Worlds Touch

Printing a Report

Nonprofit technology is my field. The world is my geographic location. Worlds Touch is the organization taking nonprofit technology into the developing world. Here's what the digital divide looks like up close and personal:

Some people have no idea what it is like, working for a nonprofit in the developing world. So let me share today's triumph, and everything several of us went through to make this happen.

Today I printed a report.

Yep. That's the major triumph. Here is what I had to do to get here. I had told Gopal S. at Hayden Hall about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and speculated that it might work in his far-flung savings and loan business with poor women. He got quite excited about the idea-- even though we agreed that it wasn't something we could make happen this summer. I told him about a training program they've got in Nepal (that I hope to do this fall), and also about this great report from Progressive Tech about using technology in community organizing.

Savings and loan clubs are actually a great organizing tool, I learned from my social worker friend Scott, so GIS might be something really great to work toward here, as part of an overall technology plan.

I brought a copy of the report to the office on my little thumb drive and downloaded it into Gopal's computer, so he could look at it. We decided that it would be best if we could print it out so he could read it in hard copy. Frankly, I really like a paper report in my hands and this one is just dynamite. So here's what we had to do to print the report:

1. Put it into the sharing file so we could move it to the computer that is hooked up to the ink jet printer. The report is a .pdf file, and so the dot matrix printer just wasn't going to do.

2. But the organization doesn't use its ink jet printer. The ink, at a whopping $11 the cartridge, is expensive. And the administration begrudges every piece of paper. The idea of printing a 65 page report ANYWHERE in the organization was met with reluctance. The ink in the cartridge there was almost out anyway.

3. I offer to BUY an ink cartridge and a ream of paper so I can print stuff that I think needs to be printed without feeling guilty or wasteful of the charity's precious funds. Over the weekend, I look around, but really can't find the right place to buy these things, so I ask one of the staffers to help me. It takes two days before the ink and paper are in stock. That was fast. The regular supplier is in a town four hours by jeep away. Normally such requests are processed within a week. A WEEK, for a ream of paper and an ink cartridge. Two days was lightning fast.

4. Because it hasn't been used lately, the printer needs a whole maintenance job. I clean the heads several times, because the test sheets are coming out with these horizontal lines across them. I spend one of my 1.5 hour volunteer days doing this maintenance, including learning how to do it, since I don't have the same printer at home, or the same printer software. The horizontal lines, by the way, only go away on about page ten of the report when we finally print it. What the printer needed most, it turns out, was USE.

5. About the same time, we realize that there is no Adobe Reader on the computer, and even though they have a local area network, nobody knows how to share applications between the two computers (not even me, though I am adding networking to my list of things to learn forthwith). So I download a copy from the internet.

6. The problem, however, is that the latest Adobe Reader requires Internet Explorer 5.01 or better, and all we have is 5. I was planning to download that right away, but got sidetracked with the printer maintenance, so put it at the top of the list for tomorrow.

7. Tomorrow, it turns out, the internet is down. It's been down all day. Nobody has been called. Everyone supposes it's down all over the city, like the water supply, the electricity and what not. I call the phone at the telephone company from where HH gets its broadband connection, but nobody answers that phone. I go over to my usual cyber place and find out they have no problem with THEIR internet.

8. Gopal offers to bring in his copy of Adobe Reader to install on the computer that's hooked up to the printer. We're heading into the next weekend...So that is already one week that we've been working on getting one report printed...

9. Monday, foggy and rainy in Darjeeling, dawns on an opening path. After first telling me the printer wasn't properly plugged into the computer, the controls on the printer finally read GO. Adobe Reader is installed. The internet is still down, but at least we can read and print the report. Gopal is dismayed at the horizontal lines, but, miracle of miracles, they go away on about page 10. The paper only jams about three or four times. While I'm printing (ten pages at a time, just to catch any weirdnesses that the printer might want to invent), Gopal WALKS up to the telephone company and leaves a message with someone he knows. Nobody is in the server room at 3 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. I put in a call to the guy I've come to know at the phone company, but really I need to see him in person. People all have mobile phones, but trying to troubleshoot a down internet over them doesn't really work.

10. I vow to come home tonight, crossing my fingers that my wireless card can read the signal from the modem across the lane and that the dial-up connection is working. I'll do the charity's internet research from here tonight.

The interesting thing about this story is that it is very much par for the course. The penny-pinching on things like ink cartridges and paper is part of Nonprofit-Think. The interpersonal component to everything that gets done (Gopal bringing in his copy of the software to install, the trips to the phone company to try to see someone face to face over the internet problem, the way it takes asking someone to find the ink and paper we need...) and just the sheer time lag from concept to actualization of the project-- this is what we live with in international nonprofit tech.

Sometimes I get frustrated at the snail's pace...sometimes I know in my heart of hearts that it's the relationships that count and that this is what the so-called third world continues to teach me. I sure hope Gopal enjoys the report I printed for him. It changed the way I look at nonprofit tech; maybe it will change his as well.

The Report: From Exclusion to Inclusion: Strengthening Community-led Organizations with Effective Technology. It's available here:
http://www.progressivetech.org/Resources/research.htm

Monday Doings in Daj

I'm on my way to Hayden Hall and my afternoon volunteer job there. I plan to print out various technical assessment forms and start the process of getting them accepted by the administration. This week, I need to write a Memo of Understanding for them and also one for the Rotary Club here for their web site assessment.

This morning I spent playing with my new download, WordQuiz. I've been puzzling how I could code myself a flash card game on the computer, and I finally got wise that somebody had probably already done it. This looks quite good, actually, though there are a few particularities I have to get used to. I'm using the transliteration system from my Basic Course in Spoken Nepali, which doesn't use funny letters except for several with a tilde on top for the nasal sounds.

I've set up two vocab lists to learn. One is part of the vocabulary I've been given by my various teachers, starting with 100 words, and the other is just verbs, just about 50. I just got it set up this morning, but I want to spend time this week quizzing myself over and over. I just need to beef up my vocabulary right now. I'm pretty good at remembering things I use and do without any special help, but that's not going fast enough for me.

Off to Hayden Hall!

Rotary in Daj: Reading and Helping

I can READ! Now I know how the six-year-olds feel that magic day in first grade when the shapes and lines and squiggles on the page turn into meaningful symbols! This is the first time in my life...well, since that day in first grade, which I sadly do not remember...that I have ever learned a whole new alphabet. When I went to Greece, I learned to sound out some of the street signs, but their alphabet, while different from ours, is not anywhere near as different as Devanagari, the alphabet they use here.

If you'd like an example of this script, check out the BBC World, here.

And while you're surfing the internet, you may want to find Darjeeling on a map of India, and then zoom in to the Himalayan mountains. One of the readers of my personal blog used Google Earth to find me. He entered "Chow Rasta," the name of the big open piazza at the top of the ridge into the program, and could zoom right down to look at the city's location. He thought I was living in a valley. Ha! Darjeeling is right up on top of a mountain ridge, cascading down one whole side. That's one reason why the place so resembles a natural StairMaster.

Here's a map of Sikkim. Look closely just south of Sikkim, in the northeast and you can see Daj (pronounced "Dodge," a local nickname for the city.)
By the way, the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection is the best site I've ever found for online maps. On their index page, they always have maps for the latest news. Right now, they're featuring World Cup countries, Korea, and the North Korea test facility.

Here's Google Earth. You have to have a pretty fast machine to enjoy it, and you must download the software onto your computer. Be careful, though. Many people find it addictive, running around the world, looking at geography they've heard about all their lives.
http://earth.google.com/

The other big news of the week is my association with Hayden Hall, a wonderful charity located in the heart of the city. This is another example of the generosity and helpfulness of my new friends here. Father Van at St. Joseph's School and Father Victor at St. Joseph's College, University Division, as well as Udaya Mani Pradhan and Mr. Gopal of the Rotary Club-- all of them were unanimous in suggesting Hayden Hall as the place I might want to do my volunteer work.

This week I met Father Burns, the elderly patriarch of the organization, who even in his 81st year is still fund-raising. I met Radha Karki, Father Burns' administrative right hand, and Mr. Gopal (another Gopal), the head of the microfinance division and the "accidental techie" of the outfit. Mr. Gopal's the one who has that "natural touch" with technology that every nonprofit needs in order to make the best use of technology to further the organization's mission.

Nonprofits are, by their very nature, constantly short of money and staff time. Everyone wears several hats and those hats keep them extraordinarily busy. The folks with high-powered technical expertise who graduate from universities are usually looking for the high-powered salaries that everyone's heard about. The nonprofit sector only sometimes attracts that talent. Besides, nonprofits are usually somewhat behind their counterparts in the for-profit sector in seizing the benefits of technology to accomplish their missions. They tend to think of computers as glorified typewriters and adding machines and that's that.

Indeed, at Hayden Hall, there is one fellow who sits behind a MANUAL typewriter, banging out letters to Hayden Hall's donors, one by one. Copying each one onto the next aerogram. Father Burns has a reason for this labor-intensive, time-consuming practice, Ms. Radhka explained to me. People who send him money like to get hand-typed letters, he says.

That could be true. It could also be something to consider in an overall approach to technology and strategic planning for Hayden Hall's next ten years. And that's what I'll be doing with Hayden Hall while I'm here. I plan to do a computer systems assessment, looking at who uses the organization's computers, what they are used for, what skills do the various staff members bring to their computer use, and what skills they want and need. In today's world, each nonprofit can benefit from an Information and Communications Technology plan.

For instance, as I learned in Nepal working with a nonprofit with a similar approach to similar goals, micro-finance is at the heart of the organization's success in bringing poor women out of poverty and giving them and their children a whole new lease on life. The women gather together into Savings Clubs and pool their scant incomes. 75 cents a month is the required contribution here, for example. But five years down the road, these groups are able to start lending each other the money for a whole host of needs, like new homes (sometimes first homes), education fees for their children's futures, startup funds for new (and sometimes first) businesses.

Micro-finance is a very labor-intensive, time-consuming operation, even with computers back in the main office. Hayden Hall, in effect, acts as the bank for the roughly 90 savings groups. Every transaction has to be painstakingly added both into a big ledger book and in the HH accounting program. Hours and hours of staff time is dedicated to entering data...numbers that are crucial to the lives of the women who count on this organization to give them a glimmer of hope from within generations of poverty.

I already have a few ideas about using technology to speed up the process, free up some staff time, and streamline the process in the micro-finance division of Hayden Hall. But all these ideas need to fit into an overall approach to technology, a technology plan-- and that will be my job for the next three months: assessing the technology in use now, and helping the staff plan use technology (a new web site? a geographical mapping system for the savings/credit groups in the villages? computer upgrades? staff computer training? new software?) to achieve its vital mission.

I've also promised the Rotary Club's webmaster, Mr. Prolad Roka, that I'll look over the Rotary's web site and give him an assessment. He'd also like some guidelines to good web design for future use. I'd like to have a nice little handbook on that myself, so that will be fun to put together from the various web design sites I've already bookmarked.

[note: If you've enjoyed this Rotary post, please leave a comment below. Just click Comment. I'll get an email that you've read and liked the post! Or, you could point out any errors, or grumble about any opinions you disagree with. That's the beauty of the blog: INTERACTION!]

Week Two in Darjeeling: Rotary Report

Darjeeling, India
June 13, 2006

Dear Friends in Rotary,

Big triumph yesterday! My first all-Nepali official interaction! It all started as I was walking slowly up the hill after my morning Nepali class. I was heading to CyberDyne, the fastest internet in town, to post some photos and answer emails. I passed Mr. Gopal, outgoing Rotary Club President here, who was sitting in his office at the Timber Lodge not far from the city's main post office. I waved, but Mr. Gopal signalled for me to come in for a short chat.

"You must register at the Foreigner's Registration Office," he told me. "All the foreigners staying here must do this. The hotels all perform this duty for you, but now you are staying in a private home and you must register."

I had passed the office several times on my way to the internet, but I had thought it was just for tourists who wanted to travel to Sikkim, a small Himalayan kingdom just north of here that is under Indian protection. That's a big tourist destination hereabouts.

So I popped in to the Foreigner's Registration Office, which is just up the road from Mr. Gopal's lodge and spoke to the man at the desk. And spoke in Nepali! He had to smile, because of course, with less than a week's course under my belt. I made plenty of mistakes. But I told him I was staying in a rented room with a Darjeeling lady, that I was studying Nepali here, and that I have a visa for three months and a student visa. He was still laughing when he pointed me to an inner office, where there was a man with an enormous book.

I told him the same things, and answered all his questions. Sometimes he had to prompt me with the English word, because of course all these educated folks here speak English, but he was respectful enough of my efforts to keep the exchange in Nepali. He took my passport and noted down all the information in his big book. It turns out he's a friend of one of my Nepali teachers, and so sent along his regards to Mr. P.K. Chettri.

When I wrote a week ago, I still had all the major elements of my Rotary Club scholarship up in the air. I had finally arrived and I'd attended a Rotary Club meeting, and a Rotary social function where I met the wives of several of the members. But that was all.

Now, a week later, I'm settled in to my new home, attending classes four hours a day and doing at LEAST an hour of homework every night. And learning to read, write and speak the Nepali language at a rate that astonishes me. I love learning languages, as those of you who attended my interviews and presentations may remember. But this is the first time I've ever been privileged to both live and take language classes in a different country, and the difference it makes in my efficiency in learning is wonderful.

I sure have a lot to be grateful to Rotary for! The members in the Darjeeling Rotary (District 3290) have been just great. Mr. Diwaker Thapa invited my husband and me to visit his kindergarden school and treated us to a morning of song, hand clapping, and discussion with his adorable little charges. The children presented us, as is the custom here, with silk scarves to welcome us. (So did the Rotary Club, by the way, at our first meeting.) It's a beautiful custom in the Himalayan mountains. In Tahiti, they use necklaces of flowers and shells to welcome guests. Here, it's silk scarves.

Mr. Gopal, the outgoing club president here, introduced me to Miss Kaushalya Giri, a retired teacher and former school headmistress, who has an extra little house across the lane from hers. The room she offered me (and I accepted!) is just right for a visiting scholar. It has a big study table, electricity for my laptop (when it is working...Darjeeling suffers from frequent blackouts), a bed and a place for my clothes. I have my own private toilet and bath rooms, though here I must say I'm glad that I have a little experience in this part of the world. The running water is available about once a week in this neighborhood, and the folks here use that precious time to fill up buckets and buckets of water for the coming week. A bath consists of a bucket of piping hot water, delivered by the teenage servant boy. I fill the rest of the bucket with cold water to bring the temperature to my taste and use a small pitcher to pour the water over me to make a shower. Believe it or not, I really prefer this method over a regular shower. It wastes no water, and it's very satisfying!

Miss Giri and I have formed a very warm relationship. She teaches me Nepali every morning after breakfast until lunchtime. She's a patient and kind teacher, indulgent of my many mistakes, but also firm in her determination that I should learn to write alphabet of this new language, and then to learn to read it. I take my three meals a day in her lovely little sitting room, which also serves as our classroom.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, I have another hour's class with Mr. P.K. Chettri, a Nepali teacher in a private high school called St. Robert's. He and Miss Giri met on Saturday to coordinate our efforts, and we have formed a very efficient team, the three of us! I had thought I could just learn to SPEAK Nepali, bypassing what I was afraid would be a slow and cumbersome process of learning a whole different script. But no. These two have ganged up on me, and by golly, I'm starting to sound out words on market signs, on the Nepali television programs and in the children's alphabet book Mr. Chettri gave me.

I'm very fortunate in being already quite familiar with the Indian and Nepali cultures. I appreciate their food (though Miss Giri tones down the hot chilis for my Westernized stomach's sake), and I know how to eat properly, with my fingers, which very much pleases her. I understand when to take off my shoes, how to greet people with the proper respect, and how to make my way through the bureaucratic maze that characterizes administration here. As the French say, "Vive la Difference!"

I told Miss Giri when I arrived that I will eat anything she serves me. Folks hereabouts are anxious to please their guests, to feed them well, and they do worry that we won't like their food. Miss Giri gives me eggs with bread and cheese for breakfast, rice, various curries and salad for lunch, and for supper I usually have vegetables and some kind of homemade bread-- chappatis, paratha, roti-- all very delicious and piping hot. It's mango season, so I usually have a mango once a day. The vegetables are mostly familiar: okra, lots of potatoes, cooked greens, and raw carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes for salads. I'm very happy with the food, and Miss Giri, who worried just a little about my American tastebuds, is relieved and pleased. 

Left to organize:
A volunteer situation: I've contacted the social services center in town run by the local Jesuits, and over the next week or so, I hope to have a project to accomplish there. I'd like to see if I can assemble a group of social service organizations in a technology workshop, to discuss their computer problems and talk about solutions I've gathered that other nonprofits and charities around the world are using to promote poverty reduction, education, environmental protection and understanding.

Presentations to the local and further afield Rotary Clubs: The LCD projector I use for my photogrphs is being used at the moment for the World Cup in Soccer, but as soon as that international phenomenon is finished, everyone will be a little more receptive to my offers to present programs. The other clubs are not easily reached over these mountainous roads, but already one or two of the Rotary members have offered to accompany me to other clubs. I'll be get phone numbers and contact names at the next Rotary Club meeting.

I could not have accomplished all this progress if it were not for the concerted efforts of many friends, new and old. The Jesuit college here, a world famous boarding school and university, has supported me at every step along the way. First Father Van and then Father Victor-- both have paved the way with introductions and suggestions, so that when I arrived, I was greeted as practically an old friend. The local Rotary Club, led by Mr. Gopal, but backed by my first contact in the club, has moved mountains to get me a place to live and tutors for my studies in record time. And, of course-- this cannot be said enough-- the fine folks from District 7690, from John Womack to the Jamestown Club and my counselor there Howard Hicks-- have made this incredible experience possible through their generosity and committment.

Good News

Things are moving swiftly now. I went up to the suburb of North Point, to St. Joseph's College, University Division, to speak with Father Victor this morning. JF and I were in the neighborhood because we'd been invited by Rotary member Diwaker Thapa to visit the kindergarden he and his wife run.

While we were there, I got a call from Mr. Gopal, outgoing president of the club, with excellent news. He's discussed my stay here with a retired Nepali teacher who has an extra room in her house. She is willing to host me, AND be one of my Nepali tutors. She's actually excited about the prospect. I'll meet her tomorrow morning to finalize the arrangements.

I stopped off at St. Joseph's on the way home and got the phone number of Mr. P.K. Chetri, a Nepali teacher at a local school called St. Robert's School. He has already expressed his willingness to tutor me, and we're meeting this afternoon to discuss schedule and fees, etc.

We'll have to see if I can plan five hours a day with just two tutors. I'm thinking I'll probably need at least one more, but I have already three other names of folks who either teach in one of the local schools or tutor foreigners as a sideline.

So we're moving right along here. It's stopped raining, for now, though we still aren't able to see the mountains. Perhaps they'll be out this afternoon, the time we've seen them once before. Because it's pre-monsoon and monsoon...this means rain, rain, and more rain. So every glimpse of the Himalaya will be a gift.

It's also quite a gift to have been so warmly welcomed by this Rotary Club. I feel I've been taken under its wing.

Rotary: First Darjeeling Report!

Now that I'm in Darjeeling, the stories about my Rotary Club experience here multiply. Until now, I've simply been traveling to get here, stopping along the way to visit Rotary Clubs and to do some volunteer work for social justice and poverty organizations.

I arrived by jeep taxi on Thursday, June 1st. My Rotary contact here, Udaya Mani Pradhan, had already arranged for a hotel room at a reduced price. The Seven Seventeen is owned by a Mr. Tashi, also a Rotary member. We're paying $20 a night here, which is quite reasonable by American standards, but the backpacker rates are about one third of that. True, the backpacker hotels are located up on the ridge of the mountain, whereas "downtown" Darjeeling is about halfway down the mountain, but there is no navigating the streets of this city without climbing and descending. I'm either going to be in great shape when I'm finished with my three months here, or have a heart attack-- one or the other.

As it turns out, the Darjeeling club meets in the hotel restaurant on Thursday nights, so I was invited to attend my first Rotary meeting here practically before I had time to unpack my suitcase. The club had about twelve or fifteen members in attendance, and they are in the middle of planning for the transition to the new club officers and committee chairmen. But they were kind enough to let me make a short speech. I told them how I came to apply for the Rotary Club scholarship, about my work as a computer systems advisor to non-governmental, nonprofit organizations in Nepal (and elsewhere!), and why it took me nearly five months to reach my posting as Cultural Ambassador. Then I told them what is still missing from the program:
1. A place to live-- Rotary International prefers that its scholars live in homestays, partly because the language immersion would then be total, but also because Rotarians know that the most important sharing and international understanding takes place one-on-one, person-to-person. Hotels are not the best places to meet locals, but homestays provide instant access to the whole range of local culture.
2. An educational program-- Rotary International expects its language scholars to spend five hours a day, five days a week, studying and practising the target language. Since there is no university-affiliated language program here in Darjeeling, the Rotary counselors and I decided we would have to patch one together. I landed here with some leads, but no program fixed.
3. Volunteer program-- Rotary believes in "service before self," and this means that every Rotary Club has some kind of humanitarian project going at all times. Rotary International expects its scholars to volunteer their services in the communities where they're living. I landed with some leads, but so far, no firm committment to a specific program of volunteer work.

Why are these key elements still not fixed? Most Rotary language programs are affiliated with a language institute which has the homestay component already in place and the requisite hours of classroom study for the beginner available. Rotary scholars just have to apply to the programs, get accepted and show up. Then they work with local Rotary Clubs to get the volunteer and speaking engagements that are also part of the program.

If I had been able to learn Nepali in Kathmandu, our first destination, the language institute is already in place. But political upheaval in the Nepalese capital forced me to shift to Darjeeling, which has a large population of Nepalese speakers. In fact, it could be said that the main language here is Nepalese. There are some differences that my Rotarian friends have started pointing out. For instance, the word "gravy" in Nepal means "gutter slime" in the local Nepali.

Also, India is like Nepal and other parts of Asia in that much of what gets accomplished happens through face-to-face contacts. Planning and execution of projects through email is just not the way the world works here. Since intercultural understanding is a cornerstone of the Rotary value system, it makes sense that getting an educational program in place would take personal effort on my part, here and now.

And I've got a great bunch of Rotarians helping me.

Calcutta Rotary Meeting

I didn't think I'd have enough time to visit a Rotary Club in Calcutta, India. We'd planned to be there only one week, and even at that I worried a little about imposing on my friends, Sandy and Dola Sandell that long. We've all heard the joke about the similarities between out-of-town visitors and fish-- they're great, but after three days they start to stink.

It's true that this is not the way Indians travel. The Sandells come to the States to visit their sons and stay six months, three months each. But I'd programmed a week, thinking if I felt we were really in the way, we could go on off to a hotel.

Then, Jean-Francois, my husband, got held up in Malaysia for six days getting his Indian visa. I'd already gotten my visa because I needed a student visa for my Rotary Club scholarship, but JF thought that India, like most non-communist, non-American countries, would issue him a tourist visa at the border. No chance. So instead of arriving on Sunday the 21st, he came on on Saturday the 27th. And because I couldn't book our onward train tickets to my final destination, Darjeeling, without JF and his passport in person, we overstayed our plans in Calcutta by four days.

I'd already talked to Sandy about my Rotary Club connections, about the Rotary Clubs I've visited on my way here.

"I'm a Rotary member," Sandy let casually fall into the conversation. But his club meets on Monday evenings and I thought we'd already be on our way to Darjeeling by then. On Friday night, Sandy and Dola and I went to The Saturday Club, a sort of leftover concept from the days of the British Raj: a fine old building with a now slightly warping dance floor surrounded by a ballastraded balcony on three sides. There's a badminton court now set up on the former dance floor, and young people in white shorts run around the court at the old-timey game of battledore and shuttlecock. There's a veranda for drinks, red clay tennis courts, a very up-to-date library, a veddy veddy British bar in mahogany with a huge painting of some kind of battle scene.

That Friday night, practically the entire Calcutta Rotary Club was in attendance. Within the space of about ten minutes, I was invited to attend the next Monday meeting, invited to give the presentation, and promised an LCD projector for my travel photos.

Dola was a bit worried about how all this was going to be accomplished in three days' time. "'No problem, no problem' is the Indian disease," she declared. "It's always 'No problem,' but does it really get done???" Sandy and I set about trying to come up with various alternative plans, just in case the projector didn't materialize as promised. We tried routing my photographs through the digital camera to the television, but after a recognisance tour of the club, Sandy realized that the club television sets were not conveniently located for the slide show.

Meanwhile, I was chewing my nails over my presentation. I have been doing travel slide shows for decades now, but this would be the first time for this trip. Because my husband is taking photographs for his French classes at High Point University, we have hundreds and hundreds of photos from our five months on the road. What to choose? What theme? What organization? I finally decided to go with the theme of cultural similarity and difference-- how we are alike and how we are different-- ending with the worldwide Rotary dedication to service before self, and showing how I've been able to serve already on this trip, and to talk about my upcoming language course and volunteer opportunities in Darjeeling.

Getting the show together and making the equipment work are two different things, of course. Sandy  had originally slotted about 20 minutes for setup, but I begged another hour from him. I know how fickle computers and LCD projectors and their cables and electricity supplies are. Indeed, it took the full hour and then some for me and Arjun Dutta, the exceptionally kind fellow who gave up his evening for my presentation, to make everything work properly, to find the right wall to serve as a screen, etc.

The Calcutta Rotarians started their Rotary Club meetings with tea or coffee and "snacks." These are amazingly filling and tasty savory pastries, some with meat and some "veg." There are many, many vegetarians in India, and "veg" is always an option whenever there is food served. The coffee is fine, but tea is an Indian specialty. They drink it hot with milk and sugar and often spiced with cardamon or cloves and cinnamon. Then, we adjourned to the main dining room for the meeting. They didn't do any "business" at this meeting; it was soon turned over to me.

One thing that's great about the south Asian mentality is that you never feel as if a clock is being watched. Conversations between friends or business associates end in some logical place, when all that needs to be said is said. Meetings, social gatherings-- these flow to endings seemingly naturally. It is considered somewhat rude in this part of the world to be looking at your watch while you're talking to someone. No one is more important that this moment, this encounter, this human connection. I could feel that at the Calcutta Rotary Club. Nobody said, "You've got 20 minutes." Nobody seemed to be keeping time on me. I'd asked ahead of time and they said most presentations run roughly 20 minutes, but that was the last time anybody mentioned timing.

I don't honestly know how long the slide show and talk ran. All I know is that they were a very appreciative and attentive audience-- just the kind of group that makes public speaking a great pleasure. There was quite a crowd there, too. I had expected about ten, but there were almost 20 people, ladies as well as gentlemen (which has not been the case in the clubs I'd visited so far.) They said very kind things after the show and must have talked it up outside, because the following day, I got an invitation to speak at another of Calcutta's Rotary Clubs. Unfortunately, we were leaving the next day for Darjeeling, but I promised, if I get back to Calcutta during my stay here...like the cool weather up here is getting me down and I'm pining after the sticky hot 90 degree weather of Calcutta, for instance...I'd be happy to show them my slides and give a talk.

All in all, a most satisfactory evening.

Photos:

The Saturday Club bar in full swing on a Saturday night. Note the impressive dress of the waiter in the background. On the left, just a glimpse of the huge battle painting that fills the space behind the bar.
Here's the group portrait while we exchange club banners.
This one's a little blurry, but we are joking about Sandy's photographing techniques.
And a closeup of the two banners.