Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Village Life. . .

is far from the urban conveniences that we are used to, like internet, like reliable electricity, like reliable water supply, like warm showers. Cows and dung cakes used for fertilizer are usual sights. It really gives you a global perspective to see where most of the the world population (although most is moving to urban centres) live. The green green fields is refreshing to see (many villages in the Punjab state are farms) and so are the kids who are excited to learn and play.

It's definitely very calm here, but during the day, there are hours when there is no electricity. Makes you think about our power and water consumption in the city. The only disruptive part of village life, the noisy part, happens at 4am when the Gurdwara (sikh temple) starts saying a prayer throught the loudspeakers and travels throughout the village. This wakes me up and I don't sleep until the prayer stops. this morning luckily, the power went out and the prayer only lasted for 1 hour instead of 2. There are three temples in the village and services two times a day (~4am and ~6pm).

We are planning for the set-up of an education centre here and did a site-tour of the local promary school where the education centre will be. As we await for our own kitchen, we are being provided food, mostly chapati (bread) morning, lunch and inner (~9pm) with yogourt (curd) as well as lots of sweet sweet milk tea before and/or after meals.

After a couple days in the village, we are heading to travel to Rajastan. It's a different region and a touristier environment. . .will tell more later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you are really experiencing India. I am so happy for you!

It sounds like there is so much to see and being apart of helping to setup a primary school has to be so exciting and fulfilling personally.

Are the villagers very friendly with one another? With on and off electricity and water, they probably don't spend time huddled around computers or televisions like many do in more developed areas.

In a way, they are lucky, they have real community.

Maybe some ear plugs would help during prayer time, or is that disrespectful?

Keep us posted. The details help me to visualize what you see and I really like that!

~Robert