Its worth a shot!

OK, so we admit it. We are very bad at blogging. We have about five very interesting partially written blogs, and hundreds of cutting edge, creative ideas that we just can’t seem to find the time to get them to their cyberspace home. In our d
esperation, we have decided to take a different approach and write many small blogs about any interesting thing that happens during the day. Let us know if we are too boring.

1/25/2011 Varanasi, India

The two things that were most interesting to me today were:

1. Hearing at least 10 horns within 50ft of a “Silence No Horns” sign at the local University.(HORNS ARE CRAZY HERE!!!)

2. A street vender selling necklaces inadvertently making fun of the size of Brooke’s head after his necklaces would not fit over it. While he was explaining how his necklaces were not the problem through demonstrations of how they would fit over any normal persons head, he realized his customer might take offence and he started backtracking. He then tried to explain how her head was just a little abnormally big and how it was really fine…it fit her body… not that her body was too big… no, no.. she had a very nice body… not that he was looking of course. We left cracking up, the poor guy still trying to pull his foot out of his mouth.

1/26/2011 Varanasi

Yeah!! Finally doing some GROW work, sort of. Today we worked with the Asha Deep Vidiashram NGO / school (More information soon on the GROW site) helping them with their struggling computer lab while planning for an environmental day and teacher trainings later in the week. After the daily power outage stopped our work, we enjoyed a long but adorable ceremony put on by the 250 children of the school to celebrate Republic Day. We finished by helping to build a tree house (yes a tree house) in the school yard with some other great volunteers. Good day!

Also on the 26th: My first time wearing a saree.

Sarees are the typical dress for women here in India, and they are beautiful. It’s about 6 meters of fabric wrapped around your body, starting with the skirt part and then wrapping up and eventually the rest tossed over the shoulder. Just getting the contraption on was hard enough, but I did well enough and could pass rather respectably for someone who knew what they were doing (as long as I was just standing perfectly still with a slight lean to my right so it didn't fall off my left shoulder). Then the problem came- after a very long period of having no stomach issues, diarrhea hit while I had on the worst possible outfit. Toilets here are the squat variety and this is usually not a problem, except for me of course when I’m wearing one of these damn sarees. For one thing, underneath I had on pants, so not only was there 6 meters of fabric to somehow bunch up and keep away from the disgusting floor while I squatted in the dark (no light in the bathroom) but I also had to maneuvering my pants away as the rest of the fabric is continuing to fall off my shoulder threatening disaster. To add to the fun the door at this school does not have a lock and therefore I needed to keep one hand free to keep a poor innocent child from walking in and having nightmares the rest of his life of the of the bright white butt of the foreigner who almost hung herself with her own saree while taking a poop! All that and I won’t even go into cleanup! But somehow I survived the experience learning a very important lesson. Wearing a saree and Indian street food…NOT A GOOD COMBINATION!

1/27/2011 Varanasi

So today is Brooke and my four year anniversary. So what better gift for me to give than a surprise fresh chocolate croissant and an Indian vasectomy. All started off to plan as I snuck out of bed and weaved my way through the narrow alleyways to the “German” (no German things there) bakery right as the pastries were coming out of the oven. Perfect! To make sure the bread was hot when I returned I jogged the kilometer return trip ducking between bicycles, goats, buffalo, and venders and skipping over garbage, cow patties, and small dogs. I was one corner away from home when I had to dart between a frail looking holy man and a large bull (a typical maneuver here in Varanasi) when the bull all of a sudden swung its head and its horn caught me in the left thigh, twisting me around and into the holy man who surprisingly felt more like a boney brick wall then an 80 year old man. A very scary moment but miraculously everything was intact down below leaving only a small scratch on my inner leg and a bit of a stiff shoulder from the 80 year old gladiator. In the end Brooke did wake up to a delicious chocolate croissant, and unregrettably, the vasectomy will have to wait for another day.

The Right Way

With India’s population currently over 1.1 billion the competition for any kind of business is stiff. Sometimes this unfortunately means that people will do whatever it takes to get ahead, often at the expense of others or the environment. When we traveled to the northern Punjab territory it was nice to see that it sometimes goes the other way as well. Mr. Singh, owner of Virasat Haveli in Rajewal, Punjab just outside of Amritsar, conducts the business of his home the right way. As is the custom in India, when Mr. Singh’s father retired he handed his holdings over to his sons, the eldest taking the city business and Mr. Singh taking over the old farm house. He now splits his time between the countryside farm and his home and own business in the city. Normally maintaining a country property like this would be very expensive to pay security and maintenance, but instead, he has a mutually beneficial relationship with many people from the village in which everyone profits from the place.

When you get to the Virasat Haveli you will have a warm welcome from a plethora of people who work there, mostly in the kitchen. Although Mr. Singh gets some of the profit when there are paying guests for the night, the restaurant (which serves some of the best food we’ve had in India) profits all are shared amongst the villagers running it, Mr. Singh takes nothing. His hotel patrons get great food and an enhanced experience, and Mr. Singh has the added benefit of more people there to help with the upkeep and make it a success, not the other way around.

He takes a similar approach with his fields of wheat, potatoes and other crops. Pesticides which are very detrimental to the environment are also costly. It would cost him 1,000 rupees to apply the pesticides to his fields, but instead he goes the organic route. He takes those 1,000 rupees he saves by not applying chemicals and keeps it in the community. Village girls come over after school to pull the weeds and get their pocket money for the week.

It is interesting that at least the second mutually beneficial relationship Mr. Singh has with the villagers, with the local girls, would never go over in the US. It would be considered exploitation of child labor, or something else would not be ok with it. But at least under the circumstances that it is, everyone is doing well by everyone else- the money stays in the community, tourists get the chance to get an authentic experience of a rural Indian village, the environment is improved through his organic practices and many people are employed. If you ask us, Mr. Singh is doing things the right way and would be great if others would model themselves after him- we certainly loved our experience there, a highlight of our time in India!