Day 1 - in the Village (Journal Entry)

We arrived yesterday afternoon. We met some of the people here, ate lunch [sitting on the floor], and eventually night came- when we had a fire! It was great, just like camping. In fact, this life here is just like camping, except we forgot the marshmallows! There was one bed in our room. While it would be customary for both Robin and I to share a bed, and while Robin and I do have a somewhat close friendship, we both knew that sleeping together was not an option. I ended up on the floor- which was okay until about 4am.

I woke up this morning at 4am, and stayed in bed (my sleeping bag), trying to sleep until about 6am when I gave up. I still stayed in bed since Robin wasn’t awake and since I didn’t hear much action going on outside. Finally around 8:15, I decided to get up. It was a struggle to know what to wear- my pajamas with a nightgown type thing on the outside, or get changed, or just wear my pj’s or what, since I didn’t know what was appropriate. I finally decided to keep my pj’s on, put on a jacket overtop and go out. Well, that was a nice thought- but didn’t get me very far, since I couldn’t get the door unlocked to go out! I tried several times and finally gave up and sat in a chair in my room for about a half hour until Robin sat up in bed.

“Good morning” I said.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I can’t get out.” I said.
She just laughed, got up and unlocked it without too much of a struggle! (It’s funny because most of the time when we have a door that’s locked and we can’t open it- I’m the one who is able to open it!)

We sat outside for a while with Anju- she washed dishes using tied up grass as a dishrag. I think it made the dishes dirtier! It was funny how she rinsed out the grass when she was done! The sun wasn’t shining, there were clouds everywhere- it was pretty gloomy and cold- though it didn’t seem as cold as our home in "Kahan." Someone had boiled some water, so we used that to wash our faces, brushed our teeth and then had chai. I observed Chachi (aunty in Hindi), take a ‘barten’ (A bowel) filled with some stuff, including water over to a tree. She pulled a leaf from it and added it to the mixture. Then she went and stood up on the ledge that surrounds the porch. She lifted it up to the sky and then slowly poured some of it out- making sure it fell on the ledge and the ground beneath it. Then she turned around once- and poured some more out. She then sprinkled it around the porch area where she was standing. I’m not sure what that was for, maybe one day I can ask her.

Seeing this, I wondered what the day would hold- our first day in the village.

The day was very much uneventful, and in fact somewhat depressing. We learned that there aren’t really any women or girls our age to learn from and work with. Bicky- the son (a few years younger than us), seems to be the only one around who doesn’t have anything to do. We both feel that while he can help us with language, he can’t and shouldn’t be our sole teacher- for everyone’s sakes, that’s just not a good idea. We talked to Anju and there is another woman who she had mentioned before and mentioned again today. We had met her the last time and she did come over today for a while. We are supposed to go to her home tomorrow to do language. She has a 1 ½ year old (named Rahul!), however and he’s pretty demanding, so I’m not sure how much learning will actually happen. If she didn’t have a kid, she would be working in the fields- as are the other women in this village. Though all the other women seem to be 50 years old or older! It seems the village has old woman and young boys- where are all the men and the young girls?

Also, Joyti, the girl (15 years old, who will go back to school in Feb), said something in Kahani and Anju said, “That’s different from how we say it…we say it like this…the Kahani people here say it like that….” Oh brother- even before we’ve hardly learned anything, there are differences in the language we’ve learned and the language of this village. And then Anju said, “all villages have a little different language….” Great.

Thoughts we had throughout the day:
“Is this really the best village to work in?”
“If there aren’t any women here our age, I’m not sure that it is…”
“Does everyone work in the field?” - Yes.
“When do they come back from the field?” – 5pm or so…
“I guess we’re going to be spending some time in the field”
“We could go to another village…”
“How did this seem like a perfect fit, and everything was laid out for us?” (Elizabeth)
“I never thought that, just for the record.” (Robin)
“Who can be our story-crafters?”
“We are just here to learn language, so I guess we should focus on that…”
“Yeah, but if the village where we end up has a slightly different language than this one, we should start learning that rather than getting confused with this one, PLUS we are supposed to be making contacts and looking for a potential story-crafter too… “
“Ugh.”

The rest of the day was spent writing letters, watching woman with grass on their head walk by- some of them had so much grass you couldn’t even see their faces- I don’t know how they could see where they were walking! We played with the dog, had chai, I tried to sleep, but to no avail, we tried to catch flies in our room (we counted more than 35 of them at one time), I was forced to have some really slimy, lemon, yogurt stuff- ugh.

While there seems to be a lot of negative things here, including the spider looking at me from the wall next to me, there is a lot to be thankful for too. Things like, “woman with grass on their heads, men working in the field, kids running and playing with the dog, and mainly, the incredible peaceful feeling of being here”

I did observe Chachi worshiping or doing some kind of puja (prayer) this morning and then heard Bicky (the son) blowing a horn and was told that was he was doing his puja in the temple in their home. My thoughts are: “How can what we bring to these people make any difference at all?” And, “There lives are fine- they don’t need and don’t want to know anything different than the life they are leading- honestly, they have more of a perfect life than a lot of Christians that I know!” Robin once told me that while things on the surface may appear fine, there may be things underneath that they are really trying to escape.

True, I guess. And perhaps, they don’t know that they want to escape that because they haven’t heard of anything else? I don’t know. Somehow being here, seeing things makes what we’re trying to do seem so much more impossible. I knew it was impossible before I got here, but now I really feel that way! One thing I guess to help is that while it’s good to keep the end goal in mind, living life day-by-day, hour by hour is what is going to get the work done in the end. And humor will probably help too!!!

-----------written later that night--------------

We just finished eating alu gobi- which is potato and cauliflower with spices mixed in. While it doesn’t taste bad, we’ve had it for the past three meals so far…I wonder how long we’ll be having it…

But, this afternoon/evening something exciting happened! Robin and I played cricket!!! It was SO MUCH FUN!!! We had been sitting around kind-of unsure of what to do all day. Some kids had seen us and sort-of talked to us, though not much. Later in the evening, the sky looked really pretty, so I went out to take a picture of it. As I was taking it, one boy came over and asked what I was doing- I showed him the picture, and about 2 minutes later, I was surrounded by kids all wanting to see the pictures on my camera. They wanted to know where their picture was, so I told them I had to take a picture of them first, then they could see. They laughed when they saw the pictures of themselves!

I then asked if they were playing cricket- they said yes and “come play.” I said, I don’t know how, they didn’t seem to care. I also didn’t care, and was thankful for something to do, so I called to Robin, “hey, you wanna come play cricket?” She said, “I don’t know how.” I said, “I don’t either, come on!” She came and we both played…

At one point, I pitched the ball to one boy and he hit it so far it went out of the field and down the mountain somewhere. They said, “The ball’s gone”- I felt bad about being the one who pitched it, so I said, “No, it’s not, come on, let’s find it.” They kids kept saying, “scorpion, scorpion”- as I climbed down the terraces trying to find the ball. I tried to ignore the “Scorpion” warnings, hoping that that it might mean something different in their language! Anyway, after the kids saw I was serious about finding the ball, they all climbed down and started searching with me- I asked one about the scorpion and he said they were joking. I’m not sure, but either way, I never saw any scorpions and, I found the ball! Both the kids and I were excited!

Anyway, I’m not sure how playing cricket helps our storying work, but it made me feel a lot happier about being here. For now, I think that’s a good thing.