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.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, September 25, 2009
T-Two
I just visited a ghost-gold-mining-town where men cut off their thumbs to afford for their daughters to marry and then couldn’t mine the gold so that we can do it in style. Blood-diamonds-bloody-gold. And thirteen million tons of useless rock heaped on the fields so now nothing will grow there, rock that will put holes in your lungs and the doctors say to drink up and keep working. Hail Brittania, who tore up the country-side in search of shiny things and tore up the people and taught them to speak english. The widows-of-the-mine have to pay for water that comes in a tank on a truck every few days will Jesus painted and chipping on the back of it (and a church every two miles, yes that was Bethany Lutheran Church where are we anyways?) all the water they need for cooking for drinking is holy water.
and then I climbed a mountain this morning and I watched the sunrise like a blood-orange and then met a girl who raped-by-her-cousin-with-a-child-no-family-will-touch-her and she tried not to cry when she said that no one blames him not a speck. They hide him away somewhere and say it was some shepherd from a lower caste but he never touched her and all she wants is for her daughter to know who her father is. Then girls at a convent school learning to be office assistants who give me a bindi and kiss my cheeks and say “oh, so pretty!” and dance about their mothers beaten by drunken fathers and say their dreams: to live a good life in fear of God, to care for my mother-and-father-in-law, to go to the U.S. I can't stop smiling because they smile so big, like suns. Sister Stella is teaching them self-confidence. They ask us to pray for them.
We have a saying here: T-two. In roman numberals: TII. This Is India.
In India we shower in buckets. There is never toilet paper. On the street you can buy a coconut and a man will hack off the top with a machete and stick in a straw. I wear a scarf every day: a dupatta. The word for hello means “I see God in you.” “Namaskara.” The trucks are painted bright colors. Today I saw one that said “We Two, Ours One”. What does that mean? The women wear strings of flowers in their hair every day and saris in colors I didn't think existed. The men wear checkered dhotis, like a towel around th e waist. There are more motorcycles than cars. Cheese is nearly non-existent, but homemade yogurt is at every meal. Eat with your right hand, wipe with your left. I speak “swelpa swelpa Kannada” and no Tamil, Urdu, Hindi, Malyalam, Telagu... but I can hear them all on the street, or could if I could tell them apart. There are dogs everywhere, and cows. In some places, pigs or goats or cats. And everywhere trash lining the sides of the road. There are mountains that are piles of impossible gray rocks and long grass. There are temples on top of them. There are not clothes-dryers. You see women washing clothes violently in the same slow river where one man washes his motorcycle another his cow. We rode for an our on top of a bus, like Indians do. The kids try out their english “Which country? Your name is?” “America, U.S. Nanna hessaru Bay-ta-ny. Ninna hessaru yenu?” “oh, chenna-gee-day!” I can't write the loopy blunt alphabet. My favorite word: Sundara, beautiful. I say this when the girls smile, when someone hands me a baby, when I see the mountains, but I don't know how to express in any language what it is to hear the story of a woman who is holding her child and they are both crying.
This Is India.
and then I climbed a mountain this morning and I watched the sunrise like a blood-orange and then met a girl who raped-by-her-cousin-with-a-child-no-family-will-touch-her and she tried not to cry when she said that no one blames him not a speck. They hide him away somewhere and say it was some shepherd from a lower caste but he never touched her and all she wants is for her daughter to know who her father is. Then girls at a convent school learning to be office assistants who give me a bindi and kiss my cheeks and say “oh, so pretty!” and dance about their mothers beaten by drunken fathers and say their dreams: to live a good life in fear of God, to care for my mother-and-father-in-law, to go to the U.S. I can't stop smiling because they smile so big, like suns. Sister Stella is teaching them self-confidence. They ask us to pray for them.
We have a saying here: T-two. In roman numberals: TII. This Is India.
In India we shower in buckets. There is never toilet paper. On the street you can buy a coconut and a man will hack off the top with a machete and stick in a straw. I wear a scarf every day: a dupatta. The word for hello means “I see God in you.” “Namaskara.” The trucks are painted bright colors. Today I saw one that said “We Two, Ours One”. What does that mean? The women wear strings of flowers in their hair every day and saris in colors I didn't think existed. The men wear checkered dhotis, like a towel around th e waist. There are more motorcycles than cars. Cheese is nearly non-existent, but homemade yogurt is at every meal. Eat with your right hand, wipe with your left. I speak “swelpa swelpa Kannada” and no Tamil, Urdu, Hindi, Malyalam, Telagu... but I can hear them all on the street, or could if I could tell them apart. There are dogs everywhere, and cows. In some places, pigs or goats or cats. And everywhere trash lining the sides of the road. There are mountains that are piles of impossible gray rocks and long grass. There are temples on top of them. There are not clothes-dryers. You see women washing clothes violently in the same slow river where one man washes his motorcycle another his cow. We rode for an our on top of a bus, like Indians do. The kids try out their english “Which country? Your name is?” “America, U.S. Nanna hessaru Bay-ta-ny. Ninna hessaru yenu?” “oh, chenna-gee-day!” I can't write the loopy blunt alphabet. My favorite word: Sundara, beautiful. I say this when the girls smile, when someone hands me a baby, when I see the mountains, but I don't know how to express in any language what it is to hear the story of a woman who is holding her child and they are both crying.
This Is India.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
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."
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."
Friday, September 11, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
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
I love you all, but I don't miss you too much yet.
peace and adventures!
Bethany
Friday, August 28, 2009
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!
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!
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