After a day of travel in relative luxury (airplane and private taxi) I have arrived at my first work destination, Darjeeling, India. I finally got through to my Rotary Club contact here and he proposed meeting this afternoon some time to discuss prospects and plans.
This is the time of year when lots of people leave town because of the unpleasant weather. Daj is a city of several hundred thousand originally constructed to house about 50,000 that drips down the side of a steep mountain crest. This is the monsoon season, which means that my first purchase today, before coffee, before breakfast, before bottled water, was an umbrella. They have serviceable Korean models here for about $1.50. At home, people are leaving town for either the mountains or the beach to escape the humid, hot weather. It was indeed humid and hot in Delhi, but this is more than humid, it is inside the cloud, and so everything is moist, limp, tending to mildew.
I have four plans for this month, only one of which really NEEDS to get done. I need to get a root canal and a cap. Other than that, I could make videos with a group of nonprofits, or I could work with one nonprofit on home-grown videos. I could work with the local Rotary Club to get a proposal for the international grants that are available internationally. I could head down the mountain a ways to spend time with a nun who does agricultural projects with local villages.
What I don't have are definite commitments. It has ever been thus with my Darjeeling forays. The first time I came here with a Rotary Club scholarship, I arrived with neither lodging, nor Nepali lessons, nor volunteer project arranged. By the end of the first week, however, all three were in place most satisfactorily. I might be one step closer this time by the end of the afternoon.
If i can't get work, then I'll get my teeth fixed and my airplane ticket changed and go back to Delhi to take a plane to Kathmandu. There are lots of corners of Nepal I haven't visited, and if there is no way to organize work, then I will organize play.
You would think it would be possible to arrange specific projects from home. So far, though, this has proved elusive. It's as if I am some sort of mirage or chimera until I'm right here. Then everything can move. Even my first project, with Lumanti, in Nepal, was completely unorganized until I arrived.
In the meantime, this is the home of some of the finest tea on the planet. And it has a kind of faded charm, a quirky beauty. No photos today. I haven't got the system sorted out yet for getting them uploaded.
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