Save the Tiger

This week was a strange culmination of all of the stress and chaos that is India. this past weekend I had the joy of spending time in Delhi at Joanna's father's house. We were finally able to enjoy luxuries like a shower and air conditioning. We even had whole wheat toast!! we took a taxi ride all the way from jaipur to delhi on friday afternoon and spent friday night lounging around the apartment with much appreciated glasses of wine. It was the first taste of farmiliarity I know that many of us had. Everything is so much more posh when coming from a city like jaipur. We woke up late on saturday morning, and had breakfast (AND COFFEE!) waiting for us on the table. There were four of us girls, and of course we ended up showering and going out into the thick new delhi air for some shopping. We walked through this really great portion of the city where there were art shops and small samosa stands. The walkways were extremely narrow, and there were stores packed in on either side for two or three stories on each side. We ended up walking straight into this gorgeous park with the rmains of an old Moghul university? it was almost surreal being in the middle of the largest city in India, and yet walking through this old building surrounded by gorgeous trees and a small lake. After exploring, we headed back to the apartment for some lunch and relaxation. We pulled out the wine again and watched the one movie i brought to india...clearly it was step up! Its a sad day when step up is the first english movie you have seen in a month and a half.
After the movie, we got dolled up and headed out into Delhi where we met up with all of Joanna's cosmopolitan friends. one of them is the son of the man who owns the largest beer company in all of india, perhaps the only beer company in india, and so we were escorted in style to all of the most posh clubs and bars for the evening. I must say I have NEVER been treated more like royalty in all my life. We bypassed security, and found ourselves in the vip sections of the clubs. It was a wonderful release of energy and tension from the week so we just danced to very indian house music for hours and literally just collapsed when we got home.
Once back in Jaipur things picked up with school again, and we spent most of the week traveling to different ngo's in the area. There is one called, no joke, Jaipur Foot. It provides FREE prosthetics (sp?) to anyone in the city who needs it. Almost 1 million people have received these legs/feet from this one company, all because a man was willing to make it affordable to create. They are amazingly functional, and we got a fabulous demonstration when the man with a jaipur foot climbed a tree. The ngo itself was a sight to behold. there were hundreds of people lined up outside waiting for new feet. Please try and imagine hundreds of one legged people. They were often the most poor in india, and had polio, or had been victims of freak train accidents. The experience left most of us with mixed feelings. Here was one man providing an unbelievable service to the world, but at the same time, there were so many people who needed it.
Asside from that, we got to travel to a tiger reserve in rajasthan. We spent one afternoon in a massive jeep riding through the jungle looking for tigers, which amazingly we found. We saw what could have been the rear end of a sleeping tiger...suspicious at best...but it was nice to see that they were working to save them. An Amazing ngo literally reshaped an entire town and the surrounding villages, just to save the tigers. they relocated somthing like 8 villages out of the park area, set up schools, hospitals, and new homes for them. they also have started fighting the tiger poaching by giving the women jobs, and the children schooling. Clearly, becuase SIT absolutely loves us, we not only heard about the projects, but travelled to two schools, three villages, and one hospital. It is amazing and hard being a group of white students walking into the lives of these truly unique and beautiful people and then up and leaving in a stream of white taxis. This time at least we were able to talk to the billages about the wonderful things that they were doing, and how happy they were with the work that the ngos were doing instead of hearing about everything that is wrong with the world.
India as a country provides so much and yet so little to the millions of people living here. The villages are absolutely untouched by most modern technologies. The women work in the field in their sari's, cutting down crops and traveling two hours to fetch water just to carry it back on their heads. They live off the milk from their own cows, and the food from their own gardens. It is amazing to think that in my whole life I will never have as much responsibility as one of these women, and yet they can't read or write, and most of them will be married by the time they are 14.
It is refreshing and unbearably awe inspiring.
As for now, we are back in jaipur for another week of work and hindi with the greatest staff on the planet. I am happy, safe, and continually saturated with the newness and complete otherness that is india.
I am off to spend the evening with some friends from the group, so I will sign off. So much love as always.