I was recently asked to speak about my trip at the First Baptist Church of Shellman, Georgia.  I spoke about my trip, India, and what it means to give well.

December 30, 2012: On Volunteer Vacations

As Nutan concluded class on our last day, I leaned against the back wall and checked once more that Mamta was present.  I wanted to make sure she got a copy of the “School Book.”  She was there, sitting in her smudged white dress, paying strict attention to the teacher for once.

The School Book wasn’t much.  It contained numbers, written in Arabic numerals alongside their Hindi and Rajasthani spellings; tables for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; the months of the year, the days of the week; a map of the world; and a map of India.  I created it on my laptop early one morning, asked the other volunteers to contribute to it over breakfast, then had the hotel print copies while we were out teaching.  It would be, as best I could tell, the only schoolbook these children had.

The forty copies I’d asked for weren’t going to be enough.  We’d distributed twenty-one copies to the older kids the day before, but Mamta—who was old enough for those older-kids’ sessions, but still young enough for this younger-kid session—hadn’t been there.  Now, as I counted the heads seated on the dusty blanket spread across the floor, I saw we’d be five or six copies short.  No matter—some of these children were too small to read anyway.

Nutan started to conclude and the kids started to move around.  As Mamta turned to stand I tapped her on the shoulder.  “Wait,” I whispered, holding my palm out to her.  “One minute.  I have something to give you.”  Her face was a question.  I gestured as if passing a gift to her, then motioned again for her to sit.  When Nutan finished, I moved toward the aluminum chest that held the remaining School Books and gestured for Mamta to follow.

Nutan knows that Mamta is one of my favorites.  Mamta’s face is expressive but matter-of-fact—she can warm your heart with a smile or instill guilt with a scowl.  She’s smart, assertive, and charismatic.  She is also mercurial.  Sometimes she needs discipline, as when we were playing “music” in a small circle and Mamta kept taking other kids’ instruments.  I warned her twice, provoking eye rolls, then confiscated her instrument, provoking a scowl and some nasty-sounding Hindi.  I leaned forward, mimicked her scowl, laughed to show gentle mockery, and kept the instrument.  That appears to have been the right move, as Mamta and I were friends after that.  Mamta would approach me before class to hold hands or slap high-fives, and I liked it when she did.  In retrospect I think Mamta wanted affection but didn’t know how to ask for it.

I opened the aluminum chest and pulled out the stack of nineteen School Books.  Nutan, who noticed what I was doing, explained in Hindi to Mamta what the School Book was and that I wanted her, in particular, to have one.  I turned, stack in hand, and gave a copy to Mamta.  Her expression was uncertain as she figured out what this was.

You cannot hand an item to one child in a classroom without every other child in the room rushing forward for the same thing, and I was immediately surrounded.  Little children with little open hands, reaching, jumping, chirping “sir!,” “sir!,” “sir!”  (This is especially true if some of the children have experience as street beggars.)  I held the stack high so the children could not reach them, and moved across the room so I could set it down on a high wall and use both hands for distribution and crowd control.  Kids who had no idea what the School Book was and would not have cared about it if they had known desperately wanted a copy.  I distributed to the older children first, then to the younger ones, trying to place each copy in the correct hands without another hand grabbing it first, trying to ensure that siblings had a copy to share, trying to ensure that larger children didn’t come back for a second copy before the smaller children got one.  In the midst of it all I saw Mampta pushing into the crowd, reaching.  I was not going to give her a copy because she already had one, but she was reaching for my empty hand.  As I turned toward another kid to hand out a book, I heard her say “thank you” and I saw her face—an appreciative expression—out of the corner of my eye.  I kept distributing the school books, figuring that I’d have that conversation with Mamta in a few seconds when I was finished.

*                                  *                                  *

Intimacy does not come easy, but it is worth chasing.  If the point of traveling is to experience and learn about something new—as opposed to merely doing the same things in front of a new backdrop, or snapping photos of Wikipedia-ed landmarks so you can prove that you’ve been there—then intimacy is irreplaceable.  If yours is a people-oriented trip, it is not enough to see them in restaurants, hotels, and the street.  You’ve got to participate in their daily lives.  If yours is a nature-oriented trip, it is not enough to see the terrain from a train window.  You have to shoulder a pack and live in it.  Those are not easy things to do.

At intimacy, volunteer vacations excel.  Had I come to India without GlobeAware (my volunteer vacation company), I would never have met any of the children.  I would not have entered a slum.  I would not have gotten to know Nutan.  I would not have experienced the closeness of the slum, the smell of the people, the sounds of an upstairs neighbor walking across the sheet of tin that constitutes the ceiling.  With GlobeAware, I could join the camaraderie of the children, feel their small hands in mine, hear the happy shouts of “tri-an-gle!” as I hopped across a dusty floor.  I could ask Nutan frank questions about her arranged marriage and I could feel the way that India is changing.

*                                  *                                  *

As soon as I handed out the last School Book I looked for Mamta.  She was gone from where the circle of kids had stood and gone from the schoolhouse.  I stepped into the schoolyard, but I did not see her.   I stepped through the metal door into the dirt paths of the slum, scanning for the hip-height girl in the smudged white dress.  She was not there.  I wanted this last goodbye with Mamta; I wanted her to know that she was special to me; I wanted to know that I meant something to her.  I left the group and walked to her house.  Nothing.

I never found her.  Since then I have often remembered her, and Nutan, and the other children, and I regret that my last interaction with Mamta brought no more closure.  I wish I had not turned away when she came to say thank you; I wish I had not ignored her outstretched hand.

Fulfillment is meeting an outstretched hand.  I hope that one day, Mamta can read this post.  But I am thankful that, through this volunteer vacation, we were at least able to brush fingers.

December 29, 2012: Raw

It’s actually the morning of the 30^th, and I’m sitting on the patio of my hotel sipping a Kingfisher and wondering how to best to sum up India, or at least Rajasthan, the state where I’ve spent most of my time.  Several phrases come to mind.  Fascinating mixture of the ancient and modern.  The great unwashed.  Thatched-hut agriculture meets bustling urbanity.  Crowded and dirty.  International-jet access to exotic biota.  Heedless environmental destruction.

Of course you can’t encapsulate India or Rajasthan in one phrase, but the best summary I can think of—at least when comparing this place to my home in the United States—is raw.  That’s both a good thing and a bad one.

Raw is the incredible biodiversity of Kheolado Ghana National Park, where I went walking yesterday and running this morning—it has received recognition from UNESCO and other international organizations, and I can’t think of anything like it back home in Georgia.  Raw is the give-and-take bargaining over bananas, samosas, and chai on the street, a local market exciting in its efficiency.  Raw is new Tata trucks beeping their horns as they swerve over the centerline to pass camel-drawn wagons.   Raw is exciting.

But raw is also the sordid water, soap swirling alongside sewage, running down the dirt paths that connect the homes of my students.  Raw is the garbage that clutters the vacant lots and railways, deposited by masses for whom a wastebasket is a foreign concept.  Raw is a water buffalo, kept so that its milk can be drunk and its feces used for cooking fires, tethered so close to the ground that it cannot stand and raise its head at the same time.  Raw is brutal.

I don’t know why I travel for answers; observation and objectivity always create more questions than resolutions.  In about a day, Anne and I will travel from Atlanta to Savannah to celebrate the new year with friends.  We will spend a couple hundred dollars on travel, lodging, food, and drink.  In this raw country, that money would go far.  If Anne and I stayed home and sent that money to Nutan, she could buy benches for the classroom, books for the shelves, lunches for the children, and then some.  (I have already left some money for these things, but more could be better.)  Is it ethical for me to travel to Savannah to drink high-priced beer on River Street?

This raw world is full of uncomfortable questions.

After the cacophonous city, I was looking in Kheolado Ghana National Park for some nature-based tranquility.  I found it off the trail in this spot.

sunset in Kheolado Ghana National Park

I went for a run in the morning fog of Kheolado Ghana and ran right through this tribe of Macaque monkeys.

Waterfowl in Kheolado Ghana National Park.  The fog was beginning to lift.

Street food.  I told the vendor I wanted it spicy, pointed to my chest, and said "Rajasthani man!"  It was hot, but very good.