Field Day 3

Yesterday was another day in the Jeep, tackling more villages...

Luckily for us, our full days of fieldwork have been on the 2 hottest days we have experienced yet in India. Today is about 40C (104F), but yesterday was probably hotter. It has not been raining lately, which means that the sun is blazing, and the sweat runs down our cheeks and thighs constantly, even while we are doing nothing but sitting on a chair talking. I actually don't mind it so much; it's like living in a sweat lodge. Just have to make sure that we drink enough water, regardless of how hot the water may be.

So we Jeeped it. The drive was about 90 minutes, on rickety, turbulent roads. Some paved, some with potholes, some unpaved dirt paths. Up and down, up and down. Speed bumps are on every road, regardless of it its paved or not. Not to mention that our roads are usually narrow anyways, and everyone shares the roads: big trucks, Jeeps, cars, little trucks, rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, goats, water yaks. I'm serious. And the standard driving laws of 2-way traffic on designated sides of the road are nonexistent. Swerving, speed-bumping, speeding, stopping.... Our tailbones are hurting after all of these joyride.

My favorite part of the car-ride yesterday was when we were supposed to drive on a pedestrian dirt road. So basically, this one village was very far out, and nestled behind a huge rice paddy field. There was a dirt road that went to the village, but it was maybe the side of a NYC sidewalk (at most). On either side of this elevated road were rice paddies. We were in a Jeep, and the driver looked wary of this road. We volunteered to walk there, but they insisted...so here we went, teeter-tottering on this dirt road to the village, praying to not tumble into one of the paddies. Mission success.

We started off with going to a school and watching Sudhansu (Soo-dan-choo, our translator) talk to the little kids. The classroom had about 30 kids in it, ranging from very young to maybe teenager, all in uniform and sitting on the floor. They looked very interested by us, but luckily Sudhansu was more interesting. He started singing with the kids, and playing games with them, and they were all taken by his charismatic personality and listening fervently to everything he had to say. He is a great singer, too! It was really cool to hear him sing call-and-response with the kids.

Meanwhile, us white folk were sitting in the front of the classroom watching, and drinking Thums Up. Slowly but surely, the small door of the classroom was crowded by people gawking at us, and the windows were being taken over by curious faces and colorful saree-covered eyes (see "White Stare" from previous post).

We took a tour of this village also, while the community watched and followed us around to see what we were doing.

Sudhansu is really a good translator. He is a 27-year-old single Berhampurian from GV, and he's now our buddy. He understands us for the most part, and he is expressive enough to get his thoughts across, even if his words aren't correct. And he has a great presence; while he translates for us the entire time, he is also managing large numbers of people in a discussion on the Oriyan side. He basically facilitates and leads the conversation on both ends, but he is still able to pull aside and tell us what is going on. He really showed his great leadership and public speaking skills with kids as well. He sings in the car sometimes, and shows us things in the markets. He has taken us to the market twice and helped us get whatever we'd like to get. What a fun guy!

Our next failure village we visited was not very helpful. Everyone was getting tired, and the translations were getting a bit funky by the end of it, so I wonder how effective that meeting really was.

As we were ready to drive home, the GV men offered to show us a deer park (sacred animals here and elsewhere) and a sacred hotspring of Goddess Kandhuni in Taptapani! The deer were adorable (though I was being eaten alive by the mosquitos). The hotspring was indeed hot. It was really neat, walking into this shrine/temple area that was dedicated to this Goddess of the Forest, and seeing a spring flowing into this pool. We walked in it, surprised that anything could be in fact hotter than the actual outside air.

The drive there was really amazing, too. Be surprised, all of my pictures are of these super landscapes. When we were driving to Taptapani, I realized we were driving through a nook of the mountains, and surrounding us were huge, luck mountains. The sunset behind the mountains made it even more incredible.

We talking to our driver about our "town", and I noticed how silly of a concept NYC can be. He asked us if we had mountains and forest, no. Do we have coconut and mango trees? No. No?! No. Do we have any fruit trees? Nope. Rice paddies, vegetable farms? No. (It was really complicated to explain to him that all of our food has to be brought in from other states for our consumption) Do you have blue skies? We don't even have STARS?! Moon on occasion... I think his flabbergastedness was appropriate, and I wonder how we could all live in such an unsustainable environment.

A note on colors: Why is is that developing countries look like bright, colorful rainbows everywhere, while it seems like developed countries are beige, black and white? The colors people wear here are amazing, and happy! They drench their houses with colors. Everything is festive, almost, and your eyes can feel satisfied after a long day because it has been full of colors. And yet, in the US and Europe, it's almost like we are scared of colors. Colors, too bright, too fun. We might be sophisticated, and that means sucking out the great colors of the rainbows from our daily lifestyles and only using them sparingly for "flare". Like color, for us, is a luxury. Why can't colors be prominent everywhere? Any ideas I'm open to hearing.

It was dark by now, and we had to head back to campus for dinner.

And with that, it's my pleasure to tell you that open defecation is alive and well in rural India, still.