India, Day 7 - The tea field.
A quick photo stop while trucking to our next location. What a great smell. If you've never smelled fresh tea growing out of damp earth, you need to. North India produces some amazing tea.
India, Day 7 - Onward, through corn and potholes.
After the youth meeting in the morning, we went back to the flat and ate lunch. With us for the meal was my next host, who had driven in to pick me up. We had met once before, two years prior, so we spent the meal breaking ice and getting re-aquainted. He would take me back to his home in one of India's poorest regions, and I would assist him in his projects for the next week. I bid a grateful farewell to my hosts, and we were off. The drive south was a learning experience of its own. I saw something I had yet to see in my previous trips to India: the use of the highway as a threshing floor. Dry ground is a hot commodity during monsoon season, and when the sun is shining, the highway becomes the most convenient way to quickly dry and separate corn. I entertained myself during the drive by leaning out the window, garnering curious looks as I took snapshots of the laborers we passed throughout our drive.
As interesting as the scenes in the images might be from a standpoint of simple cultural differences, this was an introduction (of a sort) to one of the aspects of India which I see as a slight negative, and that is the population concentration. There are so many people in India, and they are grouped in such massive clusters, that even in the open spaces of rice country, there is often a feeling of exposure--like it is impossible to be completely alone at any time, because there always seems to be children in the bushes.
I began to form this opinion as we whizzed past the farmers using the highway as a drying platform for their harvest of corn. Technically, such a practice is unlawful, but it is tolerated because utilization of any and all available space is necessary for farmers in certain regions to make their living, however meager it is.
On a separate note, I was also reintroduced to the close-quarter, wheel-borne jiu-jitsu match that is Indian traffic. The cars pass literally close enough to touch, and the relatively minimal number of accidents that occur, given the number of cars on the roads, and the poor quality of the roads themselves, it's fairly amazing. Check out the photos to see what I mean.
India, Day 7 - Sunday Youth Meeting and Indian Students
My first week in India drew to a close as the monsoon rains increased in the region where I was staying. The water rose visibly throughout the morning, and our neighbors worried increasingly as nearby streams rose and threatened to invade the bottom floors of every house in the area. Uneasy as we were, the show had to go on, and we proceeded across town to conduct the weekly Sunday youth meeting. There's something incredibly special about hosting an event for kids and knowing that you helped elicit such big smiles in an area of such poor living conditions. India is a hard place in which to make a living. The adults work hard, and the kids do too. In a life marked by repetitions of school, work and poor living conditions, the kids had these two hours on the weekend set aside just for them with music, dance and a message of encouragement. I loved being a part of it.
Incidentally, it was at this time that I first became aware of just how seriously the Indians take education. The lives of students were discussed quite a bit in the talks we gave to the kids, because, more than ever, education is important. In India, where the population is unbelievably dense and competition for employment is unimaginably high, education is the key to upward mobility. Stereotypes about computer nerds and engineers aside, specialized education in a white collar industry is a very real priority to Indian students who are serious about upward mobility. Those who take their education seriously put their American counterparts to shame. Of course, there is also the opposite extreme: many kids don't care at all, and are content to stay in the station in which they were born. These two extremes are very visible, and I saw very little middle ground. Overall, the level of dedication that students put into their studies continued to impress me as I traveled across India.
India, Day 6 - Dinner and Photography
My skill set lends itself to fun as much as it does documentation. It so happened that photography is an interest not only of my host's, but of his close friends and colleagues as well. After the children's meeting on Saturday night, we met back at the flat for me to give them some instruction in the operation of manual cameras after dinner.
India, Day 6 - Children's Meeting
Saturday night means that the time has come for a weekly meeting of the children in the neighborhood. Like most meetings or services in India, it is conducted with music, several speakers and a lot of audience involvement.
