Alwar Day One

After checking into our hotel we quickly made our way to Om Prakash’s pottery shop about 20 minutes away. He learned pottery from his father and was trained in one of the SDS programs started by Mrs. Lall on increasing skill for decoration and marketing.  He now operates a business that has won awards and is attracting global demand: http://ramgarhclaypottery.com/index.php

Me, Giant award winning clay hookah, Leah (award winning roomie) and Bachan Prasad our  awesome coordinator.

His story is incredible and he was very welcoming, patient, and kind in our visit. We went to the location of his home/business and toured the different areas for clay, wheels, and the massive kiln while meeting some of his family, employees and their families.

Om and his kiln!

Note:Just in case you are unaware: These kids aren't sad. I'm
assuming it's a cultural thing for them to not smile because
they were all cracking up and playing with me like 30 seconds
before this shot. I've noticed a lot of the woman try to keep
a straight face when I'm taking pics too..some more successful
than others to my delight :)

Namaste

Sharing Greetings :)

Front left: Sanjay (area specialist), Om Prakash, Dr. Lall, Leah, Me
Back right to left: Kireeti Ghanta, Kidan Asgedom, Family and Workers at the site.

I even got a try at the wheel!!

I failed miserably twice even with his kind and patient direction, but it was rather overwhelming since there was a large crowd of workers, journalists, and friends gathered around me!! I would almost have it and then my finger would slip and it would collapse. I laughed and said, “Oh well! I tried” and the crowd laughed and began chattering as they prepared for someone else to try. Still crouched on the dirt floor with clay covered hands I looked over to Om and said “Danyabad” (thankyou) and he looked at me with an intense seriousness and quietly said, “It doesn’t only take skill, it takes confidence.” I nodded to which he smiled, and I made my way up through the commotion of the crowd to let Leah have her turn. She made a beautiful pot with his incredible tutelage and we all laughed some more as I stood reflecting on his words. Why is it that India and its people always have lessons for you? It seems sometimes that the people here can see my spirit and reflect it back...as though it is their responsibility to strengthen my spirit for life. And so I stood absorbing this while standing in a sweltering room on the dirt floor of a rural Indian family business, as children ducked, hid, giggled and ran around me.  Truthfully I don't know that I'd trust this kind of training from anywhere else :)

Jaipur

So Monday we traveled to Jaipur which is the capital of the desert state, Rajasthan and I wish we had been able to spend more time there!

Traveling! Leah, Ritika (our colleague,translator, coordinator, expert shopper, etc.), and me!

The pollution seemed a little worse than even Delhi’s, but the city seemed well planned,cleaner, and very colorful. We spent the early afternoon touring a handmade paper factory which was fascinating. They took us from the beginning steps of sorting the cotton fabric scraps from the synthetic ones all the way to the flower petal picker and pressers.

I honestly don’t know how some of these guys work over the hot water and pulp in such heat, but the conditions weren’t crowded and the facilities were clean which was nice to see. Later we of course went to check out the markets before a late night dinner and sleep.
The next morning we woke up early to make it to an elephant ride up the mountain to Amber Fort which is the most picturesque and breathtaking place we’ve been to yet. SDS was so amazing to have arranged this once-in- a lifetime experience for us and everyone had an amazing time. That said, I feel the need to address my feelings on my personal experience.
I regret taking the ride immensely.I had reservations once we entered the city and I saw one of the elephants walking by. It didn’t seem that happy and he looked tired. Nonetheless I went about our busy day without time to think about it more. The next morning as we prepared to go I came to the conclusion that it was a once in a lifetime experience, that it was a ‘when in Rome’ situation, and that this was probably a good place that cared for the elephants and provided them with a good life. Upon arrival the next morning I was still a bit hesitant, but the arrangements had been made and so I decided to enjoy myself, feel the amazing experience, and watch to make sure the elephants were actually happy. I saw one smiling and it brought me immense comfort.

By half way up the mountain I realized I had made a huge mistake and wanted nothing more than to get down or cry. As we passed another elephant ‘driver’ I witnessed a small iron spike in his hand which he jabbed underneath the cloth covering the elephant where I’m assuming none of us were supposed to see. But I did see it and my spirit collapsed. I watched my ‘driver’ with an eagle eye after this. He was an elderly man and seemed kind. He only had a small bamboo rod and he never once touched the elephant with it. I guess it goes to show that you’ll always have some bad eggs in a crowd, but the fact that the other driver was somewhat blatant led me to believe that these practices are at least somewhat tolerated and accepted. I loved my elephant though, and I got to stroke his ear when I got down before an armed guard yelled at me to leave the platform. Our elephant was a graceful young thing and while I wouldn’t do it again I’ll never forget him carrying us up that Indian mountain in his swift lumbering gait.

After we left the elephant I lost myself in the beauty of the fort and the picturesque views of the misty mountains and ancient walls.

About 30 minutes later I stumbled upon snake charmers and was so surprised and entranced at such an oddity I found myself sitting down with them and helping them play. Once again I suddenly looked at the snakes and realized, “what in the world am I doing? This cannot possibly be a good life?” and quickly took my exit with a confused and shaky conscience. We all laughed at my strange adventure and walked on to enjoy more of such a beautiful destination, but the feeling of wrong never left me and became more solidified as the day went on.



So! Sorry for the downer but I just hope that some reader will learn from my mistakes. I was thrust into situations where I didn’t have the opportunity to Google “elephant rides – good?” “Charmed cobras in a basket –happy?” and was forced to make quick decisions on my own with only my moral code to guide me. I failed and in that I have learned and grown. This is obviously a part of my soul that needs strengthening and I at least thank the experiences for teaching me that. From now on if it is suspect of harming another, then it’s not worth the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience…at least for me. I’ll obviously let you decide for yourself. Kind of a tumultuous day for my heart and moral compass, but I’m better for it in the end, and the overall experience at Amber Fort was one of awe inspiring beauty.

Visions

You should be able to click on the pics to get a bigger picture and scroll through!

Reflection On Our First Two Weeks

Hello! This week has flown by with lots of work and afternoons at the bazaar. I unfortunately succumbed to the dreaded “Delhi belly” yesterday, but the anticipation was much worse than the actuality and I’m feeling close to a 100% again. We went down to a local market last night to get crackers, peanut butter, Gatorade and sprite to soothe my tummy and satisfy everyone’s tastes for home. We had a great time walking around the little shops and cooling ourselves down in the fat cool drops of rain that made their way through the sandy wind storm. We’ve had a few of these storms throughout the last few days and it’s cooled the area to the low hundreds. It’s almost a blessing that it was so abnormally hot when we first arrived, because now anything lower feels like heaven.

Work is going great and we’re in the final stages of preparation before our week in the villages. It’s getting more and more exciting as we prepare our surveys and plan for our exit from the city. We are each responsible for creating the surveys and information we want to collect and I’ve ended up with four different ones! Luckily, it’s by choice and I’m really happy with the content I’ll be covering. My surveys are targeted for the district officers, teachers, students, and parents. The schools are out for summer unfortunately, but they are arranging meetings for me and I’ll hopefully be able to visit the local school and tour even though the students aren’t there. The students and teachers all live locally so meetings should be convenient for all.

We are all getting more and more used to India life, though India does not make it easy. Every day you are blasted with sights, sounds, and smells that are enough to make the strongest of us falter. But nonetheless we assimilate. Last night, on a mad rickshaw ride home from our grocery run, I actually thought to myself that it was really rude of my driver to have not honked at another car…a sure sign you’re figuring things out. :) More importantly though, is the shock factor wearing off. Seeing the torn down shacks, piles of trash, crumbling infrastructure, children begging, the crippled, families living under the overpass...or more commonly under a tarp, weather beaten skeletal dogs scrounging for food, men sleeping on the sidewalks…or is it a body, ….it all wears on you in the beginning. You feel yourself tensed up and exhausted after just a few hours of trying to make your way. Before I arrived I thought to myself, “I really want to make sure I see the slums of the city too, so I don’t get a skewed view of what city life is really like for people.” As though I were in L.A. and wanting to see skid row or something. I simply laugh at the thought now. It is everywhere. It is in your face every day and there is no ignoring it. I also had heard, “People will stare at you, and try to scam you” and I thought oh, well, it will be weird but no big deal. I had this vision of easily walking down the modern, clean street to a grocery store or bank and then “going to visit” the old style bazaars and places in need where I would feel out of place and on guard. I had visions of learning the local customs as I glided through the city visiting all there is to see. And then I find myself here. Faced with the pollution, walking past sewage, facing a little girl covered in dirt asking me to buy a pen, a young boy sitting on the median barricade with no left foot, men with only skin stretched over their bones rambling some Hindi as they reach out to you, piles of trash and half finished construction at every turn, and people looking at you…because I’m western or because I’ve infringed into some community space where I’m not welcome…how can I know. Of course there have been amazing moments throughout as we see all there is to see, sharing moments of laughter with my companions, smiles from our trainers, and the happiness of our new friends, but it only fills the gaps, until you make your way back to your hotel room to wash your dusty feet, sit down and try to figure out how to get something for dinner. And then you would sit down to think, reflect, try to make some sense from the madness, but your body and mind are done with that for the day so you collapse into bed and sleep a dreamless sleep until you wake up at dawn with a quiet resignation to move.

Over time, though, while it’s not something that disappears completely from your mind, it is at least something that begins to grant you reprieve. You are able to see more now that your mind has accepted the new information as true. It’s time to accept it as reality and begin building. And so you start to see the trees again, the street children laughing with each other while on a break from pandering, a group of kids playing cricket out in a barren lot, parrots and hawks swooping overhead, a particularly lush and clean shaded block of the city, a tranquil garden with an ancient tomb looming over you somehow making you feel safe in your smallness, a woman with a beautiful sari walking with her goods balanced gracefully upon her head, the beautiful art and goods only India can make (a bizarre fact of life that such extreme contrasting visions exist in one place) a family settling down to take their meal in their lean-to, a father throwing stones with his daughter by the construction heap… and slowly you feel yourself slip back to your place in humanity…to where you belong…no longer peeking through the window with uncertainty and fear. So, signing off tonight with my feet placed firmly in India, and with a lighter spirit, promises of good dreams, and a strengthened heart. A toast to life I raise to you…Goodnight my friends :)

Work!

Being silly at work. Namaste!

Ok! So it’s Friday and I FINALLY have a spare minute!! We just got back from the bazaar where we spent a couple hours sweltering in the tightly packed streets fending off vendors and having the new friends we’ve met at the India Habitat Centre (where our office is) haggle for us. One shop owner got annoyed and evidently said, “Why are you bargaining for them? They are foreigners.” To which Asta replied that Leah was her brother’s wife. Haha.

Anyway, back to basics! We have had an intense week working at Society for Developmental Studies (SDS). Dr. Lall is the director and he’s pretty awesome. He refuses to take it easy on us and expects us to take our training extremely seriously. In his words “I’ve been given permission to be ruthless.” On the other hand he is hilarious, kind, generous, and a lot of fun. We went to dinner with him last night and had a blast trying all the wonderful Indian foods he insisted upon. So we work M-F 9:30-5 and some Saturdays. We are taking lectures on the SDS community empowerment model along with information about how to approach and develop strategies for community problems. The training is invaluable and we all agree that while we were (and sometimes still are) overwhelmed by being thrown into one of the most intense internships ever, we are all going to be so much better for it. The professional development we are receiving is amazing and it will reach so much farther into work with our own communities and beyond. The India Habitat Centre where we work!

So basically Alwar is a city with many outer lying rural villages. There are many artisans who live there that have passed down their trade over the generations, but who have been pushed into labor jobs due to their work not being as marketable (think potters who were valuable for pots which kept water cold, but the introduction of refrigerators cutting their demand) or middle men coming in and stealing profits and taking advantage of the artisans skills with little payment. Then congestion in the villages, wide spread poverty, and little if any infrastructure (piped water, toilets, etc.) led to even less ability to practice their trade or store their goods. The community also was split due to competition with each other over a limited market. So SDS came in and taught the artisans business skills. They taught them how to circumvent the middle man, how to manage finances to improve their business, ways to make their products more marketable (pots with designs, shoes with embroidery), how to reduce waste (kiln improvements to reduce breakage), technical skills (sewing machine), and how to work together to form alliances and get loans for their homes and businesses…just to name a few. Then they assisted with what the community specifically asked for such as literacy training for the adults. The goal (and what SDS has been incredibly successful at) is to only offer services and support that are sustainable by the people without further outside assistance. So, for instance they don’t buy a large machine that relies on gasoline which they don’t have access to without them, etc. It’s an amazing model that has had incredible results…which we will get to go see in about a week!!!!!! So for our own work we are each responsible for our own research report consisting of two parts. The first is an overview of the rural villages we will be visiting in a week and how the interventions and strategies SDS have developed affected them. The second part is specific to each of our focus. I am focusing on primary education and literacy as related to community empowerment, Leah is dental hygiene, Kireeti on planning and governance, and Kidan on media. We each are creating surveys for local officials and community members related to our focus. For instance I plan on surveying district officers, teachers, and students. We will then use this data to analyze any road blocks and causative factors that hinder further enrichment of these goals along with strategies to help. IT’S CRAZY!!! But also awesome, and so exciting to be part of. We head to Agra tomorrow just for a break from work and to see the Taj Mahal. It’s supposed to be blazing hot, but we’re all still very excited! Other than that we just try to keep cool. It was 118 degrees yesterday and expected to be worse in the deserts where we’re headed to work. Even the locals here have said the heat is extreme and much worse than normal. I guess even in the rural villages they talk about global warming even though they haven’t heard the term, reasons for it, or anything about it from outside sources!! Amazing stuff, and really sets in the reality of the situation.

Beginnings

Over spring break I received an e-mail from the University of Southern Indiana Teacher Education Department where I am in the final phases of the elementary education program. It said there was a Global Internship for India being conducted through the University and that it was accepting applications for this summer if anyone was interested. I paused, thought, "Well that would be just crazy" but continued to stare at the email. After a moment of grinning in childish delight, and challenging myself inwardly I began the essays. Three essays, a formal application, and an interview later I am heading to India to be part of this incredible program. I can't quite believe this has happened and feel incredibly blessed to have this opportunity. It's all been a blur, but I get more excited by the day! There are so many great reasons why this trip is so exciting for me beyond visiting such a magical place. I am going to get to meet a great team of people who are in India working on a community empowerment model, train under this program, and have a chance to work with and learn from the people of India. Also, I get the chance to work with three other students from U.S.I. that have been chosen for the program that I likely would not have met otherwise. When I come home, I will begin the last phase of the teacher education program...student teaching. My hope is that I can bring these experiences and life lessons back into the classroom to not just enrich my student's lives, but the community as a whole. I don't know a lot about the program yet, but should be going through an orientation at the end of the semester...then we head out on May 26th and return June 26th! I will be posting pictures, stories, and information here as often as I am able throughout the whole process. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them here, and I will do my best to answer promptly. Wish me luck! :)