Time's Up

I don’t know much what to say.

Yesterday class seven presented me with a beautifully ornate Assamese gamusa and a small brass plate. They raised a little money themselves between students and pitched in to get these things for me, as seventh graders. What were you doing in 7^th grade? It took me completely by surprise and was the best present I’ve received in a long time.

I found everything I was hoping for at Parijat Academy. I tried something new. I was outside of my comfort zone (and will be again shortly) and for a while, every day I saw something new that I had taken for granted my whole life. I lived in an Indian village with a big happy family, a safe environment from which I could learn about India by myself but be surrounded by wonderful people. I now speak enough Assamese to be friendly with every member of the family and to get my point across sometimes in class, but I learned that spoken language is not really how we communicate or make friends. I got to teach regularly, which was of course an interesting experience unto itself, and I felt like what I did made a difference. I learned that I can’t set off on an adventure and cut ties with everyone I know, as much as I might like to. People at home are too important. Not every day was magical – some were great, some were pretty boring, just like at home, but the whole thing was incredible. I don’t know what else to say.

The hardest part of leaving is that my attachment is to the students and if I ever come back they will be gone. There is no possibility of replicating this experience…guess that’s what makes it good.

Pandemonium after handing out prints to the best hotels kids ever!

Some of my favorite pictures from Pamohi:

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I am now slightly more than half done with my trip. On Sunday, God willing, I take the Brahmaputra Mail at 11:45 AM to Varanasi where I will stay for one night and one very long day before taking another train to Delhi to stay for a few days with Bhaswati, a friend I met through Uttam who used to volunteer at Parijat. I think she will show me a good time in Delhi. From there I go to Agra on the 10^th to see the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort, then to Rajastan where I will explore for a little over 2 weeks before catching a plane from Jaipur to Kathmandu on March 29.

I stay in Kathmandu for a day, then take a bus to Pokhara several hours west where I will set up camp for a little while. I’ll look into the treks and go paragliding and see my new friend Alex Clayton. We met (sort of) in Winthrop this summer but have corresponded because she is doing the Peace Corps in outside of Pokhara and I was heading that direction. I will spend some time with her PC friends and hopefully a few days in her village. After that my hope is to take the last 6 weeks to do the Mustang and/or Manaslu and/or Gokyo treks but we’ll see how it all shakes out. I head home June 4. See you guys then!

I have one week left in Pamohi. Forgive me if I haven’t written for a while – its one part not having enough to write about, two parts wanting to spend my last days doing other things. I guess I should talk about what’s happened in the last 10 days and conclude with broader topics of self-reflection and the passage of time.

Well, I said goodbye to Tat, Chantal, and Lilly – they flew back to the East Coast – and Paul is in Thailand visiting his fiancé so I’ve been by myself for ten days for the first time in 2 months. I like it. Power seemed to be out more frequently so teaching is a little sporadic. We spent three days setting up for, celebrating, and cleaning up after Saraswati, the festival celebrating the goddess of learning with a ceremony and lots of food. I visited Dulumoni’s house with Bibha where I ate on a full stomach, took a nap, then ate again two hours later. Her family was good to me and sent me away with a big beautiful gamusa.

I finished up my one-month lease in Bokul’s building and moved back into the guest house – it is nice to have a bathroom, water and electricity. I initially told Uttam I didn’t want to move back but decided I was acting like a stubborn child because I only said no because he told me to. I did a mock-pack and confirmed that I have too much stuff and that next time I shouldn’t bring clothing on a long trip that I’m attached to. Seeing Tets traveling the world with just a day pack and a grocery bag inspired me to cut down. It rained for the first (and only) time last Sunday and it felt like home. The next day the power didn’t go out all day and I taught all five of my classes for the first time. We’ve moved onto Powerpoint and they catch on quick.

I went to the Assamese Youth Festival. I spent my time watching Bibha because neither of her parents came and when the fireworks started she grabbed both my legs and peed her pants. I miss camp, and I needed to shower and do laundry anyway so I just kept carrying her on my shoulders.  

There was a two-day national transportation bandh (general strike) to protest the increasing prices of fuel so no school Wednesday but a bunch of kids hung out in the computer room and I half-assedly of taught class. I spent that night revising my résumé so that just maybe a job will be waiting for me when I get home. About half the usual number of kids showed up Thursday.

Friday was a good day – kids were smart in class and after school I went to the city and bought gifts for as many people as I could. The Hero Rolls Aimoni and I got reminded me of ‘Chas food and good times in Oregon. I bought a train ticket from Varanasi to Delhi. Hopefully Henry is getting me to Varanasi through the back door and might have to pay a bribe on my behalf so I can ride the Brahmaputra Mail train.

Rumor is that Anjumoni, the last of the 4 students with whom Uttam started this school in 2003 eloped and moved in with her new husband. She is smart, pretty, a semi-professional dancer and a leader at school and it’s strange to think about quitting school for good on a Wednesday, and all the reasons for and ramifications of willingly marrying at age 15.

Today I handed out pictures to the students, gave away a big ‘ol jar of candy to kids at the inaugural Young Green Soccer Academy game, and picked up momos for Madan and Nareswar when they joked that I needed to bring them some from Garchuk. Honestly, everything is so inexpensive by our standards that any gift is worth the smile on somebody’s face.

I also shucked 5 kilos of peas.

I’ll self-reflect later.

Elephant Adventures

My new building-mate is an Australian anthropology PhD candidate studying human-elephant relationships in Northeast India. He is Paul and he is immediately easy to like. In order to create trusting relationships with the mahouts that he studies, he brings them pork and chicken and they drink rice beer together. He keeps them fat and happy so he can continue his research and they all drink rice beer and hang out with elephants. The day the elephants visited school he asked if I wanted to go hang out with his mahout buddies. YES! We drove his motorcycle just down the road to their camp – no electricity so by the light of a kerosene lamp we ate chilied potato wedges and smoked beedies and drank rice beer. Rice beer smells like rice (yup!) and it’s stronger than beer – they distill it a little from what I can tell – and it’s like 20 rupees a liter. It’s not great stuff but I didn’t care…I was drinking with mahouts! We watched a video that Paul took of two men, a mahout and a fungee (old-time wild elephant roper) singing songs about elephants, then we watched Justin Bieber and Shakira on Youtube and went home for dinner.

Fast forward to 3 nights ago. Spent all evening with chatty women, came home and unloaded on Paul which was great because he laughed sympathetically and said there were wild elephants in the Deepor Beel wetland that we might see, if I wanted to go with. YES! A guy who might own elephants picked us up – he says they’re his but Paul thinks otherwise. He had just called off his wedding so he brought some whiskey and coke. We met up with the neighborhood elephant watch, a group of men who ensure that wild elephants can cross roads and railway tracks back into the jungle safely. We sat at one of their houses and drank whiskey and rum, listening to what Paul and I found out later was a discussion of local reptile superstitions.

We walked through a backyard and up to the railroad embankment from which we could not see any elephants. At one point the guy told us not to run unless he says so - if an elephant charges you have to stand your ground. Jesus. But I felt safe searching for wild elephants with a bunch of half-drunk men. After minor shenaniganry we spotted about 10 elephants swimming across the beel, dark spots on dark water visible only by looking to the side. They swam slowly and in the meantime the guy’s friends arrived with whiskey and water which we drank sitting on the tracks. When they did make landfall we couldn’t see specific animals but we could hear lots of splashing and funny elephant noises. Soon enough they moved away from the water’s reflection and disappeared. Paul leaves for Thailand tomorrow to see his fiancé but hopefully more adventures to come!

By popular demand, the second half of the our Tiwa dance

Saturday was unexpectedly wonderful. After two weeks of preparing our Tiwa dance, we performance. The older boys helped me dress in traditional Karbi attire with a sarong, a gamusa head wrap, Uttam’s Karbi vest and crossing gamusas across my chest and back. I thought I looked good and everyone else seemed to agree! The stage was a dozen rickety desks lashed together with rope and bamboo, covered in canvas, so we had to step carefully to keep our toes safe. Everybody started hootin’ and hollerin’ when we got up on stage. I didn’t know the moves too well but it didn’t matter. When we finished a fat man with a layered haircut spoke to the audience about discovering the hidden potential in every student by mapping their fingerprints and then Uttam talked and more people talked, awards were given, volunteers thanked, achievements of the last year discussed. Surprisingly I was only asked to speak briefly. We gave an encore Tiwa performance and the dancing was actually better, though the crowd had already seen our moves.

Tiwa dance

My lovely and talented partner, Seoti Teron

Once everyone left, the students had a dance party stage with a combination of traditional Assamese dance music and Hindi pop. Hormones were unleashed and they danced til dark. It reminded me again that Indian kids are 98% the same as American kids. There was one boy with serious moves for a twelve year old who only wanted to dance alone on the front of the stage. Watching his gyrating hips and two-handed, Backstreet-Boys-style heart-pumping, it seemed obvious to me that he was gay…without thinking to hide it, he was flamboyant even by Western standards. Homosexuality is not even close to discussion in Pamohi and it was another case of “Jeez, what would this kid’s life be like in not-Pamohi?”

My Tiwa buddies. 

Dancing with the students gave me a chance to be one of them, to learn with them as a peer without having to teach or discipline. Instead of wearing jeans and watching the event with the crowd of students and parents and fingerprint gurus, I could stand with the students in my bright get-up and make jokes with, pat backs and butts of, give hi-fives to, console, drink tea amongst, take pictures with and be photographed by – the students. It was camaraderie. It’s just what I was looking for when I came to Parijat Academy and this is the day I will remember when I think of this school.

Girls dancing Boro. There were 5 different dances, but this
was the best picture

Epilogue: Yesterday a bunch of engineering students came to chat with the students and I was invited to sit in the middle of class 9 by the students. I made fun of myself by asking them Aapunar nam ki? What is your name? using the formal “aapunar” instead of the informal “tumar” that I did like a noob when I first got here. This is probably less funny out of context. All the students stood up and introduced themselves really fast so when my turn snaked around, I stood up and said Nomoskaar, mor nam – (pause, wild applause) Shaffer Spaeth as fast as I could.

Volunteers thanked

Tets that we met in Cherripunjee came for two nights. We
had a wonderful discussion about religion, politics, travel,
vegetarianism and life.  I learned a lot from this wise man. 

I was scolded today for complaining too much about this school and was asked why I stay if I am so unhappy. I was probably complaining too much - there are frustrating problems with this school that I don’t blog much about for which no one is to blame and there are no good solutions. I shouldn’t do that. I told her that I stay because of the kids. I don’t think she believed me. But I hope I have demonstrated here that it is true. 

Sunday, Sunday

Serving food from the temple steps

Two weeks ago Sunday. I first contacted Hannah Dobie one morning right after I got here when Uttam gave me her phone number and told me to call now. Now? Yes NOW! It was great to hear an American voice. She volunteers at Operation Smile and makes rice and dal every Sunday with her roommates for kids in the slum. Her life is quite different than mine, living in the city an hour’s drive from Pamohi in a modern apartment with an Aussie and an American, working long hours and volunteering more time on the weekends with the poorest kids in the city. I went with Tat and had a great time. We went to Hannah’s apartment and chopped vegetables and chatted while the food cooked, then drove over to Paltan Bazaar and served from a small temple next to the railroad tracks with the help of one of the older slum boys. I could describe it at length but it’s what you probably expect – a lot of very dirty children shouting and jostling in line for food, some clothed, some not, others carry siblings not much younger than themselves.

 

Last weekend. I didn’t make food because we – Tat, Chantal, Lilly, and I – were vacationing outside of Cherrapunjee on the India-Bangladesh border. Fun facts: It’s a heavily Christian area. The hills where we stayed at 1000 meters have been formed in the last million years because of a tectonic weakness in the Indian subcontinent. In summer the area is the rainiest in the world, recording more than 24 meters of rain in 1974, nearly a foot of rain per day that year in July. The average annual rainfall is only 11.2 meters. The monsoon rains cut steep mountain rivers through the hills with boulders the size of three story houses. Cherrapunjee’s claim to fame is its root bridges, formed by coaxing the roots of gum trees across rivers where they become stable enough to walk on after 15-20 years. There are a dozen in the area, including the only double-decker bridge in the world. 

On Saturday Chantal, Dan from New York and I walked down some 2100 steps to the first of several root bridges. Because the winter months are completely dry, what little water that flows makes pools in the low parts of the river bed, perfect for swimming. I scampered across the rocks, stripped down to my bathing suit and jumped in the water, warm by Washington Coast standards. Swimming through a gap two feet wide, we immerged into another pool fed by a waterfall that we could hear but not see from the outside. From there we hiked to another river with a waterfall spilling into a bright blue pond lined with giant rocks that looked faker that than any wave pool at Disney World. I sat on the edge of another waterfall a hundred yards downstream and considered jumping into the deep water below but instead hiked around it to three natural waterslides, then hustled back over the rocks and across the two-part wire bridge to catch up with the others. It was a tropical paradise.

Disney World, no?

On Sunday I went to Catholic mass for the first time in my life and spent a less describable but equally wonderful day sitting on a rock alone in the jungle finishing my book and writing. I took no pictures and had no company – only I will ever know what that day was like. Those are rare memories that I savor. 

We ate lunch at the double-decker root bridge in the village of Nongriat where Stuart had stayed and hiked down a bunch more steps to another beautiful river where I went hunting for the perfect pool. What I found was 50 yards longs and perhaps 15 feet deep, clear deep blue water. I swam to one end, beached myself like a whale and swam back. Our Japanese friend Tets got in and swan a good butterfly but got the hell out because he thought it was too cold. I spent 2 beautiful hours exploring, sun bathing, diving for shiny objects that I never found and then warming up. Unfortunately I am such a poor swimmer that I expended the last of my energy in the lap pool before having to hike another 8 kilometers, including an hour straight up hundreds of stone steps. I was exhausted by the end but Mr. Dennis the hotel owner slipped us some rum and hot water to ease my pain.

  

This Sunday. Tat and I went back to Hannah’s apartment. Google maps says it takes 24 minutes by car but Guwahati public transportation took three times that. We got there late and didn’t get much chopping in, just sat around and chatted. It’s good to get into the city and see some fresh faces. In the slum I was designated water-pourer/hand-washing enforcer, calling out sabon for the kids to come lather up. The food goes quick and by the time I looked up from all the grimy little hands vying for water we were ready to leave. My little bit of Assamese served me well. I can give basic commands like Don’t Do That! na pie and More Soap! aru sabon and I can ask for someone’s name to start a basic conversation, though they need to speak some English for it to go anywhere. All of the other people we had served with peaced out before I could say goodbye so Tat and I got dropped at the Nepali Mandir, the only landmark from which I can cheaply and reliably get home. It was a little overcast and the excitement of serving food was over so quickly that it felt like a Sunday for the first time since I’ve been here, like when a fun weekend ends too fast and you have a bunch of homework waiting for you.

My new garb with Atta

Epilogue: Monday. Watching the Superbowl is not quite the same in the morning before class but I streamed the last two minutes and it was pretty good. Hope everyone enjoyed themselves. The big news today was two elephants visiting Parijat after dance practice. They sucked up the rice that the family offered and blew it into their mouths. When the elephants finished they took the big woven bamboo plates that the rice was served on, dumped the rest of the rice on the ground and gave the clean plate back to Reboti who had served them. Elephants know hospitality. I tonight I'm going to drink rice beer with mahouts!

Thanks to my sister for asking me to write more…ARE YOU HAPPY AUDREY? Two blog posts, with pictures :)

The last few days have been fun. Friday was Aimoni’s birthday. 

Thursday. Tat, Rayboti, Dulumoni, baby Bibha and I walked to Garchuk to see make purchases from the tailor, the vegetable market, the momo shop, then the sweets shop to order a one kilo chocolate cake for Lipi and a two kilo milk cake for Aimoni. I carried Bibha to town on my shoulders and she slept on my shoulder later on but when Tat and I got impatient with the other two women shopping for nose rings we returned the baby and walked home.

Friday. I taught two computer classes before the current went out and another after lunch, after the current came back on. The students are always excited to go to computer class, sometimes too much so. A boy in class 8 gets on my nerves when he asks several times each day if his class can go to computer room. Yesterday he walked out when I had the kids type presumably because typing is boring. I asked why he wouldn’t participate but he didn’t give me a reason so when we started doing more exciting stuff he came back in and wanted to participate but I kicked him out…my first act of punishment, I guess. Admittedly, I took a little pleasure from it because he’s so irritating.

After school I had dance practice with the older students - I will be performing with them next Saturday for the school’s annual function. The instructions are in Assamese but I have a little rhythm and I do alright. After several games of bump I came to eat rice around 3:30 and found Lipi making momos! I made a few…they were better than the Momo Restaurant in Garchuk. Then it was cake time and after surprising Lipi and Aimoni, cutting and eating the cake, the frosting war began. Some twenty students, volunteers and birthday women smeared frosting on each other. It started off small, with war paint under the eyes but quickly escalated to cover-Shaffer’s-face and get-back-at-Rayboti-with-a-frosted-wet-Willy. Once we washed the vegetable oil-based frosting from our faces, necks, hair, and clothes, the dance party started with Gangnam Style on repeat followed up Sandstorm and a déjà vu to high school. The good dancing started when we broke out the Assamese and swing music – Chantal and I followed along as best we could to the Indian music and I tried to remember the swing dancing moves I learned in the spring when Harry James came on. After an hour and a half we were all bushed and I finished a wonderful day by chatting with and getting some sound advice from an old friend. G-chat is the closest I get to live interaction with people back at home (except when I’m in the middle-of-nowhere Nepal) but it I can hear your voice in my head and it’s almost as good as a real conversation at this point.

Saturday. Today teaching classes six and seven was great until the power went out for 2 hours at 10:30. It makes any schedule difficult to follow…When I came down from the room at 11:30 about 8 teachers were standing around making a memory test - placing random objects on a table - perhaps enough work for two people. Meanwhile Tat was teaching KG and at least two class 10 students were teaching other classes by themselves. Some classes were working on assignments but most didn’t have a teacher present. While I recognize that the teachers are not paid regularly, that the fundamental contract of payment for services has broken down, I don’t understand how they can come to school and simply abandon the kids. Classes are only 9-1 on Saturday but I think most teachers only taught for an hour. Though I’m lucky that it doesn’t affect my teaching schedule, it’s extremely frustrating to watch the kids sit bored because the teachers won’t to put forth the minimal effort.

Lilly, Chantal, Tat and I being honored with traditional
Assamese gamusa and Japi before school Saturday

At dance practice in the afternoon the regional distributor of B Natural mango juice dropped by with a dozen cases of juice boxes so Uttam called “Line Line Line Line!” and I handed out juice to happy kids. After a quick ride to Garchuk on the back of the bike, I holed up in the computer room with Sankar and burned DVDs as per Uttam’s request, watched Macklemore’s My Oh My again and talked to Dave about him upcoming wedding. I’m a groomsman! After dinner I played Bananagrams and split a Kingfisher Strong. That’s where the party’s at in Pamohi. Now that India is not so mind blowing anymore, I fall back into the same routines I do at home - spending too much time on the computer checking baseball stats, thinking about the future too often, not getting enough sleep, blah blah blah. But it also means I’ve adjusted enough that I feel as comfortable as I do at home and that’s a nice feeling.