So I haven’t been very good at keeping up with my blog entries – I tend to forget to write them when I don’t have access to the internet (sorry, Ilesa). Tomorrow we will be leaving for Udaipur to head back to Toronto. It’s been a whirlwind of three weeks, half of our participants getting sick halfway through, lots of sensory overload with various community activities, and lots of really great leadership skills building. The last two days we have been doing action planning, speech writing, and re-integration stuff, and the participants have handled it so well! I was so proud of them as they presented their three minute speeches that they were all adamant they couldn’t do! A few highlights from the trip have been: Rankapur Temple – the second largest Jain temple in the world! Jainism was a fascinating religion to learn about because they do not praise gods, they praise priests that once lived. Their idea is that they have no proof that gods existed, but they have proof that priests did, so they praise them and the way they lived their lives. The temple had four points – North, South, East, West - and you meditated in a certain direction depending on what you were meditating for (example: meditate to the north for health and wealth). Finally, when we were leaving, there was an amazing carved picture above the stairs that represented part of the moon. We were instructed to stand underneath it, look up, close our eyes with our palms at our chest, make a wish, open our eyes, touch our heart then the ground, and walk out. Apparently the wishes always come true. I’ll let you know if mine does!
- Community Day – this is always one of my favorite days of the trip – it’s the day where you get to live the life of a community member for a few hours. In the case of Udawad, India, we went to the woman’s home and started by feeding her goats and cow. Once that was finished, we all grabbed a clay pot and “donut” (cloth ring to help with balancing the pot), put them on our head and walked towards the water source. We arrived at a hand pump which serves clean water to the community for 30 minutes a day. When that is not running, they must walk over rough terrain until they reach a man-made well about 100 feet deep, filled with dirty water. Because this well is so large, often people and animals fall into it and die, both resulting in tragedy and poisoning the water source. There was a large structure that the cows would be tied up to, they walk in a circle, and it rotates the pales that go into the water to bring up water for the family. The water walk was difficult because it was a lot of weight on top of your head, creating a lot of strain on your shoulders and pain in your arms. Once we returned, we learned we would be helping to plaster the woman’s home. The group was excited for this work until they learned that in this community, people use a mixture of cow dung and mud to create plaster. They were hesitant, but not for long... pretty soon the participants were picking up cow dung, mixing it, and plastering the walls! After the group finished, we were all invited into her home. We walked into a room, about the size of my bedroom in Toronto (or the size of THA, Ilesa, but not including Phil or Joe’s office), and that was her home. This one room was the bedroom for four, kitchen, living room, everything. In the corner was a small stove with no chimney, so as we made chipatis, the smoke filled the room. This experience was a highlight of many of the participants’ trip.
- Camel rides! The camel rides were a lot of fun, though I always feel so mean riding animals. I brought Tod, my sock monkey, so that someday I can show my nephew, Brandon, that auntie’s sock monkey traveled the world :) (Melissa’s request)
- Goal setting – Kailea ran a fantastic goal setting module one day that I requested to be part of instead of helping to facilitate. She helped us all write down all of our goals for life, put them into categories (travel, education, finances, relationships, etc), then put them all into a timeline (next 6 months, next 2 years, next 5 years, etc). I found it to be so helpful! I always have things I want to do, goals to accomplish, but I’ve never actually written it down and come up with a plan to fulfill them. Within my next 6 months, I plan to take the GRE’s, apply for grad school, apply to Teach for America, and do a much better job at saving my money (though that may come once I’m moved back home, making more money lol).
- Build site – On all Me to We trips, the participants take part in volunteering at a Free The Children project. In Udawad, our projects consisted of laying bricks to finish the wall on the stairs, digging kitchen gardens for the kids to be able to grow their own food, and re-doing the floors of a nursery and health center. It was really inspiring to see the participants work so hard on the build site.
- The kids :) Always a highlight! The kids of the community would hang out at the build site while we worked, which always gave Kailea and I a headache because it wasn’t exactly safe! They would run through the site, us chasing them away, with pick axes and shovels lying around. It was so hard to be mad at them though because they were so cute! I was especially fond of Kamilie, she was such a little rascal!
