It's our first weekend. It marks a week spent in India, but at the rate we have seen and done things, subjectively it could well have been months. We live deep.
To celebrate this time off, most of the group decided to take a trip to Kovalam Beach, about 16 kilometers south of Trivandrum. It's pretty close to your average, by-the-beach tourist resort; only that since this is the off-season, the tourists are absent and we have the place more or less to ourselves.

I'm sitting on the balcony with Erik, writing a few postcards and looking out over the sea. Some of our male colleagues are playing beach volleyball, and there's a lot of shouting going on. I didn't feel up to speed, though. After so many hours on the beach, and in the sea, I'm tired.
And the Arabian Sea is warm. It's not often you're able to go into the water without any sense of initial discomfort from the chill (especially when being as skinny as I am.. everyone who's seen me swim would probably attest to how squeamish I get when cold water is involved), but here you can. And the waves are great. They roll in on you, tower over you, and throw you and toss you, bruise you and batter you. It makes me feel like I'm 12 again, and only reluctantly do I trudge back up.

Last night saw us all in a great mood, and we gathered in one of these tiny balconies, toasting and celebrating that luck, fate, devotion or desire would carry us here. Our doctor-in-charge, Susanne von Schreeb, showed up as well.
Oh yes. I should tell you a bit about Susanne, too. I have to admit, when I first met her during the prep-talks weeks before leaving Sweden, she didn't much seem like a seasoned world-traveller, and I couldn't quite imagine her sweating it out in India and Cambodia - but I was in for a surprise.

When we arrived at the hotel back in Trivandrum, I initially ended up without a room due to an alleged misunderstanding regarding the reservations. Susanne promptly offered me to share hers, and, until the management solved the reservation problem, that first day had us being room-mates. Now, Susanne and her husband Johan were both in on founding the Swedish branch of Médecins Sans Frontières. I have to say, while entering the room slightly nervous and humble, I also felt like I'd been handed a stack of high society.

Travel-weary and seeking respite from the constant sweating, we spent the first part of that Sunday afternoon sprawled on our beds, talking about the course and of India in general; about reasons for wanting to be a doctor, and the nature of humanitarian aid. Susanne is easy to be around. She has that rare ability to make you feel you're talking to a friend rather than an authoritative overseer, without losing any of said authority, bound to be naturally pinned onto her role in this.
The gears move in my head and I'm starting to see career-opportunities, drifting back to the old image of the seasoned, world-travelling doctor, well at ease performing surgery on the mud floors of huts, by the light of kerosene lamps.

You know, there was this doctor in the Modesty Blaise-episodes I used to read as a kid - I believe his name is Giles Pennyfeather - who embodied this. Well, sort of. Pennyfeather is British and sort of fumbling and innocent when it comes to the sort of business Modesty is usually involved in, but very good at what he does. The doctor eventually ends up as one of Modesty's (numerous, I believe) lovers, and at the time this appeared a bit strange. It seemed to me that a dream-come-true woman like Modesty would sooner go for special friend and soulmate Willie Garvin, who did high-flying dropkicks and could throw just about anything and hit, rather than the mellow Dr. Pennyfeather.
Of course, in retrospect, that doctor was just about the epitome of the saviour: the hard-working, skilled man standing at the border between life and death with blood on his hands, keeping people from falling down. The catcher in the rye. Of course a woman like Modesty would go for a man like that. Still though, I was a young boy. I imagined myself as Willie Garvin every time. I'm not even sure getting down and dirty with Modesty had entered the picture yet.
Those were the days.

Anyway. So there we were toasting away, and Susanne joined in, got about as stimulated as the rest of us and told us a bit both about her experiences as a gynecologist and her own sex life during the course of the night. I can do nothing but salute her, and admit first impressions were wrong.

The palmtrees sway lazily along the beach, and Erik's nose has picked up a tinge of red. Radiation from our nearest star hits hard at these latitudes. I lean back in my chair, breathe in, and stretch my limbs, staring into the heavens.
What a gem of a planet. What charm did we ever possess, what art did we ever utilize, I wonder, to deserve Earth.