February 4, 2008 – 6:28 pm (GMT +5:30) – Chennai, India
When I was still in College Nathan Greve went on one of the mission helper trips to India. I remember dreaming at that time that I snuck along with him, in his luggage. Coming over this time the plane flight was certainly more enjoyable, but the city has changed a lot, it looks nothing like it did then. When I came via my dream all the buildings were rounded on top, and there was lush vegetation and wild animals everywhere, even in the city. This time I’m not really sure that I left the US at all. I’m sitting in an apartment overlooking a well lite city with sky scrapers and churches, huddled over my computer, writing emails, drinking Coke, while a delicious fruit shake and some cheese sticks digest in my stomach. Actually all three of us are huddled around our computers, reading, writing and playing games. I won’t tell you who is doing which. On the other hand it is January, no snow, and I’m pretty much the tallest person around except Dave, so there are a few things to remind me that this is not my native land.
When I told my sister that I was running some errands, she wanted to know what it was like to run errands in India. Well I’ll tell you. You walk out under the blue skies lighthearted and cheerful, because hey its nice out and the Lord is by your side. You find a free rickshaw, basically a three wheeled scooter with a leather roof and a bench in back. I’ll have to get some pictures of these and put them up, too late tonight maybe tomorrow. Then you take off for a the mall. At the mall you walk around in aimless circles through endless wings and floors searching among clothing shop after clothing shop for a place that sells electronics, pushing your way through crowds of teenagers, who don’t really seem to have any purpose but are there anyway. Unless you are looking for clothes in which case you take you pick of stores, hoping they don’t notice your American and give you their “special, I’m doing this because you’re my friend price.” After that you grab a bite to eat at an exotic Indian restaurants such as Subway, or Pizza Hut. After wandering around a little while longer you come across an exit, hail down a rickshaw, stop off at the grocery store, and arrive home to find that the cell phone they sold you with the promise that it would be registered and working with in five minutes, still isn’t operating.
One of the reasons I had to run out to the mall was because I fried my wireless router. That router was carefully packed in a bag that survived almost a month of travel, but busted within a few days of reaching its destination. Or more accurately I think just the adapter for the wireless router, but it is hard to say for sure without an adapter it’s hard to test the router. Yes I know enough not to plug American appliances into foreign outlets, and I didn’t. Dave has a few converters switching the local 220 volts to the 110-120 American. I plugged the router adapter into one of those and it was working fine for a while, but then I started hearing a fizzling hissing noise and the lights went out. On the router that is, it didn’t affect anything else. Still not sure what happened. When I finally found an electronic store that had an adapter that would replace the burnout cord I found the cord was 1,800 rupees ($45) whereas the exact same router was sitting there for 2,200 rupees ($55). HMMMMMM! The only other item that couldn’t hack the full journey was a hand held mirror that I found broken in my bag when we got to Africa, go figure. What I was doing with a mirror in my bag to begin with I’m not sure. Though my American self must have had his reasons, shaving probably among them.
I also want to put a quick note in here about billboards. Americans know nothing about billboards. There are 7.8 million people in Chennai, and there are 8.3 million billboards. I counted them on the way in. There are stretches of street where you can see three things the road below you the blue sky far above and hundreds of perfectly shaped faces promising you, ohh such a wonderful and happy life if you will only understand the wisdom of buying Levi jeans. Walls of billboards stretching up out of sight. Well at least 30 or 40 feet up, one on top of the other.
So there are the highlights of my first couple days in India, hopefully with in the next couple days we’ll find an apartment and I’ll get moved in. Next week we start teaching, this week is preparation time. I plan on getting pictures of the city next time I go out, so that you can see what I see, or at least parts of it.
– Matthew Ude