They wear uniforms of white and blue. The walls are white with painted colors of animals that they have yet to see. Traffic noise pour into their classrooms. An orange cloud rises around the playground but never falls. It blows itself around and clings to every sound and object. All is covered in the orange dust.
Read More“But the stubborn descendants of the twenty-one intrepid people who plowed through the mountains in search of the sea to the west avoided the reefs of the melodic mix up and the dancing went on until dawn.”
~One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
I read at night before I fall asleep. In India, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude. For a few minutes, I flit away from the weight of discovery falling pound by pound onto my shoulders and to the ethereal swamps of South America where Márquez weaves stories into the fabric of the land he creates. One evening I find a sentence I cannot look away from. I scribble it into my notebook next to the name of an NGO coordinator and countless questions about my moral compass. For some sleep fogged reason, I refuse to move past this sentence. I am captivated.
Read MoreThis afternoon, driving through the slums of Ahmedabad, I could not shake the nagging feeling that I did not fit. Coasting in our shiny white Toyota van through narrow dirt roads not designed for us, the universe paused for a minute to accommodate the Americans who were larger than the communities we infiltrated. Through the windows of our air-conditioned vessel, I watched as workers stopped what they were doing to make room for us, children paused their games to wave and smile at us, and local cars and vans moved off the road to make way for us-- the Americans. This reminded me of another incident I experienced earlier this morning, while working with the organization Design for Change at a local government-funded primary school.
Read MoreOn my second day in Ahmedabad, I found something very unsettling. While we were driving to Manav Sadhna, the buildings in the distance were a two-dimensional background to an extremely colorful and dense city. Even though we couldn't have been more than ten miles away, the dust-tinted towers seemed well beyond our reach.
Read MoreDear Mr. Mundra,
Why was I chosen to go on this trip?
I wonder, did you see something in me...? Did you have some sort of bigger purpose...? This is not a rhetorical question. I sincerely want to know.
I am confused, divided, nervous. Anxious. I feel weirdly fragile. I am afraid that I am not prepared to go on this trip. I want so much to experience a completely new culture, but what if I am not ready?
Read MoreI am caught in the process of remembering myself again. The long nights of work, the comfort of seeing friends everyday, the looming assignments and the quiet trust of my teachers no longer consume me. I am removed from the eight people who rowed with me and became my family, from the final exams that jarred my expectations of perfection, and from the graduation that tore me away from many of my mentors and friends. I begin the summer with a determination to find again the version of myself that does not need Andover to function.
Read MoreWe're on the brink. It's the moment right before we truly begin, the moment when anything is still a possibility. Right now, I have no clue what shape this trip will take--I am in the last few hours of oblivion. But with this temporary ignorance comes a unique excitement, because there's so much potential and nothing yet to hold it back. Everything seems to breathe possibility: the smooth, clean pages of my journal, which, now holding only the neat inscription of my name, will likely be full of lopsided, scribbled thoughts over the next three weeks. The slightly obnoxious gleam of my new, bright red sneakers, the canvas waiting to be worn and scuffed and dusty. And the people, too.
Read MoreI am anxious for our arrival, but nervous about what I might find in Ahmedabad. Poverty has long been a source of discomfort for me. I look forward to discussions on this trip about what it means to be poor and how poverty can effect the way we perceive others. My past experiences in the developing world have shown me that many people see poverty as scenery: that shanty town across the highway or a woman carrying water back to the village.
Read MoreRight now I am sitting in the Dubai airport and already feeling far from home. Not only are there signs written in Arabic and glass-walled elevators opening up onto massive water fountains, an unfamiliar luxury compared to the airports in the US—I also find it hard to orient myself in time here. I had breakfast on the plane at—11 am US time? 7 pm Dubai time? 8:30 pm Ahmedabad time? These are all just estimates, as I’ve given up trying to figure out what time it is until we arrive at our destination. So right now I’m in this state of limbo, in every sense of the word. I have no idea what time it is, what day it is, what day it feels like. And I am on the edge of an experience of which I have no idea what to expect. I have this vague idea that I am about to be changed. But changed how? Changed by what?
Read MoreThe sky is blue because light scatters in the atmosphere. Some colors of light scatter more than others. The robins-egg blue that we see is an average of values. Up here, from the window of an airplane, the sky looks motionless. Clear, blue, and still. It’s an incredible phenomenon. We sit in the hollow belly of tons and tons of metal, careening at hundreds and hundreds of miles per hour relative to the ground, but it doesn’t feel like we’re moving at all. It’s only when I look down and see the clouds that I believe I’m moving.
Read MoreAs I sit, waiting with my new friends in a rather busy Boston Logan food court, my mind melts into a state of what can best be described as a strong opiate high reserved for only the most unconditioned of travelers. It is a vibrant tingle that starts from your head and slowly makes its way down to your toes, like a long red curtain that is lowered to conclude a performance.
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