India, Day 8 - Rice Field Respite
As we Bolero'd our way through impoverished villages and shantytowns of eastern India, my host leaned forward and gave fresh directions to our intrepid driver. After he finished with the rapid, rolling-R burst of localized Hindi, he turned to me and said that we were going to detour through his home village. I was to see the place of his birth and the rest of his tribe. I told him that I couldn't wait to see the place. In my last entry, I posted about the incredible poverty to which I bore witness in this area. Future entries will show even grittier images than the ones I have posted thus far. You drive long enough through certain parts of India, and things start to look alike. Endless, pitted roads of repetitious cell phone recharge stations, machine shops and samosa stands. Villages of identical thatch huts appearing in the middle of rice fields that extend to a sensible horizon darkened by palm fringes. Even after just a few hours, the effect can be oppressive.
India is second only to China in world rice production; the last available measurement from 2010 placing its production at 120.6 million metric tons. As a staple food for its 1.2 billion citizens, most of the rice grown in India is traded within the country; the only variety to be traded outside of India to any substantial extent being the gourmet basmati variety. That said, large-scale farms still buy seeds from Western agriculture companies like Monsanto; and, like most other scenarios involving Big Pharma or industrial food production, the unethical policies of the seed producer has done exponentially more harm than good in India. I highly recommend that you watch this video of Dr. Vandana Shiva to learn more about these problems. As the Fair Trade movement gains traction in cultural consciousness, don't limit your awareness just to the sources of your coffee and chocolate. When you see images of smiling Kenyan or Ethiopian coffee farmers--remember these photos and consider the people who made your plate of basmati bryani possible.
That said, my host's home village represented a striking contrast to the usual scene. Conditions there were not only different, they felt...freer. I left with the impression that their agriculture was based on subsistence rather than subservient cultivation for the local rice barons. The people here seemed content and happy.
We pulled to a stop at the rim of a rice field. My host and I jumped out of the Bolero and he led me down to meet the people of his village who were busy planting the summer rice crop. However, they weren't so busy that they couldn't take a break to smile and meet the gora with the camera. The women were a bit shy, exhibiting the conspicuous modesty common among Indian females, but they seemed to truly get a kick out of seeing their likenesses in the monitor of my camera. Hanging about on the fringe of the crowd, a goat herder wandered up and showed himself to be an outright ham as soon as the camera turned his way.
This little episode, lasting no more than ten minutes as I photographed the people in groups and as individuals, but for a newcomer to the area, it was happy respite from the depressing scenes I had been in the middle of for the first part of the day, and would continue to see for the next five in this area.
India, Day 8 - Village Outreach
Recapping day seven took forever. It was like flying west--the day just never ends. After arriving in my second location and being greeted by the "cast of thousands" that live with my hosts, we all took a good night's sleep and were up with the sun the next morning. The day began with a group devotional before the orphans went to school. If you have never heard a group prayer in India, it's a unique thing. Everyone prays aloud simultaneously, and I have to confess that it caught me off guard when I first heard it.
Devotions over, kids at school and breakfast eaten, my host and I set off in the Bolero once again. Our project for the day was village outreach. This area is home to a myriad of transient "gypsies" who move in during the harvest seasons, live lightly on the land until the harvest is over, then move on. We went to reach out and speak with these people. We didn't take any gifts, we didn't raise a tent, we just walked up, spoke to the people, and moved on.
More than anything else, this felt like pure missions work. My host reminded me of Paul. Go into the center of a community, speak, and continue on your path. It was at this point during the trip that I began reading through the book of Acts in earnest, trying to learn from the example of Paul, whose restless and often reckless devotion to his calling has been matched by very few individuals since. This week, I would read, watch and learn.
Poverty is hard to look at, no matter where you are in the world. But poverty without hope is even worse. When you walk into a mass of crude tents to visit a people group who neither know nor have imagined a life any better than the one into which they were born, it's hard to watch. And we had nothing to offer. We couldn't make their lives any better materially, and we did not lead them to believe that we could. We simply tried to give them a little hope. I don't know what kind of impact our visits had on the people we spoke to, but we can hope that they took it to heart.
India, Day 7 - The Welcome Wagon
Upon arrival at my second host's home in India, I was greeted by a fresh crowd: the orphans he cares for. I had met this group of children on my first trip to India, several years before. I never got the chance to get to know them, but my time with them on this trip more than made up for it.
All of these children are supported by Compassion International. Compassion is a wonderful organization, and the support it provides to children all over the world, including India, Africa, Central and South America, allows them to have education, skills training, food and water. They might still live in open-air houses without utilities, but their lives are enriched with nutrition and knowledge.
This group, by American standards, have no right to be as happy as they are. They live in an unsealed cement house with no running water and a few hours of electricity a day. They go to school for eight hours a day and spend four more in homework and revisions. They work hard and study hard. Yet they have the biggest hearts and smiles you could ever dream of. Whenever they have visitors, they welcome them into the house with songs and a dance or two. Even though I was only one person, they still put on the full show.
I spent a love of time with the kids in my off hours between projects with my host. We played games, I helped them with their English and sat with them to do my own journaling while they worked on their work every morning and evening. My contributions to their days always felt minimal at best, but the whole crew still treated me like one of the family, and when I got sick a few days later, they were insistent about doing as much for me as possible. I defy you to find a sweeter group of children anywhere on the planet.
India, Day 7 - My second arrival.
When we last cracked open the volume entitled "Steven in India," I was traveling south. I dodged the monsoons of India's northeast corner to go a little further south and bob back up out of reach of the deluge. My second host and I passed fields of tea and roads of corn, and we arrived safely in the little town you see below. What makes this town unique in India? The poverty and the lack of mobility, that's what. This area has the lowest education rates in India. I visited some schools, and I can say that the teachers are well-intentioned and do all they can, but when there are very few visible options for graduates or non-graduates within a hundred miles, what incentives do students have to continue?
At any rate, the welcome I received the moment I stepped out of the Bolero was intense. Very few white faces are seen in this area, and my own epidermis was more than just a novelty, it was a beacon. A mob of kids materialized all around me as soon as my feet hit the muddy ground. Young children and young adults. Cute and homely. They all appeared around me with their lips bulgingly wrapped around the enormous teeth common to the tribes of the region. These smiles were quickly unsheathed when I smiled at them. They shook my hand and held on to it in the Indian way as they asked my name and learned as much about me as they could in as short a time as possible, just in case I wasn't staying. And, as always, the people of India never glance when there's time to stare. And boy do they know how to stare. The unblinking gaze is rarely a sign of hostility or rudeness, it's simply how the culture operates. Whoever didn't come directly up to me stood at the edge of the throng and gave me a firm and unblinking once-over--their gazes can be glimpsed in the background of a few photos.
India, Day 7 - Escaping Monsoon Floodwaters
Going to my next location on Sunday afternoon, I was happy to be on the move again for two reasons. The first reason? It meant that I had been in India in a week and nothing had gone wrong. Unlike so many other, similar trips to the country, my journey was proceeding according to plan. That was good, and it put my mind a little more at east. I loved my first hosts, but I wasn't in India with the goal of staying in any one place for too long.
The second reason was the flooding. The rains had not been torrential, but they had been steady. As close as I had been to the mountains, rain and runoff had gotten together and wreaked havoc on the local landscape. The water table had reached the saturation point, and pleased with itself at this feat, was creeping up still higher to invade bottom story rooms all over town.
My elevated seat aboard the Bolero gave me a good view to photograph the floods as I left town. The further we drove away from the mountains, the drier conditions became. Flooded and potholed streets gave way to better-maintained highways to take us southward, and instead of sodden ground, we were treated to the aforementioned sights of farmers spreading their corn out to dry on the roadways. India is a country that never fails to show visitors something new and interesting at every turn. That day, a drive of two hours made the difference between floodwaters and roadside threshing floors. Contrasts like that always remind me of a moment a year ago when a street vendor saw my friends and I taking in the spectacle of costumed and bedazzled beggar children outside of a temple. He laughed in a knowing, chortling sort of way and called out "Incredible India, am I right?"
Yep.
