Village Livin'

Last week was definitely the best and hardest week of my time with RangSutra, and maybe all of my time in India. On Friday after a brief stop at Sarnath in the morning to get my Buddha on, I went to Arjunpur Village in the Mirzapur district outside of Varanasi. The plan was for me to stay there until Thursday, and then I would join my boss at a workshop she was running. On Monday, two of my co-workers were to join me in the village and serve as translators while I conducted interviews. But this is India. In June, the start of the monsoon season.

That Friday night I went to sleep on the roof of the home I was staying in, with my host mother next to me and her daughter-in-law less than 3 feet away. Earlier that evening she had massaged cooling oil in to my hair, shoulders, arms, and face. Which was wonderful but made my hair greasy and it took about 8 washes to get out. But that's another story. The next day, my host mother, Parvati, decided that my sawar kameez outfit was not ok, and dressed me in one of her sari's. There was literally a hush over the entire village when I walked out wearing it. It was one of her nicest ones - it came from a locked closet in her bedroom - and I felt guilty about that. That afternoon, one of RangSutra's field officers came and off we rode on his motorcycle to conduct interviews. Yes. I rode a motorcycle in a sari. Sidesaddle. It wasn't as terrifying as I expected it to be.

So things went south once we got to the interviews. He didn't ask the first woman the interview questions - he just told me what he thought she would say. It took about 5 rounds of me saying, "OK, well, can you ask her the question?" before he did. The next two interviews went alright - one woman's husband was right there and contributed to the answers she gave. Overall though I ended my first day pretty optimistic about how the rest of the week would go.

That night, right as we were going to bed, big fatty rain droplets started raining down on us. We moved to sleep under an awning - still outside, in traditional cots. Parvatti and I shared one - we were definitely spooning at some points. (Also, let me just say that sleeping in a sari when it's been wrapped by an Indian woman is the most unpleasant experience ever. I kept secretly loosening it, and she would notice and re-tighten it). It rained all night and for the next two days, so I just laid around the village not doing anything. Roads had been washed out so we wouldn't be able to get in between villages on a motorbike. My stomach was crazy-upset at this point too, and I was fighting a constant battle over being given way too much food. It went something like this: wake up. snack. another snack, with chai. another snack. breakfast: vegetables and rice. shortly thereafter, lunch: dahl, roti, vegetables, and rice. afternoon snack. pre-dinner snack. dinner. Oof. That, plus my stomach, plus being the only white person in a rural Indian village, plus my subpar Hindi language skills, plus really greasy hair from the oil, plus what I think were tons of bedbug bites on my feet, made me pretty worn out by the time Monday rolled around.

My coworkers showed up that afternoon, and after much fussing over me dressed in another one of Parvati's saris, I was told that I would be leaving the village that day because of the rain, and would be with Dipti for the rest of the week at the workshop she was running. So I packed my things and said my goodbyes. I was very sad to leave - don't get me wrong, the village was a beautiful place and the people there were really wonderful.

After making some quality check stops along the way, we made it to the house the workshop was being held in. We had stopped briefly there on Friday but I didn't really know what was going on. Come to find out, it's Dipti's in-law's home. And by home I mean huge compound - complete with a mango tree, temple, well, and three cows. Though it was by far the nicest home in the village, it was still very Indian in that the toilet was an outhouse, the shower was outside, and the electricity was sporadic. Dipti left soon after I got there, but I had mentioned that I was homesick so she called her husband (who was there) when she was on her way back to Varanasi and told him to put on CNN for me.

The next morning, the workshop started. We were training the women to cut stencils from designs given to them. The stencils would then be put in to a kit along with paints and an idea book, and will be sold in FabIndia stores and potentially overseas in the future. The idea is based off the fact that in rural Indian homes, people often decorate the exteriors of their homes with designs like those. But the kits will be sold in FabIndia, so the designs will ultimately be painted in upper class Indian homes. There's some kind of irony in this...or some notion of "bringing the village home" that I think is interesting especially in terms of development. But that's me being anthropological and overly analytical about it. Anyway, this project is a collaboration between RangSutra, Women on Wings, a women’s business and development organization based in Holland (that sounds really really cool and somewhere I'd want to work for in the future), Akzo Nobel paints, and FabIndia. RangSutra will train the women and oversee the production of the kits, Women on Wings will help create the business plan, Akzo Nobel will supply the paints and created the idea book, and FabIndia will market the final product in its stores. In addition to Dipti and me, there was a designer who works with RangSutra from Delhi, a woman from Women on Wings, and a woman from Akzo Nobel there as well. One of the best things (for me) about the team was that English was our only shared language, so that's what we spoke in. It was also really cool to hear about everything involved in making the project successful - packaging, materials, paint, marketing, costs, etc. The woman from Women on Wings really (I think) took some extra time to tell me about what she would be discussing with FabIndia in the meeting she had on Monday, which I really appreciated.

The 20 participants traditionally got employment from weaving, agriculture, bamboo crafts, riling yarn for carpet weaving, housework, and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. However, none of these jobs gave the women enough income and an alternative, sustainable form of livelihood was needed. In addition to creating employment for these women, they are coming out of their homes and actively earning their own money apart from their husbands. Also, one of the women who had worked in NREGA told (and showed) us that her right hand had become really swollen after working with them. It sounded like she had a pinched nerve.

I could write a day-to-day breakdown of everything we did every day, but that would be boring and unnecessary.
Some of the women had been to 12th grade, some had never held a pencil. One woman had exams on her wedding day, and made her father-in-law let her finish high school. Some had gotten married before they were 18. Some didn't know their exact ages. There were Hindus and Muslims. Some were related to one another. There was one mother-daughter pair. One woman dropped out on the 3rd day because she wasn't doing well. We got a woman who had fallen ill right before the workshop started to replace her. She had completed 12th grade and by the end of the week was one of the best students in the workshop.
At the end of the week, Dipti's husband had me, Liza, Willeke (the woman from Akzo Nobel), and Karen (the woman from Women on Wings) plant mango trees on their property to commemorate the workshop. It will start producing mangos in 5-6 years...I hope somehow I can be there to eat. them. all. Oh, I should also mention that Dipti's husband is incredibly supportive and sweet and caring - he served us lunch every day and Liza, Willeke, and Karen didn't even know that he was her husband, or that we were at her in-law's property, until we told them one day. It was funny. At lunch that afternoon he goes, "Sometimes, I am a journalist who oversees an office of 93 people. But sometimes, I am a waiter."

Ironically, it didn't rain for the rest of the week and it was hot, hot, hot by the end. One room in the house had a cooler, and we all slept in there after a few days: me, Dipti, her husband, his mother, her mother, and Dipti's 15-year-old niece.

Next week, Dipti and I will go back to the village to check on the women. They were supposed to be coming every day from 10 AM - 2 PM to practice. We put the best student in charge of keeping track of attendance and the paper/knives allotted to each woman. The 2nd-best student has the key to the practice room. A woman whose husband works on the property is in charge of collecting everyone's supplies. Oh, and my field interview project isn't completely lost - I interviewed 11 of the women who participated in the workshop, and will interview the other 9 when we go back next week. I'm actually happier about this because I feel much more invested in the stencils project.

On Saturday evening we came back to Varanasi. On Sunday morning my friend Roz came to visit and was here until Tuesday morning. I had a really great time just being a tourist in Varanasi...and I can now say I've been in the Ganges. It's risen a lot because of the rain, and at one point we were walking along the ghats and part of it was under water, but there was a step right there so we all just walked through it like Indians. It started raining heavily again on Monday and again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tomorrow I'm going to a meeting with people from the UNDP. I'm leaving for home in 18 days.

I'll post pictures from the workshop next time, but for now:
Top 3 Questions I Was Asked in the Village:
1. Are you married?
2. Why isn't your nose pierced? (ahem...take note Mom & Dad)
3. Why don't you eat meat? (this was based on the assumption that all Americans eat meat. Indians are always shocked when I mention that I'm a vegetarian. Also: cooked soybeans look like small meatballs (but taste DELICIOUS). That one threw me for a loop my first night at Dipti's in-law's. She had told me before that they're veg though so I ate it without knowing what it actually was.)