here there be monsters

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.

written by

Drie on March 6, 2008 from Jodhpur, India

from the travel blog: Adventures in Hindustan

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