Ok. Without internet in our home, and with the ridiculous amounts of traveling i've been doing, I haven't found the time to sit down and chronicle the happenings.
In Nepal after my last post, we went to the Indian border to the jungles of Chitwan to
ride the elephants, and then we went to the Tibetan border to go
bungee jumping. Nepal was the best vacation I may ever take, the most fun i may ever have in two weeks together. There is so much good ministry going on there, just at the very beginning point. Laying the groundwork is hard labor for the workers there, and it takes a lot of patience. But we all sure had a great time together.
The first weekend I came back, we decided to take a weekend trip out to
Jaipur, which is a tourist-laden city about 275 kilometers to the southwest of Delhi. We hired a car and saw just tons of historical forts and palaces. There was a peacock who visited our hotel garden in the morning as we ate breakfast.
But Nepal and Jaipur were easy.
My third trip of the month of March was
not so easy; and really, the struggles and triumphs are what you want to hear about, right?
On Wednesday afternoon, I got a text message from a friend named Laura. She had shared with our fellowship about some work she and her family have been doing with a people group called the Kamar tribe all the way down in a place called Chhatisgarh, which South of Delhi, close to central India. She asked if i could join her the next morning (yep, that's how the timeframe generally works over here) on a trip to go and visit the villages. We ended up leaving early Friday, and stayed down there for four full days.
Many
(manymanymanymanymany) things happened, but I'm sure you don't want to hear more than four stories.
STORY NUMBER ONE: SHANTIBAI & GRANDMA TODDY
The school where we stayed each night is in a town called Gariaband - this was our home post from which we traveled all manner of directions all four days of our visit.
I remember during my college days driving from Ohio down to Texas, and hating the stretch of road that goes through the heart of Oklahoma. I was so close to home - just one state removed from my own - and every ten minutes there's another tiny town on the highway. You have to slow down and wait at a red light and watch for children crossing the road. You have to go from seventy miles an hour to thirty-five. Every ten minutes. I always just wanted to be on my way.
The road to Gariaband from the airport was just like the way through Oklahoma, but instead of red lights, there were a series of strategically placed road bumps, and instead of roadway fishing tackle shops, there were small Hindu shrines. As we were on our way, an army of chunni-clad girls on bicycles came toward us from the direction of a village - highway under their tires, with jungle on one side and field on the other.
The further away you get from Gariaband, the less Hindi helps you - everyone speaks their tribal languages, and a little bit of Chhatisghari. This means i was really less and less useful as a speaking figure and better off just hiding my pasty face behind my camera.
That's what i would have preferred, anyway.
Laura, totally disregarding my utter uselessness, asked me to share the Good News starting off at the very first house we visited. We were in a village named Amjhar, at the house of a woman named Shantibai. Her daughter is very much interested in the Good News, and she has also heard it and listened to it, without making any clear decisions yet. But she has a beautiful, soft heart. I loved it when we would talk to her, because of how you could see in her eyes and the angle of the tilt of her head that she was listening; that she was thinking. We came back to see her again a few days later, and there was a village grandma, drunk beyond belief, who was following us around. I got to take some photos of both of them to show to you.
The evening darkened as we left Amjhar that first day,
and the children were burning the trash in the fields.
I looked out of the back of the car at the place we were leaving:
a place where dogs materialize out of your dusty wake,
where the donkeys disappear into the houses and the cows are set in stone over the temples.
STORY NUMBER TWO: FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE RICE
We picked up our Brother, the young but hopeful Anoj. He accompanied us to one of the most remote Kamar villages called Kulhadighat. There were mosquitoes buzzing fiercely around my eyes as we sat under the straw covering on the patio, but i sat quietly and watched in amazement as men gathered from all over the very rural mountain village to hear what Anoj had to say in their own language. He gave them his testimony, and he was pure and simple. Elderly ladies - they must have been eighty and older - would come in from the fields with giant bags balanced on their heads, and walk through the gathering into their home, but Anoj continued to share with the men seated on the side of the house.
After about an hour he had finished sharing and we had walked them through the prayer of the sinner.
We drove away out of the mountains and down through the fields - trees scattered throughout the growing and picking of wheat, corn, and rice.
i stared, my eyes hungrily taking in the lanscape, the dynamic green of the rice paddies so pure and transfixing it must be the color of envy.
I hesitate to include a picture because it can't possibly contain the wonder which the in-person scene inspired. I am telling you, i have
never seen this color before in my life.
As i continued to look, and to feel the nature-cleansed breeze on my face, I changed my tune. My eyes warned me of the color of envy, but my heart told me it was the color of life. I wanted to live inside the color of those rice paddies, the color of peace, the color of cool contentment, and then surely everyone who saw the color in which i clothed myself would be envious.
STORY NUMBER THREE: BEEF STEAK NUGGETS & YOUR FIRSTBORN SON
On Palm Sunday, on our way to a place called Kanthidadar, we stopped at a house we found along the road - a house completely surrounded by idyllic Indian jungle and chopped firewood. We sat and shared with them, and as the translation was being done, i glanced around at the details of their dwelling. The women had triangle tattoos on their arms, which represent the Kamar tribe's tally of good deeds done. What a cultural rift -- the more tattoos you have, the better person you must be!
Above the beautiful tattooed mother was a thatched roof lined with waterproof packaging found by the men in town. The most prominent package sticking out on one side was a bag which had contained '
Beef Steak Nuggets.' How ironic, i thought, that a people who characterize their religion by preserving the lives of cows would be completely oblivious that the proclamation of the freedom to have
cows as food was a constant shelter over their heads.
Finally we made it to Kanthidadar, where we heard that the people love a spectacle, and will sit and listen. Sure enough, there was quite a crowd of children and grandmothers. After I was done sharing about the Father who sent His one and only Son as the answer to sin, and after being translated into Chhatisgarhi, I asked Mr. Mahindra, the translator, to wrap it up. He continued the conversation and then asked simply in Chhatisgarhi, "So then, can I pray for you all?"
The grandmother sitting next to me became very defensive. Her eyes were watery and her hands were in front of her face. "No, no, absolutely not!" she kept saying. She didn't want what we had shared. Our friend asked her then in her mother tongue, Kamari, what was troubling her.
She had misunderstood. "I have only one son," she said. He explained we only wanted to pray, and she agreed to let us. A drunk man began yelling angrily at our driver. We seemed to be in slight danger. We had to leave before we could help them understand...
She thought we wanted her son for our sins.
As we left that town, i was shaking my head, saddened at the communication issues. My thoughts were interrupted by the children playing holi - in the villages during the week before the big holiday, the kids will block the roads with ropes and ask the driver for money in order for them to get through, which is used for poojas - hindu prayers for blessing. We don't participate in this holiday, and so we refuse to pay these kids their pooja money. On the road home there was a boy blocking our way, and he was not about to let the rope down. Mr. Gideon, a burly big-haired South Indian minister with the temperament of Winnie the Pooh's sweet-hearted Piglet was sitting in our passenger seat. All of a sudden, he opened the door and stepped out toward the blockade, his arms swinging at his sides.
I'll never forget that boy's face as his eyes grew wide and he instinctively dropped the rope -- i think he must've peed a little as he did it. Poor thing- he couldn't have known he was in about as much danger as if a kitten was walking toward him. I'll never forget how we laughed and laughed.
STORY NUMBER FOUR: NEHRU, DASMATH, & THE WITCH DOCTOR
The village called Hathbai is the place with the highest concentration of Kamar believers. Working there is a 'Shepherd' named Nehru. He lives in the village with his family on a plot of land bought by Laura and her husband. They work the rice paddies there and have a new field of banana trees, too. We found out upon our arrival - to everyone's surprise - that Nehru's wife Dasmath (Duss-mutt) had just had a baby. As in, ten days ago. And she'd birthed it without going to the hospital, and almost completely alone. We got to hold the precious little girl and encourage their family, and see the property. When we left their house we had about a kilometer to walk to get back to the road, and that long after sunset.
I was just thinking,
of course.
Of course this woman had a baby all alone in her hot twelve-foot-by-twenty-four-foot one-room concrete home. Of course I am tromping through the impossibly dark and muddy jungle of rural India with a flashlight behind an Indian man I met only yesterday. Of course this way is a shortcut. And of course now we are lost. Of course there a lonely lovely firefly floating in our path. Of course there are jungle snakes nearby, out at night chasing that running rat.
I couldn't believe how soothing it felt that night to pour cold water over my feet at the end of that walk. I wish you all could feel the goodness of washing your feet after they have carried you through the thick muddy jungle and the long dusty day.
Between the time we arrived in Gariaband and the end of that third day, i had the opportunity to share the Good News from my heart eleven times.
The next morning, i sat on a woven cot under an enormous shade tree on Nehru and Dasmath's vast property and got a taste of the slow and simple life. The family brought us a plate full of fruits picked from their trees - they looked like shrunken tangerines. They called them Tendoo, and taught me how to eat them. You have to get the whole thing in your mouth and then spit out the seeds, which i did very ungracefully indeed. I watched the huge swarms of fat dragonflies, took some photos of their banana trees and rice paddies and the river behind their home, and then it was time to go. Our last stop before heading back to Gariaband the last time was there in Hathbai. There was one uncle who had been bothering the fellowship gatherings there because it was hurting his business. He was the local witch doctor, and instead of coming to him for incantations, people were beginning to go to the church to pray. Laura was aware of his disgruntled, disruptive (and usually drunken) behavior, and had decided to offer a small gesture of peace:
she brought him a box of medicine.
What a stroke of ingenuity. I couldn't believe it. Give medicine to the witch doctor! What a beautiful first step toward replacing complicated trickery with simple Truth. I was touched by her thoughtfulness, and i hope that he was too.
After everything, we piled in the car and headed back toward the airport. I covered my hair with my scarf and my eyes with my sunglasses, and rolled down the large window to open up the top half of the side door of our rented van. I hung my elbow out the window and put my face in the air rushing by at ninety-five kilometers per hour, my view of the gnarled trees and brightly colored rice paddies unobstructed. As you probably know, rice paddies are filled about a foot high with standing water. As the Indian trade wind breezes over the plots, it undergoes a delicious freshening and cooling effect. This cooler air is an amazing contrast to the already very hot season in the South. I felt the refreshing wind whipping across my face, and after four days of din; after four days of discussion; after four days of third-world miscommunication; after four days of chatter in Chhatisgarh, i had a safe place to think, to process, to begin to form intentional memories and understand the truth of all that i had witnessed in such a short period of time.
I had found a place to wonder at ethnic differences, and to take a deep breath, and to praise my Father;
all inside the empty roar of the unseasonably cool wind.
___________________________________________________________
(and these are for free:)
 |
| i guess you must know you're in poverty when the cows are skinny. |
 |
| 'Shepherd' Nehru's Mother. |
 |
| Palm trees on Palm Sunday. |
Love from Delhi - finally Delhi again,
Julie, clothed in the color of life.
