A school - this is larger than most
Kids testing out the crayons we gave them
standard cow traffic jam
random waterfall we stumbled across
Kids in an Anganwadi center, which is free preschool
A government-run health clinic
We measure people's "peak flow" which is how much air passes through their lungs and is generally correlated to overall health
It is basically the sap of these palm trees that grow in the area, and it doesn’t even need to ferment, you just collect it off the tree and drink it straight. Here is the exact Toddy process: First you scale the palm tree and leave jugs at the top to collect the sap. A few weeks later, you again climb the tree and collect all the sap (these dudes literally shimmy up the palm tree in about 20 seconds).
Starting up to collect the goods
The problem with the collection process is that bees fly into the booze and drown in it, so after you collect it you poor it through a filter to collect all the dead bees. Once you’ve filtered out those suckers, you’re ready to drink.
Filtering out the bees, yummy
The stuff doesn’t exactly taste good but it seems to be pretty strong and the tribesmen (not to mention our surveyors) were getting a huge kick out of the fact that I was willing to drink it.
This guy is a vetran Toddy collector, and made it up the palm tree in record time
In addition to learning to drink like a villager, I also learned their most common gambling game, which is called Carrom board. Carrom board is sort of like pool except its played with checkers on a wooden board and you try to slide them into the pockets. Ok that was a pretty pathetic description but if you look at the pictures it kind of makes sense.
Apparently Aakash had played before, so he suggested we try to take on the two village guys. Fortunately we didn’t put any money on the game, because I learned that I am just as pathetic at Carrom board as I am at pool. Pretty soon the entire village had gathered around to watch the white girl attempt to play. I quickly became their charity case, and they all started trying to coach me. The best part is that I actually improved and in the end I think I actually made my coach proud of his new protégé. Needless to say I really would have preferred to work 24/7 while in Jhabua, and yet was forced to bridge the cultural gap by drinking and playing Carrom with the villagers. The sacrifices I make for the good of the project…
Jeep top: our primary mode of transportation. And yes, to fit more people in they actually ride on the hood.
After Jhabua, Aakash headed back to Delhi and Jack came down and joined me for a quick three day tour of Rajgarh, another one of our districts. Somehow in just three days we managed to get into quite the shitshow, for lack of a better word. Challenge number one was to get ourselves from the city out to the village to meet up with Purshottam, one of our Indian coworkers who was already there. Amazingly we managed to get on the right bus, and we were quite proud of ourselves, until we of course got off at the wrong stop and ended up wandering around asking everyone for the Hotel Orange Residency. We walked past the Hotel Anand Residency entirely too many times before we realized that was, in fact what Purshottam had been talking about all along. On day 2, we went to visit a small town. We had been in said town exactly 60 seconds when we were “pulled over” by a cop (I don’t know what you call it when you’re a pedestrian and you get pulled over). The cop informed us that we had to go check in at the police station and show them our passports. Clearly Rajgarh is not yet ready for international tourism. We ended up spending an hour trying to prove to the cops that we were just looking around the town and not up to anything shady. He insisted that we give him a copy of our passports, which would have been fine except that Jack had left his at the hotel, which was over an hour away. We figured they would leave it at that, but that night they actually showed up at our hotel to get the copy. We weren’t sure if we should be proud or upset that it was worth it to them to travel over an hour just to get the copies. The best part is we still didn’t have a copy because the entire town our hotel was in had a power outage all day. The cop actually waited there for another hour for the power to come on just so he could get the copy. You know how some restaurants post pictures of celebrities who have eaten there? I think that the Biora police station is going to frame and post the copies of our passports with a little plaque underneath that says “these white people came here”. We should have signed them.
By day 3, we decided we should head back to the larger city since we were not exactly getting a warm reception from the smaller towns. We started with breakfast at a roadside stand. We were about halfway through when there was an explosion in the dhaba right next to ours, like about 20 feet away. Amazingly, the workers there seemed ok, although they were pretty badly burned. We were pretty shaken up and decided to go straight to the bus stand and get out of this district, which clearly had it in for us. We made it on to the right bus (go us) and sat right behind the driver. We made it through the first 20 minutes of the ride event-free, when a car passing us somehow hit a rock at the right angle to fling it into the front windshield, completely shattering it all over the driver and the front the bus. I have no idea how, but the driver was completely fine. I literally pulled a shard of glass out of my chin, but was otherwise fine, as was Jack. What’s even more ridiculous is that the driver barely missed a beat. He pulled over, brushed all the glass away, and then just kept right on driving. We drove the remaining four hours to Bhopal with no front windshield! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous, a bee was sucked in through the lack of windshield and stung me. Seriously? Overall it was an amazing trip, but also one of the most ridiculous 48 hours I’ve ever had, and I think both Jack and I were pretty glad to be back to the “peace and calm” of Delhi.
We started and ended the week in Delhi, and I think my proudest moment was when the four of us squeezed into the back of an auto like any good penny-pinching Delhi family would do. The Taj Mahal was absolutely amazing, and totally meets the hype. It was made even more enjoyable by our Indian tour guide, who kept talking about the Muggles who had built it. We got extremely excited that he too was Harry Potter fan and we were impressed that he took the time to tell us it was not, in fact, constructed by a bunch of Hogwarts kids. Alas, it turns out he was referring to the Mughals, who build an empire in India in the mid 16th century and who are not nearly as cool as Muggles.
Agra also has a history of producing precious stones, so part of our tour included a stop at a jewelry store that makes Tiffany’s look like Claire’s. I mean there were some serious rocks in there. At one point the jeweler showed us their prize piece, which was an emerald necklace worth 7 million dollars. After he showed it to us he insisted that one of us try it on. Of course, my mom, sister, and I were terrified of the thing, I mean if we broke it my NGO salary in rupees was not exactly going to help us buy it back. Somehow he convinced Care to wear it, and I must say that it went extremely well with the Red Sox t-shirt she was wearing. I think its safe to say no Plant will ever again wear a 7 million dollar necklace. Hell, even a 7 million rupee necklace isn’t likely!
Mostly it was great to see them after such a long time, and I think they enjoyed seeing the absolute chaos that is a life in India. Being with them definitely made me realize I am going to be in for some serious culture shock when I get back to the US. I don’t think I had realized just how “Indian” I’ve become over these past 9 months. I’ve definitely picked up on Hinglish, which involves using bizarre verb tenses and phrases - I would be wanting to see you all when I get back to the US, and I will do my level best to see you this summer only. Once I am in receipt of my plans I would be letting you know. Fortunately, I still prefer beer to Barcadi Breezers and football to cricket, so there is some hope for an easy transition.
