Welcome to Tamil Nadu

"Chennai is a beautiful place," said the old man I was talking to while waiting for my afternoon departure from O'Hare. 'Chennai is sometimes referred to as the French Rivera of the East' said the uncited Wikipedia article I'd read beforehand about Tamil Nadu, the Indian state I'd be living in for three weeks. I left Iowa after an eight hour, twelve inch snow storm had rocked Council Bluffs and another was on its way so I was praying I'd be spending my winter vacation somewhere warmer.

And boy, is Chennai nice.

I hear it is cold in Iowa right now. As in -18 Celsius cold. The weather in Tamil Nadu is a sometimes-too-hot, usually-quite-acceptable 20 to 25 degrees Celsius (lower to upper seventies). Of course, it is winter time here as well and so you do see the occasional wearer of winter accessories. Something I can say I never would have guessed seeing in India is people wearing earmuffs and full face warmers. The camo earmuffs seem to be pretty popular and seem slightly hipster, to me at least.

Another thing I didn't expect to see while in India was one of the three churches in the world built at the grave site of an original member of the Twelve Apostles of Christ. Yes, that is correct, there are three places in the world you can go to pay direct tribute to the 12 Apostles: Santiago de Compostela (Spain), The Vatican, and Chennai.

A little random, but I was happy to pay respects to St. Thomas (a.k.a. Doubting Thomas) nonetheless. The results of his early mission trip/death here in Tamil Nadu can be seen in the strikingly large number of Christians, cemeteries, and churches here in the state today. And at this point, I'm really not even surprised when I walk through India and BOOM- end up at something random like the grave of one of the Twelve Disciples. Nope, you start to expect this country to offer nice surprises like that.


Another treat found in Chennai is the seven and a half mile long Marina Beach. In my mind, the beach setting really sort of clashed with all of the 'Indian' scenes inhabiting it. I guess I've only ever seen the colorful women's saris, little fruit stands, and stone trinket salesmen in the context of rural/desertous India before and the new contrast of such a classic Indian scene against the sandy shores of the Bay of Bengal was a bizarre sight to say the least. Then again, after some fresh coconut milk, feeling the sand between my toes, a horse ride, and a minute in the warm waters of the Bay, I was thinking less about how strange everything seemed and more about how darn nice Chennai is.



^There are Christmas lights and trees up everywhere. The big department stores in Chennai still have their Santa manikins up.

Day Two in the Dirty South

This ain't the crunk dirty south. It's the dirty one.

Southern India, to me, looks and feels very much like Northern India (except for the weather, which is about 35°F less soul crushing). Although I know that it only seems like the same because I never got to fully understand what the hell the north was all about so coming to the south feels abit like visiting Rajasthan 2.0. More on the good old north south divide to come, but for now I'll just type up some purdy words bouts the ornery projects our group members are a hankerin' to git started on here in the Dirty South:

1. Creating a transition plan for waste management companies who are started/run by our NGO. So far, the waste management firms Hand in Hand runs have a pretty solid business plan but no exit strategy- they want to be able to give ownership to the locals.

2. Creating a report evaluating/looking into the effectiveness and results of giving out vocational training alongside microloans (loans to poor entrepreneurs who do not have any collateral).

3. Assessing the state of so called bridge schools which try to transition and prep child laborers back into normal schooling (like the one i taught at in the summer)

4. Developing a pricing scheme for rural hospitals to become more financially independant because Hand in Hand is now worried their clinics are too dependent on government subsidies

5. Figure out how to deliver IT services and computer literacy to the7000 villages worth of rural Indian's who've never used a PC before. And make a business plan that impoverished women can follow which delivers on that goal.

Also, the side projects are to found an NGO in another state of India and start a Microfinance program in Iowa City, for which there is about $75 thousand in funding that is just waiting for our business plan telling them how to use it.

Some more side projects to be had are a possible University of Iowa research partnership with the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology on looking into the long term health benefits of giving out micro entrepreneurship loans to the poor. And another thing is that we are trying to pioneer a sort of social networking site for social entrepreneurship (think Facebook for groups of people that want to fix the world). As you can imagine, things are quite organic/dynamic/hectic with all these side projects flying around.


Update: It seems as though our Hand in Hand initiatives are seemingly more complex than I thought when I typed this (on my second day here). I guess there isn't any reason for them not to be, changing the world isn't an easy business. More to come on the more intricate details of the projects soon.

How To Get To India:

1.Brave the snow of CB and head over to Eppley Airfield Omaha.


2.Keep cozy in the Minneapolis airport to avoid the snow storm outside.


3.Take the orange line into Chicago. Enjoy the sights and snow in the windy city.


4.Depart your aeroplane at London's Heathrow and relax because you've FINALLY outran that damn winter storm.


5.Wohoo! You're in Chennai now.