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. :)]
India is a complex place.
You will see sweeping. Lots and
lots of sweeping. There are armies of men
and women with bundles of sticks sweeping roads and porches. Sidewalks and shop entries. Even the lawns and bare dirt patches are
swept of every leaf, twig, dropping and piece of litter. All of these sweepings (and most trash for
that matter) are carefully gathered and dumped, in a big pile, next to the
stream, where it will sit and sit and sit representing a nasty contradiction to
all of the sweeping.
But isn’t everyplace complex? Isn’t there always a hidden agenda or dark underbelly
just below the surface? In the US our
garbage is neatly packaged and carefully trucked in clean- fuel vehicles to far
off landfills where no one will witness the vastness of our waste. We enjoy the safety and polite order of US
roads with clear signs and signals, easy to understand and navigate for those
who have enough wealth, language skills and documentation to access this privilege. Perhaps the reason Indian complexity is so outwardly
challenging is that everything is exposed and literally coming at all of your
senses all of the time. But the same
could also be true in the US but the complexity is masked, hidden behind fresh
paint and under well-maintained streets.
It is not until the unsuspecting “tourist” steps off the curb and into
the path of the oncoming garbage truck do we see the true complexity of our
society bubble to the surface. 
