Matt and I are sitting in our hotel room, watching an episode of “Winnie-the-Pooh” dubbed into Hindi. To my untrained ear, it sounds like gibberish interspersed by high-pitched squeals of “Christopher Robin!”

I’m curled up under a sheet, somehow simultaneous hot and shivering. I spent the morning shooting interviews with team members on the roof sans water, and ended up sunburned and nauseous, edging on collapse. While my methods were unwise, my timing was fortuitous: the festival concludes today in a spasm of drinking and fireworks, and after the roads were closed, the team was sequestered for safety at the hotel for most of the afternoon. I curled up atop the hotel covers and awoke to darkness, feeling… “refreshed” isn’t the word. “Alive.” I am decidedly not dead.

I’m starting to think that maybe this wasn’t as good an idea as I thought it would be.

We’ve been packed tight inside this crowd for an hour now, moving, always moving. My hands have stiffened into claws from gripping the camera so tightly, and my arms are starting to shake from holding it protectively aloft for so long.

Behind me, a hand makes a quick, exploratory dive into my back pocket, looking for cash. I’d spin to face the would-be thief, but experience has taught me that by the time I turned, I would be met only with a sea of blank faces. 

I’m regretting bringing my passport and wallet along. I’ve kept them with me every step of my journey so far - for safety, I thought - and they sit in their regular spots, wedged deep in my front pockets. But I know that should any enterprising pickpocket make a grab for one, I’d never get my hands down in time to stop them. I should ask my guide, King, to hold on to them for me, but then I’d have to admit that I’d felt hands reaching into my other pockets, and I’m sure that King will force us to leave once he hears that. I jam the items deeper into my pockets and hope that this doesn’t become a story about “that time Ben had to live on the streets in India for three months, then came home to crippling credit card debt.”

The week has just begun, but it seems I’ve heard this song a hundred times already. It would help if it wasn’t the same verse, over and over, time after time. No amount of adding hand motions changes the fact that it’s the same, monotone chant in constant refrain. On a day like today (clap, clap) on a daaaaay like todaaaaay (clap, clap) on a daaaaaaaaay like tooooodaaaaaaaayyyy (clap clap) oooooooooooooh, I need Jesus!

The children love it. Really, they love Matt, who leads the song with palpable joy, waving his hands and clowning about. Some people lead children’s songs with pasted smiles, but you can feel Matt feed on the laughter. His smile gets bigger, his arms swing wider, so wide that he clocks Sarah in the stomach as we finish a verse (she won’t stand next to him during the song for the rest of the week). His singing, unfortunately, gets worse, as he abandons the notes altogether and develops a tuneless yell for the last half of the song. ON A DAAAAAAAAAAY LIKE TOOODAAAAAAAAAY! Some of the older kids abandon the hand motions in order to stick their fingers in their ears.

Peter’s voice is reverberating off the pale blue paint of the cement walls, easily filling the room with his presence. He is a commanding figure by any measure, but especially so in this room, where the audience sits so quietly, with a resounding humbleness. Most of their eyes are aimed downwards as they listen, as if looking at the speaker is a privilege they haven’t earned yet. These are our conference attendees, the men and women we’re to spend the next three days teaching the basics of Christian leadership. Where I come from, attending a conference is, at worst, an inconvenience. For some of these, discovery might put their lives in jeopardy. People have lied to their families, their husbands, to be here. Our lesson plans seem an inadequate reward for that sort of daring.

A tuft of breeze fills my nose with an overpowering scent of flowers from the lei that hangs about my neck. It is an honor I will never get accustomed to, to have a hula hoop-sized wreath of marigolds dropped over my head just for showing up someplace. I’m treated like a visiting dignitary and seated at the front of the room, to be stared at curiously by a pack of people I’ve never seen before. I don’t want to be up here. I want to be standing in the back, where I belong. I want someone to give me back my camera. The light is coming through that back window at just the right angle to catch a red-and-orange sari back there, and I want to take a picture of it.

Peter removed his lei seconds after they placed it on his head.  Am I being perceived a prideful by keeping mine on? That I feel that I deserve the honor? Out of the corner of my eye, I see John moving in his seat against the wall. He slowly takes off the lei and lays it carefully over the arm of his chair. That decides it.

“I’m gonna take mine off,” I whisper.

Sarah’s fingers dig into my arm. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses.

The pastor talks in a steady stream, his tone neither rising nor falling. He is soft-spoken, and it’s hard to hear him out here in the morning air, so we lean in close. He does not sound emotional. He does not seem in distress. One would think otherwise, to hear his story.

He was a high official in his mosque, got saved anyway, stealthily began a local ministry.  Some of the other officials from his mosque found one of his church members worshiping one day. They beat the man within an inch of his life and locked him up in a kitchen.

The officials called a meeting to discuss what was to be done. “If we kill the leader,” they decided, “this movement will stop.”

The pastor knew they were coming. But he didn’t leave. He waited for them. He waited for death, and when they came for him, he told them about Jesus.