Child Labor School

It has occurred to me that I haven’t given an adequate description of basically my purpose for being in India. I arrived under the impression that I would be working in an orphanage. Through fate or lack of organization, whatever the guilty party may be, I ended up working for a child labor school in Annur, a village a 40 minute bus ride from Hunsur. The ethnic tribes in Karnataka, the state in which I live, have been battling for more rights, but these improvements can be crippled by their poverty and illiteracy. The Nisarga Foundation is an NGO that helps facilitate certain rights, including the education of children. It pulls children that would otherwise be working in the tobacco fields and puts them in to schools. It is a noble effort but they are still leaps and bounds away from providing a quality education. 

The teachers are severely under educated and not exactly motivated to actually conduct class on a regular basis. I am supposed to be teaching English along with the other volunteer, Nils, but most of my days are spent inside the school waiting for something to happen. As a result, I don’t have much to write home about. Nils and I have been meeting with the headmaster of the school, the director from the Nisarga Foundation, as well as other child right’s organizations to figure out some way to contribute, but nothing has materialized as of yet.

This has been a fairly frustrating experience, but through it all I have developed a rudimentary attachment to the children that promises to grow with more interaction with them. They hardly speak any English, but like all children, they are satisfied with a smile or holding hands. 

a few of my kids at a child rights meeting

sporting their new umbrellas on the way to Lake Day

Supporting Evidence

“India is magical. You must leave your need for personal space behind, for at any given moment, whether enclosed in a taxicab or exposed on the street, you will be surrounded by men, women, children, auto-rickshaws, taxis, exhaust fumes, carts, scooters, goats, cows, and the smells of samosas, jasmine, spices, manure, and trash warmed by the blazing sun. It will fill and enhance your senses. It is a portrait of life at work with apparent beauty and glaring tragedy, and it asks you to look on it all...

It will show your strands of pearls in Hyderabad, pink stone in Jaipur, beautiful white sand beaches in Goa. It will introduce you to basmati rice and curries that have been simmering for hours, pistachio ice cream, and fried doughnuts floating in sweet syrup, and it will teach you how to eat with the fingers of your right hand. It will show you how to slap dough into chapatis. It will fold its hands to say namaste as you pass by the elderly woman on the side of the road. It will impress you with its propensity for academic excellence in technology, engineering, and medicine. It taps on your window, the beautiful face of a little girl with round dark eyes and black eyelashes, clasping her fingers together and drawing them to her mouth to tell you she needs food...

You will feel special, amazed, full, stirred, naive, helpless, enraged, awakened - and all in the first day. India is magical.”  

-The Scent of Water, Naomi Zacharias

“The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future.”

- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

sunset on the street in Goa

just a small example of the colors that pervade India

sunset in Kundapur

From Rags to Riches

      Juxtapose: To place or deal with close together for contrasting effect. Immediately after arriving in India, this word began to manifest itself in everything that met the eye. The strikingly bold crimsons, emeralds, turquoises and golds of women’s saris clash with the brown of dry, dusty, manure lined streets. The energetic, fast-paced cities like Delhi and Mumbai contrast with the tiny villages who still use ox-pulled carts for work in the fields. The alluring smells of fresh flowers, frying street food, and the spices that make India famous fight against the combination of sweaty bodies, rotting trash, and animal waste. Juxtaposition is dominate in India, but I didn’t realize it would become so apparent to me personally.

     I have been living in Hunsur, one of those rural villages with one main road and not much to see or do outside of eat or use the internet cafe. Cows, pigs, goats, chickens, dogs, and cats run rampant through the trash filled streets and nothing less than pure mayhem exists during mid day when rickshaws and people are involved. We’ve been washing our clothes in buckets, using hoses for toilets, and eating some variety of rice or bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We’ve lived in a cramped, dirty, cockroach hotel with an extremely fickle electrical system. I am describing this without the slightest hint of complaint or regret. On the contrary, these things have made my stay in India that much more adventurous. But I want to clearly establish an idea of my everyday reality so that you can better understand the dream world I entered into last weekend.

     My friend Mariana is Portuguese and her parents happen to be acquainted with the Portuguese consul who lives in Goa, a small but beautiful state in western India. Portugal had control over this part of India for a  couple hundred years, finally leaving in 1961, so there is a significant Portuguese influence in Goa, hence the need for a consul. He generously offered to let us stay in his house for however long we liked. As a traveler on a budget, a free place to crash is gold, so we were already ecstatic about our good luck. We had no idea what was in store. 

     Antonio, the consul, and his driver picked us up at the bus station after a grueling 16 hour bus ride (think run down school bus) and took us to his mansion on a hill overlooking Panaji, the capital city of Goa. He led us down the long hall and showed us the two rooms we would be staying in. We also had our own bathrooms, with real toilets, clean sinks, and hot showers. You have no idea what a treasure this is, but it doesn’t end there. We had servants, a butler, and a cook that made us breakfast and lunch. For dinner Antonio took us to the nicest restaurants in town, refusing our constant offers to pay for at least half. After we mentioned that we wanted to go to the beach, he took it upon himself to arrange a hotel for us in a small beach town, dinner at a restaurant his friend owns, and transportation to and from the town - all for free. I have never in my life been so dumbfounded and unable to express my gratitude. I have no idea how I stumbled on such good luck, but I can’t help but think about that frustratingly true maxim: it’s not what you know it’s who you know.

      Arambol, the beach town we stayed in, can be summarized by this quote: “The sixties have never really come to an end. They’re still going on right now in Goa.” (Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.) Hippies galore. Which also means fun hippy stores to shop in. We shopped, sun bathed, and soaked in the party atmosphere that Goa is famous for. Basically, our lives were the exact opposite of what we had been used to the last month. Juxtaposition is a beautiful thing.

Rainbow over one of the many beautiful churches in Goa

the beach in Arambol

our night out

Check out some videos

My housemates and fellow trekking companions, Amandine and Mariana, are creating videos for each week of their gap year. India is their first stop, and afterwards they are planning on going to Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. Here are the first two of their videos:

Week 1


Week 2 & 3


Week 4 & 5

Living in the Moment

          There are certain stages that you reach in life in which you can reflectively look back on another part of life. Usually, it is only then that you realize the former part of your life currently in consideration was so perfectly tranquil, making it indelible to your memory. It is only after the passing of time that makes you aware that the catastrophes were mere trifles, and the moments of enjoyment were far more frequent than they originally seemed; in short, that life was simple and easy. Usually, you have no idea how much you will revert to these moments in your mind with a yearning that borders on regret and begs the questions “Why did I not stop to appreciate more?”

        Despite this human inclination, sometimes we are granted with moments in which we are entirely conscious of the remarkable chapter of life we are in. Such an epiphany happened today. Coming to India had long been my adventurous dream. It was crystalized in my mind as being exotic, mesmerizing, and enticing, and that I would finally satiate at least one of my explorative desires. After arriving here, I was still gripped by the novelty of India, but my excitement had been harshly checked by the difficulties and frustrations that you encounter while adjusting to an entirely unfamiliar country. Today I became cognizant of how much those struggles just really didn’t matter.

My friends and I set off from Hunsur to visit a Tibetan refugee settlement about an hour away. It’s main attractions were the numerous ornate monasteries, as well its rebellious attitude toward eating beef. As we cruised our way in a rickshaw to the colony, after some auspicious help from a friendly man on the bus, and took in the rolling golden corn fields with the faded blue mountains in the background, it struck me how blissful life actually is. The entire premises of a refugee settlement is based on the desire to be free and peaceful. These people escaped turmoil in their homeland and created an entirely new life with those desires at the forefront of their thoughts. Who could appreciate the concept of relishing in a tranquil moment better than refugees?

After exploring the Sera Tey Monastery and finding a hole in the wall Tibetan restaurant (that served beef!) we started backtracking our way through the corn fields on foot. The lack of cars, pollution, and noise, combined with the afore mentioned scenery, as well as the knowledge that I was doing something so entirely out of the ordinary stream of life, is what triggered me to acknowledge what a special moment was occurring. Even with all the annoyances I’ve had in the last three weeks, I fully comprehended that my life is virtually stress and problem free. I have the leisure to explore, travel, and reflect on an entirely new place, and I have three months to do it. Walking with my friends in the brilliant sunshine, breathing in the clean country air, and gazing across the vibrant fields, I knew that this was one of many moments of my life in India that my memory should earnestly savor. 

Initial Observations

1. The cows know they are treated like royalty and seem to take every opportunity to prove it as they plod across the road perfectly at their ease, and stop to ponder life in the middle of traffic.
   
   
2. Honking while driving is a way of life. As Daya says: “In the west, people honk when something’s wrong. In India, if you don’t hear honking, something’s wrong.”
3. Perhaps the most uncomfortable thing about not using toilet paper is that after you use the hose everything is always wet.
   
   
4. Germans (to avoid generalizing, I’ll say the German volunteers I have met since being in India) are both admirably and annoyingly adjustable.
   
   
5. Since eating with your hands is protocol, all restaurants have sinks strategically placed in the dining room for washing purposes.
6. Indian men make the most vile sound I’ve ever heard. It’s a mix between obnoxiously clearing their throat and violently coughing up an imaginary hairball. It’s been a rather unpleasant wake up call the past two weeks.
7. Rickshaws, also called autos or tuk tuks, are the most brilliant invention ever. Though the lack of traffic laws in India make this dwarf vehicle particularly unsafe, it is still as amusing as cruising around in a high velocity golf cart (T & K, you know what I mean.)
   
8. Indians have artfully mastered how to pour water out of a cup or bottle into their mouths without letting their lips touch the surface, which would be considered unsanitary, and without spilling a drop. The dribbles on my chin and shirt prove that I have failed to obtain this skill.
9. We are required to cover our shoulders and legs to about mid calf at all times. Although this seems a bit restricting, it is surprising how quickly I’ve gotten accustomed to dressing modestly. The other day we were in our hotel room so I was wearing gym shorts. A few male volunteers stopped by and I couldn’t help but think about how much skin I was showing.
   
   
10. On the other hand, I will never get used to being treated unequally due to my sex. On several occasions at our my job site, my male co-volunteer is acknowledged and given preference over me. Any questions about the English language are directed towards him even though I am the native speaker.
11. You can never go wrong with Indian “meals.” Every restaurant we’ve been too has a dish called a meal which includes rice, a crispy wonton thing, poori (fried dough - delicious), an assortment of vegetables and sauces that vary from restaurant to restaurant, yogurt, and, if you’re lucky, a sweet banana/coconut pudding. They are very cheap and very tasty.
    
    
12. For reasons beyond my understanding, there always seems to be some type of festival underway in India. There is always a reason to eat, dance, and revel in the streets. Not a bad way to live.
    
    
13. Men are highly affectionate with one another. It is not rare to see men holding hands or walking with their arms around each other. They also dress how men in America dressed in the 70’s.
14. Indian people are very curious and anxious to talk to me and the other volunteers, mainly because we are such an uncommonly pale spectacle. I half expected this, but the questions they ask us caught me off guard. In no particular order, some include:
1. “What is your father name? What is your mother name?” (When children ask, its more like “Mommy name? Daddy name?”)
2. “What God is yours?” (Meaning are you Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc)
3. “Did you eat breakfast/lunch? What did you eat?”
4. “What is your local language?”
15. The head wobble is unique and endearing Indian maneuver that my friends and I are determined to adopt. Sometimes the meaning can be tricky to decipher, but in general it means OK or Yes. 
16. Indian women are above and beyond the most beautiful people I have ever seen. They have thick lashes framing dark eyes, and heavy, long dark hair usually plaited modestly down their backs. Stunning.
    
    
17. Haggling is the preferred economic style and I am decidedly terrible at it. It requires a ruthless desire to one up the other person, whether you are the buyer or the seller, and a tenacity that is elusive to me.

Address!

So we haven't moved in yet, but I do have our address! It takes up to two weeks for things to arrive, maybe more, so keep in this in mind if you are sending me something.

No. 3850/5
Manjunatha Extension
Hunsur Town
Mysore District - 571105
Karnataka, India