Bikaner part 2

Last Wednesday was the BEST day of the program so far. We went to an URMUL trust cluster office out in the desert and learned more about their rural development programs. The office serves as a kind of community center too I think. We continued on to a rural village called Nathusar where we had some men map it in the dirt for us. We then broke down in to smaller groups and met with individuals in the village. My group met with the panchayat (local governance unit) representative, a 50 year old, illiterate widow. On the way to her house we encountered a man on a camel carrying a load of sticks. Everyone whipped out their cameras and when he saw us he stopped his camera to let us take pictures! It was SO cool. I'm in awe of all the camels I see - I can't believe that they're still an efficient mode of transportation after however many thousands of years. I digress. Anyway, we talked with her about the village, its needs, how the people get food, water, etc., and her life in general. She was surrounded by her grandchildren who I'm sure were fascinated by our presence. After we finished our interview she showed us her home. On our way out, she said something to me in Hindi that I didn't understand so I just smiled and nodded - my go-to response in those kinds of situations - and continued to walk out. She grabbed my arm and pointed to my camera, to have me take a picture of her and her family:

Afterwards we met with two women's heath workers in one of their homes. They talked to us about their work and we asked questions about the health concerns of the community and the whole process of how they treat their patients and visit the various homes in the village. At one point we got on the subject of family planning and we asked if anyone in the village was actively using contraceptives to space the birth of their children. There are 8 families doing so, and to follow up we asked if the men supported this decision. A male village elder who was facilitating our visit immediately scoffed and said "no," which I found...I wouldn't say disturbing but definitely not in line with everything else we've been learning. However, I will say that it was nice to hear a man's candid opinion - a lot of the information we've been getting has focused solely on women.
That whole day made me realize how much I do love doing field work like that. Even though I'm pretty sure it's not what I'm going to be spending my life doing, I definitely want to do it for some amount of time. And at one point our program staff interpreter asked me & one other person if we wanted to do development work after we graduated from school, and I answered "yes" without even thinking about it.
The desert landscape is SO beautiful. It looks like California and Africa got together and had a baby. Also, on the same "random cultural similarities" note from yesterday, we saw so many of these on the drive out:

They look nearly identical to the huts that the Maasai build and, again, it blew my mind.
That evening when we returned to Bikaner, we actually made it in to the Old City. It was nowhere near as touristy as Jaipur's, so it wasn't at all what I had expected. We passed under a gate and encountered the same types of shops as we had on the other side. We ended up wandering up a couple alleyways in to a more residential area. It was pretty cool to see a more urban residential area.