Sweet Home Minnesota...

I'm home.

It's cold here. There's a lot of space and nothing smells bad. It's like the opposite of claustrophobia. I miss waking up to birds singing, and I miss my friends from the program. I've hardly slept in the last 60 hours.

weird.

It's good to see my family though, and my bed is probably the most comfortable thing God ever invented. I'll be ok, but it might take a while to readjust. This requires a whole new kind of cultural sensitivity. Weird.

Pilgrims

We're back in Bangalore now after a month on the road. We've had two units: Environment and Livelihood and Religion and Culture. If you're following along on a map, we've been to Orissa (Koraput district), Hyderabad, Andrha Pradesh (Zahirabad district), Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi.

Varanasi (also called Banaras) is one of the oldest living cities anywhere. It's situated on the Ganges and is probably the holiest site in Hinduism. Some people go to Varanasi when they know that death is near, hoping that it will speed their way to enlightenment. The river is lined all day with funeral pyres, pilgrims bathing in the holy water, and the poor washing clothes. When we were there on a sunrise boat-ride, the river was covered in a flock of migratory white birds. Like everything in India, this place is a paradox--both beautiful and horrifying.

Over the course of our week in Banaras, we visited about five Buddhist temples, two hindu temples, and a Catholic cathedral. We met with a Buddhist monk, a Hindu monk, a Jain scholar, and a Catholic sister and priest. We heard the bells in the temple of Durga, stood under an offshoot of the tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment, planted where he gave his first sermon, and celebrated an intimate mass for the first Sunday in advent. We bought some sweet t-shirts. We learned a lot of philosophy. We watched many, many episodes of "The Office" on someone's laptop.

I wrote the following poem after seeing the Ganges at sunrise. It incorporates (I realized after I wrote it) elements from almost every philosophy or religion we learned about this week.

Pilgrims

The birds, they say, are migratory.

White handfuls of wing and flight that
fling themselves, baptized,
off the water and against the sun
as it rises like blood to the brain.

They have nothing to lose
in such an action.

They are pilgrims like the rest of us.
They come to the holy water
to drink and to eat, to escape
the cold, to churn their muscles
so that they rise, again and again,
from a watery grave.

They are nothing but bellyfulls of
fish, and feathers pasted on cardboard.
They are caused, created by no one
but themselves and by my eyes.
The birds, they say, are migratory.

We are all pilgrims to the river,
and migrants to the world.
We are traveling in skin that
is not our own. We are clay
squeezed by no one's hand.
Our rudimentary minds,
handfuls of muscle,
see birds and river and
self with boundaries
drawn in chalk.

The water
wipes them away, like sin.

He-Oh, Bessay Nehai!

A month on the road sounds like a long time. Some days it feels like it-- like nothing would be nicer than my own space, my own food, my own people. To turn off India. Other days I can't fathom going home, and the snow and and the sidewalks and the giant houses seem all too close. How can I go back and be happy and well-fed and obscenely rich?

But here we are: one month on the road, two weeks back in Bangalore, and then home for Christmas. If you're following along on a map, we're hitting up Orissa (Koraput district), Hyderabad, Medak, Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi. Lots of planes, trains, and automobiles.

One week in and we're spending the weekend in Hyderabad. Last week was Koraput, a hilly rural district dotted with tribal villages. We visited several of them, and even spent the night in one. It was incredible. No advertisements. No trash on the ground. People living in and with the forest, taking from it and giving back. They had a mini-hydro-electric dam which gave them enough energy to run a mill and light their houses but didn't cause much environmental harm at all. They were incredibly kind. I can't explain how beautiful this place was, or the people. I learned to say 'very good' in the tribal language. Bessay Nehai. Yes. Very good.

We had a meeting there on climate change. They told us their story. The people here, who are deeply in tune with the earth's rhythms, noticed that their seasons were changing before they had ever heard the words 'climate change' or 'global warming'. The rainy season here has shrunk and the hot summer has expanded, making agriculture difficult. Wild fruits ripen at different times, and the food is smaller in size and less good to eat than before. Water is less plentiful. The star patterns, which they study to know when to plant and when to celebrate festivals, don't line up with the seasons like they used to. They had been wondering if they were being punished by God for something, that the earth itself is rebelling against them. Slowly, however, they learned that other villages, even other countries, are experiencing the same thing. Now they are worried about how to survive, how their children will survive in future generations. We tel them that they are by no means being punished (except, perhaps, for the actions of others)-- that the way they live in partnership with the earth is admirable, an example for the rest of us. We apologize for the role that we and our culture have contributed to the hardship they are experiencing, and tell them that together we want to try to stop it. And we tell them to keep telling their story—that people like us, too disconnected with the earth to notice these changes, need to hear from them. We need to know that livelihoods are being affected by our consumptive actions now, not just in some distant future. The people of Putsil are innocent in terms of climate-changing behavior, yet they are worried about their survival. Climate change is real, and its urgent. It needs more than our lip-service to change it—it needs our real dedication, our willingness to change our lifestyles, and all the ingenuity we can muster.

Bethany in the Himalayas

You wanna hear an adventure story?

I just got back from a weeklong trip up to the Northern part of India with some friends-- Brendan, Katie, Alyssa, Allie, Britta, and her boyfriend (visiting from the states) Mike.

We started out our trip at 6:00 AM with a taxi to the B-lore airport, whereupon it was quickly discovered that I had forgotten (all too typically) my purse with credit card and passport. After some quick shuffling around of tickets and payments and a bit of begging to security guards, we made it to the gate with 5 minutes to spare. Flight to Delhi, taxi to the train station, several hours sitting on the dirty floor of the station or walking down the dirty street (if we would have wanted a marble statue of any Hindu god, we would have been golden. That's all they sold on this street. Well, statues and signs.) We were supposed to meet Mike there. Time passes, departure approaches, but where is Mike? nowhere to be found. Images flash through all of our heads of a poor American, new to India, wandering lost on the streets of Delhi... and we leave two members of the group behind to find him. The rest of us run fulltilt to the platform and make it just in the nick of time onto our train, only to find that car D6 is apparently a phantom. We walk up and down the length of the train with our big bags squeezing down too-small aisles trying to find the right part of the train. When we do, there's an elderly couple in our seats. Enter train conductor and every passenger in the car, who attempt to oust the very sweet old couple and install us in our rightful seats... in the blur I'm not sure where we found a place to sit, but sit we did. in seats. and we breathed for a while.

We met our friends in Rishikesh the next morning, a very jet-lagged Mike in tow.

Rishikesh was cold mornings, sadhus in orange, pilgrims and beggars with tin cups, prayer beads and music in every shop, nutella pancakes at every meal, cheap ayuravedic massages, white-water rafting the Ganges, sunrise in the foothills of the Himalayas, sparkling sand, sending prayers on little boats downstream, eating a giant grapefruit and street food, plunging into the river at dawn alongside the devout, visiting the Ashram where the Beatles wrote the white album, the yoga-capital of India, dirty-hippies trying to find meaning in the mess of it all. There were a lot of cows, but whats new?

After two days we took a couple of buses up to Musoorie, the queen of the hills. Katie had some friends from Wilderness Canoe Base teaching at an international school there. Small world-- they know almost everyone I know-- camp friends, highschool friends, even a cousin. Nan and Laura squired us around this beautiful little town nestled in the foothills.

Musoorie was good cheese, wool hats and mittens, layered sunset over the hills like a parfait, a ferris wheel powered by a man, climbing around on the inside, hiking up a hill swathed in tibetan prayer flags, views of the snowy peaks, playing silent football, little cafes, eating momos at every meal, visiting a tibetan buddhist temple, incredible vistas around every corner.

This is exactly what vacations are supposed to be: relaxing, refreshing, beautiful, exciting, adventurous, a cultural experience and brimming with happiness.

Nine Months of Rain

This week our group was split into two halves for field visits to different parts of southern India to learn more about 'Globalization and the Ethics of Development', which is the theme of our second unit. I'm representing the half of our group that went to the coastal state of Kerala. We were in it's poorest region, Wyanad, which is situated in the Western Ghat mountains. The week was amazing-- the region is beautiful (green mountains, incredible birds... you get the idea) and we had some awesome experiences getting different perspectives on issues like health, education, and agriculture. We asked the question “What is development? Who does it, for whom, and at what cost?” and found a plethora of interesting new ideas, both about the Indian context and our own.

I (creative soul and hopeless romantic that I am) wrote a poem one early morning, looking out over a hill in Wyanad, listening to the birds and reflecting on our experience. I hope it gives you some idea of what our week was like.

Nine Months of Rain

The language here falls like
water over rocks
skipping and rolling over itself,
a stream from the green mountains.
Words bubble like a spring from
the mouths of people as old as
earth to say 'yes, your gods with
human shape are selfish, so, they
steal the earth they rape the forest.”
coming from mouths that now take rice, take
sugar with their tea when it used
to be wild honey, and now they live
in exile and impotence while the
ancient knowledge leaks away.
They speak in words like bitter
water tainted with poison,
scarce despite nine months of
rain because of the greed of bananas
and the big men who buy them.
And even the neighbors, each with too-too
small land who plant their crops together--
even they sell their coffee their
pepper their tea by prices
decided in New York.

But again the air is full of sounds:
it's birds with long tails, it's birds
who sing like fountains, it's shy-daughters
singing old love-folk-songs after dinner,
and then the drums, and dancing--
wildly! Around and around to music
like water that doesn't stop and
doesn't stop until we can hardly-hardly
breath. It is like this, too, when we
stand on top of a mountain and see:
rice-paddies like patchwork,
mountains behind the mist, forests unrolling
like carpet, and water that glints in the sun.
and here any words that bubble up are whisked
away by the wind, so we are speechless.

And speechless too when we know that
water-that-glints is water-that-rises:
a dam, or the ghost of one,
where water had risen and risen like words,
like a scream so that homes and lives were drowned
in a word from some big man and
none of their words could stop it.
No. the water still rises and rises,
hungry, and when it rains they hide
their children, or the rising water
will be their end.

And now it's a foreign mouth with
words rising and rising like water
to say there is this place where moss
grows like velvet,
and birds sing like fountains,
where there is water;
in streams-resevoirs-floods-rains-wells
or conspicuous by its poison or its absence
or as it is tumbles,
joyous-sad-ancient-rising,
from all of our mouths together.

the doctor ordered a week in the countryside.

We got back in to Bangalore early this morning on the overnight train from Koppel, a region in the northern part of the state of Karnataka. It's among the poorest areas around, and quite rural. The elevation is considerably lower and the temperature considerably higher, although it rained (out of season) almost every day. During the monsoon, there was a drought. We stayed at a grungy hotel, ate dry oatmeal and honey for breakfast, worked on building a meditation center and school, saw the second biggest set of ruins in the world (after Rome)(!!), and talked to a lot of people. Real Indian people. Little girls, temple prostitutes, impoverished Dalit (P.C. for untouchables) villagers, child laborers, farmers, women working in a factory, men on the train, the superintendent of police and everyone asking "what country?" and "what is your name?" and we are always saying "Nana Hessaru Bay-tanny" "America" "Nina hessaru yenu?" and repeating these names that don't roll off of any of our tongues-- Gangama, Vishwasager, Shilaja, Nazzer, Shilpa, Mumata, names I can never remember but repeat to myself over and over again anyways because at least I want to try.

Some entries from my journal:

I am so inspired by these women, who in the face of extreme poverty, in the face of hard labour and harassment and 1000 years of tradition say "With our generation it will stop." Devidasi women, dedicated to the god at 10 years old, are condemned to a life of single-motherhood, serving the whims of men who will not acknowledge their own children in the street, who might bring some vegetables when they visit. They are the untouchables among the untouchables. They said to us "I know you can't save us, but won't you please do something for our children?" These women were so beautiful, with their laughter, their determination and their premature wrinkles. I pray to have their strength.

-------------------------------------

We talked to some child laborers and their landlord in a cotton field. The children had all dropped out of school-- some as early as second standard, to work from 9-6 in the field. They get 1 hour's break for lunch, and are paid 60 rupees (about a dollar) a day. The work they are doing is cross-pollination, producing seeds. A big company gives the farmer seed, fertelizer, and money for labor on loan, and the farmer gives up his traditional and eco-friendly multicrop farming, stops the production of food, to grow a cash-crop.

-----------------------------------

Yesterday was hard. We went to a rural village with a large (150) Dalit population. They were very hospitable, singing and playing us wonderful music. They asked us questions, and they cheered when they heard how women's rights had progressed in the U.S. Then they told us about their lives, first by answering questions, then by inviting us into their homes. Most of the community works as laborers, althoguh some own land. Even those with land are very poor because of the drought. As Dalits, they are not allowed into key places in town-- temples, tea shops, the well-- but are asked to do the village's dirty work. Because of drought and poverty, the government has allotted some relief money to the area-- but these Dalits never saw any of it. The upper-caste local government leaves them out of the equation. One family we visited struck me especially hard. Their house was one small, dark room, where more than 5 lived. The husband had lost the use of his hands to leprosy and couldn't work. The wife made 30 rupees a day laboring in the fields-- when she could find work. I asked "what is one thing you'd like to see change?" and the father told me "Who am I to talk about change? My struggles is to fill my stomach."

Living

It is dark still,
as dark as cities get,
when the sounds of metal-
on-metal, the breakfast smells,
the strange music, the
musical words begin. The
rushing-by of traffic
and lives-lived from other
people's windows, and
it is all in
my ear my nose like
India is digging itself a
home in my eyes.
(here is the ancient world
being born as the sun rises,
or as we turn to face it. Across
the globe it has already set.)
Already it is living on my
tongue, behind my teeth,
it is living in my stomach.
Here is India settling too
on my skin. I try
not to brush it off, though
it is strange to me--
gold dust, spicy smell
and dogs in the street.

And here are the people twisted
like trees, here the children
who tug my sleeve, here a bright woman,
heavy with unborn birth, balanced
on the roof, pouring cement -- and
here I strike the heart of it,
this leathery-old place that cries
as it is born, a new thing in an
old skin (or is it the other way?)
Here are the unhappy rich and
the smiling poor, who are,
after all, still alive despite
the failing monsoon, and the rain,
when it comes, comes through the roof.
In Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, in Hindi,
Malyalam, in thick-tongued english they
tell me we are citizens of a thing called
living.

It is all we know how to do.

And then across the skyline--
churchtemplemosque
and the temples, too, of
glittering commerce
where all night the phones
ring off their hooks--
the siren-call to modern
prayer. And the young man
who answers the phone
“HellomynameisBill
How Can I Help You”
tells me that India is moving
up
in the world.
“becoming a part of the Global
market, you know, a so-big power!”
so that I, a citizen of said Globe,
can call mynameisBill to fix my
computer so that I can write this
poem

about being in India,
where my blue eyes make me
strange, where I do not know the
names of various fruits where my
eyes ears tongue bowels say
you do not
belong
here.

But I, too, am a citizen of living.

in the end,
it is all that I (we?) know how to do.

We're Here!

It's beautiful here-- very lush and green, with birds everywhere. On the ride from the airport I saw some cows in the street, a man brushing his teeth and cooking something in a black pot over a fire, a little boy who smiled and waved through the window, piles of trash, little shacks I could see inside, people riding bikes along the highway, huge billboards advertising highspeed internet in English ("I carry speed") and a million other things I can't describe. I'll figure out later how to do pictures, but suffice it to say that Brendan and my new camera is getting a good workout already.

I love you all, but I don't miss you too much yet.

peace and adventures!
Bethany

leaving tomorrow

I think this feeling is akin to moving out to go to college for the first time. I have that feeling that I have to savor everything I know and recognize--the food, the people, the weather, the places-- knowing that everything where I'm going will be different. Not bad, I know, but different and probably, at times, really uncomfortable. The food will be incredible, but I know that at some point I'll just want a sandwich. It will be great to get to know Indian people, but I know I'll be homesick for my family and friends here-- even to see people who look like me or talk like me.

BUT. I'm going there to be uncomfortable, right? to get WAY out of my comfort zone. to have the world as I know it messed up.

so. bring on the culture shock!

The World is Round

When I place my hands
on the ground, side-by-side
(here, like so)
and if I sit very quietly
and hush all the music in
my head I begin to feel
the earth in its bulk.
Below this grass is soil.
below that rock, and water,
and magma, tectonic plates,
a giant, shifting world moving
in its own idea of forever.
And below that is china,
or India where there are people
walking and loving and touching
the ground with two hands,
like-so.
And all of us--the
spider crawling on my leg,
the jack pine and its shy seeds,
the Chinese lovers and me
are turning constantly
away from the light and then
towards it, like a dance.
like so.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm leaving for India on Saturday. Wow.

Going up to Camp, We're Leaving Right Away...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while--I haven't forgotten you, but don't get your hopes up for many posts in the near future. I'm headed up to camp!

I'll have pretty limited e-mailing capacity, but I LOVE getting letters. Please drop me a note, and I'll try to write you back. I'll write your letter sitting in some idyllic location, and may even (upon request) include some samples of the local flora, so you can pretend you're at camp too.

My address (and Brendan's too--he also likes letters!) is as follows:

8450 E. Camp Amnicon Rd.
South Range, WI 54874

I'll be back at the end of the summer for about 10 days, and then I'm headed to India. If I'm lucky, I'll get to see you then!

We're Going to India, La la la la la la!

I just found out: I'm officially, definitely going to INDIA for next fall semester!

HOOORAAAAAAAAAAAAY! YIPPEEEE!

I'm a little excited.

I'm going on a program that Gustavus sponsors along with Concordia called "Social Justice, Peace and Development in India" along with 15 other students, including my magnificent boyfriend, Brendan. We'll be learning about culture, religion (my personal favorite!) ecology, politics, and a whole host of other interesting and important things. We'll get to travel around the country, interact with Indian people of all sorts, and (oh yeah...) eat a LOT of Indian food. The format fits in time for book-learning, hands-on learning, and lots of reflection, as well as a week off for us to travel as we please. I'll be gone from the end of August until partway through December.

Now I just have to find the money to make it work...