The dreaded "India slump"

It’s 4:30 am, and I slip on the clothes I laid out last night.  I wander down the hall to knock on the children’s doors, waking them in time to load the bus.  Back in our room, I eye the packet of medicine on my shelf.  Should I take it now, or wait until I have some food in my stomach?  I better take it now.  The muscle spasm in my back that is already a week old did not subside over night.  I will need some muscle relaxant in my system if I’m going to survive the punishing six-hour bus ride we have ahead of us.  I grab my bottle of water, liberate two pills from their foil packet, and swallow.

Reflecting on the past 10 days feels like a lot of work – almost as much work as it was getting through them. We have hit the dreaded “India slump”, and to be honest I had kind of hoped that we might be spared, that somehow we would be immune to what other groups were not.  No such luck.

Traveling is hard.  I know this from experience, yet I still believe that the benefits far outweigh the costs.  When I travelled as a teen and 20-something, I encountered plenty of incredibly stressful situations that left me with wounds I still sometimes lick.  Traveling as a family has introduced another whole layer of stressors, but I still value the experience enough to risk it.  We grow so much from those times we are pushed out of our comfort zones.  So it was with eyes wide open that we signed up to lead the Global Semester – knowing full well that adding 17 college students to our traveling family would add more stress, but more growth, too.

It’s 5:00 am, and we’re on the bus.  Maggie has on her motion sickness bracelets and she’s taken a Dramamine.  She should sleep for the first stretch and then be OK.  James and Grace have found comfortable seats.  Greg and I are settled in.  The students have all made it on the bus with passports in hand.  Our ECC hosts climb aboard, and we start down the first two kilometers of pitted dirt road.  Each bump is like a small stab in my lower back.  I grimace at Greg.  “Did you take the muscle relaxant?” he asks.  “Yep,” I reply, “just waiting for it to kick in.”

When we first arrived in India, things felt light, and colorful, and almost easy.  It was the contrast with our time in Egypt, the harshness of the Sahara Desert, that made India seem so resplendent and welcoming.  We breezed through our first week of traveling and arrived at the ECC feeling almost refreshed.  And then we all got our own rooms, and we were welcomed so earnestly, that it was hard to imagine that we would hit an “India slump”. 

But as the weeks progressed and we spent more and more time here, the signs became hard to ignore.  Day after day of packed schedules left everyone feeling depleted.  The children of ECC families were on school break and stood outside our building waiting for anyone to play with them at tea time or after lunch, but after the first week almost no one had the energy to play with the kids.  We all seemed to be in a bit of a fog: frustration over less than ideal wifi service was obvious, a head cold was rapidly spreading throughout the group, anger and guilt over compulsory yoga at 6:30 am led to snarky comments and resentment, and the bus rides (the god forsaken, never-ending bus rides) were enough to make even the young, healthy bodies rebel. 

It’s 6:00 am and I think the muscle relaxant might be kicking in a little.  Or maybe the road has just smoothed out.  Either way, I’m feeling almost content to just sit still and look out the window at the rising sun.  Greg is asleep, as is most everyone else.  He tips over onto my seat a little and I grin, glad that he’s able to relax.

With tensions high throughout the whole group, we sat down for a group meeting that was doomed from the start.  Everyone was harboring far too much stress to be able to process old frustrations in a constructive way, yet we were planning to debrief some difficult stuff that happened as we were leaving Egypt.  Simple clarifying questions suddenly felt like judgment, and Greg lost his temper in response to what he likely perceived as the students attacking me for holding them accountable for their behavior.  None of us behaved well, and I should have known better than to try.  It was like trying to mediate an argument between Grace and Maggie when either one of them  (or both) is tired and hungry. 

Unfortunately, things haven’t gotten better.  We made things worse by trying to process through some stuff without really acknowledging where we are all at right now.  Maybe if we’d taken the time to acknowledge more fully how tired we all are, how hard this trip is, how much we all need each other for support we could have avoided some of the hurt feelings.  But sometimes when you are already in motion, it is hard to change course.

It’s 7:00 am and something is definitely not right.  My back is fine, or at least I can’t feel it, so that’s fine, right?  Wow, my hands really itch.  Mmmm, that muscle relaxant must really be kicking in now. I feel kind of floaty.  No, definitely not floaty.  Just itchy. And wrong. Very wrong.  My field of vision is kind of closing in.  I elbow Greg.  He sits up a little, but stays mostly asleep. I mutter, “I don’t feel right.”  I think he sits up more, but I can’t really tell because I’m not sure where I am anymore.  I’m back to feeling floaty, except for my tongue.  My tongue really hurts.  My whole mouth hurts. Why does my mouth hurt so much?

A few days and several excruciating outings after the fated group meeting, Greg graded and returned a reflective writing assignment he’d given to the students.  Regardless of the intentions and whether or not the learning outcomes were achieved, many of the students found the process of being graded on their reflections too personal.  It fueled the fire.  They pushed back in the way that all students do where grades are concerned.  I watched from the edge sensing things were spiraling out of control.

I have no idea what time it is, or where I am for that matter.  I open my eyes and see Greg gently holding my face, panic etched in his eyes.  “There you are,” he says.  

“What happened?” I ask.  

“I’m pretty sure you just had a seizure,” he replies, shaking his head.  We are still on the bus.  The bus is moving, and no one around us seems to have noticed.  Greg gets me some juice to sip, and we tip my seat back to stave off another episode.  I’m definitely not OK, but at least I’m conscious.

On the second morning of our latest outing (this one lasting three nights and consisting of over 20 hours on the bus), we received an email from the IOS office at St. Olaf letting us know that several students and one parent had contacted them over growing concerns about the group dynamic.  It was pretty easy to tell that this was St. Olaf’s way of letting us know that the students were upset with us, not just each other.  I knew it was coming. I could see and feel the signs, and yet once things were in motion it didn’t seem like anything we did could have stopped the reaction.  And knowing it was coming did not in any way reduce how hurt I felt that the students didn’t think they could talk directly to me.  If they can’t talk to me about this kind of stuff, then why exactly did I come on this trip?

I spent the day in silent reflection.  I was hurt, but also searching for understanding to try to make things right.  We set off on the bus to visit a tea plantation – a visit that was interesting but so mired in transportation problems (no paperwork at the border between states, some form of bribe changing hands, an hour of sitting on the side of the road, etc., etc.) that it hardly seemed worth it to me.  I barely had the energy to interact with the students, and the few times students interacted with me it was either to complain about something or ask for some direction.  I sat on the bus with my eyes closed, tears rolling down my face, wondering how I could be with so many people and still feel so alone.  Later that evening at a bonfire thrown for us by the resort owners, I could hardly face the students.  I arrived late and stopped in the shadows just outside the fire ring watching all three of our children interact with the students.  It was awfully beautiful to see Maggie and Grace each dancing with Oles while James was in animated conversation with another.  I wanted to be mad. I wanted to stay hurt and engage in a battle of some sort – I’m only human after all.  But as I watched my children love and be loved, I just wanted to heal.

It’s 8:00 am.  The bus pulls over at a wayside for a breakfast and potty stop.  I’m covered in hives, woozy and tending a mysteriously loose tooth. My tongue feels like I must have bitten it. Greg helps me get off the bus and into the bathroom.  I rest on a bench, then sit up and fidget because I’d like to crawl out of my skin.  I manage to eat enough breakfast so I can take a Benadryl.  A student walks by and notices me slumped over at my bench.  She asks if I’m OK.  I respond, “I don’t know, but I will be.”

Whether it is an allergic reaction to a muscle relaxant, or the dreaded “India slump” – there are some things that once set in motion, are pretty hard to reverse.  Instead, we just kind of have to get through them.  I’d like to think that I have learned a lot through this experience.  Clearly I won’t be taking that muscle relaxant again.  But I’ve also relearned that traveling is hard.  And if we are going to be successful on this adventure, we’ll have to acknowledge that to each other, support each other, and push each other just enough to grow without falling off the perilous edge. Are we ok?  I don’t know, but we will be.

[Author's Note: Dear Mom, I really am OK. I promise.  The Benadryl kicked in and got rid of my hives. As soon as the other medicine was out of my system I felt totally back to normal.  And the tooth I knocked loose is almost back to normal, too. :)]