Well! I’ve been here just a few more days, and experienced just a few more things.
I have now experience doing laundry…Indian style. It’s hard. Let me just say that here, laundry and laziness do NOT mix. I used to complain about having to carrying laundry over to the mat, and remembering to go back to switch it (all right, in all honesty, I probably will complain about that again when I get back)…but we Americans have it so easy. To all the mothers out there…be glad you have a washing machine.
Remember that tub full of water (the one with the fish)? K, so you use a little dipper to fill two large buckets with water from that tub, and put some powder detergent in one, then stuff all your clothes into this bucket. After it’s sat for a while, you get a brick of detergent, and pull each item out one at a time, to scrub the problem spots with more detergent. Then you have to rinse most of that detergent out in the bucket of soapy water. Then comes the fun part. Once the item of clothing is sufficiently soaped down, you pull it out, wring it out, and proceed to beat it against a large, flat stone. This is what rids the clothes of the soap, and the dirt, and the body oils, etc. So it’s important to beat. HARD. I think it will be a while before I wear truly clean clothes again. Oh! So after you’ve beaten your clothes, you rinse them once again from the second bucket of water, then hang them to dry. Yeah…it’s intense.
I also went to church! I think most of you have heard by now that I’m staying at the branch president’s family. But his (it’s actually not even large enough to be a branch, it’s a group)…um, his group is only the very few members that live here in the village. It’s pretty much his family, the BYU students, and a sprinkling of a couple of other people (his sister…one neighborhood girl…). But three of the four of us BYU students need translators for our research, so we went to the city branch for networking purposes (I did find a translator, by the way!). It was SO good to see fellow members! A whole room full of them! Here, where daily we walking through crowds of people that we can’t understand, and who look so different from us, and who live such different lives…I think it’s good to be able to go to church with a group of them, and remember that they’re not so different as we sometimes make ourselves believe. And it helped that two of the three meetings were held in English, and there was a group of siblings from America that volunteer at a nearby orphanage.
I don’t think I’ve said much about the people here. They are so kind. I have already fallen in love with the Indian people. They are a very trusting people. In the buses (which are every bit as full as the trains in the bigger city were…I’ve decided that in order to be considered a true Indian man, you must first have the ability to hop on and off of a moving bus, and the ability to ride the outside of the bus), I’ve seen many women who don’t have much room hand whatever they’re carrying (be it books, purses…whatever), to somebody with more room. This transaction is done with very little verbal communication. The goods are most commonly simply placed on the lap of the unsuspecting caretaker, accepted, and then reclaimed in time to be carried off the bus with the proper owner. I think this small gesture actually exemplifies much of how Indians interact. They have some kind of unity that is foreign to us Americans.
When I first arrived in Chavadi, I mentioned that many of the school children followed us home. These children are the neighbors of my host family, and come here quite often. They have been the source of my first few henna tattoos (ball-point pen style), and have taught me many useful things (like how to say “beautiful” in Indian, and some of the meanings for some simple Indian symbols). One of the girls in our group has even been the subject of their hairdressing skills (it actually turned out pretty cute). In exchange, we have played with them, tried teaching them American songs that they don’t already know, and tried to teach them to greet each other with “What’s up” and leave with “Peace out.” For the longest time, whenever we tried to get them to say “what’s up” they would throw their hands in the air and tell us the Tamil word for “up.”
So now that I have a translator, my goal is to re-familiarize myself with my research and get a start on that this week! Wish me luck!
p.s. I think I now officially smell like an Indian (I’m sweating all those Indian spices…it’s great!).
I have now experience doing laundry…Indian style. It’s hard. Let me just say that here, laundry and laziness do NOT mix. I used to complain about having to carrying laundry over to the mat, and remembering to go back to switch it (all right, in all honesty, I probably will complain about that again when I get back)…but we Americans have it so easy. To all the mothers out there…be glad you have a washing machine.
Remember that tub full of water (the one with the fish)? K, so you use a little dipper to fill two large buckets with water from that tub, and put some powder detergent in one, then stuff all your clothes into this bucket. After it’s sat for a while, you get a brick of detergent, and pull each item out one at a time, to scrub the problem spots with more detergent. Then you have to rinse most of that detergent out in the bucket of soapy water. Then comes the fun part. Once the item of clothing is sufficiently soaped down, you pull it out, wring it out, and proceed to beat it against a large, flat stone. This is what rids the clothes of the soap, and the dirt, and the body oils, etc. So it’s important to beat. HARD. I think it will be a while before I wear truly clean clothes again. Oh! So after you’ve beaten your clothes, you rinse them once again from the second bucket of water, then hang them to dry. Yeah…it’s intense.
I also went to church! I think most of you have heard by now that I’m staying at the branch president’s family. But his (it’s actually not even large enough to be a branch, it’s a group)…um, his group is only the very few members that live here in the village. It’s pretty much his family, the BYU students, and a sprinkling of a couple of other people (his sister…one neighborhood girl…). But three of the four of us BYU students need translators for our research, so we went to the city branch for networking purposes (I did find a translator, by the way!). It was SO good to see fellow members! A whole room full of them! Here, where daily we walking through crowds of people that we can’t understand, and who look so different from us, and who live such different lives…I think it’s good to be able to go to church with a group of them, and remember that they’re not so different as we sometimes make ourselves believe. And it helped that two of the three meetings were held in English, and there was a group of siblings from America that volunteer at a nearby orphanage.
I don’t think I’ve said much about the people here. They are so kind. I have already fallen in love with the Indian people. They are a very trusting people. In the buses (which are every bit as full as the trains in the bigger city were…I’ve decided that in order to be considered a true Indian man, you must first have the ability to hop on and off of a moving bus, and the ability to ride the outside of the bus), I’ve seen many women who don’t have much room hand whatever they’re carrying (be it books, purses…whatever), to somebody with more room. This transaction is done with very little verbal communication. The goods are most commonly simply placed on the lap of the unsuspecting caretaker, accepted, and then reclaimed in time to be carried off the bus with the proper owner. I think this small gesture actually exemplifies much of how Indians interact. They have some kind of unity that is foreign to us Americans.
When I first arrived in Chavadi, I mentioned that many of the school children followed us home. These children are the neighbors of my host family, and come here quite often. They have been the source of my first few henna tattoos (ball-point pen style), and have taught me many useful things (like how to say “beautiful” in Indian, and some of the meanings for some simple Indian symbols). One of the girls in our group has even been the subject of their hairdressing skills (it actually turned out pretty cute). In exchange, we have played with them, tried teaching them American songs that they don’t already know, and tried to teach them to greet each other with “What’s up” and leave with “Peace out.” For the longest time, whenever we tried to get them to say “what’s up” they would throw their hands in the air and tell us the Tamil word for “up.”
So now that I have a translator, my goal is to re-familiarize myself with my research and get a start on that this week! Wish me luck!
p.s. I think I now officially smell like an Indian (I’m sweating all those Indian spices…it’s great!).
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