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Drie

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Adventures in Hindustan

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Jodhpur, India

So all you waiting with baited breath...things are better now. We figured out a project and more importantly spent three days in the city. But back to the wilderness again for the week because we ben to a town (for dad's benefit).
So to found out how this all occured your gonna have to wait with baited breath (or no bait is ok too).
For those at Will Rice, YEAH SWEEP!!!! I wish I were there to cheer you on.

permalink written by  Drie on March 15, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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beyond madness

Jodhpur, India

3/13/08
Day 8…
We’ve lost our sense of humor. In India this is as good as a death sentence for the experience. Living here is much like living in a beautiful prison, a prison with friendly but unintelligible prison guards. Sarah has been reading excerpts of the prisoner of war camp experience at Dreden in world war two, as Kurt Vonnegut detailed it in Slaughter House Five. We are drawing similarities between the conditions, our behavior and emotional degradation to that of the soldiers. The same frustration, the dissatisfaction and ill-health from the same few foods at every meal (here it is roti, cabbage, potato, and dal), the same torpor. Inactivity, you see, leads to indolence. We sleep more and more, eat and bathe less. We laze about and half-heartedly attempt to brush off the flies. And this only after eight days! Inactivity combined with no purpose is deadly.
We called Rimaji today asking for out. Our goal: a move to the GRAVIS office within the bustle of the city of Jodhpur. Perhaps a place with proper resources will at least allow us to do research, have some project while allowing movement about a city and food diversity. Cross you fingers!

permalink written by  Drie on March 13, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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raining desert

Jodhpur, India

3/11/08
Day 7…first full week completed. We woke to the very peculiar sensation of humidity and the sound of pattering rain and thunder. It was raining! Off-season and in the middle of the desert it was cloudy and raining. I can’t explain how bizarre it felt under the circumstances.
But even more bizarre than rain in the desert was this: we did something. Let me repeat that, we did something. Giriji came over midmorning and announced that the jeeps were coming today (to drop off people for training) and that they would take us to Jelu (a village nearby) where several GRAVIS projects are in process.
So we hopped in the back of a jeep with Arunji and we were off. Well, actually we were told we would leave and be back before lunch, while it ended up being we ate lunch and then left: a classic example of Indian timing. But then we were off. We went into Jelu and to a little building with several posters, some books and a bag of USA millet. This was the information center where GRAVIS has a representative and where people can come and look up things from moon cycles, animal care, to home delivery care and AIDS.
Next we drove a bit more and stopped at a woman’s house. They told us she was in a self-help group. She had had a shop. Now she didn’t have it, she might again in the future. She made pots. Her husband worked in the mine. They had financial troubles. GRAVIS had helped. They had to close shop… GRAVIS would help. The story was very confusing even after Dillan asked a number of questions in Hindi.
We went further out and saw a small rock dam and the agricultural area behind it. It seems the agricultural water projects are designed to prevent water from running off too fast. A man came over, greeted us, and invited us to tea at their home. This was composed of several buildings, three for the goats, and one for the humans. As we waited for the tea, awkwardly making conversation, Arunji told them how I was a ‘painter’ bahut accha hai. This bit of gossip arose from him seeing several of the sketches I had drawn in boredom in ‘fort gravi.’ The result was the very sweet man with a gigantic bushy mustache asking me to draw a flower…on their wall. Yep, they pointed to empty blank white walls, and told me to draw a flower on it. Then a stub of a pencil was produced and so I drew it, adding a signature for good measure.

Dillan with villager and a plow

The whole excursion was not so much a field visit as a field tour, and took maybe two hours. It was fun, but then we came back and had no purpose again. Began watching Heroes episodes on my computer to keep entertained.


permalink written by  Drie on March 11, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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A Jewelers Dream

Jodhpur, India

3/10/08
Day 6…
We got sick and went mad. Actually partially true… Dillan had stomach trouble in the morning, while Amy and I went jogging again. But in the afternoon illness—fever and stomach—hit Sarah and I and we were probably a little delirious. We watched Rang De Basante (famous Bollywood film), which was interesting after having seen the Legend of Bhagat Singh since it essentially parallels that story, and then two episodes of Heroes. Then we laughed to tears about the ridiculousness of our situation.
Earlier in the day we had gone for a little while to attend a training session offered by GRAVIS for a new health initiative being tested by the government. Of course, the proceedings were conducted in Marabati and Dillan (still sick) wasn’t there which meant we hadn’t a chance in hell of understanding what was going on. We felt like a distraction more than attendees as all the women stopped paying attention to Giriji lecturing up front in favor of staring at us. The situation then progressed to what has become a usual pattern in these types of situations. Women—or children or men it matters little—wearing brightly colored outfits and veils over their eyes crowd about us and begin asking questions we haven’t a clue how to answer (or understand). They are much more touchy than any American would be comfortable with and have even lifted our shirts several times, or mildly slapped to try to get our attention. This generally digresses into them pointing to our stomachs or breasts as a way of asking whether we have children or are married. When it is explained that we are not, they laugh heartily. They then point to their jewelry and our very jewelry-less earlobes…and wrists and noses and fingers and ankles and toes and upper arms.

Why don’t you have jewelry? You don’t have jewelry? Do you even have earholes? Yes. Do you even have nose holes? No. Laugh heartily. Such short hair. Yes. Why? It’s hot here. Laugh heartily. No children? No. No husband? Why? We’re students. Blank stare.

After only twenty minutes of these situations, we are generally too exhausted to continue and have to retreat back to our fort and hide our shameful earlobes.


permalink written by  Drie on March 10, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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Back in the desert

Jodhpur, India

3/10/08

Day 5….
We’ve resorted to spearing snakes and rats in the desert, while Dillan has fallen ill. Kidding about the former, serious about the latter. We continue to wait around for something to happen. Yesterday Giriji returned 2 days later than he said from visiting his family. Since he’s the only English speaker and the Field Center leader it was a relief to have him back, especially since he is our jogging partner in the early morning, this for the second time!
The cabin fever is really getting to me. Although our interactions with the families and workers here are priceless; I won’t forget sitting having my hands done with mahandi (like henna)


mahandi on our hands from GRAVIS girl
and helping to milk a goat so that chai can be made on the spot, or playing soccer outside the compound walls in the desert Fields.

village hut at sunset
But Field visits that actually encompass doing something, in fact any kind of work beside the 15 minutes ‘mutual work’ in the mode of Gandhi each morning, is likely to few rare.
Yesterday, we locked the outside doors of fort gravis and laid out in shorts and Then I did some drawing. Then I sat and stared. How long can I do this before going mad? Tom Hanks did it for two years but I don’t have the benefit of needing to do work for survival or Wilson to talk to.
No Wilson, but there are dogs. They discourage me from petting the three friendly (and relatively clean) compound dogs, though I do it anyway. I discourage them from having me hold their babies. This is a tough task considering there are babies and small children everywhere, staring curiously with charcoal decorated eyes, yelling tata! and checking my face for nonexistent jewelry. I have never interacted with children so much in my life. Rao and Umchko continue visit us daily and attempt to teach us Hindi words. If only I were in the Matrix and could upload a language things might be much easier around here.

permalink written by  Drie on March 10, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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madness descends

Jodhpur, India

3/10/08
Day 6…
We got sick and went mad. Actually partially true… Dillan had stomach trouble in the morning, while Amy and I went jogging again. But in the afternoon illness—fever and stomach—hit Sarah and I and we were probably a little delirious. We watched Rang De Basante (famous Bollywood film), which was interesting after having seen the Legend of Bhagat Singh since it essentially parallels that story, and then two episodes of Heroes. Then we laughed to tears about the ridiculousness of our situation.
Earlier in the day we had gone for a little while to attend a training session offered by GRAVIS for a new health initiative being tested by the government. Of course, the proceedings were conducted in Marabati and Dillan (still sick) wasn’t there which meant we hadn’t a chance in hell of understanding what was going on. We felt like a distraction more than attendees as all the women stopped paying attention to Giriji lecturing up front in favor of staring at us. The situation then progressed to what has become a usual pattern in these types of situations. Women—or children or men it matters little—wearing brightly colored outfits and veils over their eyes crowd about us and begin asking questions we haven’t a clue how to answer (or understand). They are much more touchy than any American would be comfortable with and have even lifted our shirts several times, or mildly slapped to try to get our attention. This generally digresses into them pointing to our stomachs or breasts as a way of asking whether we have children or are married. When it is explained that we are not, they laugh heartily. They then point to their jewelry and our very jewelry-less earlobes…and wrists and noses and fingers and ankles and toes and upper arms.

Why don’t you have jewelry? You don’t have jewelry? Do you even have earholes? Yes. Do you even have nose holes? No. Laugh heartily. Such short hair. Yes. Why? It’s hot here. Laugh heartily. No children? No. No husband? Why? We’re students. Blank stare.

After only twenty minutes of these situations, we are generally too exhausted to continue and have to retreat back to our fort and hide our shameful earlobes.


permalink written by  Drie on March 10, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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City is the key word

Jodhpur, India

3/9/08
Day 4…
Our day in the city. We spent four hours riding on a bus for 5 hours of time in Jodhpur. I think it may on be 50 kilometers to Jodhpur but the many stops and poor roads make it a long and bumpy trip, though the ticket is only about 25 cents. And it was worth it; I got my fill of food that is neither cabbage nor potato and internet and bought fruit enough to make it through the week.
Snapshot: the rural bus
Riding the bus is in itself a fascinating experience. In this rural setting it felt like the bus was the bloodline of people’s lives. A single bus goes each direction out from the city and bounces its way down rougher and rougher roads as it goes out to all the tiny villages where the people depend on its arrival. One or two people stand along the side of the road, raise their hand and the bus stops. On the way out I sat next to a woman with a baby that could not have been older than 9 months. (I thought it was cute until I had to smell baby poo for a couple hours.) Virtually all the women travel with one if not two or five of their children. On the way back it was clearly mostly men returning home from work in the city. Among the interactions involved were various plastic bags of vegetables and fruit being passed in the window without other discussion or interaction involved. Its clear this happened every day, or at least at a set time with pre-arranged agreements for place, time and price. In another little village the driver simply threw out a bag of medicine and tobacco to an old man by the side of the road. They didn’t even stop the bus.
Out the window we saw sandstone mines, hard ground cut down brick by brick, fields of pepper plants, roaming goats, and isolated buildings made of sandstone and dung and dried grass. The area seems so barren and remote that’s its strange to see so many people emerging from its sandy reaches. But the Thar is the most populated desert in the world, and the people their lives here happily or not by the grace of single bus arriving daily.

It feels strange going to the city for the same reasons as the locals. We didn’t go sightsee anything. We took the long trek into town for errands. This commonality made me feel even more divided from these people. I am trying to live here for 6 weeks, always with expectation of getting back to civilization at the end. Yet, 80% of Indians live this way. A majority of the people in the world live more like this than any urban lifestyle I have ever experienced. It’s a different world really.
We came back to hang out with the children, basically about 4 girls, Lela, Puja, Umcha, ? and one boy, Rao, who follow us about alternatively speaking to us freeheartedly or patiently teaching us words in Hindi or Marabati. Then, as is now our routine we sat in our whicker changes in the common room’ listening to Dillan mandolin away or talking on random subjects, most often of all the ridiculous things we plan to do while here or when we get home. When the power randomly goes out, throwing us into the darkness ( a regular occurrence) we listen to the wind whistling through the seed pods and comprehending really being here.



permalink written by  Drie on March 9, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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City is the key word

Jodhpur, India

3/9/08
Day 4…
Our day in the city. We spent four hours riding on a bus for 5 hours of time in Jodhpur. I think it may on be 50 kilometers to Jodhpur but the many stops and poor roads make it a long and bumpy trip, though the ticket is only about 25 cents. And it was worth it; I got my fill of food that is neither cabbage nor potato and internet and bought fruit enough to make it through the week.
Snapshot: the rural bus
Riding the bus is in itself a fascinating experience. In this rural setting it felt like the bus was the bloodline of people’s lives. A single bus goes each direction out from the city and bounces its way down rougher and rougher roads as it goes out to all the tiny villages where the people depend on its arrival. One or two people stand along the side of the road, raise their hand and the bus stops. On the way out I sat next to a woman with a baby that could not have been older than 9 months. (I thought it was cute until I had to smell baby poo for a couple hours.) Virtually all the women travel with one if not two or five of their children. On the way back it was clearly mostly men returning home from work in the city. Among the interactions involved were various plastic bags of vegetables and fruit being passed in the window without other discussion or interaction involved. Its clear this happened every day, or at least at a set time with pre-arranged agreements for place, time and price. In another little village the driver simply threw out a bag of medicine and tobacco to an old man by the side of the road. They didn’t even stop the bus.
Out the window we saw sandstone mines, hard ground cut down brick by brick, fields of pepper plants, roaming goats, and isolated buildings made of sandstone and dung and dried grass. The area seems so barren and remote that’s its strange to see so many people emerging from its sandy reaches. But the Thar is the most populated desert in the world, and the people their lives here happily or not by the grace of single bus arriving daily.

It feels strange going to the city for the same reasons as the locals. We didn’t go sightsee anything. We took the long trek into town for errands. This commonality made me feel even more divided from these people. I am trying to live here for 6 weeks, always with expectation of getting back to civilization at the end. Yet, 80% of Indians live this way. A majority of the people in the world live more like this than any urban lifestyle I have ever experienced. It’s a different world really.
We came back to hang out with the children, basically about 4 girls, Lela, Puja, Umcha, ? and one boy, Rao, who follow us about alternatively speaking to us freeheartedly or patiently teaching us words in Hindi or Marabati. Then, as is now our routine we sat in our whicker changes in the common room’ listening to Dillan mandolin away or talking on random subjects, most often of all the ridiculous things we plan to do while here or when we get home. When the power randomly goes out, throwing us into the darkness ( a regular occurrence) we listen to the wind whistling through the seed pods and comprehending really being here.



permalink written by  Drie on March 9, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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In heaven...with cobras

Jodhpur, India

3/7
Another day of inactivity followed the first. This time the excitement of the day was a 20 minutes football game following a 15 minute ride of terror on the back of a motorcycle through the sand. How do the two relate, you ask? Well you see, the football required a trip into the central part of Gagadi to get blown up and went along on that trip, not for the futbol or for the chance to ride on the terrifying back-of-motorcycle ride through the sand, but for the only 3 pieces of fruit within a 30 mile radius. We get great food here, but virtually nothing fresh and no fruit. We saw a giant spider I thought looked like a brown recluse (special interest to Ann) and either a rat snake or cobra...all right in our lving quarters which we have dubbed the gravvi fort (insert french accent). The evening featured a power outage and thus especially dark meal and another hour staring up into the stars and Dillan playing mandolin for entertainment.
Today was our first day of activity and it involved going to a nearby town to host rally for International Women’s day. We had glued signs and tied sticks to that morning and the night before and now we took them with us on the march through town. This was followed by several speeches including an impromptu one by Sarah after they told us one of us must speak on the occasion relating to women’s rights. We got see the GRAVIS run hospital for lunch before heading back.
Perhaps even more memorable than this rally and the over-filled jeep ride home was the morning run. We have determined to make this our new habit and thus I woke up at 6:00 to run through the silent desert while the sun rose over the horizon. Giri-ji insists that someone must go with us, so like the dogs that tag along, he runs loyally beside us the whole way. If I could continue to do this, it would be a new era of Dana actually choosing to rise early. Of course, it isn’t really by choice since the heat drives me to it.
As a special note to you all, these blogs will only appear once a week at the very most since it is only when we make the trip into jodhpur on Sundays that there is even the chance of internet access. Cell phone access is pretty sketchy too. We don’t get the Hindustan Times here, let alone imported copies of the The New York Times. It seems I may spend the next 6 weeks largely isolated from the world. Well it’s an experience let me say.

permalink written by  Drie on March 7, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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here there be monsters

Jodhpur, India

3/6
I have arrived at the internship site, a small village called Jenu-Gagadi an hour and a half Jodhpur that will be home for the next six weeks. Don't try to find it on a map cause it aint anywhere labeled. I have never lived rural-aside from camping or at my cabin- like this before. It’s a shocking difference from ‘overlack’ of Jaipur. While Jaipur is overpopulated and overburdened and lacking infrastructure, Gagadi is just lacking. Situated in the Thar desert, here water and consequently food, money, and other luxuries are all scarce.
The five of us American’s are put up in simply built round concrete structures with a tiny bathroom. Each room has three wood beds (two for sleeping, one for everything else), 4 in-wall shelf, two tiny barred windows, 3 wall hooks, and 1 (thank god!) ceiling fan . The tiny bathroom (maybe 4x5) is equipped with a squatty toilet, a tiny sink, a bucket for washing and a beat up mirror. We are also given two lizards (now christened Fellow, and Buddy), a spider, and a wasp, the latter, which we decided to evict.
But much of the lack here is a pleasant shock. From the noisy honking and polluted bustle of Jaipur we are now given evenings disturbed only the by the wind rustling through the tree bean pods. A hundred thousand stars are visible above at night. In the day our sight is filled with orange blossoming trees, young green wheat fields and village women entering through the sandstone outer barrier to retrieve water in the silver canteens on their heads.
We will have English-speaking Indraniji, who accompanied us from the Jodhpur office, here for one more day after which we will have only one contact who speaks any English. All other communication must take place in either Hindi or Marabati (the local dialect). But everyone is very friendly including two children of one of the staff, brother and sister both around 10 years old. The two hang about waiting to entertained and willing to teach us hindi and marabati at will. They both seem incredibly bright, picking up on Uno, origami, knitting, mandolin and whatever else we teach them with surprising agility and very little common language to get explanations. Do Westerners learn to excel in only one kind of learning? Does book learning inhibit or ability to learn other types of things as easily?
Our first day here began with a 7:30 prayer period which included some chanting mostly to Ram I believe, followed by a reading of Gandhi-ji’s autobiography. Afterward we did the customary 15 minutes of physical work, this time using the classic Indian sweepers to clear fallen leaves out of the main garden area and moving them to the compost. This was followed by the now familiar chai and a breakfast of parantha (a thick flat bread) and chutney (a sauce made of raw vegetables and spices). We then met with the staff to discuss what we might actually do here, a subject until on which we were left in the dark. I would say things are now twighlight. We know that today is to be a rest day along with Sundays, that the day after tomorrow is the international women’s day and we will be part of the rally, and that we will be shadowing them on their work in the villages, and other projects may present themselves once we have done this.
The rest of the day we were left to our devices. So we read, lazed, boiled drinking water, lazed, taught the children Uno, lazed, showered and napped. After a 4 oclock tea we walked into the hills of the desert to watch the sunset. I watched as the other girls learned to dance from several the young Indian ladies and then we all watched the older ladies cook chapatti in the kitchen. We were warned that such ‘down’ days would likely occur. Besides, it happens that today is a holiday and even much the staff is off.
The greatest challenge of this very different lifestyle is going to be the heat. By midday the inside of the our darkened and thickwalled rooms were 31 C while in the sun it is over 35 C. They night cools down. But they tell us that March is cool, and that April will be far worse. By then lazing in the middle of the day may be a necessity for me even if there is work to be done.
So what is there to be done? From the literature I am learning about GRAVIS (Gramin Vikas Vigyan Samiti meaning Rural Science and Technology Organization) and their water resources projects. Essentially GRAVIS aims at helping villagers recover traditional methods of water capture that were lost when government water projects came in and provided water access that is no longer sufficient or efficient. Old simple methods are revised with newer technology. For instance, they are building tankhas which are really giant stone tanks halfway buried in the earth and able to catch water and drain it of silt. If filled by the monsoon (unlikely) the full tank could give drinking water for a family for a full 9 months.
I’m torn between complete satisfaction--who doesn’t want laze about all day and sit in the evening watching the stars in and listening to whistling of the trees?—and living 6 weeks in these conditions with virtually no contact with the outside world, rare doses of fruit, only batteries for my steripin and boiling to get drinking water.



permalink written by  Drie on March 6, 2008 from Jodhpur, India
from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan
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