so the other day I was walking down the streets of Pune with some friends to find a coffee shop and with the front of my sandal scooped up the biggest juiciest pile of cow poo you ever did see. i washed it off in the bathroom at the fancy coffee shop. it squished between my toes.
about a week ago I was at an ashram about 2 hours outside of Nagpur. I signed up to do "biogas crew." We walked into the barn after breakfast and Vasant explained how the biogas machine worked then told us we'd be collecting cow poo. no shovels. we used our hands to put it in baskets and take it to the slurry tank. not the end of story. then he showed us the stirring mechanism. it was broken. again with the hands, but with water this time. get all the chunks out! up to our elbows. mmmmmm. but the lights turned on that night...
Friday, December 21, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Sewagram, and the farms
So then comes my favorite part of the trip thus far. We got to Sewagram in the evening of the 4th. We actually stayed across the street from the actual ashram in a guest house. For those who don't know, Sewagram is Gandhi's main ashram where he stayed and did his thing. I don't think I'm going to go into a lot of detail about Gandhi and what he did, but he was a pretty cool dude. We went to evening prayer each night we were there at the ashram and toured around at our leisure. we were only there for two days, which was disappointing, and one of those days we were on field visits. We got to chose between three places and I chose to go to the center for rural technology, a bitchin NGO that gathers appropriate technologies from diverse rural communities around India and disperses them for free (anti-copyright! or "copyleft," if you will). The center was kind of a willy wonka type playground for messing around with different cool technologies. There was a junkyard filled with prototypes for bicycle-powered machines (including a bandsaw and a winnower), a paper making operation, sustainable honey-harvesting experiements, welding and blacksmithing, pottery, and a really really kickass irrigation system.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
India: Delhi, A WEDDING, and the Taj
Well, sounds like everybody wants to hear from me more judging by the million emails I got. I'm trying, but this is the first time I've been able to use the internet since I arrived in India. So....what have I been doing?
We started off in Delhi where we were in homestays for 8 days. Delhi is big, noisy, and polluted, but also pretty sweet. I enjoyed it a lot. We had classes at the Indian Social Institute and had many AMAZING guest speakers (one of whom was NOT Vandana Shiva 'cause she was in the hospital. sad). We went on several fieldtrips, to a Sikh shrine and to the designated protest area, which was one section of a city block in an obscure part of town away from all the government buildings.
My homestay family was awesome. Our mother, Lata, was really sweet and loved to feed us lots and lots of food (I'm noticing a trend). We had an 11 year old host sister, Manurut (Manu for short) and a 16 year old host brother, Vikrant. Vinod, our host dad was a little quiet and his English wasn't that good, but he opened up eventually. So right when I arrived at my homestay they asked if we wanted to go to a wedding, so we dressed up in Lata's clothes and went. That noght was actually the henna party, which takes place at the bride's house. Our family was apparently pretty wealthy and the party was at a big fancy farmhouse about45 minutes outside of Delhi. The bride was a cousin of Lata. The party involved Rachel and me being introduced to every family member, admiring the elaborate henna on the bride (it took 5 hours for them to do it and there was actually a portrait of the bride and groom. on her arm. in henna. on her arm. and Genesha. on her arm. it was beautiful), and then dancing for hours with all the cousins and uncles and aunts. crazy dancing. The uncles especially. I'll have to demonstrate when I get home. It can't be described in words. So much fun. So then the next night we went to the actual wedding. it was absolutely fabulous and unfortunately MY CAMERA RAN OUT OF BATTERIES RIGHT WHEN I GOT THERE because i forgot to charge it and Rachel's was dead too so we have no photographs of the beautiful event, but i guess I still gots it my mind. so here's how it went. Rachel and I walked around mostly with Manu, who was a pretty kickass 11 year old, and sampled possibly every dish on the, not exaggerating, football field sized buffet. There were sparkly lights all over and tons and tons of flowers, mostly marigolds. We weren't allowed to dance that night because we were guests of the bride and only the groom's guests can dance on the night of the wedding. We ate food until we were stuffed and then went to watch the procession. The bride was surrounded by her family and everyone was dressed really elaborately, especially the bride who was wearing a dress that weighed more than her covered in metal and glass glittery stuff with a long train and the biggest gold nose ring I've ever seen and lots and lots of gold jewelry. Apparently the heavier the dress, the richer the family. She had at least two people helping her move while she was wearing it. There was a marching band and everything. Sorry I can't describe the ceremony in more detail. There was a lot going on and I didn't catch all the specifics. The bulk of the ceremony happened in a pillow-filled room off to the side with just the close family (well, and us, since we were temporarily part of the close family). oh i forgot, first the bride and groom sat on a couch in front of an crazy techni-color, glittery, flowery pillar display and received congrats from everyone attending the wedding. individually. Then we went to the pillowy room and listened to some of the ceremony, in Hindi, and had our host sister translate some. By this time it was about midnight, so of course we went for second dinner, the whole time trying to avoid our host brother who we soon learned was really annoying and thought he had to protect us or something and was on our heals the entire night telling us what to do and whatnot, which would be cool if it was helpful, but it clearly wasn't and so Rachel and Manu and I played a little bit of hide and seek with Vikrant, but failed to lose him the entire night. Did I mention there was a moonwalk? there was a moonwalk. and fireworks. We left the whole ordeal at 3 AM, and it still wasn't over. We got to take as many flowers from the display as we wanted. The whole experience was pretty amazing and we were the only ones on our trip to see a wedding. I feel pretty lucky.
After Delhi we took a little trip to the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. Beautiful, of course. and crowded. I wanted to stay for a really long time and imagine all of the cool art I could create inspired by the architecture. I took lots of picture. I promise I'll post pictures one of these days. I just need to find a computer that is fast and modern enough. which would not be the one I'm on now, or most of the ones i've been on since I left.
From Agra we went to Sewagram.....I'm gonna write the rest in another post so it's not so intimidating.
We started off in Delhi where we were in homestays for 8 days. Delhi is big, noisy, and polluted, but also pretty sweet. I enjoyed it a lot. We had classes at the Indian Social Institute and had many AMAZING guest speakers (one of whom was NOT Vandana Shiva 'cause she was in the hospital. sad). We went on several fieldtrips, to a Sikh shrine and to the designated protest area, which was one section of a city block in an obscure part of town away from all the government buildings.
My homestay family was awesome. Our mother, Lata, was really sweet and loved to feed us lots and lots of food (I'm noticing a trend). We had an 11 year old host sister, Manurut (Manu for short) and a 16 year old host brother, Vikrant. Vinod, our host dad was a little quiet and his English wasn't that good, but he opened up eventually. So right when I arrived at my homestay they asked if we wanted to go to a wedding, so we dressed up in Lata's clothes and went. That noght was actually the henna party, which takes place at the bride's house. Our family was apparently pretty wealthy and the party was at a big fancy farmhouse about45 minutes outside of Delhi. The bride was a cousin of Lata. The party involved Rachel and me being introduced to every family member, admiring the elaborate henna on the bride (it took 5 hours for them to do it and there was actually a portrait of the bride and groom. on her arm. in henna. on her arm. and Genesha. on her arm. it was beautiful), and then dancing for hours with all the cousins and uncles and aunts. crazy dancing. The uncles especially. I'll have to demonstrate when I get home. It can't be described in words. So much fun. So then the next night we went to the actual wedding. it was absolutely fabulous and unfortunately MY CAMERA RAN OUT OF BATTERIES RIGHT WHEN I GOT THERE because i forgot to charge it and Rachel's was dead too so we have no photographs of the beautiful event, but i guess I still gots it my mind. so here's how it went. Rachel and I walked around mostly with Manu, who was a pretty kickass 11 year old, and sampled possibly every dish on the, not exaggerating, football field sized buffet. There were sparkly lights all over and tons and tons of flowers, mostly marigolds. We weren't allowed to dance that night because we were guests of the bride and only the groom's guests can dance on the night of the wedding. We ate food until we were stuffed and then went to watch the procession. The bride was surrounded by her family and everyone was dressed really elaborately, especially the bride who was wearing a dress that weighed more than her covered in metal and glass glittery stuff with a long train and the biggest gold nose ring I've ever seen and lots and lots of gold jewelry. Apparently the heavier the dress, the richer the family. She had at least two people helping her move while she was wearing it. There was a marching band and everything. Sorry I can't describe the ceremony in more detail. There was a lot going on and I didn't catch all the specifics. The bulk of the ceremony happened in a pillow-filled room off to the side with just the close family (well, and us, since we were temporarily part of the close family). oh i forgot, first the bride and groom sat on a couch in front of an crazy techni-color, glittery, flowery pillar display and received congrats from everyone attending the wedding. individually. Then we went to the pillowy room and listened to some of the ceremony, in Hindi, and had our host sister translate some. By this time it was about midnight, so of course we went for second dinner, the whole time trying to avoid our host brother who we soon learned was really annoying and thought he had to protect us or something and was on our heals the entire night telling us what to do and whatnot, which would be cool if it was helpful, but it clearly wasn't and so Rachel and Manu and I played a little bit of hide and seek with Vikrant, but failed to lose him the entire night. Did I mention there was a moonwalk? there was a moonwalk. and fireworks. We left the whole ordeal at 3 AM, and it still wasn't over. We got to take as many flowers from the display as we wanted. The whole experience was pretty amazing and we were the only ones on our trip to see a wedding. I feel pretty lucky.
After Delhi we took a little trip to the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. Beautiful, of course. and crowded. I wanted to stay for a really long time and imagine all of the cool art I could create inspired by the architecture. I took lots of picture. I promise I'll post pictures one of these days. I just need to find a computer that is fast and modern enough. which would not be the one I'm on now, or most of the ones i've been on since I left.
From Agra we went to Sewagram.....I'm gonna write the rest in another post so it's not so intimidating.
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