Ders no plash like home

I regret to inform you that Sarah The Volunteer has come to sticky end after suffocating in one of her trademark ethnic shawls, and drowning in a cloying marsala of acute smugness and self importance. This is why I'm now writing to you from my new apartment, lying on my new silk bed covers in front of a new plasma screen TV watching Desperate Housewives. Roughing it is well overrated.
Since being here I have come to realise that acute self importance is a common condition among the international volunteers, who come to the refuge determined to 'help' in their droves, armed with a multi-coloured ammunition of felt tips, flip charts, stickers and timetables. The latest are Bridgitte and Henrika, two social work students from Holland who have come here to write their dissertation about sex trafficking in India. They are robust and milky in the way that only Dutch girls can be, with arms like rolling pins and big doughy bosoms, trussed up neatly in sensible shirts, quick-dry cargo pants, money belts, camera cases and hiking sandals. They have never been to India before and are keen not to eat any Indian food, squat over Indian toilets and want to teach the girls at the refuge European standards of cleanliness, how to fold their ragged salwar kamize in neat hospital corners, and cleanse every surface with boiling disinfectant solution. Having been here for almost a month, I know this will never work. Personally I have found that teaching them how to fold both their lips inside their mouths, cross their eyes and raise one eyebrow, paint their toenails - far ore productive. But Bridgitte and Hernrika are optimistic, and believe they can bend India and Indians to their will, simply by virtue of being WESTERN VOLUNTEERS.
But I think their first visit into the city changed all that. Yesterday they both came trotting towards me all sweaty and traumatised from a morning of 'Shite sheeing', clearly in the throws of the first phase of culture shock (terror). This is what happened:
Bridgitte: 'Oh my got Sharah you would not belief dish. Me and Henrika wash going to der maharajah palash and we shee dey haff dose childresn wish no armsh and no legsh begging for coinsh – isht terrible!
Henrika: 'And den Bridgitte nearly got run ober by a big bush, and den der was dish guy shleeping in der road wid all der cars going pashed it was terrible, and stinking of urine!
Bridgitte 'And sho many people and sho we try to find der Mc Donalds, but we didn't find sho we find der coffee and haff some ice cream and den we come home.
Henrika nod like de Holland'
Bridgitte: ‘No ish nodding like dat in de Holland. I wand to go to der home.'
Henrika: 'Me alsho'.
I ruthlessly take the piss out of Bridgitte and Henrika, but I can totally understand how they felt. You arrive in an Indian city, all pale and full of enthusiasm, schedules, guidebooks, and a crisp wad of rupees in your money belt, only to find yourself in the middle of a busy intersection with an 80 year old amputee clutching one leg of your jeans, a couple of stray dogs casually sniffing at your crotch and a circle of Indian men shoving flowers in your hair, demanding “which country madam? Rickshaw? You come to my shop? Beautiful madam? You like India? Where you from?” The trick is just to go with it. Hang out on a street corner and drink a coconut with them, tell them you're from Abu Dhabi, Mexico, Mecca, or Morocco and let them stare at your ankles/ neck/ tits if they really want to. Only then do you actually start to enjoy yourself.
After the initial terror, I'm starting to enjoy myself so much now that I'm on the lookout for a handsome Indian rickshaw driver to whisk me off on his bejeweled three wheeled love wagon so I can stay here, wake up every morning to palm trees, eat papaya and drink chai as the sun comes up, and go to bed in the evenings when the sun looks like an enormous glowing Strepsil in the sky.