Impressions of Rural India

Unfortunately I am not able to write these blogs with the leisure and attention to detail I enjoyed when I had daily interent access, but will do my best to keep them up!

I have spent the last ten days at the project in the rural village of Amarpurkashi, and I think that the vast chasm between the world I know and this one is only just beginning to fully reveal itself to me. I am having to peel back the layers of my Western thinking, values, attitudes and beliefs in order to have any chance of understanding or appreciating the world surrounding me. The amount of prejudices, assumptions, and misunderstandings I have made would make rich pickings for any social work portfolio I'll say! More of that later.

As in urban India, the countryside provides endless new sights, sounds, and experiences to keep me constantly spell-bound. A family of monkeys swing with admirable agility down from the roof past my bedroom window. But these are not the cute fluffy creatures, which my niece so endearingly emulates; they can be pretty aggressive and cause real problems to the villagers, as I witness when one swipes a banana from the breakfast table right under our very noses and another makes its way off with washing from the line!

Trips to local towns are a treat. We board the clapped out, old bus crammed with people, boxes of goods, bags and animals. The conductor lounges on one of the seats, indistinguishable from the passengers apart from the machine he has for writing out tickets. Our change is sometimes given in the form of a couple of sweets! We pass by people carrying great bundles on their heads and careen around buffalo who have chosen to take respite in the middle of the road. The driver beeps incessantly at trucks that whizz by with people stuffed into every crook, cranny and crevice - men hang off the back like bunches of bananas, boys spill out of the sides,and yet more hitch a lift on the roof. Not an inch is wasted.

Little shacks or shops line the side of the road where you can get your ears cleaned, face shaved, shoes shined, weight measured and clothes ironed. The last of these being a real sight to behold, as this slip of a man wields this great huge metal iron which he has opened and filled with hot ashes. Miraculously our clothes come back as pristine as they used to from under my Nana's exacting hands.

The sun blazes in a perfect aasmani (Hindi word for 'sky blue') sky. Fields of rice and sugar cane stretch away as far as the eye can see, we sip chai delicately flavoured with ginger, and then there is one of my favourite sights and experiences....early in the morning or evening, before and after the sun has lost its ferocity, people can be seen gently strolling on top of the roofs. There is something almost enchanting about the figures promenading sedately up and down, silhouetted against a brilliant sunset. I don't know which I prefer, to observe or to take a walk myself - a gentle breeze blowing the heat of the day away.

But it is not all rural idyll. The dirt and noise of the city are never far away. The nearby main road serves as a communal dumping ground; a local papermill churns out smoke and ash that causes regular eye problems for the villagers and pollutes the water suppply. Some of the facilities on campus (i.e. the toilet and kitchen) seem a veritable paradise for bacteria and germs and incite in me a keen urge to don a pair of Marigolds, take out shares in Domestos and scrub for my life!

There is poverty here of a totally different nature to any I have seen before. I have had to entirely recalibrate my idea of what constitutes; "wealthy", "poor", "lovely", "well resourced". We visit the "lovely" home of Arti, our project coordinator. By all accounts she lives in an eight-bed luxury mansion, that is the obvious envy of others. It transpires that she and her mother occupy only two rooms in, what to our eyes seems an under furnished and extremely basic dwelling, whilst the rest of the rooms are let to tenants. Nearby Chandausi is also given the accolade of "beautiful" - with my Western head on, I envisage attractive buildings, cafes where we can sit outside and enjoy a cup of chai, well manicured public places etc. Whilst it is interesting, bustling, not too dirty, has character - "beautiful" is not an adjective that springs to my mind. The boys that work in the kitchen here, sleep on beds strung with rope outside the door of our bedroooms. The 'best house' on the campus would look shabby next to some people's garages in the UK.

.....I've run out of time AGAIN! Am frustrated that I can't do justice to the experiences I am having, but no way round it for the time being. Willl write again soon.