4 August

Dear All,

My time at Seva Mandir is quickly wrapping up, as I have decided to leave the organization a week early, and travel with my two roommates and another volunteer to Nepal (any advice is welcome!) The work I am doing is actually at a good point to wrap up the project, and traveling a week early allows the four of us to travel together. I am working on submitting some final reports, one on getting the community's youth involved in understanding the challenges women in Delwara face, as related to water, a copy of the survey I wrote, and a write up of the stories I have gathered from the various women my translator and I have interviewed.

Like many previous emails, there are two extremes I would like to talk about: A fair honoring the monsoons/season some of the volunteers attended this past Friday in Udaipur, and my experience of collecting water with the women of the Meghwal community in Delwara (which happened yesterday- sunday- and today).

The fair we attended honored the monsoons and the season, as best as we could gather from various people in broken English. It was the ultimate street fair- all the major roads (which are two lane slabs of cement) were closed to vehicular traffic, which wouldn't have been able to move anywhere because of the thousands of people that descended on the city. And I mean thousands- loads of people were here. The streets were lined with stalls selling everything from roasted corn (some made of fires of garbage- delicious), cheap plastic gold jewelry, hankerchiefs, boys underwear, and fired food galore (every food vendor in the city must have rallied his brothers, sons, and cousins to help in the deep frying process of a bunch of food I coudn't really identify, but was most likely a mix of flour, spices, and potatoes). There was also ferris wheels- what fair is complete without one? But this wheel was man-powered: literally. Two men hung from the wheel's center axel and walked on the spokes of the ferris wheel to make it move. I took pictures if you don't believe it, but it was pretty awesome (to watch, ain't a great deal was going to get me into the contraption).

When we entered the madness, there was a man selling fakes beards and mustaches, which my roommate Fiz quickly bargined down from Rs 50 to Rs 10. He donned the amish style beard and giant Indian mustache with pride, and got a lot of cat-calls from his new get-up. Then we bought the festive hats vendors were selling- mine was a lovely number of thin cardboard wrapped in gold celophane, with a brim of gold glitter and multi-colored feathers. Our new looks generated a host of shameless stares, laughs, and requests for photos, including some by newspaper reporters. We actually made it into two of the Udaipur daily newspapers- and one of the photos is in color (mom- i have three copies so don't worry). Actually, 7 foreigners walking around in tens of thousands of Indians at the fair created quite a stir. Ever time we sat down to rest, a group would amass around us, and just stare. It was funny the first two times, but when the police came by and broke up one group (of about 50 gawkers), and a second time when about 70-100 people formed a semi-circle around us, it got a little creepy, and we decided to stop taking a rest. However, we had a great time, as did the people of udaipur, at such a fun fesitval with food, dancing, singing, and general merryment.

It is amazing how drastically experiences can change here. Sunday afternoon I made my way to Delwara, to spend that evening and the following morning with women in one of the Meghwal communities collecting water. I believe I have written about this community before, but they are a sceduled caste and members of the dalit (one of the lowest castes), and this community in particular is separated from the rest of Delwara by a ~1km road. There is almost no running water in this community, terrble road conditions, poor drainage (where it exists), and a great deal of community in-fighting. We went to one of the far wells around 5pm, which is located about 1~2km from the village, over terrible dirt roads pock-marked with giant water puddles (it had rained the day before). To get to the well, you have to climb over a meter high stone wall (imagine doing with with two water pots balanced on your head), and then walk through a farm and down a narrow, winding, and uneven dirt road to a well. Once you get to the well, you toss your metal bucket with a thick rope attached to it into the 30 foor deep stone well, hope the snake on the side of the well won't bother you, and begin to jiggle the bucket in the deep water to fill it up, so you can hoist the thing up, dump it through a filtering cloth, and into one of your two water pots. Once that is all done (to get 25 liters takes about 6 intense and heavy tosses of the bucket down the well), you get to hoist the pots (one made out of clay- keeps the water cool, and one made out of hammered metal) onto your head and navigate through the farm, road, slide over the stone well, and back down the crappy road to your home, which is probably up a hill and the road to get to it is probably unpaved or poorly paved at best. Once you kick off your shoes, you take the pots off your head and sit for about five minutes, before you go and collect water for bathing, as that well water with the occasional snake on the side of the stones is only for drinking.

Now, there are several wells and handpumps one can use for water collection. However, one of the wells is flooded with waste water from the rest of the community and waste water from the Devigarh fort (the former king's former castle cum luxery hotel), made wrose by rain runoff. So that is out for many people. Another well's water is contaminated from the rain and many people won't use it for bathing. There is a handpump at the entrance to the community, but when I entered the area this morning, a man was in his undies bathing. Now, we went to an area at the bottom of the hill where there are pipes in the ground with water in them. There are five ditches, about 2 feet square and 3 feet deep that has a spigot of water pouring in them, and then two shallow dugouts (think of a dugout a child makes at a beach while digging sand for a sandcastle, only this one is in red dirt and snall stones) with small spigots with a small but respectful stream of water coming from them, when you pull out the stopper of a twig with cloth wrapped around one end. You have with you a giant plastic drum, think something like a painter would have when painting a room or house, or for you NYers, the buckets people use as drums at the times square subway station. To fill this up, you squat on the ground and take a plastic container, hold it under the spout, and fill and pour, repeating this until your bucket is full. You ask someone to help you put this on your head (it is probably 20+ liters of water) and you make your way back home, bathe, and begin your day.

Appreciate every drop out of your tap, the luxury we have created of bottled water, and a shower pretty much any time you want it. I know I do more so than I ever have before.