KazMainea !

Stating the Obvious

 As I walked out the door of the boulangerie and into the Paris early morning, I had one of those moments when the whole world seemed to be in sync. A thought popped into my head. “I love it here.”

I can just picture you rolling your eyes as you read, “I love it here.” Well, duh, Mike. Of course you love it. It’s Paris, for cryin’ out loud. And that is true. I imagine that several thousand people say that every day, and, chances are, there was at least one other American tourist who was walking out of a boulangerie at the exactly the same time, somewhere in this city, saying the same thing.

My point was simply that this is yet another thing that travel adds to your life: a simple, quick, unbidden flash of joy because you are in a place far from home but somehow making your way successfully. It’s not so much that it’s Paris. It’s moreso that it is a foreign country and you fumbled your way through ordering your bread in a different language, connected with a person from a different culture, and survived to walk back out into the glorious sunshine.

We’re here this week to research the possibility of bringing a group here. The concept is to go and “get closer to good” by doing good in India, and then spend some time here debriefing and experiencing a different kind of good here in Paris.

We had a profitable meeting yesterday with a vendor who could supply reasonably priced lodging for us, and we found a great little neighborhood that could work really well for a group to explore and experience—kind of like I just did.

So it’s been a successful trip all the way around, from Delhi to Paris. Successful, except for one area: blogging. I can’t believe I’ve only written twice while here. Ah well. Paris has a certain, as we French like to say, I-don’t-know-what, that captures your time and your heart. It’s been far easier to experience than to describe.

I’m glad we came. I’m glad we did the research. As a result, I hope we’ll be bringing  some friends with us in November.

Who knows? Maybe next time, you’ll be here as well.

Oranges and World Understanding

Interesting little conversation I had here in Paris. We wandered through a street market, and I stopped to buy some blood oranges (if you haven't had them, they're fantastic. Like a Clementine, but better.)

Anyway, I thought I was communicating pretty well with the guy who was selling them--especially since I don't speak French and he didn't speak English. That was, until he handed me the oranges and I paid him. He said something, I said something, he said something, I shrugged, he starts waving his arms wildly, I'm getting a little tense, we're both frustrated. It was getting close to an international incident.

Suddenly, a woman appears and explains to me that I owed him more money. Technically, I didn't because I only asked for one kilo and he gave me two. But I just paid him the extra, and he was happy. Stand down from Defcon Four.

My lesson for the day? Well, having just arrived from Delhi, it reminded me of the "language gap" between we Americans and the poor of the world. We Americans are like, well, me. And the poor of the world are like orange guy.

We really do have the the best of intentions to help the poor. But all too often, we don’t even understand what they are trying to say to us. We are throwing money at them, and it seems like they don’t use it the right way, because, frankly, we don't even know what is that they truly need. We end up frustrated with them and in the end we turn away and throw our hands up because it seems like they don’t even want our help.

But the core issue is, we don’t understand them. We don’t speak their language and we certainly don’t live like they do.

I want NotFar.org to be like the kind lady who stepped in and helped us finish the orange transaction successfully. NotFar needs to know both languages. To be able to understand how the poor live and what they really need, as well as understand what good-intentioned Americans are trying to do, and explain HOW they can help most effectively. Our goal is to make sure that the poor get their support in the right way, while giving Americans the opportunity to act on their good intentions in an appropriate and rewarding way.

I’m heading out to buy some croissants with my wife.

Please, wish me luck.

Airport Zen

Tonight is the worst part of travel for me: departure. It’s not so much because we’re leaving. I will miss Delhi, of course. But it’s the worst part of travel because we’re departing by air. And Indira Ghandhi International Airport may very be my least favorite to place to depart from.
I had a very unsettling experience leaving from here last year. In a nutshell: I almost didn’t leave. I posted about it and it’s a pretty interesting little read—and a great cautionary tale that very well may convince you never to leave your country again. I still get ticked off just thinking about it.
Hopefully, tonight will go better. I have to psyche myself up for the experience. Or rather, find my Zen place. It’s a place where waiting in endless lines is a good thing. Where surly, threatening Army officers with guns are really teddy bears underneath that body armor. Where I will expect to be surprised with a form nobody told me I needed to fill out. And where five hours is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to arrive ahead of our departure. And finally, a place where squeezing into a shoebox-sized airline seat is actually reaching Nirvana.
I believe I have here the beginnings of a new religion.

We’re spending our final day in India casually. We actually did a couple hours of sightseeing this morning, we just finished packing, and the rest of this afternoon will be spent reading and relaxing one more time in our wonderful hotel.
Tonight we leave for Paris. If all goes well, we’ll meet our friend Mary Beth and our son Jake there tomorrow.
I will plan to continue blogging whilst in the City of Light. Look for something Monday.
Provided, of course, I actually leave Delhi. I hope my new airport-Zen religion doesn’t need more than five hours of practice on this trip.

Better than Lambfry Pizza

 One of the fun things about travel is trying different kinds of food. I'm certainly no Anthony Bourdain, though. I'm not what you'd call real adventurous. "Twas my wife who ordered frog's legs in Paris a few years ago (turned out, it was the whole frog. Poor little guys looked like they were being held up in a robbery, arms up, head to the side...but she ate 'em anyway.)

But I do like to try reasonable new food. By last night, we were getting tired of Indian food (for the record, it's really grown on me over the past few years. I really like it.) So we decided to order in pizza and some Indian beers and enjoy our awesome abode. We ordered one safe pizza (four cheese) and one more exotic type. We ended up with a lamb, ginger, red onion and lime-mint sauce pizza. It was really good! The spice made the beers all the more refreshing.

Okay, it wasn't actually lambfries. But it makes for a better story.

We had our final meeting today. That means tomorrow is a real day off, since we don't leave until the evening. We're looking forward to it. And then we're off to Paris.

This trip has been a huge success. We've set some exciting strategy for the rest of this year, and we're eager to get back and begin to create some new curriculum and roll it out. It was very rewarding to hand over our first set of donations today. We finished our meeting by driving past a comunity where Shikhar is working. "Community" in no way describes what we saw with a western eye. If I said "slum" or "worst place you can imagine to live," even that might not paint the proper picture for you. But, families live there. Familes that are desperate to provide for their children. They even have ideas for how to do it. Truly innovative ideas for starting little busineses--if only they could get a little bit of credit to get started. And Shikhar is helping them.

I watched as a filthy, ragged, beautiful little girl walk past me. She smiled shyly.  I realized that, as of today, NotFar is helping too.

That was even better than the pizza.

Travel Freak-ness

We’ve been having some really productive meetings with our client here in Delhi (see the picture of my awesome wife holding court). Of course, I think it helps that we’ve been meeting at our phee-nominal hotel rather than an office. This place is such a welcome surprise, and we love it here.

This trip is different than previous ones, in that we hardly get OUT at all. No sightseeing (yet), no travel, no projects. Just meetings, writing, planning and strategizing. We expected that, of course. That’s why we’re here. But normally we’re out and about. So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you have to be stuck someplace, this is the place to be stuck.

This is the first trip to India for just the two of us, without anyone else. I love travel for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that it kinda freaks me out at times.  It challenges me to try new things, even when I've left Zone of Comfort a thousand miles ago.

Just outside the door of our paradise is Delhi in all it’s raw reality: dirt, noise, garbage, tons of people---and all of them brown. Not one blond in the bunch. So today we forced ourselves to go out for a long walk—just because the thought of it gave us the Willies. Yep, we were intimidated.

As you’re walking, you’re thinking, man, we are the only white people for MILES. And everyone is staring at us like we are, um, well, foreigners. But then, in the midst of your freak-ness, you force yourself to smile…once. It’s hard. And then, lo and behold, they smile back. Hallelujah! World peace breaks out!

It’s such a cliché, but it is simply true. We’re all different. But that doesn’t mean we’re enemies. Different is cool. And that’s why travel is a lot of fun.

And most coolest of all? Going out today earns us the right to stay in tonight for dinner. Woohoo!