complicated simple life.

I have always envied the simple life. The people who know how to work the land and make something out of nothing; the idea of being able to sustain yourself. And so when activity week rolled around and I was headed to a nearby village, Gaird, with a group of 14 ninth graders and 3 other chaperones, I was beyond excited. We fully immersed ourselves, living life the way the villagers do, and well, it was hard.

It felt as if I had stepped back in time; how could a community be living without modern day conveniences or any connection to the outside world (other than the occasional mobile phone)? Our entire group felt the overwhelming hit of culture shock unlike any of us had ever felt before.

Akansha and Kheytson in front of Gaird

Perhaps the best example of how differently this culture operated comes from our second night. We were camping in tents, and the first night me and a few other girls had heard rocks being thrown down at the tents. We approached the village leader about it the next day, and he assumed that because we were women, we were making it all up (I won't even get started with how many tiffs I had with this man). After attempting to put up a fight that consisted of me telling students what I wanted to say and them translating, we gave up and headed back down to our camp.

About 20 minutes later, as one of the girls was zipping up her tent, a rock came in and hit her hand. She of course was a bit shaken, and acted in typical ninth grade girl style, crying and screaming. The entire village came out of their homes, and began frantically searching for the culprits. Turns out, it was just two 8 year old boys who were trying to scare us.

Now, in most Western countries, the boys would be given a stern talking to and maybe be grounded for a day or two. These boys were literally thrown down the hill by a pack of angry men, brought in front of us, forced to apologize and then beat repeatably as we watched helpless.

After about three minutes of hell we were able to get them to bring it back up to the main square, but the pack of men returned a few minutes later, this time bringing with the parents of the boys, who were fighting on their children's half. This proved to be exciting. By this point I had gotten all the kids into their tents, and the one chaperone of us who actually speaks Hindi, was trying to do damage control with the leader of the village a ways away. That left me and two other twenty something year olds with a pack of grown, pissed off men. I tried to get them to stop, yelling "Bas" over and over, and started to be pushed around before I decided I should probably back off. Luckily we didn't have to deal any blows and somehow we were able to usher them away and calm things down.

This is the way that problems are dealt with in the village. They don't just acknowledge a problem, they see to it that it will never happen again. The next morning we met with a group of the men and explained it as if we were the wrong ones, because we didn't know how to respond since this isn't how things are dealt with in our culture; explaining that many of the kids have never even been spanked. The men couldn't believe it, but they apologized and all was well.

After that, we felt we had fully been initiated into the village life. Once again, we were wrong.

Each afternoon we lead PRA sessions with the villagers. The girls would interview the women, and the boys the men in hopes that if the men were not around, the women would not clam up. We had a different focus topic each day, all of which centered around the difficulties and problems of daily life. We worked it down to a list of eight problems which the kids will bring down and present to the Magistrate in Dehradun, hoping to push for some sort of change.

These women are incredible. They wake at four each morning and work non stop until 10, taking their only breaks when they are eating meals. Wood is scarce, and to collect any they have to hike to the top of the local mountain, gather a bundle of sticks that they then carry back home on their heads, taking a total of about four hours. To get water they either have to walk two hours to the river, or to the village gate where there is one little hose they can use as long as people take turns. There is no medical care whatsoever and often they have to walk half a day to Dehradun if they need a doctor. They are often abused physically and verbally, many of them cannot even afford to send their children to primary school, and it eats them up.

At one point, a woman turned to me and said, "Here, take him, take my baby. I will miss him, but he will have such a better life with you"... I was left absolutely speechless and heartbroken. How are you supposed to respond to such a plea?

I am so privileged it is pathetic, who am I to not offer my help and services when I have so much going for me? Luckily, because the kids were translating, they were able to break the spell of my silence, explaining to the lady that I can't just take her baby legally.  I have come back to that moment hundreds of times since, wondering what the right response would have been... it really has made me take a second look at my life and my priorities.

The days were hard. Every morning we had an activity, we went to the local school to teach, learned how to use a plow (similar to one the pilgrims probably used), dug holes for saplings with pick axes and long sticks rather than shovels, helped to garden, picked weeds along the road, visited the river, and were taught how to 'properly' climb trees.

It was quite the experience to see the students do manual labor, many of these students didn't even know how to properly wash their dishes. I said 'suck it up princess' and 'man up' at least once an hour. They would ask for band aids for tiny scratches and blisters and spent most of the time dehydrated and sun burnt. But for the most part, they did the work without complaining, understanding that this is the one time in their lives that they have to work hard outside, and that it would help enhance the overall experience. They came out as quite the lot of troopers and I am quite proud of them.

 

The 'city' mill

We also spent loads of hours just playing with the kids. These kids have close to nothing, but they are some of the happiest children I have encountered. As with most kids, they had ridiculous amounts of energy and left us all exhausted by 8pm every night. We taught them games like 'dook dook goose' and bopbop bibbity bop, and in turn they taught us Hindi games that I still do not know how to pronounce.

Each night we went on family visits, going to a home and hanging out, asking one another questions, eating a meal together, smoking hookah (on their half) and having quality family time, village style. Despite the extreme language barrier, I was able to bond with quite a few of the older women and they were always eager to let me help out with their chores.

One lady told me that because my nose ring is large, it looks as if I have been married and have children (a compliment for them). I asked her how old she thought I was and she responded with "oh, 19 or 20"... many of these ladies are married around 15 and kicking out babies by 18, the wheel of life is always turning I suppose, just another example of how opposite our cultures are.

The pack of stories I have from this trip seems endless. I came away with a renewed appreciation for the little things in life, and a new outlook on materialistic Western society. I also came away with a horrible, itchy rash that I am quite positive might be bed bugs or lice or something of the sort (don't worry, it's gone now). It was definitely an adventure of a lifetime.