Coping with Koppal

Okay...the title has little to do with the post, I just couldn't think of a good name...

We spent all of last week in Koppal. A poorer district in Northern Karnataka. Our purpose there was to help build a school for children of women who are a part of the Davedasi (temple priest) system. Unfortunately (or actually fortunately I guess since the region had a poor monsoon season this year) it rained almost the whole time we were there, so we weren't able to build much. The building we did do was great though. Some of the young girls who will be attending the school helped out and one day we got to talk to some of their mothers who were visiting. A good experience all around.

During the week we also went to Hampi, a city built around the 6th century I think. It was a neat place. On the main temple there are statues of women in erotic positions. Our tour guide explained that this was so that the visitor's eye would be drawn to those images and not to the rest of the temple to prevent people from being jealous of the temple and therefore bringing bad luck upon it. Interesting. A few people got blessed by the temple elephant who was trained to tap people on the head when it was given money. Market and religion, anyone? On that day, we visited Hampi University, a small Master's and Ph. D. program university that is working to preserve the culture of the area. We ran into a couple of arts students who showed us around which was great. I got to talking with Veena, one of the arts students. It was great to connect with someone close to my own age.

On another day we went to a village and saw people working on a handloom and then people working on a machine loom. On the handloom, the man has to pump two pedals continuously and push a handle thing back and forth over and over again for ten hours a day. On the machine loom, a man stands and makes sure the thread doesn't get caught. I have often heard that we should try to support the handloom industry and I heard that again on that day. I have a hard time understanding why now. I can see that, since handlooming is slower, it can employ more people, but it employs more people in back-breakingly hard physical labor. If the alternative is unemployment, I can see why that would be preferable, but isn't there a way that people can have jobs and decent conditions? Then the next day, we went to a human hair processing plant. There men and women comb through hair and sort it by length to send it to factories that make wigs. Vishwasagar, our guide for the day, kept telling us about how they don't have their rights and so on, but the women were sitting close to each other and laughing and joking with each other. There labor was hard, but it didn't require massive amounts of physical exertion. They can talk while they work. I'm having a hard time understanding why I'm supposed to consider that work less ethical than the handloom work.

By far, the hardest thing for me to process this week was our visit to a village of about 45o families, 100 of whom are dalit families. For a while, we exchanged songs and questions with each other which was nice. When the Q & A was done, we went around to homes in the village. At each home, Vishwasagar would do his best to point out just how poor each family was. He would pick up food to show us that it was old. He would show us the pots and tell us how they were metal and not clay, a sign of real poverty. At one point, he poured out some of their food to show us how thin it was. I felt awful that we were treating people as objects. The people and homes of that village turned into our textbooks. We exploited their gracious hospitality by going through their homes and objectifying them, pitying them for their lives. We heard nothing positive about their lives because the purpose of our visit was to see despair.

I hated this visit for several reasons. One, we are learning in class here in India that what India needs is to be village-centered. If that is village life, then why?? Why why why why why? At least in a city, new jobs are constantly cropping up. Although moving there would probably mean poverty, there is a chance of upward movement. Where is that chance in villages? I feel as though this is another instance of those of us who are already well-off saying that others can't become well-off because that wouldn't allow us to continue to live our comfortable lives. Second, people just can't objectify other people like that. Other members of the group said it was nice because we connected with them before visiting their homes, but we didn't really. We asked them questions to determine just how poor they are relative to us and they asked us questions to determine just how great life is for us. Is that connecting? We sat on opposite sides of the room. Third, I realized that day that this is what the program I signed up for is. The program's purpose is to show us how awful life can be, so that we carry that away with us and consider it as we go off into our careers. This isn't a cultural exchange. The hope of this program is not that I would build relationships with Indians but that I would see just how many and how deep problems are in India. It's like an extended mission trip except we are basically only viewing the problems, not doing anything to alleviate them. This isn't a fault of the program, per se. There are people who enjoy that kind of program, who are looking for that kind of program. I just should have looked more into what the program actually is before I signed up for it. Now I need to adjust my expectations of this study abroad experience. I need to accept the fact that I'm not going to connect on a real level with Indians, that's not what's it about. That's a hard thing to do.

In other news, today in most of the world but tomorrow in India is Eid el-Fitr. Ramadan in India has been semi-hard, but only because various people who work for Visthar have continually been recommending that I not fast on a large variety of occasions. It was frustrating that in a country that has way more Muslims than the United States does, I got a lot more flack about fasting. Strange how that works. I realize that the Visthar staff members were just concerned for me that I would be too tired; they just don't realize that I've been fasting and completely participating in regular life for ten years. Anyway, I have about eight days to make up. This is my first Eid not with family. Not a big deal though. It will be fun to see how Eid is celebrated here. The guys are going to the prayer tomorrow, but not the women because no mosques in India have women sections. Is it just me or is that uncommon in most places in the Muslim world? I mean, in Egypt not all mosques have women's sections and they're never anywhere near the size of the men's sections but they exist, don't they? Please comment if you know. That's okay though. I don't mind not going to the mosque; that means I get a free morning. In the afternoon, Dr. Kittelson says we are going to the house of Sham - a Muslim Visthar staff member. I like Sham and the members of his family who I've met before, so that should be fun.