On my to-do-list it says "blog" and you know how I'm always faithful to my to-do-list so that's why I'll tell you something about my project and all

Time flies... this is my last day in Delhi. A couple of weeks ago, all I wanted was to get out of here as soon as possible. Now I realize I'll miss the comfort of having a place to stay, the fun of having fixed friends and the convenience of knowing your way around. I'm about to hit the road.

The last two weeks have been quite interesting and fun. As I told you in my previous post, the purpose was to inform school children and college students about HIV/AIDS. To this end, we would first "work" in an NGO in that field for two weeks, meaning we would mainly observe and acquire knowledge in this way, and occasionally help out if possible. I'm not a very big fan of the concept - I hoped to find a project where I would actually DO something - but that's the best I could find. And it turned out to be quite interesting. The NGO, Sahara House, started off as a care center for drug addicts. Through the years, they realized that a lot of drug users got infected with HIV, because of shared needles. Today, Sahara House has various projects throughout Delhi as well as in other cities in India. The interesting thing is that 90% of the employees are former drug addicts and/or seropositive. We visited three projects, each for a period of three days.
The first three days we went to a place called "Michael's Care Home", which shelters people with AIDS, and helps them to deal with the hospitals (apparently, a lot of doctors are still very reluctant to treat AIDS patients). The doctor at Michael's Care Home taught us a lot about HIV and AIDS, which was quite interesting. We interacted with patients (they call them "clients", for some reason I couldn't really find out); some their life stories are still resonating in my head.
The hardest part was the second project. Sahara has an outreach program in a slum area with a lot of injecting drug users (IDU). They talk to these people and get them into detox and rehab if they are ready for it. Otherwise, they provide clean needles and syringes, or oral substitutes for the drugs, to at least prevent HIV from spreading (this is called harm reduction). The HIV incidence in those areas is estimated at about 10 to 20% (government and independent numbers tend to differ). What you see there is close to what hell must look like. People literally live in garbage, with nothing on their minds but drugs. You can see them injecting their stuff, in the strangest parts of their body because they have no proper veins left. I've shaken hands with dozens of them, some of them told me their stories. I've talked to people I would normally run away from. We were escorted by one of the outreach workers, and it was impressive to see how everyone there knows him and respects him - they even call him "boss". It made me realize they are lucky that some people do not run away from them. Despite the thick mental shield you inevitably develop when seeing such misery, three days of confrontation with this godforsaken place really get to you. The hardest for me was the absurd contrast between being in the slums during daytime and being with AIESEC people at night. I tried it, because life goes on and all that, but it's quite impossible to have a good time in some fancy club when you saw people living like animals just a couple of hours before. I never saw so clearly how deeply cynical this world is.

After seeing all that misery, the third project felt like paradise. The Women and Children's Home provides shelter (as well as detox and rehab) for women with drug problems and/or HIV, as well as a crèche for their kids. We interacted with the women and I must say we really had a lot of fun. Of course, there again, most of them could have written a book about life stories. That is, if they would have been able to write. Several women there are completely illiterate. I never realized that illiteracy sometimes means that they aren't even capable of drawing. We tried to play some kind of pictionary, and for some of them drawing a spider or a mouse was an impossible task. This made me realize I spent 20 years of my life, almost full time, educating myself. We have so much knowledge, and we really take it for granted. All we do is looking up to people who know even more, to the point that we think our knowledge is only basic. But when I interact with these people I realize that I have everything, and they have nothing. I travel around the world, while they barely understand the concept of a map or a globe. Education, education, education. Everyone says it, but I never fully understood it until now. Education is the only way of getting chances in this cruel world. Most of these women are strong and beautiful and, in their way, intelligent, but without education, they are helpless.

Yesterday we gave our first and last presentation about HIV/AIDS in a school. Quite frankly, I couldn't help but feel like we were at least partially used as a promotional tool for AIESEC. Our audience consisted of 12th graders, meaning they will go to college next year, a good moment to join AIESEC. Anyway, they at least acted as if they were interested in what we had to say about HIV/AIDS, so it wasn't that bad. That presentation was the only useful thing we did in this whole project, though, so it goes without saying that I'm not really satisfied. It really felt like some perverted kind of tourism sometimes, seeing AIDS patients and drug addicts to later brag about it in your blog. The only way I can reconcile with it is if it actually makes me do something about it. I'm sure some of us (most of us?) will go back to their countries, show the pictures of slums and drug addicts to their friends, and then go on with their little luxury lives. I understand it, and I can't even guarantee I won't do the same, but I find it, once again, cynical.

In the weekends, we went traveling in Rajasthan. I will keep it short because it's probably boring. Some crazy/funny things did happen, but I hope to talk about it some other time. Two weeks ago we went to Jaipur, the Pink City. A chaotic and noisy city, but it felt like a small village compared to Delhi. Nice forts in the rocky Rajasthani hills, splendid views, great tourism. Last weekend we went to Jodhpur and to Jaisalmer, where we did a camel safari. Jodhpur is the Blue City, so same story as Jaipur but different. Jaisalmer, the Golden City, is located in the Thar desert and is the proud owner of a beautiful fort made out of sandstone. I think it used to be a magnificent city, but it is completely spoilt by tourism. We went on a "non-touristic camel safari" (like all tourists do) and spent a night in the desert. We slept under the stars, saw sunrise and sunset, beautiful experience.

So, as this whole crazy continent is heating up like a furnace, I have the brilliant plan of heading south, where it's the hottest. I have the opportunity of working in a HIV/AIDS project for an NGO in Cuddalore, in the state of Tamil Nadu, on the southeast coast of India. I'm planning to head southeast slowly, doing some tourism along the way, to arrive in Cuddalore in about a month. How long my project will last is not clear yet, I guess it will depend on how well it goes. Tomorrow I'm going to Agra (there's supposed to be a nice building called the Taj something) with some people I met here, and then I will head east. I should be in Kolkata by the end of next week. I'll try my best to keep you updated.

I'll try to upload some pictures, if my connection is not too slow.