Category: India

Indigenous Indians

Paloma Raffle3 Comments

Things you see in pictures are true. They are not photoshopped and edited or taken at the exact right time. This is what is going on around the world. When I saw the dirty and dusty children in Kumbhalgarh, India, working and begging in the streets, it made me realize how lucky I am, to have nutritious food, clean water, a house, an education, and many opportunities for fun extra activities, such as art and sports. Many children don’t have these opportunities.

In Kumbhalgarh, the children slept on the streets in the evening and begged for money in the day. That was their life. They knew they were unlucky to be born into poverty, and they knew they couldn’t change how their parents treated them. They haven’t realized just how unlucky they are. This is their life. They have never known anything different.

A child in Kumbhalgarh and I could have switched places when we were born. I could be living the life they are in right now. They could be living my life on the other side of the world, feeling so fortunate for their great house, family and friends, and being able to go to bed every night knowing they will be safe when they wake up the next morning.

Me to We

I got to see how one humanitarian group, called Me to We, is trying to help. My family and I connected with this group because I went to an elementary school involved with the Me to We program. This kind of school encourages kids to make positive changes locally and globally. At Ohlone, fourth and fifth graders organized bake sales and fundraisers to raise money that was sent to the Me to We organization. These experiences made me realize how hard it is to make money.

My class was able to attend a large gathering of schools and donors for an inspirational “We Day.” At “We Day”, lots of children and adults gathered together to learn how to help other children around the world. Listening to those speakers telling stories about people who had so much less than me helped me realize how lucky I actually was.

Me to We has 5 main goals to improve communities

  1. Clean Water and Nutritious Food – Helping people grow more productive and nutritious food and finding or building wells.
  2. Shelter- Building homes for indigenous families.
  3. Health Care – Getting access to Health Care
  4. Education – Helping children go to and stay in school
  5. Opportunity – learning skills that can lead to good jobs and a sustainable life

Kumbhalgarh

At We schools, we are educated about how unfortunate some children in different parts of the world are. Although we are told and shown through videos how much less privileged some children are, nothing beats observing it in real life.This is why I think it is good and completely life-changing to see other children’s lives firsthand.

In October, my family and I visited Me to We in Kumbhalgarh, a small rural village in Rajasthan, India, and saw how Me to We is pursuing their 5 goals there. We got to meet several families and their children and we also helped build a girls’ bathroom at their school.

We saw details of how the organization’s goals are important for very poor, indigenous people. Me to We focuses on families who are native to the land and who are not part of mainstream culture. They mostly focus on the mother in the family. Indigenous people are often the poorest and most needy, and the women usually lead the family.

Clean Water

When we were in Kumbhalgarh, we saw many children who looked very unhealthy, whether they suffered from diseases, disabilities, or malnutrition. One disease many children get in Kumbhalgarh is tapeworms. Tapeworms eat the very few nutrients available to the children which causes the children to slowly starve. Tapeworms occur because of poor sanitation and hygiene: children drink water from wells that are open to runoff from the fields. People in these villages are not accustomed to using toilets and they also don’t have access to toilets many times – they just do their business in the fields – so when it rains, their waste gets carried off by the rain water. When a child gets tapeworms, the worms will come out in their waste. When it rains, her poop will get washed into the water well that children drink from. When other children in the village drink the water, they will get those worms in their stomachs.

 

Dirty water led to malnutrition, which led to other problems, like getting sick and not doing well in school. It’s hard to think when you are hungry and hard to learn when your brain is not fed. Many children were getting sick from dirty water because they did not have the resources or habit to filter and boil the water.

Me to We provided families with stove tops and pots to boil the water and spent many hours teaching the mothers and children to use them every day.

Nutritious food

Helping people grow more productive and nutritious food
If you look on the cluttered streets of India, you will probably see many children appearing dirty, sick, and starving. Children that belong to tribal families often suffer even more and have worse health because their older relatives think of food as something to make you less hungry, but they don’t necessarily consider it as a nutritious form of energy. The people of Kumbhalgarh only get vegetables 3 out of 12 months a year because there is a very short period of time when the weather is right to grow wheat and corn, the local crops. So in the other 9 months, they mostly eat bread.

Malnutrition hurts people’s health in different ways. For example, cuts and scrapes affect children’s bodies more because their immune systems are so weak. A lack of protein in children’s diets leads to iron deficiency, a common problem in Kumbhalgarh not only because meat is not widely available but also because the local religion doesn’t allow them to eat meat. In order to be healthier, bigger, and smarter, people need enough nutrients in their food. In Kumbhalgarh, nobody has enough land to grow enough food for their families. Also, the food they are growing does not contain adequate protein and nutrients. Many times malnutrition leaves children with mental or physical health disabilities, and they are not able to get help. This malnutrition results in smaller brains and mental illnesses which makes it harder to learn. Teachers in India often don’t have much sympathy for a slow or tired child, and the child may get hit or sent out of the classroom because of something they cannot control.

Me to We has introduced more productive modern agricultural ideas that taught better farming practices, such as crop rotation, proper fertilization techniques, higher protein crops, and planting techniques. The indigenous people of Kumbhalgarh had been using their irrigation techniques for centuries. They worked. However, some changes can help a lot. The farmers were still using a plow design that was 4,000 years old! Just switching to a modern plow design that turns over the soil can improve their yields drastically. Modern hybrid seeds are more productive than the ancient seeds that the farmers had. However, the new seeds are not a perfect solution. Over time the modern seeds will become less productive, so then the farmers have to buy new seeds. Me to We helps educate the family on how the seeds would give families more food from the same amount of land. Me to We buys starter seeds for the family and helps them learn how to make money from extra products. This way they can buy new seeds every 5-6 years when the productivity goes down, and also have more food to feed their family every year.

Health Care

We observed in Kumbhalgarh that almost everybody has some health condition, whether it is physical or mental. When unhealthy children get a minor virus, such as the flu, they can get very ill and even die because their body is already weak from malnutrition and dirty water. Though healthcare in India is free, many people do not get it solely because they do not know it exists.

Me to We helps by just informing the families where the nearest clinic is. In rural areas, this is harder because it is so far away from the nearest clinic. Sometimes they help people learn how to get to the clinics, and when to go. When a woman is pregnant, sometimes the clinic will travel to them.

Education

We visited the local school in Kumbhalgarh. They had 4 classrooms for 300 students, with about 70 students in each classroom. The walls were crumbling and they had no bathrooms – only a recently installed pit toilet.

 

Me to We builds schools with help from volunteers and donations. They work with people in the community and check in on families to make sure their children are going to school. Me to We also provides books, pens, and uniforms for the children.

When we visited, the We program was in the middle of building the school’s first toilet. The school realized that when girls hit puberty they usually dropped out of school because there was no toilet with privacy. Me to We started helping by just digging a hole in the ground. I helped build a foundation for a private girls’ toilet. We put rock after rock and heaping spoonfuls of “masala” cement. (In India, masala is anything that is mixed. Masala tea, masala cement: mixed herbs, mixed sand, same thing.)

 

By helping build a bathroom for that small school, we hopefully helped the girls ages 10-14 continue to go to school to further their education. Children in India go to school for an average of 12 years, as well as having a 62.80% literacy rate(World Factbook, CIA), but in Kumbhalgarh, the average years of school is much lower, an average of 6-8 years.

Opportunity

The We organization tried to focus on helping families stay together and become sustainable in their villages instead of moving into Western civilization, such as big cities. They started achieving this by teaching the families useful things to make everyday life easier, such as boiling water so they don’t get sick every week. They taught them skills that would be helpful in their community that could lead to a sustainable life. They also taught them how to grow more food on their land so they could sell some in the towns.

How does Kumbhalgarh symbolize the rest of the world?

This year, we are seeing children around the world. Most of the children I have met were smiling and seemingly happy, but not everyone has the same things. Some children, like us, have clean water, nutritious food, doctors, schools to go to, and opportunities. Others have much less. They speak different languages and laugh at different jokes, but they all have the same needs. They need to be healthy, and they want to learn things and accomplish things in their lives. Me to We may not have all the answers, but they provided a good outline of what people need to live a happy and healthy life.

 

Sources

  1. The World Factbook
  2. Me to We

Some ways people use (and don’t use) technology around the world

Hayes Raffle4 Comments

So far we’ve been in the United States, New Zealand, Mongolia, India, Bhutan, two islands of Indonesia (Bali and Flores), four regions of Australia, and countless airports. We have seen different people using technology and have spoken to that least one person in depth about it in each country. And you can learn something by looking at people. Let me tell you some of the things I’ve noticed.

First of all “first world” seems to apply to Internet as much as anything. I had sort of gotten used to the idea that people are glued to their phones all the time whether it is to socialize, to learn, to optimize their travel schedule, or to be entertained. Not so outside of the US, it seems.

Namaste.
An Indian builder greets us with his phone conveniently tucked between his palms, a sight I saw often seen in India where people hold their phones ready-at-hand.

Internet service does not exist everywhere, and it does not always work. And connectivity alone does not make a country internet-native. As the Kiwis say, they live 20 years in the past. So even though Google Maps works flawlessly, not that many people depend on the internet the way we do at home. In the other places I’ve been, the internet does not always work, or even exist in the same form as we have at home, because unreliable or horribly slow connections really change what you can use the internet for, and how you will end up using it.  

Some challenges

  1. The internet doesn’t work very well most places. Many of our web services don’t work when this is the case (e.g. many Google services like Photos and Hangouts). Personally, I have had to migrate to WhatsApp, SMS, and Instagram just to have tools that work reliably.
  2. The only place that people seem to have their eyes glued to their phones is the airport. Maybe this is because people have more time or more money or come from bigger cities, or perhaps they are bored or lonely being away from home (or all of the above).
  3. Phones started out as communication devices and seem to still be that for most people in most places. There are some additional utilities, such as in Mongolia where they rely on cell phones for weather forecast which are quite helpful to the farmers. But mostly they are about being connected to people.
  4. When I have asked people what they use their phones for, internet services are often not mentioned. For example, a man in India told me lots of things which were mostly about using Facebook (although he never mentioned Facebook by name). He didn’t mention any Google services, which surprised me (as a former Googler). So I asked specifically about Google and Google Maps and things like that. The man I was speaking to said, “oh yeah of course – Uncle Google! That’s what we call it – uncle Google knows everything and yes we know Google Maps to and use that a lot.” This attitude was pretty typical: people focus on what they are for, not what the tools or networks are called, or who provides them.
  5. Most of the places we have been to are not iPhone-heavy cultures. Attitudes about iPhone range from not caring, to wanting an iPhone and not being able to afford it, to assuming that we own iPhones even though they have handled our phones directly to take our photographs. They seem to largely be status symbols at this stage, since people can’t tell the difference between a Pixel and an iPhone.My guide in Flores had two phones: a Nokia candy bar phone for calls and SMS, and a Samsung S5 for WhatsApp. He also uses the S5 for Google photos (whose client-server model is much too complicated for him to understand), and FB messenger (which brings home new business) and occasional demos of Google maps, when he wants to “take his uncle to Europe,” or see where a client lives. He has no real idea that Google makes Android, and he uses email and Facebook too. But it’s basically his WhatsApp phone, in his thoughts. What’s the most important thing to people? Other people.

People are interested in other people

The rest of the world seems to have stronger sense of community than we have at home, at least in the old-fashioned sense of community where community means that you live with other people and you talk to them all the time. Community means you get in each others’ business, in each others’ ways, and rely on each other deeply. This is true in New Zealand (which is a little bit more affectionate than England), and it was also true in India where people are almost literally living on top of each other everywhere you go. It was true in Bhutan, in Indonesia, and in Australia. Because of this, in some places like Flores, people spend little or no time maintaining relationships with people who are far away.

Tools like Facebook and Instagram take on a different role when they are used more for coordination of the next face to face encounter, rather than relationship maintenance (as we do in the US). In a culture where families live together and people require face-to-face communication to make important decisions, technology is a way to (at best) arrange your next encounter with someone important, or (at worst) to get in touch with people who have made the unfortunate choice to move too far away talk to be part of your face to face community. In short, it’s all about the people.

Helping Me To We

Anika Raffle5 Comments

We were recently at a place where we worked on a Me to We project. We helped build the foundation of a bathroom for a school that had previously had one hole in the ground for the whole school to use. We only used rocks, and cement. We didn’t have any gear except for gloves and trowels. But, we still got pretty far in the span of an hour.

The rocks we used had been found for us. The sat in a huge pile and we brought them over to the hole we were working in. We slathered cement over the rocks, then added them to the top of the foundation. Then we repeated. We would pour cement in the holes that were left in-between the rocks. Even though we were doing the same things for an hour, we didn’t get bored of it. In the end, we had made the foundation taller.

We had a lot of fun building the wall, and helping the kids at the school. If you travel through a place that has Me to We – or any organization – that you can help with, definitely give it a try. Helping these kids have a bathroom was a once in a lifetime experience. Even though this will probably be the only time I will touch cement in my life, it felt so good to help make these kids’ school better.

Mongolia vs. India

Paloma Raffle1 Comment

Despite both being located in Asia, Mongolia and India are two very different countries. India is much more colorful and lively than Mongolia. However, it is also a little overwhelming. Everywhere you step there is a new smell and a new sound. When you walk down the road, you will find poop everywhere. Mongolia is the exact opposite. In Mongolia, they will pick up all of the poop for fuel. If you look around in Mongolia you will probably see nothing.

The climate and the density of the populations of these two countries are stark opposites. Mongolia has a very dry and cold climate. In Mongolia, you will find everyone has dry and chapped lips and skin. Everybody is always wearing at least 2, if not 3, jackets if they are to step foot outside. In contrast, the climate in India is very hot and humid. Indians just finished monsoon season, which is the very wet time of year, so the air will still be quite moist, but the sun will nevertheless beat down rays of hot light that vibrate off of people’s chestnut-colored skin.

India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, while Mongolia is the exact opposite. If you step foot into Delhi, the capital of India, you will find it very crowded and messy, and you have to watch where you step so you don’t step on anybody, as someone may be lying flat on the floor, taking a nap. If you are flying in a plane over India and look out the window, you will probably see a town or small community through the dense urban smog. In Mongolia, you will almost certainly find snow-dusted mountains or flat, completely undeveloped land.

While Mongolia and India are very different countries, they still have much in common. The warm and friendly people of these two countries provide great hospitality towards everyone. In Mongolia, if you drive past a person’s house or ger, (a big round tent with a heater in the middle), you get out of your car and knock on their door, as it is considered rude to stand outside. People love it if you come in to say hello. The whole family will discontinue what they are doing, whether they are cooking, cleaning, caring for their livestock or riding a horse.  They will invite you into their house or ger and the woman of the house will make you milk tea, cookies, cheese curds, and butter that was fresh from their cows. The man of the house will sit down with you and have a conversation. They will find it very interesting if you show them photos of where you live because it is so different from where they live. They will make you a whole meal if you don’t interrupt them.

India and Mongolia are both countries where you settle for comfortable, but not luxurious. Despite their very different climates and the density of the population, the warmth and great hospitality in both places is unique. Both countries are stark, distinct and completely unforgettable. Honestly, I would not revisit either of these places, but it was definitely worth going at least once.

India: highs, lows, and sillies

Hayes RaffleLeave a comment
Anika

High. First meal
Silly. Catfish temple
Low. All of the temples. Listening to the guides blabbering on about all the artifacts. Having to cover our shoes at the Taj Mahal. Walking around in the heat. 

Rachel

High. Food at Panna
Low. Quality of life for women at Kumbalgarh
Silly. Mayhem of animals, pedestrians, animals, carts, rikshaws,  absolute and complete chaos on the roads
Paloma
High. Seeing all the kids wave to us at the windows. Being so happy to see us
Silly. Seeing the 2 year old girls blow kisses to us. 
Low. Sightseeing in super hot weather 
Hayes
High. Old Delhi. Chaos and how everything worked. Contrast of app the wires and chaos, and the amazing meal. 
Silly. When all the middle school girls had to shake the girls hands.
Low. How scientist at Panna was ignored and forced out. 

Reflections as we leave India, after 2 weeks traveling here

Hayes Raffle3 Comments
We are about to leave. we wait in the Delhi airport for our flight to Bhutan. Since missing our first flight of this trip to Hawaii, we've arrived very early to each flight since. Three hours early today. Two to deal with the extraordinarily slow and tedious airport security, and an extra one to try to get another 3 window seats on the left side of the plane. We heard from a fellow traveler in Mongolia that this flight — Delhi to Katmandhu to Paro – is one of the most beautiful in the world, because if you are sitting on the left side of the plane, you can see 20 of the 22 highest peaks of the Himalayas. We got two window seats. 

That's probably OK because Rachel's fear of flying has intensified as our travels have progressed. It seems like a fear of heights combined with a deep distrust for being off the ground. She said it really wasn't a problem for her until after having kids, and not even a severe issue until this trip. But window seats are bad for her. She clings my arm in terror with every bump of turbulence, and can't seem to relax. I've suggested drugs, sleep, meditation, earplugs, movies, VR. She refuses basically everything. I dno't know what to do.
India's been hard for her. The reality of child marriages, child widows and the caste system seem to have finally sunk in for her. I think I went through those same horrors after watching Slumdog Millionaire years ago. Somehow that movie didn't sink in for her in the same way, which came clear when she suggested we watch it as a family (I refused). But it became clear here, particularly after spending time in Kumbalgarh with the Me to We project, in which we heard in detail the impact of Hinduism and the caste system on our very lovely hosts, as well as the challenges the women of the rural villages of this secluded mountain town. 
Seclusion has allowed the villagers here to retain an indigenous culture for thousands of years. While they have retained their gods (to a degree) and their customs (to a degree), it has left them as literal outcasts from the mainstream society. Some of the consequences of being outcasts are poor health, nutrition and education — at least compared to their more modern Indian counterparts. 
We visited a local hamlet to help a woman one day, and we met a bunch of local children, since it was a holiday. Everyone is short; even the 14 year olds we met were a head shorter than Anika. The woman we helped has a decent house, with 3 rooms: one for her and her husband, one for children or guests + kitchen, and one for the goats. It's not too bad by local standards, but by "not too bad" I mean that it had a roof and a chimney on the stove, so the kitched did not completely fill up with smoke when she cooked bread. 
The charity we were helping had provided the stove. They also provided education about boiling water to stay healthy. The water of this town is drawn from open wells — picture a big cistern in the ground, with an open top. When it rains, all of the poop in the fields runs off into the wells, and then it is consumed by the villagers. This is, as you can imagine, not too healthy. People get sick often because they don't have a habit to boil the water. They have some other weird habits too. Such as, they don't use bathrooms; they just poop in the fields (they don't dig a hole or anything). Open defecation. I'm used to seeing this with farm animals, and there are many, but not for people. And poop is sort of everywhere. Every month, cow or buffalo poop is mixed with mud to plaster the walls of the house. We did some of this. On the day after Diwali, people make dolls out of poop and place them at their curb to represent their sins, so passers-by can stop out the badness and make it go away. Girls drop out of school at puberty because there are no toilets, and they don't want to do their lady business in front of the boys and teachers. So let's just say they have a very different relationship with poop than we do.
And water. So basic. I am aware that I take it for granted at home, but it really drives that priviledge home when I fear for my health with every shower and every meal. Dont talk in the shower. Don't sing in the shower. Don't breathe through your mouth in the shower (this is hard). At each meal, carefully inquire with the waiter, "is the mint sauce made with regular water, or bottled water?" Inspect the bathrooms of restaurants to get a sense for the cleanliness of the kitchen. And only order vegetarian food, and make sure it's steaming when it arrives. 
So far, we have not gotten really sick here. Rachel and I both had a day or two when we felt a bit off, but we've basically been good. We broke "the rules" at some of the hotels, accepting ice in our drinks after hearing promises it was made with bottled water. And eating some fresh vegetables and even some chicken on two occassions (when we saw it being cooked). The food has been delicious. Like, really, really delicious. I LOVE Indian food. We got a couple lessons, but I think I'll need more hands-on experience with the timings and techniques after we get home. 
I will miss this place. I loved the deep contrasts in Delhi. The delicious food, and the chaos of electrical wires and people. The insane traffic, and how everyone seems to make it work. The cows who own the roads, and the deep love for vegetarian cuisine. The brightly colored saris and the kindness of the people. 
But I'm ready to move on. Ready to hike in clean mountain air. Ready for a cooler climate. Ready not to be so afraid of the water. Ready for basic hygeine to be commonplace. I'm not sure if I'll find it in Bhutan, but I hope so.

The Sacred Animals Of India

Anika RaffleLeave a comment

All the animals of India are well treated, but I thought it was interesting how they treat their sacred ones. The privileged ones are cows, and catfish and do some pretty extreme things for them.

The cows were a big part of India and its culture. Cows roam the streets, not a scare in their mind. Cows graze in fields, not worried of being shooed away. If you kill a cow on purpose, you get sent to jail. If you eat cow, on purpose or not, you are arrested. When cows stand in the road, the people have to swerve around them. It blows the flies off their backs, so they purposefully do it. Cows are treated better than some people in India.

Another animal that the Hindus love and respect is catfish. They have one spot in Kumbugar where you can feed the catfish treats. There are hundreds of them there, waiting to be fed. Because they get food so much, they are huge fat, and aggressive. Waiting to be the next one fed. The also hold their mouths up like basketball hoops, and those ones get the most food. The catfish had a whole temple built just for them, and are obviously the most sacred fish in India.

Mongolia and India

Hayes Raffle1 Comment

The world is a kind place. In the past week I’ve traveled from Mongolia to India, from the Gobi Desert to Indian Jungle via busy Asian capital cities. I’ve traveled from snow to blistering heat on the same day, and amidst these contrasts met some of the kindest and most welcoming people I can remember. Perhaps these lands of extremes help to amplify people’s humanity. I’d like to share some things I’ve learned.

Mongolia and India are both huge! But Mongolia is among the most sparsely populated countries in the world with only 2.7 million people, and India is one of the most densely populated countries with nearly 1.3 billion people. Both have long histories. India reaches back thousands of years in its capital alone, and yesterday we stood inside Hindu temples that have been standing for over 1000 years. Mongolia traces its origins back to Chinnghis Khan who united the clans of the steppe almost 800 years ago. Flanking either side of the Himalaya mountains, they countries are close and united in several ways, and worlds apart in others.

Mongolia is cold. Three days ago we awoke to snow and icicles on the ground, as fall was coming. The winter would bring chills of -60 degrees c and nomads would weather the winter with their livestock as they have for generations. Meanwhile, In Delhi, we were greeted the next day to 34 degree weather, a temperate change from the 44 degree summer we missed. The temperature seems to impact everything from culture to population density to clothing and transport and city smells. Do you know cold kills the smells? And lots of people and humidity amplify them? Ulaan Baatar was cold but not so stinky, dominated primarily by the coal smoke. Delhi was dominated by…everything you have ever smelled before in your life, turned up to 11 all at once. Where the Mongolian Steppe demands shelter from the freezing and dust storms, the India Jungle demands shelter from the heat and sun.

Food is a big part of life in both places. Mongolia is a meat lover’s place. Five treasure animals keep people alive: camels, horses, cattle, sheep, and goats form the foundation of life there. In India, plants thrive. The country has the most fertile land on the planet, and with the large population, plants are the major sustenance. The Hindus, who don’t eat meat, have developed the best vegetarian food I’ve ever enjoyed, and we’ve been here only two days! I may eat myself into looking like a dosa!

But in both places hospitality thrives. The people are warm, inviting, and quite genuine. While both countries welcome western culture (and Americans like us who are interested to learn more), they have proud cultures and histories of their own which reign supreme. In both places people have greeted us with smiles, food, and handshakes, although the customs differ. In Mongolia, people shake your hand after bumping in to you, a quick “no offense meant.” In India, people shake your hand just for being there, “thank you for coming to my country, and welcome!”

Both countries are still developing, and are not super rich. But they have rich people and rich natural resources which are being used. Mongolia has the world’s larges gold and copper mines, and is a major source of other metals and minerals. India hosts the world’s largest diamond mine. Both are rich in agriculture and support their people with a high degree of autonomy. Their lands make both countries strong.

My hope is to get to know some people in both countries a bit better, over time. This may happen in days or years to come, but I am open. Both lands seem to brim with hospitality and possibility, and have so much to teach me.

how mongolia is different from India

  • populated / not populated
  • colorful / spare
  • humid / dry
  • people shake your hand to say hi / people shake your hand to say sorry
  • vegetables rule / meat rules
  • plant farmers / meat farmers
  • families live in the same home for 9 generations, or 400 years / families are nomadic and move around (although in fairness land rights are inherited so maybe that’s similar)
  • it is hot! / it is snowing!
  • south of the himalaya / north of the himalaya
  • celebrates diversity / celebrates unity (e.g. chingghis khan)
  • 2 seasons / 4 seasons
  • jungle / desert
  • dominantly religious (80% hindu) / 57% atheist
  • you have to look for the animals who are hiding / the animals fly to you
  • super strong smells / not so smelly, but rather quite dusty
  • very modernized / very traditional and not so developed

how India and Mongolia are the same

  • people are very welcoming and kind
  • we have had wonderful guides in both places
  • long histories
  • both have suffered multiple invasions and occupations due to the wealth of their lands (india: agriculture / mongolia: metals and trade routes)
  • smoggy capital cities
  • food is rich and diverse, but healthy and filling. both have strong culinary traditions and have not been overwhelmed by western tastes.
  • for both, the US is not the major cultural influence. India seems to have a very strong cultural identity of its own, as does mongolia.
  • both cultures seem strongly connected to their land
  • both are in asia
  • multiple languages and cultures thrive in both countries. there is an appreciation and tolerance for the diversity, amidst common goals to unify people around language and civic identity.
  • both capital cities are completely overloaded with people. there is smog, traffic, chaos at times, and people spend more time commuting than they wished. Did both cities’ urban planners ignore demographics? were demographics wrong?
  • in both places, natural resources are being actively used. mongolia has huge copper and gold mines. india has huge diamond mines and poaching of mega fauna like tigers (who we failed to spot today).

Differences in Delhi

Paloma Raffle3 Comments

As soon as we land in Delhi, we can immediately tell it is going to be a different experience. Delhi is the capital of India, and we will stay here for only one day. From our hotel, we can see two amazing and beautiful temples. The weather is very humid, about as humid as Hawaii, but so, so smoky.

A bus meets us at the gate of our hotel. Our guide tells us we are going to Old Delhi, and he reminds us we are in New Delhi right now. As soon as we arrive, we are already overwhelmed. There are people scattered everywhere – up and down the streets and alleyways. We immediately realize this is going to be a very different and interesting experience. We get out of our van, a little nervous.

We go to the main market, which sells trinkets and food. We notice there are no other tourists here. The market is in alleyways which seem to come out of a dystopian movie. Wires hang everywhere, dirt and trash litter the concrete ground, and crumbling apartment buildings are over 400 years old. This is not my favorite market ever, but it is very interesting to see how other people live so differently than what I am used to.

Later, we visit two different temples: a large Muslim temple and a large Sikh temple. The Muslim temple has a nicer vibe, but the Sikh temple is extraordinarily cool because it serves 40,000-70,000 meals a day. We check out the kitchen and it is amazing! The pots could fit 10 people in them. Volunteers roll out hundreds of parathas and throw them on a giant skillet. All sort of people are helping, including old men and moms with children. One toddler helps roll out bread. An old man with an aged beard and a light blue turban stirs hundreds of gallons of lentils, beans, and rice in big steel pots, using a huge metal saucepan as a spoon. We could have hopped in and started cooking as they would not have minded, but we had to go home to get ready for our next event.

We walk back to our car, through the traffic. A homeless family on the side of a busy street enjoys what little they have, which happens to be a game of ‘Sorry,’ my favorite. Delhi is VERY crowded and busy, and everywhere we turn, we bump into someone.

It is very cool to see how so many other people live, but I have no desire to spend more than a day here. When we tell our guide Delhi is less organized than the streets and towns where we live, he says he had just visited Florida, New Jersey, and New York. He explains they were way too empty and organized for him. This makes me realize wherever you grow up is tremendously going to affect how you look at new places because you will always compare them to what you are used to.

Horn Please

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This driver is very quiet. The last one…not so much. He honked a lot. There were cows in the road, people in the road, children in the road. Oncoming traffic in the road. And slow people to pass. Lots of reasons to honk.

I wondered how much he was honking, so I counted honks for 20 minutes. Guess how many times he honked in an hour? Really, take a moment. Guess.

285 honks per hour.

There seemed to be some rules, or patterns at least:

  • If you are passing someone, honk continuously until you are out of the blind spot.
  • If there are animals or children ahead, honk so they don’t walk in front of you.
  • If you are driving through a town, honk so people know you are coming.
  • If you want to drive faster, honk so people get out of your way
  • If someone is driving right at you, honk so they know you mean business. This was quite often since our road was usually only 1.5 cars wide and we shared it with big trucks.
  • If you are going around a bend, honk so people know you are coming.

In truth there were a lot of sacred cows in the road, looking for a passerby to make some wind to blow the flies off their backs. We wondered how many cows there were, so we counted these too. Guess how many.

235 cows per hour.

Granted, they were not all in the road. But they could have been.

Tigers of the Emerald Forest

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“It really is a very educational movie,” our hostess said to Rachel when we declined to watch in favor of trying to catch up on our ongoing academics. My rare and hopeful attempts to keep my girls’ minds from wandering too far from the 3 R’s kept getting interrupted by thing more urgent or unique than book material.

“They are waiting for us,” Rachel said, so we wrapped up our thought, slipped into our sandals and headed through the tall narrow double doors that sealed our mud hut from the elements. The sinuous path to the communal area felt farther away on account of the tall grasses that hide it from view, but in a moment we approached Joanna who greeted us. “Oh good, I’m glad you came.”

The few guests at Sarai at Toria were gathered on comfortable couches around a small TV that had been brought in for the occasion. My family joined Karen, a travel writer who was helping contribute to a book on Indian eco lodges. BBC, the film opened, and the sound system was surprisingly good given the relative lack of technology at the lodge.

As the film began I recognized voices. And then faces. Many years younger, but the same ones as our hosts. Joanna and Raghu, our hosts, were not your average hoteliers, nor even your average conservationists, it turned out. They were the storytellers of this film, the main characters who started to teach us about the Tigers of Panna. What were these animals’ habits? Who were their families? What of their loves, concerns, friends and enemies? Raghu unfolded the rich society of tigers to us as a world expert might do. We were staying with scientists, with celebrities, and the most humble sort, the sort who don’t bother to tell you, “this is our film.”

I’m really not a huge nature documentary guy, but…this film. Full of details and drama. And aftermath. Emerald Forest tells the story of a rising tiger population, but shortly after it was released tragedy befell Raghu and the tigers. Poachers hit the park hard, for year after year. Raghu, who sounded the alarm in Delhi, was summarily ignored, and then fired, until almost every tiger was dead. Authorities offered innocuous excuses and covered up the atrocities while they slowly rebuilt the population with imported animals that are today guarded by camera traps and rangers in watch towers and Jeeps. Authorities have relocated local farmers and their livestock from the park, to protect both cows and tigers from their incompatible ways of life. 

And Raghu and Joanna support their conservation efforts in a more indirect way. I was told by another guest that they lost their scientific jobs, their funding, and the tigers they loved. But they did not lose their love of these large and graceful cats, and now they share it with unwitting guests like us who happen upon their graceful Sarai at Toria, an oasis in the jungle. With good food and a gentle nudge to watch an educational film and drive around the park with one of their expert guides, they have made a bit of an activist out of me, a guy who never really cared about tigers until now. 

We leave Panna today but our stay here will stay with me. I will spend my days thinking and hoping for the tigers. Hoping they survive a few more generations. Hoping that they outrace the poachers in a world where human competition seems to consume any animal unlucky enough to be both slow to reproduce and a bit too valuable to our destructive species.

First time in Delhi

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People said it would be overwhelming. But words are just a poor representation of sensation. I can’t explain what it’s like to smell that many smells at the same time. I can’t explain that a single smell, like the one from the tree outside our room, smelled like horse manure to me, but like perfume to our hotelier. I can’t explain the visceral sensation of being surrounded by blaring horns in a crowded auto-rickshaw in a crowded intersection in a crowded area of a crowded city. I can’t explain the awe and mystery of seeing so many different people and feelings and sensations at once.

I can tell you about the streets. How I saw people get hit but not hurt. How our rickwhaw driver caught tangled with a man pulling a hand cart through the street, where everyone was moving at a slow walking pace. How the street is shared by pedestrians, auto-rickshaws (basically the tuk-tuks we saw in Thailand, but much cleaner and quieter, required to burn compressed natural gas), bicycle rickshaws, hand rickshaws, cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, motorcycles and the occasional ox-cart.

In Old-Delhi they protect you from the poop on the narrow street by covering it with a thin veil of newspaper, and you are grateful when your awesome guide Gagan pulls you aside so you miss it. The street is narrower than most sidewalks you have known, and it is shared by school children coming home and motorcycles honking and zipping past. Electrical wires are slung between anything that will hold them overhead, like a mess of spaghetti thrown at a child’s messy room. Or perhaps a yarn fortress woven by jubilant four year olds playing fairy make-believe. It’s a mess, but it works. Everyone has power. There are no electical fires or calamities. And people are calm and kind.

The sidewalks inside and outside Old Delhi are packed with people shopping for Duvali, the festival of lights, which will begin in about a week. The air is full of smoke from the surrounding farms who are burning their stubble to prepare for next season’s planting. And from the cars. And from the fireworks whose sale and purchase has just been banned in Delhi, much to the sadness of dozens of merchants who sit on the recently emptied sidewalks with downturned heads and sorrowful expressions below signs “no cell phones” in hopes perhaps of a contraband sale. The retail stores couldn’t be smaller, and they compensate with bling and flare. One nut shop (among dozens of seemingly identical ones) is little more than a large set of wedge-shaped counters facing the sidewalk. The three workers who are packed like tree monkeys into the wedge wrap trays of nuts in yellow cellophane in preparation for gift sales for Duvali. The shoppers stream past. 

“How do people choose where to shop?” I asked Gagan, as we browse tea and spices in what might be the world’s finest spice shop. “Oh, you know, price, quality…maybe where they have always shopped.” So, the usual. Same as home. But with 16 million people in Delhi, there seems to be infinite choice, and infinite competition. It might explain how the food is some of the best I’d ever tasted, from the buffalo raita at lunch to the sesame candy from the street vendor in old Delhi. And how a single day seems to have filled my mind with a lifetime of senstaions. And how Gagan might feel lonely when he goes to a place that is not bustling with so much activity that it literally pushes you from all sides with all 5 senses.

In the Indian jungle, near the Panna tiger reserve

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New photo by Hayes Raffle / Google Photos

​I am…sitting on a swinging couch next to the cleanest river in India.

I see the bright risen sun through the tree arbor. I see layers of pastel hills and river reflections muddied by the damp humidity. I see my daughter slumped in a caned recliner writing in her own notebook.

I hear a dozen different birds in the trees around me. Crickets chirping in the head-tall grasses that line the pathways to our cottage. Calls of the birds that fly downstream. The whiteness of the waterfall who hides behind the tree trunk.

I taste the grit of a morning french press coffee lining the back of my bottom teeth. 

I smell Indian humidity, thick like a whipped buttercream fog. I smell fragrant plants bursting from the jungle that hosts lives with whom I’ve never been acquainted.

I feel hot and sticky and sore from a restless nights sleep, awoken dozens of times by the fast and unbalanced fan who droned throughout the hours. I feel tired of wearing the same shirt that is acceptable but not ideal for the Indian air. I feel challenged by the various needs of my family, all with their own challenges and frustrations and desires and all looking to me for guidance. I feel lucky to be here, knowing that my best memories are often hardest earned, the challenging parts where I solved a problem or suffered through a struggle, and I hope, hope, that we are stronger and wiser and grateful for this chapter when we reflect on it as older selves.