18 November, 2010
Girl Effect
Many of you may be familiar with this organization already, but I just wanted to post this video because I believe in the message it promotes. While I don't think that simply investing in girls will solve all the world's problems, I do believe it is a giant step towards tapping into all of the untapped human power, especially in rural areas. This is just coming from my experience. As I work with amazing women everyday, I just thought I would share with you all a little bit of what is on my mind 24/7 here... enjoy!
17 November, 2010
How India Makes Me Think
Anyone who has spent at least a few days in any Indian city will have stories about their chaotic experiences riding in cars/taxis/autos there. Just ask them. On several occasions, my arm has brushed a passing vehicle as it dangles out of my own overcrowded auto-rickshaw, which somehow narrowly avoids collisions left and right. There are few traffic lights (and those that exist are more like suggestions to motorists) and lanes are meaningless. Even driving on the proper side of the road is a bendable rule. Yet somehow I have yet to see an accident since I have been here. How can complicated intersections and streets crowded with cars function without traffic direction? The answer is simple: without lights and signs and lanes as guides, one must actually pay attention to the actions of other drivers around them, and react to those actions.
There are two important things I have learned during my three months in India. The first is that, as chaotic and disorderly as everything may seem compared to the United States, there is a system here—I just don't understand it yet. If I tried to drive a car, or even a bike, through the streets of Ahmedabad or Udaipur, I would certainly cause an accident because I don't understand the sideways glances or the honking patterns. I cannot blend into the system. Another example to demonstrate this point:
The organization for which I am working here in Rajasthan wanted to purchase a water buffalo so that we could have our own source of milk for the schoolchildren and few families that stay on this campus. Alone, I would have no idea where to purchase a water buffalo. I am not able to log onto eBay to see what is available; there are no stores, no formal market even, for the purchase of water buffalo. You have to understand the system. The system for purchasing a buffalo is rooted in knowing which families have how many, where calves have been born recently, and who may be a little short on cash at the moment. If you can navigate this web of information, you will arrive at the answer of where you should ask to buy a buffalo. In the end, we knew someone who knew someone who was selling their buffalo. The system here is not about internet connectivity, or credit cards, or traffic lights, it is about understanding people.
The second thing I have learned while in India is that it is near impossible to operate on autopilot here. In India, I have to think. How many people in the US roll up to a four way stop intersection and hardly glance side to side before continuing onward, knowing that the other cars will also have to stop at this intersection, allowing them to only halfheartedly check for other traffic? I know I have done it. Green lights tell us to go, and so we happily cruise through them without giving a passing thought to cars on the intersecting road. While this system works for us Americans, it enables us to drive without thinking very much. This is a parallel I can draw to entire hours or even days of my life in the states. Perhaps I am so used to the systems with which I grew up, that I hardly have to think about them anymore. Here, a thousand thoughts pass through my head every minute. I have to be constantly aware. When I offer chai to someone and they say no thank you, it does not mean they would not like any. I cannot simply take their answer at face value. I have to dig deeper and insist several times that they take chai before they, quite happily, agree to drink some. This is what people do when it comes to offering and receiving food, and I have come to understand this.
The systems are complicated here, and they are based in human relationships. I like this. In this small Rajasthani village I have practically no internet, no television, no radio. The sounds I hear, information I gather, and decisions I make all come from the people around me. There will be no autopilot this year, no traffic signs to guide me. This year I will become enmeshed in the community around me—and dependent on these people I see every day—like I never have before. And in this way, I will build relationships with people whose language I can hardly speak—yet. I think I could learn to love this system.
25 October, 2010
For the Girls
Two nights ago we had our first Jhiri girls' meeting.
Upon finding out that basic women's health topics are rarely discussed here, even between mothers and daughters, I decided to talk to Sumita about putting together meetings for the girls of Jhiri. We had a lengthy conversation about all of the issues that girls in this village face: marriage as young as 15, and babies at 18; lack of access to health information; zero support for the pursuit of higher education; little freedom to make decisions of their own. We quickly put plans for a girls' meeting into action, although it was not so easy. During the days the girls are in school, and as soon as school is over they go home to work in the fields. After dark, which falls around 6:30 now, the girls are not easily allowed out of the house. We were not sure if we could find an appropriate time for the meetings. After convincing parents that we would meet for only an hour, and that only girls would attend, and that Sumita and I would be present the whole time, we were able to schedule bimonthly meetings at 7:30 every other Saturday evening.
This past Saturday during school, we could tell that the girls were eager to meet. I was feeling really excited, and I was so honored that the parents trusted me and Sumita enough to let their girls into our care at night. (We have spent a lot of time with most of these girls' families because each of them is in school with us. I actually stayed with one of these families for six days about a month back. We are even pretty tight with the dads, which is really amazing in such a gender-segregated culture). HKS (our org.) started a small library in an empty space in the village, and so we decided to hold the meeting there. We were happy with the number of girls who came, and even happier with the way the meeting went. It was mostly just chit chat this time, but I could tell that these girls felt comfortable with us, and I look forward to discussing more in depth topics, from health to each girl's family life.
Sumita and I had a conversation amongst ourselves about the best way provide information and support to these girls while still respecting the local culture and its traditional gender roles. In the end, we decided that we will definitely be able to provide information about health, and even about topics like opportunities for higher education, but when it comes to touchy subjects like early marriage, we will do our best to just listen and be supportive in whatever way we can.
It is such an amazing and strong group of girls, and I have so much fun with them everyday. Hopefully these meetings will help strengthen my relationships with them. It seems like everyone, including me, stands to benefit a lot from this new addition to our schedules.
** I want to note that even though girls here face some of the issues I mentioned, they also are trusted with many important responsibilities and roles. The women share an amazing culture in their own sphere here—one that I have been lucky enough to be included in sometimes. No topic is ever completely one sided, so I just want to add this little disclaimer on the topic of gender issues.
PS: We just today sold Rs. 45,000 worth of cloth after I sent some letters and samples out last week! That's a pretty good amount by small hand loom co-op standards :)
Upon finding out that basic women's health topics are rarely discussed here, even between mothers and daughters, I decided to talk to Sumita about putting together meetings for the girls of Jhiri. We had a lengthy conversation about all of the issues that girls in this village face: marriage as young as 15, and babies at 18; lack of access to health information; zero support for the pursuit of higher education; little freedom to make decisions of their own. We quickly put plans for a girls' meeting into action, although it was not so easy. During the days the girls are in school, and as soon as school is over they go home to work in the fields. After dark, which falls around 6:30 now, the girls are not easily allowed out of the house. We were not sure if we could find an appropriate time for the meetings. After convincing parents that we would meet for only an hour, and that only girls would attend, and that Sumita and I would be present the whole time, we were able to schedule bimonthly meetings at 7:30 every other Saturday evening.
This past Saturday during school, we could tell that the girls were eager to meet. I was feeling really excited, and I was so honored that the parents trusted me and Sumita enough to let their girls into our care at night. (We have spent a lot of time with most of these girls' families because each of them is in school with us. I actually stayed with one of these families for six days about a month back. We are even pretty tight with the dads, which is really amazing in such a gender-segregated culture). HKS (our org.) started a small library in an empty space in the village, and so we decided to hold the meeting there. We were happy with the number of girls who came, and even happier with the way the meeting went. It was mostly just chit chat this time, but I could tell that these girls felt comfortable with us, and I look forward to discussing more in depth topics, from health to each girl's family life.
Sumita and I had a conversation amongst ourselves about the best way provide information and support to these girls while still respecting the local culture and its traditional gender roles. In the end, we decided that we will definitely be able to provide information about health, and even about topics like opportunities for higher education, but when it comes to touchy subjects like early marriage, we will do our best to just listen and be supportive in whatever way we can.
It is such an amazing and strong group of girls, and I have so much fun with them everyday. Hopefully these meetings will help strengthen my relationships with them. It seems like everyone, including me, stands to benefit a lot from this new addition to our schedules.
** I want to note that even though girls here face some of the issues I mentioned, they also are trusted with many important responsibilities and roles. The women share an amazing culture in their own sphere here—one that I have been lucky enough to be included in sometimes. No topic is ever completely one sided, so I just want to add this little disclaimer on the topic of gender issues.
PS: We just today sold Rs. 45,000 worth of cloth after I sent some letters and samples out last week! That's a pretty good amount by small hand loom co-op standards :)
21 October, 2010
Project update, Dushera Festival, and Water Buffalo
As of this week, I dove in head first to my project with the hand loom co-op. In fact, Sudhi Ji told me that from now until the end of the year I will be managing the logistics and marketing of the co-op on my own. After letting this sink in a little, I became extremely excited. With so much work ahead of me, I know I will have no problem finding motivation and renewing enthusiasm for my project. Now that I have spent the past few days sizing up the situation of the hand loom co-op (unorganized, little documentation if any, and only a word of mouth networking history), I have several goals for the next month or so: make a detailed spreadsheet of our inventory, create a few prospectus layouts that we can use to email to prospective clients, and put together a website for the hand loom co-op.
With the older school kids, I initiated a quilting project where we will use scraps from the hand loom co-op to create a quilt. We are only in the planning stages now, and each of the 8th and 10thgraders is working on an idea that they want to express in their quilt square (some of the ideas that have been tossed out are Hindu-Muslim tolerance, gender equality, and going to college to become a doctor for Jhiri village). There is a lot going on in school right now, so this will be one of those projects we do in spare time, but hopefully the end product will be inspiring and initiate a dialogue about some of these topics.
Last Sunday Harpreet and I traveled six hours to Kota to see the Dushera Mela. Dushera is a holiday in between Durga Puja and Diwali that celebrates one of India's most beloved stories from the Ramayana. The festival in Kota is one of the largest in India for this specific holiday. The city builds three large statues of Ravan and his brothers (who kidnapped Sita) and then “Ram” shoots an arrow into them, lighting them on fire, burning them to the ground (complete with a massive display of fireworks), and saving Sita. We had a great time exploring the old section of Kota, which boasts beautiful temples as well as a precolonial fort. We also snagged prime seats for watching the Dushera parade, and even made friends with a group of young boys who explained the entire Ramayana story to us. The number of people who attended the festival was astounding, even for a country of 1.2 billion people. We returned to Jhiri on Monday, but most of the kids didn't come back to school until Wednesday. All in all, it was a superb mini-vacation. Now it is back to work, hoping to finish up a lot before I head to Ahmedabad in November for our first workshop/debrief with Indicorps.
In other news, Devendra Ji knew of someone who knew someone who was selling a bhez, or water buffalo. We bought it, and its five-day-old calf, so now we have fresh delicious milk every morning. Their names are Kiran (sunrise) and Prakash (light). They are adorable, but not so bright as their names would lead you to believe. I like to water them, they like it too.
Our water buffalo
Some of my closest friends here
Dushera Mela in Kota
12 October, 2010
10 October, 2010
Seasons
Living in a city, you can tell that the seasons are changing in a number of ways. Of course there is the calendar, but there are more subtle changes as well. In the store windows, the clothing displays discreetly morph to showcase the coming season's new styles. Your favorite coffee shop changes the art on their front window from beach balls and ice cream to falling leaves. Leaves fall. School begins, or school lets out. Neighborhood pools open, they close.
Here in Jhiri, the season has changed. The temperature feels the same—it is still 96 degrees right now, in the shade, at 4pm—but the season has definitely changed. I realized this when my not-so-healthy knee began to hurt a little. At home this happens when it gets cold in the winter. Here it happened because the earth that I walk on everyday went from being nice and squishy from the monsoon rains to rock hard and cracked. I looked around and realized that the hills were yellow, like in Marin. The lush hariali, which translates literally to “greenery,” had disappeared, been devoured by all of the water buffalo it seemed and replaced by scratchy twigs. Come to think of it, after a month of super sweet roasted corn every day, I had not eaten a single ear in a week. It had all been harvested, consumed, and stored, along with the peanuts, the sesame, the chawli, and the other monsoon crops. In an Indian farming village, seasons are marked by the food you eat and the number of new mosquito bites you can count at the end of each day.
Along with the subsistence crops that have been harvested, everyone cut down the only cash crop here: soy beans. All the work has meant that many of our kids have been missing school the past week. On the bright side, families here will be paid soon. For their soy beans, they are paid once a year. On average families get 20,000 rupees. That is 465 dollars. Some do business on the side—carpentry, pottery, etc—and some sell small amounts of buffalo milk for extra cash, but most just spend their money very slowly until they are paid again. There will be another few weeks of hard work in the fields and then everyone will take a bit of break as the Indian version of Christmas fever, Diwali, approaches.
Here in Jhiri, the season has changed. The temperature feels the same—it is still 96 degrees right now, in the shade, at 4pm—but the season has definitely changed. I realized this when my not-so-healthy knee began to hurt a little. At home this happens when it gets cold in the winter. Here it happened because the earth that I walk on everyday went from being nice and squishy from the monsoon rains to rock hard and cracked. I looked around and realized that the hills were yellow, like in Marin. The lush hariali, which translates literally to “greenery,” had disappeared, been devoured by all of the water buffalo it seemed and replaced by scratchy twigs. Come to think of it, after a month of super sweet roasted corn every day, I had not eaten a single ear in a week. It had all been harvested, consumed, and stored, along with the peanuts, the sesame, the chawli, and the other monsoon crops. In an Indian farming village, seasons are marked by the food you eat and the number of new mosquito bites you can count at the end of each day.
Along with the subsistence crops that have been harvested, everyone cut down the only cash crop here: soy beans. All the work has meant that many of our kids have been missing school the past week. On the bright side, families here will be paid soon. For their soy beans, they are paid once a year. On average families get 20,000 rupees. That is 465 dollars. Some do business on the side—carpentry, pottery, etc—and some sell small amounts of buffalo milk for extra cash, but most just spend their money very slowly until they are paid again. There will be another few weeks of hard work in the fields and then everyone will take a bit of break as the Indian version of Christmas fever, Diwali, approaches.
08 October, 2010
Cultural Note on Names
One of the students I work with here--Mangilal, who is 12 or so (no one knows their exact age here)--told me recently that his parents are changing his name to Chandrasekar. Their reason for changing their child's name to that of a famous Indian freedom fighter is that "mangi" means "one who asks for things, or wants things too much." They are afraid that such a name will give those grading the national 10th grade exam a bad first impression of their son from the start.
--Further background: 10th grade here is sort of like 12th grade in the states. After you finish 10th standard, you take a test that will determine not only whether or not you can advance to 11th and 12th standards, but also what you will be able to study: business, engineering and science, or the arts. So this test is a massive deal and is unfair in all sorts of ways that I will not get into here.--
So, Mangilal's parents changed his name. However, there are many other Mangilals in the surrounding villages, so we set out to find out why it is such a popular name if its connotations are supposedly bad. What we found out fascinated me. If someone's child falls ill as an infant, which happens frequently here, parents will change the infant's name to Mangi (for a girl) or Mangilal (for a boy) in express to the gods the extent to which they want to keep their child.
For the time being, we are calling Mangilal Mangilal, until someone tells us to do otherwise. Incidentally, he is an amazing kid, with a voice like an angel. We are all making him teach us this beautiful Hindi folk song about Radha and Krishna. Maybe I will sing it for you sometime.
Link to Picasa Photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/racheltrip/IndiaI?authkey=Gv1sRgCNGqj7DaubamOg&feat=directlink
A few photos to start...
02 October, 2010
Past due update pt. 2
Here is a breakdown of my typical day. 6am wake up, lie in bed for a while, yoga on the roof. 7am chai time with the 12 students who board at the hostel, Rambilas (our “cook” and general best friend, he's a couple years older than us, has the two cutest kids in the world, and is basically the man), and my two cofellows, Sumita and Harpreet. 8am school starts for the kids and I work with the handloom coop. 10am breakfast, then my classes start. I teach 1st, 4th, and 5th standards, and then do some projects with the kids in 8th and 10th. 1:30pm school ends, we eat porridge, and our afternoon begins. For the rest of the day, we engage in any number of activities, usually with the hostel kids. Here have been a few of my favorites:
1. Swimming in the kua. Our kua, or well, is 60 feet deep. Right now the water is about 25 feet down, making it the perfect swimming hole to jump into. The kids love this. I am trying to convince them to flip (yes Gabe, flip!) but no one will do it...yet. Most of the kids here, and all of the adults except for Rambilas, cannot swim. So there are about eight of us who participate in this activity almost daily (thermometer reads 98 right now, and this is considerably cooler weather than before).
2. Working in our garden. Sumita, Harpreet, and I knew from the start we wanted to get a garden going here. This may seem silly in a place surrounded by farms, but we wanted something small and manageable that we could use to teach the kids science and also plant whatever we wanted to eat. Lucky for us, there were remnants of an old garden, although it was in very bad shape. We have weeded it back to life, and dug irrigation trenches (watering the old fashioned way!). Currently we have eggplant and peppers growing, but will plant a variety of other vegetables tomorrow. The kids also love this.
3. Going into Jhiri village. Our organization's campus/office area is a 15 minute walk out of Jhiri. As most households are on the farm during the day, the best time for us to visit people is in the evening, and most evenings we are working. However, one of our favorite things to do is spend our evenings jumping from house to house in the village, so we make time for it. Every family is so welcoming and wants us to stay all night, but we always politely decline and move on to the house of the next child begging us to come. I love spending time with the families of the kids I teach. Usually we walk back to HKS (our org) around eight or so, in time for dinner, but filled to the brim with chai.
So that basically fills in the general gaps of the past 25 days here. I am going to try to start a Picassa web album, so I'll post the link when I get that started.
1. Swimming in the kua. Our kua, or well, is 60 feet deep. Right now the water is about 25 feet down, making it the perfect swimming hole to jump into. The kids love this. I am trying to convince them to flip (yes Gabe, flip!) but no one will do it...yet. Most of the kids here, and all of the adults except for Rambilas, cannot swim. So there are about eight of us who participate in this activity almost daily (thermometer reads 98 right now, and this is considerably cooler weather than before).
2. Working in our garden. Sumita, Harpreet, and I knew from the start we wanted to get a garden going here. This may seem silly in a place surrounded by farms, but we wanted something small and manageable that we could use to teach the kids science and also plant whatever we wanted to eat. Lucky for us, there were remnants of an old garden, although it was in very bad shape. We have weeded it back to life, and dug irrigation trenches (watering the old fashioned way!). Currently we have eggplant and peppers growing, but will plant a variety of other vegetables tomorrow. The kids also love this.
3. Going into Jhiri village. Our organization's campus/office area is a 15 minute walk out of Jhiri. As most households are on the farm during the day, the best time for us to visit people is in the evening, and most evenings we are working. However, one of our favorite things to do is spend our evenings jumping from house to house in the village, so we make time for it. Every family is so welcoming and wants us to stay all night, but we always politely decline and move on to the house of the next child begging us to come. I love spending time with the families of the kids I teach. Usually we walk back to HKS (our org) around eight or so, in time for dinner, but filled to the brim with chai.
So that basically fills in the general gaps of the past 25 days here. I am going to try to start a Picassa web album, so I'll post the link when I get that started.
30 September, 2010
Past due update pt. 1
And I now have internet! Sometimes... and it's very slow. But it is ok, because sitting at my computer is the last thing I want to do here. “Here” is a small village called Jhiri in south east Rajasthan. Originally, my project for the year was located in east India, but as always happens in this country, plans changed.
So on September 8th, after spending 25 days in Ahmedabad, I left the state of Gujarat and headed north via the sleeper car on Britain's most helpful legacy here, the train. Traveling with me were the two other fellows I will be working with for the rest of the year, both of whom I admire immensely. We disembarked in Kota, and caught a six hour bus ride to Jhiri. Before we left I looked up Jhiri on Google maps. I couldn't find it. If you were to search for Jhalawar, the district in which Jhiri is located, the actual town of Jhalawar would show up. This is the closest largish town to Jhiri, and is three hours away by bus. What all of this means is that the stars at night here are so brilliant they actually look like millions of little holes in the sky, the air is so clean that I can't breathe enough, and we are miles and miles from any built up civilization. It is bad for internet, but good for people.
The organization for which I am working has been operating for 20 years, and focuses on the farming community, which is everyone here. It is a small organization, with two leaders and a handful of employees—although everyone helps out. The organization is centered around the school, which is attended by 150 children in standards one through ten. In addition to the school, we run a textile cooperative which allows primarily women to earn extra income for their families, as well as to have a source of wealth themselves. We have four handlooms on our campus, and run the entire textile process ourselves, except for spinning the thread (so dye prep, dying, loom prep, looming, sewing, detailing). As many of these women are illiterate, my official reason for being here is to help them expand their market and strengthen their cooperative in general. Apart from the school and the textile cooperative, I find ways our organization is involved in the community here every day.
While the two other fellows and I live in the school hostel, we spent 6 days each in surrounding villages with different families, and will do this once every month. I learned a lot. Everyone here is involved in agriculture, and it is mostly subsistence farming, although many families also grow some soy as a cash crop. Everything we eat comes from the farms. Some highlights: daal that we helped pick, de-seed, and dry; fresh water buffalo milk every morning in our chai; buffalo yogurt; fresh grilled corn; and whole wheat rotis (tortilla like unleavened bread). There is not a lot of fruit, aside from some funky melon things, but every now and then one of the other fellows or I will make the trek to town for supplies and pick up apples and bananas. People live in brick and mud homes that house a joint family—usually brothers, their wives and children and their parents—and the water buffalo and oxen they own, usually five to eight. Many families also keep goats. The culture is very colorful: from women's saris to traditional Rajasthani house painting, there is color everywhere. Every day there is farm work to be done, and everyone pitches in, even grandma and gramps.
Sometimes I feel like I might as well be on another planet, and at other times I am reminded of how all humans—regardless of where we live—are all the same. Brothers and sisters fight here too, teenagers gossip, and moms want to keep feeding you until you explode. People are generally very happy. Money is excruciatingly tight, but most families buy very little and are astoundingly resourceful. I have already built many amazing relationships here and in many ways it already feels like home.
So on September 8th, after spending 25 days in Ahmedabad, I left the state of Gujarat and headed north via the sleeper car on Britain's most helpful legacy here, the train. Traveling with me were the two other fellows I will be working with for the rest of the year, both of whom I admire immensely. We disembarked in Kota, and caught a six hour bus ride to Jhiri. Before we left I looked up Jhiri on Google maps. I couldn't find it. If you were to search for Jhalawar, the district in which Jhiri is located, the actual town of Jhalawar would show up. This is the closest largish town to Jhiri, and is three hours away by bus. What all of this means is that the stars at night here are so brilliant they actually look like millions of little holes in the sky, the air is so clean that I can't breathe enough, and we are miles and miles from any built up civilization. It is bad for internet, but good for people.
The organization for which I am working has been operating for 20 years, and focuses on the farming community, which is everyone here. It is a small organization, with two leaders and a handful of employees—although everyone helps out. The organization is centered around the school, which is attended by 150 children in standards one through ten. In addition to the school, we run a textile cooperative which allows primarily women to earn extra income for their families, as well as to have a source of wealth themselves. We have four handlooms on our campus, and run the entire textile process ourselves, except for spinning the thread (so dye prep, dying, loom prep, looming, sewing, detailing). As many of these women are illiterate, my official reason for being here is to help them expand their market and strengthen their cooperative in general. Apart from the school and the textile cooperative, I find ways our organization is involved in the community here every day.
While the two other fellows and I live in the school hostel, we spent 6 days each in surrounding villages with different families, and will do this once every month. I learned a lot. Everyone here is involved in agriculture, and it is mostly subsistence farming, although many families also grow some soy as a cash crop. Everything we eat comes from the farms. Some highlights: daal that we helped pick, de-seed, and dry; fresh water buffalo milk every morning in our chai; buffalo yogurt; fresh grilled corn; and whole wheat rotis (tortilla like unleavened bread). There is not a lot of fruit, aside from some funky melon things, but every now and then one of the other fellows or I will make the trek to town for supplies and pick up apples and bananas. People live in brick and mud homes that house a joint family—usually brothers, their wives and children and their parents—and the water buffalo and oxen they own, usually five to eight. Many families also keep goats. The culture is very colorful: from women's saris to traditional Rajasthani house painting, there is color everywhere. Every day there is farm work to be done, and everyone pitches in, even grandma and gramps.
Sometimes I feel like I might as well be on another planet, and at other times I am reminded of how all humans—regardless of where we live—are all the same. Brothers and sisters fight here too, teenagers gossip, and moms want to keep feeding you until you explode. People are generally very happy. Money is excruciatingly tight, but most families buy very little and are astoundingly resourceful. I have already built many amazing relationships here and in many ways it already feels like home.
17 August, 2010
First couple of days!
My first two days in Ahmedabad have been a whirlwind. Each day started at 6am and ended at 11pm, which is a long day especially given this heat and my jet lag. And the humidity! The air is simply wet here, mostly, perhaps, because it is still monsoon season. There have been two very hearty rains since I arrived, and we are told there will be one more big push of rain before the season ends.
India is amazing. For our first month here, we are staying in a hostel that is part of a University campus here in Ahmedabad. It is a quiet university founded on Gandhian principles, and thus is a very tranquil and beautiful environment. From my window I can hear peacocks screaming, birds singing, and monkeys loudly jumping from tree to tree.
The first thing we do every morning-- in traditional Indian fashion-- is Safai, which is the cleaning of the home. We each have a task, and collectively clean our hostel. Then we have breakfast, and begin our activities—which range from language lessons to conversations about simple living. All of the fellows eat our meals together, all sitting on the floor. In fact, the floor is the only thing we ever sit on. Actually, my bum is a little sore from this new adjustment, but I love the overall simplicity of life here. It is refreshing in a way I have never experienced. I have no internet within the university campus, but I understand we will make trips to the city every now and then.
In three weeks, I will make the jouney to the site of my project in Deoghar, Jharkhand. Until then, I am learning all the things I need to know to bring about some positive changes here in India. We spend a lot of time talking about development and culture to this end, and I love it! Basically, I am in love with the first two days of my new life, and I am sure the journey will only grow more interesting from here.
India is amazing. For our first month here, we are staying in a hostel that is part of a University campus here in Ahmedabad. It is a quiet university founded on Gandhian principles, and thus is a very tranquil and beautiful environment. From my window I can hear peacocks screaming, birds singing, and monkeys loudly jumping from tree to tree.
The first thing we do every morning-- in traditional Indian fashion-- is Safai, which is the cleaning of the home. We each have a task, and collectively clean our hostel. Then we have breakfast, and begin our activities—which range from language lessons to conversations about simple living. All of the fellows eat our meals together, all sitting on the floor. In fact, the floor is the only thing we ever sit on. Actually, my bum is a little sore from this new adjustment, but I love the overall simplicity of life here. It is refreshing in a way I have never experienced. I have no internet within the university campus, but I understand we will make trips to the city every now and then.
In three weeks, I will make the jouney to the site of my project in Deoghar, Jharkhand. Until then, I am learning all the things I need to know to bring about some positive changes here in India. We spend a lot of time talking about development and culture to this end, and I love it! Basically, I am in love with the first two days of my new life, and I am sure the journey will only grow more interesting from here.
14 August, 2010
Finally out of here
I am on board my flight to Qatar, I believe it is 14 hours. I have a couple of books, an Economist, Hindi on tape, and Qatar Airways' seemingly endless list of movies at my disposal. Adios, or namaste!
13 August, 2010
Starting off with travel mishaps, of course
I wish I could be writing my first entry from aboard my flight to Doha, where I am supposed to be right now. But that is not where I am. Strangely, I am back in Texas, the last place I thought I would find myself on this journey to India (especially given my relationship with this particular state)-- at a Holiday Inn in muggy Houston, to be specific. Out of my window, I can hear planes taking off. Tomorrow I will be on one. After a day of waiting standby and delayed flights, after running across the entire Houston Intercontinental airport, Qatar airlines said I wouldn't make the flight tonight. After rescheduling, I will be arriving in Ahmedabad exactly 24 hours later than I was supposed to. Could be worse.
On the bright side, I met my NBA idol Steve Nash today. After I gawked, "Oh my god, you're Steve Nash!" we exchanged a few brief comments about our travel, and he even signed the current book I am reading (which I am almost done with, and had planned to ditch in Doha, but will now hang onto for the rest of my time in India, obviously). So it's not all bad. Hopefully my next update will actually be from outside of this country.
Thanks to everyone for all of the amazing goodbye wishes. Much love to all.
On the bright side, I met my NBA idol Steve Nash today. After I gawked, "Oh my god, you're Steve Nash!" we exchanged a few brief comments about our travel, and he even signed the current book I am reading (which I am almost done with, and had planned to ditch in Doha, but will now hang onto for the rest of my time in India, obviously). So it's not all bad. Hopefully my next update will actually be from outside of this country.
Thanks to everyone for all of the amazing goodbye wishes. Much love to all.
12 July, 2010
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