Yesterday morning, my first full day back home post-fellowship, I took a steaming hot shower for the first time in two months. I exfoliated, I washed my hair with coconut-scented shampoo, I shaved, I scrubbed in between my toes. And – I’ll admit – I just stood there under the hot water and inhaled the steam that swirls around the bathroom when the water is hot. It felt like an outside layer of skin melted off my body and slipped…
Today is my last full day in India. I finished my volunteering in Mumbai and have spent the last week and a half traveling with two of my sisters. It was so special to share a piece of my time here with them. Now, I’m sitting in a little café in Rishikesh, solo again, overlooking the Ganges and Himalayan foothills searching for words to summarize my experience fully. I’ve tried a few different beginnings to this post and they’ve ranged from existential…
Picture me this: an office, full of intelligent women clicking away at computers, analyzing data, authoring reports, planning community education, training a fleet of maternal and child health warriors to sail into communities and make a tangible difference. Women in three different clinics in Mumbai slums spearhead nutritional counseling, pregnancy clubs, cooking courses, breastfeeding instruction, and mother-child bonding classes for local women. For my internship, I’m working with the Foundation for Mother and Child Health and the scene is just this….
Phase 1: Aaah I’m here!— World appears in technicolor, overwhelming sense of enthusiasm unobstructed by reality. Takes pictures of everyday scenes and objects: traffic, cows and goats, coconut trees, rickshaws, streets. Picture 21st century Dorothy exiting Kansas for Munchkinland, iPhone in hand. Adrenaline-induced lack of jetlag because WHY sleep when there’s SO much to see?! Forgets all warning and eats anything and everything, irrespective of one’s ability to identify or pronounce it, with an abandon typically reserved for children left…
Upon boarding a long flight, the world inhales. Earth holds its breath at the top, soaring over the space we call home and laughing at the concept of time. The plane smiles down on rotating earth for a breathless pause, and people just exist. It doesn’t matter where they come from and it doesn’t matter where they go after the plane lands. For those small hours, it is just a flying bubble of humanity bunched together 35,000 feet above familiarity,…
I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida—a sunny, southern city just 2 hours north of the place that stressed and sunburnt tourists dub “The Happiest Place on Earth.” I was in fifth grade when the Esteemed Graduating Class of Julington Creek Elementary School was to go on a class field trip to Disney’s Animal Kingdom—very Florida, I know! Expedition Everest, Disney’s brand new roller coaster at the time, was all the gossip amongst the eleven year-olds. It was the tallest mountain…
