Here are all our posts!! First internet in a week!!! ENJOY!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

We finally arrived in Goa yesterday. I was a bit nervous about how we would be received (or if we'd be received) by the RLSS (I). But they were at the airport just as planned. As we drove to our guest house Purush, the founder of RLSS (I), told us all about his mission and the sorry state of affairs with lifeguarding in India. It seems that India has many lifeguards, particularly in Goa, but these guards are found through private contractors. They hold no certifications, have no training, but are simply good swimmers. Often, when these guards see a swimmer in distress, they only try half heartedly or not at all in fear of their own safety and well being. This is why there are so many drowning deaths on the beaches of Goa. Indians come from all around the country, take buses for days from places like Delhi and become mesmerized by the ocean. That's when they get into trouble.

Purush's organization is the only organization within India that trains and certifies lifeguards. However, they receive no support from the government. For the past ten years, he has been working to standardize lifesaver and lifeguard qualifications throughout the entire country. He has been successful in Mumbai and Pune where most resorts only hire guards with RLSS (I) certifications.

Our guest house is pretty nice. Matt and I are sharing a room. Our shower head is plugged into the wall, for heat I guess. But every time we turn the water on to take a shower we get electrocuted. So until they fix it, we have to shower in sandals. Also, my beard trimmer apparently broke during the plane trip because when I went to trim it up I accidentally shaved it off.

We're all doing well, pretty healthy, and loving the warm Indian air.

-Ben

Friday, January 4, 2008

Yesterday was our first full day in Goa. We took it easy and hungout at the beach with some of the RLSS(I) lifeguards. They helped us tuneup our skills on rescue boards and showed us some other cool open water lifeguarding tricks. Pursh, the director of RLSS(I), went to Panjim (Goa's capital). He went there to visit with the Minister of Tourism to hopefully try and get a lifeguard training center opened in Goa. It is desperately need, because just yesterday Goa had two drownings.

Last night we enjoyed a delicious Goan meal of Pomfret fish, naan, and rice. We ate right on the beach, and watched a beautiful Goan sunset.

Today we had our first full day of teaching the lifeguard class. There are about 12 participants as of right now, but we are expecting more tomorrow. We hopefully we will be able to train close to 40 lifeguards. Our current participants traveled all night on buses from Mumbai, just to take our class. They were somewhat weary today, but they seem very enthusiastic. We have the RLSS(I) lifeguards helping us teach and translating.

-Bree


Monday, January 7, 2008

The past few days we have been teaching and perfecting the lifeguarding skills that we have taught to the 22 students that we received. We have been teaching them everything from CPR and first aid to the how to read the tides of the water to the different ways there are to perform rescues in different situations. As the days went on, we really saw great improvement each day and have become like proud parents. Its really a great reward to see how much that we can help these students and to know that we could potentially save a life if one of the students ever has to use these skills that they learned from us. Everything so far has gone pretty smoothly and are loving every second of it. Our students are so fun and really fast learners, we couldn't have asked for anything better.

On the other hand, we've also been having a nice and relaxing time when not teaching. The beaches are beautiful with not to many people, the water is warm and eating the freshest seafood for dinner at the little beach shack style restaurants is pretty awesome. Also the lady that owns the guest house we're staying at got electricians to fix our shower and they did, but its broken again. I went to turn off the shower in the girls room because lindsey said the nob was shocking her a little bit, and I touched and got electrocuted so bad and my arm twitched and slapped lindsey in the head.(HAHA)

We're having a really good time here and even though the times going by pretty fast, it still seems as if Lindsey and I have been gone for months. See you guys in a week, don't miss us to much.

-Matt

Ohh yeah, the leader(Parush) of RLSS is great and sounds like Yoda from Star Wars with all this positive advice metaphors he keeps using. Not like you wanted to know that though.


Wednesday, January 9, 2008

We finished our lifeguard training program yesterday. We had to put on a final presentation of skills in front of two officials from the Goan Tourism Department as well as several RLSS board members. We arranged the students into three groups. I led a group through a CPR demo, a carriage/drag demo, and a spinal log roll and boarding demo. Bree helped one of the Indian lifeguards, Kunal, with a shallow water rescue tube rescue demo. Matt and Lindsey assisted Tushar, another Indian lifeguard, with a rescue board rescue and beach resuscitation. Afterwards, the students were presented with certificates and although they worked as lifeguards before, with the certificate they have more clout, have more job security, and may be able to get better wages in the future. Not to mention, they won't drown now if they have to save somebody.

Teaching the class overall was a great experience. It was also frustrating at times. The students really aren't good swimmers. We (the Americans) wanted to work on swimming skills with them but the Indian instructors felt that it wasn't a good use of our time. They didn't think you could make much progress on stroke in only 5 days. I don't know if that's true, but we decided to focus mostly on skills. Our amount of involvement was also frustrating occasionally. Matt and I taught and led lots of exercises. However, the girls struggled to be included. This is because in Indian culture, there isn't too much male/female workplace interaction. Our Indian instructors didn't know how to talk to them and how to use them. Matt and I discussed this with them on a few occasions and by the end the girls were feeling as though they helped out quite a bit (I think they were the students' favorite instructors). These frustrations are inevitable I think when you work in cross-cultural environments. One of the goals of this trip was to experience that environment and be productive in it and we definitely accomplished that.

We had a giant party last night to celebrate the end of the course and our time with RLSS. Purush's wife cooked a huge meal and invited our guest house family, neighbors, RLSS board members, and of course the instructors to a huge barbecue. Matt and I barbecued the chicken tandoori. But there was also rice, chicken biryani, Goan fish, naan, veggies, paneer, and drinks. It was a nice way to end things.

The RLSS crew will leave tomorrow. Today we are going with the other instructors to Panjim, Goa's capital. We'll do some shopping (they'll help us bargain) and sight see around there. After today, we still have a few more days before going back to Mumbai and home. We've been invited to a nearby resident's house one day. We also plan on checking up on some of our recruits at Palolem beach in the south.

We've been going hard 18 hours a day. This change of pace will be nice and hopefully we can stay in touch a little better.

-Ben