Quick update: I leave for Darjeeling in about an hour, to return in the New Year. We will hike Sandakfu and hopefully get a view of Mt. Everest. It is very cold right now in Guwahati and I have been bundled up watching Ken Burns' Baseball under the covers. Christmas on the Brahmaputra was everything I could ask for. Carnival atmosphere, good company, delicious food, beautiful scenery, entertainment watching cars get stuck in the sand. Sankar and I walked to the river and back - that's a lot of water when it all floods in monsoon season! Several people came up to me and shook my hand while I was doing something else and started taking pictures with me, which gave me a feel for being a celebrity or a beautiful woman.  

I don't have the internet power I need right now to post pictures, but the basketball court is almost finished! Today Steuart and I helped dig the three-foot hole for the concrete pillar that will support the hoop and five feet of it was finished when I got home from running errands. The courtyard is almost finished - two more days of paving! I'll post photos when I get back.  

Work has started on the basketball court! The day after I came home with the hoop, a crew of five laborers started paving the courtyard in long strips. Today is the fifth day of work. They mix the cement by hand, making a crater with cement and sand filled with water. When they cement is laid and flattened they top it with a shiny coat of plaster. The pole for the hoop is under construction and they left an opening in the concrete where we can dig the hole. It’s going to look really good! We invited the best school basketball team in NE India to come play when it’s finished and it would be a lot of fun if I could play with them.

I’m teaching the students Christmas carols so tonight we will stand around the little plastic Christmas tree Uttam has and sing Jingle Bells, Rudolf, and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. We might get interviewed because there is a student from Guwahati studying at Wesleyan who is doing a story on Parijat. Also at the Christmas festivities will be my new friend Bhaswati (pronounced P-haswati). Uttam introduced me to her a few days ago and I immediately trusted her not only because she seemed cool but because she had volunteered here two years ago, commuting from home two hours each way. It takes a good heart to do that. She has lived in Delhi most of the past five years and offered to show me around! So now I have a tour guide when I get there and I don’t have to try my luck with sketchy hostels and wander by myself in a city of 22 million people. I could not be more excited, so I think I will extend my stay a few more days in Delhi! Yesterday were walked around Guwahati, eating at choice restaurants, walking, getting to know one another, hopping between public transportation and getting a drink at a top floor bar. I had whiskey, neat. I gained some confidence and took an auto and two trekkers to Garchuk by myself, bought some necessary provisions from Prodip and walked home. For those who are curious, the “trekker taxi” is a red-painted, stripped down Range Rover-looking SUV with a bench in front, another in the middle and two benches parallel with the road in the back. They have set route that they run like a bus. It’s a standard sized American SUV but here, a comfortable ride holds 12 or 13 people and the record so far for a trekker I was in is 20. I always count. The far is cheap, the destinations are printed in English on the front windshield and my body fits slightly better than in a bus, so it’s my preferred mode of transportation.

This week marks the end of a short era in my life – life without Americans. Steuart showed up on Friday, a student from Reed College. He actually recognizes my sister…said he had a class with her before he dropped it, but it doesn’t seem like a huge coincidence because of all the people to show up here, a Reedie seems the most likely. It’s great to have somebody to talk to about American stuff and keep me company, but I really enjoyed the time away from my countrymen. He’ll be in and out for about a month.

In two days I leave for Darjeeling for 8 days to trek around the mountains with Henry Teron, a friend of the family. I previously mentioned to him that I wanted to visit Darjeeling, so he said, “OK, I’ll come with you and organize the trip.” What luck! Five of us are taking an overnight train to New Jalpaiguri and a morning taxi to Darjeeling. I am really excited to see some Himalayas! Three days after we return we also take a one night trip to Shillong and Cherrapunji, the latter being rainiest place on Earth. It receives an average of 128 inches of rain each July and holds the world record for most rainfall in a year with 1041.75 inches! But it doesn’t rain at all in January and I’m fine with that.

When I get back I will be halfway done with my stay at Parijat. The time has gone both very quickly and very slowly. 

Motorcycle Diaries

There are not many things that I think are good old fun, but riding on the back of a motorcycle in the afternoon sun through Indian traffic is one of them. Aside from the wind in my face, the best part is India watching. One of the stranger American cultural influences in Guwahati seems to be the prevalence of Oakland Raiders apparel. I don’t know – maybe it was an Al Davis marketing campaigns a while back. The first man I saw with a Raider’s jacket was at a wedding. The second was yesterday on our way downtown. For those uninterested in football, the Raiders are bad in a sad way, not in a cool way that would make their stuff fashionable, so even in the US it’s unusual to see Raiders fans anywhere outside of Oakland.

We inquired about a basketball hoop at the sporting goods store and one of the guys ran to the warehouse and returned with an orange metal regulation hoop, just like we have at home. The owner insisted that it was used upside-down, with the hooks facing up and it was good to feel like an expert on something other than English. A little part of the hoop was broken so the guy ran back and got another one. We hung a red white and blue Team USA hoop on it and bought 2 basketballs for a total of Rs 2500, about $45. There were five employees in the tiny shop (though the American understanding of “employee” is a little different) and we talked in broken English about my height and how little Assamese I knew. Just before we left, the middle-aged woman with a beautiful smile ran out and got coffee for Prasanta and me in little plastic Nestle™ cups. She spoke to me only in Assamese so a bald man told me that the woman wanted her very tall fifteen year old daughter to come to the United States and that maybe we could get married and then she would be my mother-in-law. I don’t know what she really said, but he insisted we would be family. When we left we were all friends and I shook hands with everyone on the way out.

The trip home was smoky and dusty, illuminated by garbage fires and flashes of magnesium light from the welding shacks. I loved it. Riding on the back of motorcycle with a basketball hoop slung over my shoulder justifies a little staring, though the novelty is still mostly the white guy. Equally stare-able would have been the nine goats on leashes being led across four lanes of traffic or another motorcycle passenger carrying a fifteen foot pole like a lance. Or the Raiders fan that we passed again. But none of these things attracted much attention. 

A Week in Review

This week I successfully used a squat toilet. Previously I had only used a western-style john but without toilet paper so I would be prepared for the time there was none and I didn’t have to wipe my ass with 10 rupee notes. I’ve also started eating with my hand. It’s an enjoyable way to eat, to squish the rice between your fingers and try to make sticky little balls so more food gets to the mouth. I pick up little tips by watching the more experienced eaters.

Last week and this week there are no classes and no school. I can’t really get a straight answer out of anybody - I’ve been told that there are 50 students per day this time of year and there are morning prayers. Well, the most students I have seen is 10, there are no morning prayers and school ends when I say because I am the only teacher. (Sometimes more students come on field trips, like today when we crammed into a bus to the stadium to watch the Indian-ASEAN car rally stop in Guwahati. It was not a car rally like we think…the cars were quite boxy and utilitarian. Representatives from India and 9 other SE Asian countries (the Association of South East Asian Nations) have driven 4,000 km in 3 weeks to trumpet the economic and political ties being made between the countries. There were some pretty cool motorcycle stunts and traditional Assamese tribal dancers danced to We Will Rock You.) This is all fine though because it means I have actual structured class time to teach the students computer skills in fun ways. We do a little geography most days and I’ve taught them to sing Jingle Bells and Rudolf for the Christmas Eve show.

Motorcycle stunts at the Indian-ASEAN car rally

  My and Nabakanta's handy work. 

One of the best things I brought to India was my little wooden box with cards and dice games. The hostel kids are fascinated when I shuffle and bridge the cards and burst out laughing when they saw it for the first time. I tried to teach them with the old sticky cards I brought but they had more success when they used the new plastic ones I bought at the Pan Bazaar. I taught Sankar and Nabakanta 13s and we’ve had many relaxing afternoons and evenings playing. On Saturday night all of the hostel students had gone home except Nabakanta so I asked if he wanted to play cards and he quickly abandoned his typing practice. We spent a great evening watching the first inning of Ken Burn’s Baseball and idly playing cards. I tried to explain certain concepts but he couldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did. It took me to a far away time and place and I only realized that I was still in India when I got up to pee. Sunday is apparently the roosters’ Sabbath so I got to sleep until 8. Most of the day I listening to blues, did my laundry, sanitized water bottles for the week, wrote a bunch of emails and worked on intercontinental Christmas presents…first truly relaxing day I’ve had here.

Sankar

I also taught the hostel kids the game we all call “Egyptian Rat Screw.” I couldn’t explain what the name meant because I don’t understand myself so we call it the slap game and it caught on quick. One of my favorite nights thus far started when I poked my head into the girls’ dorm with my laptop and my box of games. The boys were there too and Nabakanta translated the rules of the game. Some of the students were interested in the typing program I have on my computer but most sat in a crowded circle, all knees and elbows, trying to slap their way back into the game. They didn’t get bored and they screamed and yelled when their hand got buried in the pig pile. We played for more than two hours and it was great to finally have a medium to interact with the girls.

Of course, much of the last few days has been spent fundraising, but you know about that. Thanks again for the support. 

Into the jungle

Yesterday I walked into the Garbhanga Forest, a jungle nearly the size of Guwahati and home to the fifteen hostel students at Parijat. The “road” to the village was nearly impassable by car, with muddy ruts at least a foot deep in places. It is JUNGLE, home to wild elephants and in more isolated places tigers and leopards as well. Two German environmental interns and their asshole Indian coworker came with us. I spent most of the trek up talking with Henrick, a bright 18 year old almost as tall as myself, about India and politics and the EU. It was great to relate stories of India to another person who also found them novel – most Indians are pretty unimpressed with our Western impressions of their country. To entertain a different part of my brain it was also interesting to hear about a German opinion of EU economics.

When we got to the village, Garbhanga Ulubari, the first thing we saw was the Parijat satellite school – small, well constructed but without any children. There is only one teacher and it’s very difficult to convince the students to come to school. Uttam and I and the three others brainstormed way to improve the village, from volunteer guest houses to solar-powered lamps and Uttam again tried to convince me to write a book about the Karbi people, the tribe of his family and of Garbhanga, which would make me “famous like Oprah Winfrey.” I’m interested to return to the village with Sankar or Nabakanta in February or March to help teach and get a better idea of what Parijat can do.

The village was idyllic. Golden rice fields snaked around the valley floor while the hills were scattered with houses that overlooked the paddies like lake-view estates. The fields were backed up to dense jungle with picturesque streams running through and each was dotted with villager cutting and transporting rice, cows eating the stalks left after harvest and ringing their bells peacefully, and thousands of bundles of rice, each tied together at the stalks and fanning out like a lather brush. The villagers also grew oranges, grapefruit, star fruit, pineapple, betel nut, and papaya on their properties. The village is 17 km on foot or by motorcycle to Lokhra, the nearest modern town and the isolation gives it a whimsical quality. Of course it is also the cause of many problems. There is no electricity or running water. There is an understaffed government school through class 4 and Uttam’s school through class 8 but both struggle to educate the students. The nearest healthcare is in Guwahati. (The government built a modern-looking medical building but it is currently abandoned.) Their only substantial means of income is at the Lokhra market where, again, they have to carry their goods 17 km. Sankar and Nabakanta each speak good English as their fourth language and will likely attend university, but both said they wanted to live in their villages again after school. I think they will do more good here than anyone from the outside could.

The walk home started at 2:45 and Hendrick and I ran out of things to talk about so time passed more slowly. The sun set at 3:45 and by 5 we were walking in the jungle at NIGHT. We got out around 5:30 and returned to Parijat by 6:45 having walked at least 35 km. I have wanted to see Garbhanga since before I got to India and it was even better than I had hoped for. 

I recently interviewed a group of 5 students after class in the computer room. Bitopan Medhi, Bikas Tumung and Biku Patur, all 15, read in class 8. This is probably my favorite class because they are especially good natured and both the girls and the boys participate. The class has a few girls that organize games of dang and aren’t afraid to speak up and everyone catches on quickly when I teach them chalk board games. Bitopan speaks the best English in the class, perhaps in the whole school. The other two students were Sotiesh Tumung, 13, and Bitopan’s brother Rupjyoti, 10, a round, happy kid. The Medhi boys tell me their favorite food is meat. The older boys have all been at Parijat for at least 5 years, Sotiesh for one, and Rupjyoti also for 5, since class KG.

When I asked what their fathers do for work they told me Inland Water Transport, Guwahati Municipal Corporation, and business/land, though this did not give me a clear idea of their day to day labors. Bitopan said his father was a peon (probably a word that many American kids don’t know), but even with his good English it was difficult to get certain concepts across. They each liked their favorite subject because it was “important and interesting” – science, science, English, science, science and math. The science teacher at Parijat is a kind, quiet man named Promen who lived just a few houses from school. He has taken me under his wing on occasion to explain Indian things and goes out of his way to be friendly. Tonight I showed him pictures of my family. Chemistry lectures about substituting metal compounds seems impractical at compared to the rest of the curriculum (English, Hindi, Assamese, math, social science, computer) but it introduces the students to something novel, a way of thinking that they may never encounter elsewhere. It’s an “academic” way of thinking, the only such subject Parijat offers and perhaps that’s why they like it.

I asked them what their goals where. Bitopan wants to be a doctor, Bikas an army man, Biku and hotel manager, Soteish a doctor and a teacher (we discussed the possibility of having two aims) and Rupjoti a scientist. It was good to hear that they didn’t ALL strive to be doctors. When I asked Bitopan earlier what he wanted to be after Parijat he said he wanted to be a “good man” – a ballsy answer I thought for a 15 year old. Except Rupjoti, each had gone to government schools before Parijat but in some cases the schools were too far away to walk (10-12 km) and each only went through class 4. They like Parijat because there’s always something happening; festivals, outings, etc. Uttam organizes events to open the kids’ eyes to the world – on Saturday we took 2 school buses to The Royal Global School to watch primary school Indian heritage dances in a sixth-story, acoustically-designed, state-of-the-art auditorium. Afterwords there were refreshments in the tea garden. The contrast between schools made my jaw drop…I have no idea what the kids thought.

Parijat students are proud that international volunteers come to their school, something that no other school in the area offers, including the Royal Global School. Each volunteer gives them something slightly different, showing them as they show us that people around the world are really, surprisingly, all the same. Their only requests were for teachers to always attend class and for a playground. 

The City

Today I went to the city. I spent too much money, I made a friend and I am happy to be home. Having been in Guwahati for 3 weeks I wanted to see what the city was all about, so armed with my gamusa I took an auto-rickshaw to Uzan Bazaar on the banks of the Brahmaputra and started looking for the ferry to Peacock Island. I could see the temple on top of the island from shore – it wasn’t very far away – but for all the map consulting I couldn’t find the damn ferry so I walked inland to buy stuff. I soon realized that the Pan Bazaar was where I came my first day with the Australians to buy art supplies and nervously try to eat some fried rice so that made it a little more familiar. I got the autobiography of Gandhi (when in India…) and Jules Verne’s Spaeth family classic Mysterious Island, and a bottle of wine for making pasta sauce for the family on Sunday night. The wine man smiled wide when he saw that I had a gamusa stuffed in my backpack. I decided that the ferry couldn’t be too hard to find so I walked back out to Mahatma Gandhi Road to have a look…sure enough, it was still hard to find. I must have passed the same blind beggar 5 times. He was probably the only one who didn’t notice the American walking back and forth under the employment tents and past the judges’ residences with well-kept gardens. Finally I gave up and started walking toward the Fancy Baazar but before I got there someone said, “Boat? Island?” and I said, “Okay.”

I read that in India sometimes you have to resign yourself and get swept away, so with that in mind I got on the aluminum roof of a boat with a handsome English-speaking man and motored into the Brahmaputra. The boat ride ended up being 500 rupees instead of the 10 the ferry charges (it probably was not 50 times better) but still only $9.something and it came with Kamal, a guide/translator/friend. I was skeptical but friendly and he told me a little about the mythology and showed me the temple and walked me around the island. In the meantime his friend, the boat owner, had left without notice so we sat and talked with the ferry manager. By the time I got back to shore he had invited me to his house and to a festival. I wanted to trust him but I’m not in a position to start making friends that live an hour away across town, so I thanked him and left. The Fancy Bazaar was a bunch of people and clothes and shoes and saris so when I found The Paradise Hotel I ate lunch, pricy by American standards, horrendously expensive by Parijat standards, and caught another auto-rickshaw home.

I was so happy to be back in my neck of the woods! The first cows I saw in the road made me smile because it meant I was almost home. Garchuk is just a wide spot in the road but I know Prodip and his convenience store that sells me soap and mango juice and I recognize the rickshaw driver and the one mangy billy goat and the thankful drunk man thanks me. I say hi to each house and it says hi back. I learned one important thing today – that I am perfectly content to stay in Pamohi. I know that sometimes something interesting will happen with little or no notice and the rest of the time I can read or play with hostel kids. Normally I would consider this lazy but I don’t - I am happy to enjoy the village life. 

The other night I asked Uttam to tell me about his school, a story that I had only heard so far from articles and videos. I wanted to hear Uttam tell it.

The school started with 800 rupees and a cow shed. This is Parijat gospel, mentioned in every article. The shed is now a carport that shelters a deadbeat car, a cycle-rickshaw, a hen house and in the mornings, Uttam’s father. Surprisingly to me, Uttam got a lot of resistance when he tried to recruit children to his school. Parents didn’t see the value of free education for themselves or for their children, so the school started with 4 students. The next year there were 18 and the school doubled in size, from half of the shed to all of it. He explained the school’s history to me in a spatial way that put my geographically-inclined mind at ease, describing how classrooms became kitchens became bedrooms as he raised money and was able to take on more children from surrounding villages. An influx of money came when the school started getting media attention, enough to build three permanent structures over several years, but donations have fallen off and another building seems unlikely in the near future. It was fun to be inspired as Uttam told stories about his school with a genuineness that no feel-good, Save-a-Child reporting cannot evoke. He doesn’t teach classes anymore and is often out doing administrative stuff during the day, but he taught by himself for the first 2 years and when I asked him if he missed teaching he said “Absolutely, absolutely.” The real story confirmed that I made the right choice coming here.

I was informed yesterday that after the examinations this week (which I sorta knew about) there would be no regular classes until January (which I did not know about). I asked Sankar what school is like during this period and he said there are morning prayers and maybe 50 students come each day, meaning that theoretically I can teach computer classes. Most students have little concept of computers and Uttam wants them to practice writing their names over and over, so yesterday we did this. Then I asked the class to come up with questions one might ask in a letter to a stranger their own age, a pen pal. It was hard to get much response but once we had ten questions written on the board I told them each to type Q. Questions and A. Answers. My favorite question was “What is your favorite curry?” (Most typed, “My favorite curry is fishcurry.”) My favorite answer was “There are 6 peapole in my family.” Today they started with names, then typed out the 28 states of India and drew maps of India in MS Paint. The girls took to this well, the boys got bored. Two boys drew Assam instead and I showed them how to label places in their state. As you may know I love maps and think geography is super important, so having a specific purpose at school AND teaching two skills at once makes me happy.

Wagon Wheel

This week was the Rash Krishna festival at the temple down the street. For a week or so before the festival sculptors came and made clay figures large and small with straw and bamboo frames that would be displayed in booths that depicted different stories of Krishna. They would later be painted and dresses. Uttam introduced me to some of the people organizing the festival. None spoke much English but everyone was friendly and one man took a picture with me. On Wednesday there was no school but many of the students came anyway and we walked down to the festival grounds. One of the hostel boys dressed as Krishna and led the procession. They had not finished setting up all the booths, so the procession marched back the other way to another temple. There was much singing and most of the students were bored and wandered off. I was sitting next to Promen, the kindly science teacher at Parijat, and he sat next to a man with wavy hair and a big wart on his eyebrow. When the celebration appeared over, the man with the wavy hair walked down to the temple and said a few things and then called me over with the overhand beckon that Indians use, like clapping with one hand. The man introduced me and put a scarf around my neck and I said thank you and "mor naam Shaffer." Promen told me that they were honoring me with a gamusa, a red and white traditional Assamese scarf. Everyone wears them. I was extremely excited that someone would honor me with such a gift without even knowing me and it was the one thing that I really wanted from my time here.

Two days later we went back to the festival (at the original temple) to watch Parijat students perform. There was a carnival feel with stalls selling mountains of sweets and booths spinning gambling wheels. Eight girls put on two beautiful dances and Sankar and another boy, Bitupon, did a stand up routine that had the crowd rolling on the ground. The drunk man who always thanks me was also there, and he thanked me several more times. Before the girls performed Uttam told me that I will sing an American song. I said no and he said You will sing and I said NONO and he said You will sing? And I said na lagay, no need, and he said OK you will sing and walked away. As much as I didn't want to sing, I needed to come up with something in case he didn’t understand my desperation and dragged me up on stage anyway. I couldn’t think of a song that I knew more than a couple lines of but after a few minutes I thought, well, I guess could sing Wagon Wheel. Yeah, ok, I could do that.

As they were announcing me as the American who was going to sing a song, there was a commotion in the temple part of the stage and someone ran over and told the mic guy to shut up and everybody got really quiet. There was some screaming and then a girl started spasming on the floor. I asked Uttam’s wife Aimoni if someone should call a doctor and she said no doctor. It seemed to get worse and I asked if someone should put something under her head. Aimoni said no and that she would explain it later, so I stopped talking and watched. The girl got up, still shaking, and sprayed people with water from a vase and screamed more. It was a very disturbing experience, more so because I think I was the only person there that didn’t know what was going on. Sankar and I went to get tea and rice cakes and he explained that it is believed that the Gods can possessed the human body, and that they remember nothing when they are dispossessed. After a break for some REAL spicy pea soup, the program went on and I reluctantly agreed to sing. When else would I have such an opportunity? So this is how, in front of at least 100 staring Indians, I got up and sang "Rock me Mama like a Wagon Wheel..." And then I was honored with another gamusa. I actually enjoyed the whole thing and it gave me a greater sense of belonging here in Pamohi. It’s a great feeling to be included into a community so rapidly and perhaps people will start to recognize me as the singing American.