which just makes me ill. but, i didn't leave depressed. it was an emotional experience, to be sure (we all cried), but i left feeling like we are on the right path. scott, our team leader, pointed out that it wasn't too long ago the indian government denied there was any HIV in the country at all. to have programs addressing the problem head-on in such a successful way is a major step forward and i found it very heartening.

and that is the last few days in india in a nut shell.

with just as much behind us as ahead, i have to say that this experience is everything and nothing like i thought it would be. in all honesty, i am having difficulty processing the whole thing. i think it will come piece by piece. i hope it will at least. i am interested to see more clearly how kerala is different from tamil nadu. kerala has the first freely elected communist government in the world, and the highest literacy rate in all of india. but my host's son was just telling me this evening that those model elements come along with some social problems, including a high suicide rate and a less than reliable press. so, as always, there is much more to come! (and hopefully some pictures, too.)