by: Jennifer Kumar
***This page is written as if it were a very informal email, hence the language is posed in a very relaxed manner***
As the previous page was a more formal account of what I experienced, this page is a very
informal account. This is an expert of an email which I wrote to my family about the village
experience. (Hence, the informality of the writing style!)
Just had a really great experience in a pakka Indian village. The name of the village was Kalyanapuram, 20kms (15 miles) from Vandavasi (which is a town about 100kms or 75 miles from the college an Chennai) It is 4kms from main bus route, so when the villagers received us, the girls (that includes me) rode a bullock cart to the village.
There was no toilet or bathhouse there. The villagers knowing we would not be comfortable without semi-modern facilities built just for us a bathing area including an Indian style toilet, which was put in the ground and surrounded by a grass wall, and a bathing area. The three stall bathhouse had a dirt ground. Each stall was made of grass pieces, banana leafs and other barks and leaves.... (Yes, even I had to use these facilities, there was no other choice and if this weren't there, then what can we do? The village women take a bucket of water in the fields at 5am and keep one petticoat on them and bathe by dumping water on them, they may not even use soap.).
The village itself has electricity, but no phone for 20kms and homes had no indoor water supply, only boar well or pump well (one per 30 houses). So, for the first 6 days we were lucky to have the boar well. It was working well up until our last days as there was no power. Since the boar well does not pump the water without electricity, we had to gather water from the public well and stand in cue for one to two hours. The villagers were giggling at us, saying we were are weak because of having trouble carrying water. The eight-year-old village girls were carrying tw pots on their heads and two in their arms. Imagine that water problem!
Well there were no shops in the village either. They were growing rice, ragi, sugarcane (my first time eating that), ground nuts (peanuts) and bananas. The people there also raise goats and eat them. Vegetables were hard to find in that place. There were several small villages surrounding us. My class of about 25 was divided into four groups, and each group visited one village within thirty minute walking distance daily. My group of six went to the village Andhiparoudai meaning fields (paroudai) of beggars or sannayasis (double meaning of andhi). The village populate was around 200-230 people, and the village had only 41 houses. There were two castes in the village. Seemingly, there were no caste problem really, they got along well and shared a village temple, though, each caste did have their separate temples. No one in the village owned a car and only one person had a moped and five villagers had a tv and radio. A bus would come to the village once a day in the morning to take people to the city, and once in the evening to drop them off. As far as eating daily and eating vegetables, the male class mates would travel every other day or so to the nearest city, Vandavasi to buy vegetables and other needs.
The most unforgettable experience I had in the village was when an older lady asked who I was. She knew I looked different, but thought I was from the next village. When we told her I was from USA, she had never heard of it. She did not understand the concept of continent, ocean or globe. She, however, did know what an airplane was, since she has seen them in the sky. We had to tell her that I was from a place I needed to use an airplane in order to reach where I was now.
See the photos
Created in July 2001. Revised April 2004, December 2007.
This page has been visited times since September 2001.
