I'm Off to India. Wanna Join Me?

I was greeted by humidity.  The baggage claim was filled with people from all over the world, some transient, some coming home, some leaving.  After waiting in line for what seemed like forever the immigration agent asked me why I had come to India.  “To do volunteer work,” I told him.  He nodded his head in true Indian fashion, stamped my passport and sent me on my way.  Stepping outside the airport my friends and I experienced something we had never encountered before.  India.

India isn’t always an easy place, but it is beautiful.  India is a rising power on the global stage.  The country is a leader in technology and cricket, among other things.  However, most of the country lives in densely populated, underdeveloped communities.  Sex trafficking and disease are on the rise.  Many lack access to the education and resources that you and I take for granted. 

But I wasn’t thinking about any of this as I jumped in a taxi and headed for the bus station.  We weren’t home yet.  During the five-hour bus trip from Delhi to Jaipur I tried to make reality set in.  I was in India.  India. 

When we arrived at our host’s home we were greeted by a young girl around the age 9, the same age as my little sister.  She had a leg brace on one leg and a smile that consumed most of her face.  She’s from a small slum in Jaipur.  Her community is known to some as the “puppet people.”  They make, sell and perform with puppets.  The families in this community live in dire poverty. They have no access to sanitation, very little access to (dirty) drinking water and almost no access to education or medical care.  The organization we were working with visited the community every week and brought food and vitamins for the children.  On one visit they found this little girl in the corner of her home. She had broken her leg and her family could not afford her medical treatment.  With no options they left her in the corner.  The group was able to bring her home and fund-raise for her surgery.  When I met her she was almost fully recovered, healthy, happy and alive. 

In the same community I met a woman with a newborn baby.  She explained through the translator that she and her child were sick but she could not afford medicine.  At the time I was naive to the illness of poverty, but now I believe it was TB.  Two months after my visit I learned that the baby died. 

Another family in the community lived in a single room.  The family consisted of a 12 year old girl and two younger boys.  I believe the youngest was around age 3.  They invited me to sit on their bed and immediately the youngest crawled into my lap.  He snuggled in and would not let go, his heart obviously longing for a mother.  The interpreter explained that their mother had died in a fire and the father was a truck driver.  The daughter had been living in slightly better conditions with her grandparents and attending school.  When her mother died she was forced to stay home and take care of her brothers while her father was away for weeks at a time. 

As I sat with the women and children of the community we shared laughter. Not even able to speak the same language we still managed to talk about life’s hardship and beauty. 

Before going to India I did not understand the concepts of global health, infrastructure or development.  Now I am obsessed with them.  Call it a calling if you will.   I am devoted to the development of the global community that I am a part of and I am striving toward a future where resources are better allocated and utilized, and education, health care, and women's rights become fundamental aspects of community development.  

I’ve been awarded a $500 scholarship to travel to India with a group of medical professionals, engineers, college faculty and fellow students.  We will be working two hours outside of Jaipur, Rajasthan in clinics and helping build sustainable infrastructure including composting toilets.

To cover the cost of the trip I need to raise an additional $2500. I will be able to save a large amount of this money and have already received some donations. 

My first trip to India was difficult.  I had never before experienced such poverty or diversity.  The longer I am away the more I want to go back. I'm excited to be apart of a program that is bringing medical care to those who usually cannot access it as well as implementing sustainable infrastructure that will have long-term effects on the well being of the community.   This trip will invest in the people of Rajasthan and fuel my education in International Development.   Please consider investing with me. 

Thank you,

Jenn

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To donate via pay pal either click the button on the top left of my blog or send donations to jennrp@gmail.com.  You can also send a check to Jennifer Pekol, 2615 NW 56^th St, #204, Seattle, WA 98107. Anything you can give will be helpful and used with integrity.  

 Global Impact: Experience Rajasthan
Aug 20th-3rd

If you wrote your life story, what would the first line be?

Insomnia has struck again.  The reasons are obvious.  I have been obsessed with writing and have spent most of my time the last few days sitting at my desk moving nothing but my fingers.  I tried to go the gym, but apparently they are open twenty-four hours a day every day but Saturday.  So I did yoga in my room and then wrote some more.  It’s four AM.  I think the neighbors (the ones who live in a van on my street) are having a rock concert. I am wide awake and suddenly obsessed with the first lines of stories.  So, like any sane person I went through every one of my books and recorded the first line of the ones that struck me. 

Please enjoy

“EVERYTHING WITHIN TAKES PLACE AFTER JACK DIED AND BEFORE MY MOM AND I DROWNED IN A BURNING FERRY IN THE COOL TANNIN-TINTED GUAVIARE RIVER IN EAST-CENTRAL COLOMBIA, WITH FORTY-TWO LOCALS WE HADN’T YET MET. “ –Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

Sometimes, I sleep with Dave’s books.  Now that I saw that out loud, it sounds creepy. This, on the other hand is incredibly intriguing.  

“By the time you finish reading this book, ten thousand children will starve, four thousand will be brutally beaten by their parents, and one thousand will be raped.” – Peter Kreft, Making Sense Out of Suffering

I almost didn’t add this one because well, it’s traumatizing.  But then, maybe that’s why it should be included

“Then there was bad weather.” –Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

            I will read this book once a year until I die.  One day I will read it in Paris. 

“I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.” –C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

            This is possibly the first book I ever read that truly left me speechless.

“No one ever told me that grief feels so much like fear.” –C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

This book has always come to me at the most needy times. Last year I read it after reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the same day a good friend died. It was a pretty hard week. 

“Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums.” –Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

            Dear Don, write me letters will you?

“It was one of those nights, one of those lovely nights, dear reader, which can only happen when you are young.” –Frodor Dostoevsky, “White Nights: A Sentimental Love Story”

            Yay for the Russians! Yay for short stories! Yay for Sentimental love stories!

“When Mr. Bilbo Bagins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his elventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobiton.” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Whenever I read these books I usually spend the first hour on the first line.  It’s magical.  And then I spend the next hour wondering how the hell he got from there to Mount Doom and why he never thought of this…

 
“As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God.” –Karen Armstrong, A History of God.

Perhaps the one woman who has helped make more sense out of God than I have been able to find anywhere else, except, of course, for Anne Lamott...

“On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death.” –Anne Lamott, Plan B

My dear Anne Lamott, in the words of Kelly Clarkson, “My life would suck without you.”  Thank you, Anne, most sincerely, for allowing me to be myself and think all my crazy thoughts and still be sane (mostly).  And mostly, thank you for believing enough in the human race to write about them with truthful aggravation and expansive compassion. 

           

fivehundredwords: The 750th Time.

I am a woman.

I was born in affluence. 

I was born in a country where my voice not only matters, but is encouraged.  I was born in a place without restrictions.  I had the stunning realization a few years ago that with this freedom, I carry the burden of obligation to my gender. 

I am a living, breathing, beautiful, powerful woman who happens to have a pen in hand and a heart for women around the world whose lives are directly affected by lack of resources.  I can’t quite wrap my head around it all: women without access to clean water, medical attention, education, freedom?  Women around the world who die of things that most in my country wouldn’t think twice about like childbirth and TB?

You know how sometimes when you see the 700^th picture of a child in Africa, you become numb to the images?  I read the news for fun.  I read books about global issues like some read novels.  But I still waver.  I’m sad to say that sometimes I catch myself thinking, “yeah, I already know about that.”  But then something happens.  The next story I read, the next image I see sends me over the edge.  Suddenly I’m looking at a picture of a mother dying of AIDS holding her malnourished child who is about to be an orphan, and they are all that matter. 

Everything stops.

This woman is dying of a disease, that if she had access to very common treatments, she could live with.  Her child is dying from hunger…

I just    

there are not

how can  

no. 

tears.

But I must find my words again.  Not for me.  For them.  For us.  For women.  Elie Wiesel, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech talks about how we are all connected.  “That while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.”   I can go on with my life.  Listen to my ipod on the bus on my way to Urban Outfitters and grab a coffee on the way.  But these things don’t determine my quality of life. 

What determines my quality of life is the quality of life of women around the world.  Am I using my resources wisely?  Am I using my words powerfully?  Am I taking every opportunity handed me?  Am I keeping myself connected to the greater source of life and strength at the core of all women? 

I’m never going to fully understand the plight of these women.  But I’m going to try.  I’m going to try to acquire understanding, to build relationships and bring awareness.  I will tell you their stories 749 times so that when you hear it for the 750^th time, your heart will break and you will start to grasp the gravity of the situation.  It’s then that we will be connected, and our outrage and strength will overpower the factors at work against us.  

I’m going to use my words for the benefit of my gender, bringing to light our struggles and great triumphs.

What will you use?