Journal 9-8-10
Well the past couple of days have been pretty crappy. John and I have been sick. The first night we both had high fevers (103.9) and ridiculous dreams. I also kept woke up to go to the bathroom about 5 times. The following day John and I spent that day in bed sleeping on and off. I had no energy to read, write and barely enough to get up to use the bathroom. We finally left the room at dinnertime but the thought of Indian food made me queasy so I ate only a handful of plain rice and a pile of salt for re-hydration because of the diarrhea.
This morning we felt significantly better but still thought it would be best to stay in and get more rest and stay close to a bathroom. This did not end up happening… Irene insisted that we were fine and that we come with the rest of the group to polycanai marshyland. She explained that Polycanai is a rainforest marshland with trails and was a bird watching area. In Irene’s defense, she had never been to polycanai before. Hesitantly john and I boarded the short bus and set off on an hour long drive with I driver who was constantly blaring his horn for no reason (more than usual in India which is really saying something). The drive also did not know where this “Polycanai marshyland bird watching area” was. We must have asked 5 people, getting slowly closer each time, until we finally found it.
This morning we felt significantly better but still thought it would be best to stay in and get more rest and stay close to a bathroom. This did not end up happening… Irene insisted that we were fine and that we come with the rest of the group to polycanai marshyland. She explained that Polycanai is a rainforest marshland with trails and was a bird watching area. In Irene’s defense, she had never been to polycanai before. Hesitantly john and I boarded the short bus and set off on an hour long drive with I driver who was constantly blaring his horn for no reason (more than usual in India which is really saying something). The drive also did not know where this “Polycanai marshyland bird watching area” was. We must have asked 5 people, getting slowly closer each time, until we finally found it. The “Polycanai marshyland bird watching area” was, in reality, a dump. It was literally a landfill. Composed of trash, and hospital biohazard waste all mixed together in one giant, seeping, repulsive mound. 
The landfill had been placed in the marshland so what in this picture appears to be a mountain of trash, was at one time a body of water. This picture doesn’t begin to capture the size of the landfill, it was HUGE. Across the street from the dump was a nice picturesque bit of marshland that looked much nicer.
but we soon learned that the liquid seeping down from the Landfill had poisoned the entire marshland and probably the entire watershed. As for bird watching… I must admit that there were many birds flying around and pecking at the junk. I even saw a Grey colored Egret.
When got back to our bus…
… It was filled with Flies. There must have been at least 200 nasty landfill flies crawling and flying all over us. After about 20 minutes of driving the majority of them had left but several managed to make it all the way back to ICSA with us. When I asked Irene if there are any natural areas left within the city of Chennai she pointed to the toxic marsh and said “haha, this is it.” I can’t tell if she was surprised that our destination was actually a landfill. But she didn’t seem overly bothered by it.
After we got back to ICSA we declared the rest of the day “America Day.” We went to KFC for dinner and went to see Toy Story III in 3D at a theatre nearby. This was great for John and I. We haven’t been able to touch Indian food in the past couple days, so KFC was wonderful. I finally ate something substantial for the first time in two days.
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