I am back in the village and though my first day and half was a bit rocky, and the heat makes everything feel uncomfortable, I am happy to say I have immersed myself back into my little universe --- bubble of rural India and feel reinvigorated.
I truly must be Indian, because I just told myself life must go on, and I had a week to grieve and now its best to stay committed to my cause to get through each day.
I am truly a part of the world, with my practical fluency in the language and my closeness with the family -- it is true for all intents and purposes that I am Rajasthani and part of me belongs there. This week I even gave my little girl a bath, one of the boys slept on my cot with me at night, one of the wives let me give her a piggy back ride, and the one year old baby cries now -- not when he sees me because he is scared, but because he wants to be in my lap more than anyone elses even his grandmother. A relative arrived, and assumed I was the little one's Masi and not the "foreigner" that i am.
I have been asking more questions, devling into every little aspect about how these people run their lives (who splits the days' work),
and their harvesting, and even how they handle their bank accounts. I am making great progress with my kids in school, and our "preschool" room just opened as a new building and I am exciting to have my own space to work with thekids. And its so hard that they don't understand something as simple as relay races, but then its amazing to see them pick things up if I just stay patient with them. And they still love me with all their heart even when Ihave to discipline them.I think the third month was hard for me because there is no good yardstick of achievement -- my first month I learned the language, my second month I really got to know the people and the way of life, and the third month I felt stagnant -- waiting for time to pass. But, if I don't die because of the heat the next three months should move by. Right now is about 100 degrees Farenheight in the shade and summer hasn't even arrived yet! Elecriticy is running a bit more than the 4 hours a day it used to so the fan provides some relief but I was told its not even hot yet. I will be missing air condiitoning, right now I just really want a swimming pool! Its funny because i have never even detailed to you all my "average day" in the village, I will besure to do that soon.
Thank you for all your emails, that have been unbelievably helpful -- you couldn' t even imagine. I will persevere here and your support shines through even from so many miles away.
there is much more to say but not the time or space. I leave this saturday to stay in ashram for two weeks that frees children from carpet loom slavery and rehabiltates them... I am excited (an nervous). When I get back to Delhi I will meet my father and then get to show him my little niche in rural Rajasthan. More later.
Love Reena
A day in the life.
My life in the village is a strange strange thing, and India is very different from Africa -- India is chaos and Africa was peaceful, and it is very different that I am Indian and speak Hindi, and that for all intents and purposes that see me as Rajasthani, as one of them. I look like one two, I wear my salvar kameez (long shirt with pants and scarf )-- what all unmarried women wear, I wear my set of chooris, which is bracelets on both arms, and two anklets on my legs. Sometimes I wear a bindhi, the little dot on my forehead (though those are for married women) -- I have yet to by my toe ring. And I wear my hair either in pigtails, a fat braid in the back, or in a bun. And I am so very black (tan) these days... my Aunt wants me to bleach my face!
I generally wake up at 6:30 -7 drenched in sweat because its so hot and the electricity went out and the fan turned off, and on my little woven cot with the cushion that is my "mattress" encompassed by in my mosquito net--- I die. I feel like I am always sleeping with a fever of a 101 (since that's the temperature). The rest of my family wakes up at 5 AM and the kids study before taking on their morning chores which are a lot more than mine. My little brother who is 11 makes brings me chai (tea) to my room, and then I proceed, "aram se" (at ease), to get prepared for my day. I start by making the journey to the latrine, which is about a 7 minute walk, passed the angry bufallo who foams at the mouth still when I walk by, and then I crouch down and use "the facility." On my way back I usually end up playing with my 1 year old baby who cries all the time and goofing around with the youngins because the older ones school start at 7 AM. I try to clean my room, jaroo (sweep) and wipe the floor (crouching down with a wet old sweater) -- I am an expert croucher these days! I am excited to go to the handpump to get water for my bucket bath and then I bathe in the little corner of our house with a sheet acting as a shower curtain covering me from others watching, but if the wind blows strongly all is revealed -- nobody looks I hope. I get another bucket of water to soak my clothes in detergent for the afternoon's washing -- each piece of cloth quickly covered with children's piss (there are no diapers so either the babies wear no underwear all day and just pee on the dirt floors and it dries or they wear their shorts and happen to be on my side while I am carrying them), dirt/dust, and ounces and ounces of sweat.
At about 9-9:30 We sit in front of the chula, where our Mom cooks our rotis over the fire and we eat subjee/roti for breakfast sitting on your sack with our glass of freshly made lassi from the buffallo arond the corner. Eventually I make it to school (always searching for my keys), putting in my backpack whatever toys I have chosen for the day -- a lesson on frogs perhaps, with a new hindi nurserry rhyme, some and puzzle to show how a frog turns from tadpole to a frog --
and we play Lemons and organges the Indian version of London Bridges whcih the kids can finally play on their own without instruction and it ends in a fun tug of war. Our perhaps we relay race with different color rings to teach colors and team work and to make them run, and exert some energy so they don't sit on my head. The kids often get hot so I will push the handpump and they cup their hands and crouch and drink the water directly from the handpump. I only drink handpump water -- no boiling or anything! We store them in these muden "mutkas" which somehow amazingly keep the water cool and we pour our glass from a ladle.I come back from school exhausted, escorted wtih all the children grabbing my hands (often fighting for it, violently) and any other limb and shouting ta ta
Reena Didi, and telling me to coem to thier house in the evening and sometimes I take the 2 year old to school with me as well and he has become quite fat but he sits in my lap as we walk in the oppressive sun back home. Then perhaps a nap, or a cup of chai -- as big as an espresso shot... or just an afternoon with the great grandmother and playing with the kids of my family, hide and seek perhpas, or entertaining the 1 year old, teaching him how to walk... chatting with the women as they continue to work from one huge chore to the next.. I get to wash my clothes crouching on slab of stone, this being my only responsibility I undertake. In the evening I sometimes walk around and get invited by every family for chai (even in this heat) -- and they will pull me in on to their cot to sit and I just gossip with them about whatever.And then after eating dinner with a glass of hot bufallo milk, I might go over to the other house where there is a TV and watch VCD of some cheesy Bollywood flick. The TV never lasts on for more than 10 minutes without the electricty voltage changing and everything turning off and having to be restarted. And then it might just go off altogether.I walk back to the house and crouch and pee in the field adjacent to us. I only go to "the bathroom" twice a day -- I don't know why -- perhaps I sweat all the water out. I arrive into the house, where the family is asleep in cots outside in the verandah (courtyard of our house, where all activity takes place) and I wash my face crouching down with a cup of water splashing on my face and brush my teeth. Sometimes I write in my diary by candlelight and sometimes me and Caroline discuss the events of the day and fall asleep. And that is my village life.
Dear Friends,
This is RATIONAL Reena writing you, as opposed to a very very EMOTIONAL Reena that had written a week or so ago. I don't really have any opportunities to be emotional, I mean I don't have any opportunities to be emotional and I did write to you when I felt broken down. (these expereinces are meant to be challenges and that was one of the moments supposed to happen).
Honestly I have been deathly frightened of opening my inbox and visiting the messages awaiting for me, I don't like to admit vulnerabilty of weakness in my life and a short mass email to my best friends was the only place I could.
The heat is an unbearable and unimaginable thing but it is only a factor, and exacerbator in what my mind has been doing loopdy loops over my experience thus far here in India. My current discontentedness -- More of it is rooted in being associated with a corrupt NGO that provides no "grassroots" movement to participate in or any support network or interest in the work I am doing.More of it is being tired of being a "volunteer" -- of providing a service that I know is not rooting out the problems I identify and understand. Its this desire to run back and quickly get started on a real career where I have real power over the policy making and implementationof this work.I do feel like I am wasting my talents. A part of it is that I adjusted so easily, so quickly to barriers of language and crossing over into the community that I am an accepted part of my rural village -- I have learned every inside out detail of these people's life, and now I feel stagnated by being in place where there is no discourse of an outside world - where I am reduntantly told, over and over again what traditions and customs rule the society.
Its a feeling that things have run their course for me here. And each day I am still hard at work, no mater what. I took the children of my family to visit Delhi and they were in awe to see that in "their India" only 3 hours from their home, woman drive cars, and girls and boys go out for coffee alone together, and the police beats beggars on the street. And I see my "sister" Tina at 15 was engaged this year, I hear that now she plans to stay with her family after the marriage, go to college and because of me, on her own, she has decided to take a computer course and learn English and her father has agreed to it.
"Leaving Early" for me was never hopping on the next flight to the states -- no absolutely not. In fact the day I wrote a message to my travel agent -- am actually cutting off my two weeks of travelling in India I had left after completing my six month stint in the village. I am still committed to that and if I do leave the village early, it will only be one week shy.
My plans? I still plan on travelling to South Africa, I would like to visit some other NGOs working in the country. I have been reading Arundathi Roy's political essays, and I would like to make more of my one essay and develop a few more feature pieces about India and the village.
If I can spend a better time editing and reorganizing, I think I might have something worthwhile-- I really have found a love for writing here and feel it may be way of "doing something more"I want to get back to the states by Septemeber to start working on getting to grad school. I have a lot more choices ahead of me, studying to do, and applications to fill out. I also anticipate, living in the living room (or walk in closet) of my sister's luxury apartment in Manhattan will actually take a lot of readjusting to as well. After the LSAT in December there is a big question mark but I do believe I will find myself abroad again -- but one step at a time.
My last email I was looking for an empathetic ear -- that's all. I think its hard for some of you to envision the Reena who always had at least 20 friends she could phone call at a drop of a pin if something was awry in her dramatic life -- without a single person to truly share the enormity of what I am experiencing here. (Especially in English)This is a long email! Anyhow, after a 42 hour train ride I have made it to Goa, to the beach, to the palm trees, to a little wooden shack that reminds me of living in a tree house or what the Big Bad Wolf would blow over that amazingly has a western toilet, a shower (no hot water), and a fan with electricity sometimes feels like an undeserved luxury! I am glad mostly just to have some personal space, to have the autonomy to do, come and go as I please. And you know I love the ocean! My goal is to gain back some of the weight I've loss and to catch up on the sleep I've loss and to have a few drinks to boot.
I love you all,
Reena
Oh Hello World!
Its been a long time since I last wrote - and the good news is that my ulcer has cleared up and I have been eating eating eating since then! I have just returned from a brief holiday with my family in a hill station out in the Himalayas -- where us Northern Indians run too, and claim the cold, foggy, rainy, cloudy weather is gorgeous because it gives us an amazing getaway from the heat and oppressive sun here in Delhi and Rajasthan. The heat in June is actually totally bearable, reaching highs of 105 degrees -- where is the May heat is truly something indesribable, when you hit over 120 degree highs and the wind that blows is hot you do begin to lose your mind.
Today I return to the village for my final ten days -- and I am a bag of mixed emotions. On one hand, I do feel my time has run its course, in fact recently I have been going through an identitiy crisis because my transformation to Rajasthani villager has been so complete that I am losing a sense of having a former "self." It is frusturating because my sense of indiviuality has always been something I have strongly definted myself on -- my approach to life has never been convential or toned down --- I would say I was a bit eccentric and passionate. Here people are constantly pleading me to truly conform to their way and battle with me, questioning and challenging anything I choose to differently or the fact that I make choices and have opinions and ways I preffer things. Part of this has to do with the fact that I am woman.
I before took all of it with stride, being I was an ambassdor of an "outside culture" whether it just be urban India, but now I feel it is seeking to undermine my own sense of my self and self worth -- because its not really about cultural differences -- its about me, Reena, who I am, not product of "my coutnry or my culture." this may not make any sense to you all -- Indian culture is just so thick it truly swallows you whole - and I love the culture, I own it, but I do not ever condone culture dictating the role you must play in life, and the way you must engage in every activity. My identity crisis also comes from the fact that I feel to that my purpose is not very strong, meaning my role in school in the classroom and I do feel a need to be doing "more" with my time.
But on the other hand, I definiely feel how can I leave this family this community who has become such a home to me, that seems so natural and part of who I am now. How can I not be surrounded bychildren -- performing like barney (whcih is essentailly who I am a big purple dinosaur) whose smiles light up my life and who still crave my presence and attention as if I was a superstar. And how can I leave these family structures where loneliness is never an option. How do I say goodbye?
Anyways, I am spending my birthday -- next week, June 27th -- in the village with my community. It will also be my good-bye party.. and who knows what kind of festiviites they will put on for me? I am hoping for some dancing! On July 1st I shift to Delhi to meet up with two of my friends who are coming from working in Zambia for six months and it should be fun! I also have ALL mys shopping to do, so now is the time to make requests. And then on July 14th I board the plane and say goodbye to India, but I have a sneakign suspicion that I will be on my way back before I know it...I will be in London for three weeks in July and then I spend the month of August in South Africa. Then to NY (Septemeber 9th) --- THE MONTH OF SEPTEMEBER, I am planning a road trip before I have to settle down, get a job and start my LSAT class in October. So far on the itinerary is obviously D.C. (MD/VA) and Chapel Hill (UNC). I was thinking of maybe Atlanta too (asha and doshi?) -- so please try to arrange some way to meeet up with me, becaus I miss you all sooo very much, more than you could know.
Okay, not much more to say. Back to the village to sleep on my concrete roof under the stars
and to be awoken by a congregation of 20 peacocks near my head for morning chat. Back to playing on the tractor with my babies- using the cart/trolley as a slide. Back to visiting each household for a cup of chai and joking with them again about my plans never to get married (they think its a joke). Back to crouching near the fire while the women prepare rotis to quitely whisper the gossi of the day. Back to watching Indian videos on the television before and imitating the moves of all the bollywood stars to amuse the children. Back to the buffallo, the dust, the afternoon nap and card playing session, to home cooked meals and to HINDI HINDI HINDI.I love you all,
Reena
There was a book I forgot to mention that I bought along with the six others.Prepare yourself to laugh.The name is "Emotional Intelligence." I am NOT a fan of self-help books, but after my last ten days in the village, where I felt like my emotions got the better of me, where i felt on a rollercoaster not just inwardly (which is totally understandable) but also OUTWARDLY, meaning that anger, irritation, frusturation, became these big bad demons I felt I hadn't seriously had to deal with, in ages, in what seems like forever. Anyhow, at an attempt of a summary of things that are hard to summarize, I will try to convey to you what occured.
Basically, I had really become a part of a family, I was never distinguished as existing or belonging anywhere other than -- as part of the family. Except, I was a in position to give a lot more because i have neat gadgets and soaps and some expendible cash for afternoon pepsis.
People started to walk all over that generousity and take my things and expect stuff and well, you get the gist -- and things of mine started disappearing. It was hard enough never having my own room, just for personal space and privacy, but before i never had to worry about my belongings being stolen although occasionally things were ruined and what not. Then there was Caroline, the Bristish girl "with me" who is useless leech. Well she decided to start acting funny with the men the last couple weeks, getting a reputation, and doing all sorts of unsafe things as well. I had to deal with the consequences ofher actions by fielding all the questions of her whereabouts and what she does. Level of irritation getting higher.
And lastly, my birthday and my going away. Neither of them did my family, or the villagers give me 'function.' I only came to expect something after seeing the going away party they gave Patrick the earlier volunteer -- and because they told me for months they were going to do something. NOTHING HAPPENED, nobody did anything. Made me feel totally unappreciated, unloved, and like my time int he village had been useless. What did I learn? They do not, and can not give functions for girls. It isn't done for any family, and it woudl look bad to do it for us (gossip would spread). THe only function a girl is allowed to have is for her wedding.... I became further infuriated.So what do I take away from this. My last days, i had some amazign moments with my children, their adoration for me was real, I am sure of this, and i do believe that even if just as a role model I have influenced and affected they peceptions and way of life. I believe I triumphed in school, improving the condition, increasing the understanding of the teachers on how to affect the pupils, and invigorating the students. I still feel tons more could and needs to be done, but I know my time and effort means something. And being a part of the family, a part of rural Indian life, is totally instrumental to me in any further pursuits in the field of international development, of dealing with teh worldwide problem of educating rural populations and alleviatign poverty. I can mainatian perspecitve about my experience as a whole, but as a reaction, an emotional reaction, i walked away feeling very hurt. I am still trying to iron that out with myself.
As I go ahead, i feel very attached to the world, but at the same time relieved to regain a sense of independence and autonomy in my life. Turning 23, I felt was only 15 and that in so many ways India has become living a second childhood. I am ready to go back to being an adult. But love, in whatever its form, is a hard thing to say good bye to. And Ilove Bighana and Bighana loves me. That is the truth.
Love Reena
Hello!!!!
So, I have made it to England, with luggage that literally weighs more than me, and after a small accident falling at the bottom of an escalator with my 40 lb bag on me, and my 75 lb falling on top of me, and two people just walking over me totally blase about my crash (welcome back to british culture) ---- I made it to my friend Rhiannon's house which is in a 'village' in 'rural england' -- vastly difference than my village in rural india. its sooo quiet here, when i ride in the car, i keep thinking that all the india people are hiding, and are about to pop out with their rickshaws and carts of vegetables and all the mess and overtake this empty land.
the weather is fabulous, everyone on the radio keeps talking about how much it sucks and i am revelling in the cold, it feels like winter in India. we even put on a fire the other night in the living room. i have got a bit of the sniffles, but its a gazillion times better than being sprawled on in layers of dried sweat on a cot praying for the wind to blow. i had a great last week, my friend rosy (who is mexican) came from finsihing six months in zambia and we shopped and shopped and ate and ate in delhi, before going off to my village to visit the newborn baby of my family (absolutely adorable and healthy) -- born one day after i left, in the house! and off to jaipur to meet my friend prabha who was my hindi teacher in the states.
i had a great time back in the village, and rosy's observations about how much the villagers love and respect me, and how tough it must have been handling all those children gave me that bit of reassurance that i needed to seal off my experience. (something my corrupt organization never gave me). I left, knowing i was family and totally confident i will be back sooner than later -- but unfortunately not for all the functions that require my presence (weddings and births of all the people i know which will continue to occur on a bimonthly basis!)
its great to see rhiannon and melina, and to be reunited with such good friends! I miss all the rest of you so much and anxiously await not only seeing you but what would be nice would be hearing from you sooner than later! i am off to south africa on the fourth of august and have gotten a yes from a small ngo that runs a school to help the children living in run-down slum-like dangerous areas -- to work with them, located in capetown. i am still hoping to work with a group for GLBT rights but i figure children in my theme these days, and i would be happy to work with them anytime and get the experience of a new country my return date to the US is September 9th as of now so mark your calendars! okay not too much more to say. been too tired to really get into my reading and writing as planned but i do hope to get all my essay writing in the works and what not. i promise if you send me a personal message, to write you personally back and here in england i doubt i have much to say for the mass email network and the next message you will see from me will be in august in south africa!
i love you all loads,Reena
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