Village Life

Good morning! We leave for our second (optional) safari at 6:45am so breakfast starts at 6:00 and before then I wanted to squeeze in an entry about our visit to the local village OAT helps support. The WiFi in this hotel isn’t great in the rooms, so I am sitting outside on my little porch in the courtyard.

On our way to the village we stopped in front of the school we would have visited if it hadn’t been a Sunday, and Abhi told us all about how OAT pretty much transformed it. Actually, not OAT, but Grand Circle Foundation, which is a partner of OAT I think. Somehow they’re related! https://www.grandcirclefoundation.org/ The school now has washrooms, benches to sit on, fans, a generator, etc., etc., thanks to the foundation.

Onward to the village, where we got off the bus and board one of those safari Jeep things to get to the village itself. What a treat! The young woman who is the main contact (Permila?) wold is a little bit about the village itself, and then all the children who were sitting in front of her took turns saying “My name is ______.” So sweet! The kids were delightful! And as we spent a few hours with all of them, the term “it takes a village” really meant something.

We all got a chance to ask questions of the young woman, and then she had a question for us. She wanted to know about birth control in the States. (She is studying political science and wants to be a social activist.) Bob shared that he had had a vasectomy, and there was a lot of discussion about that! Apparently in India vasectomies aren’t popular because they think it makes the men weak. I appreciated his and others’ openness about this topic.

After we talked, we were split up into groups of two and led around the village by some of the teenagers. Paul and I were escorted by Assa and Jyoti and a handful of the littler kids who ran around us and held our hands and blurted out the English words they knew. “Naughty girl!” one boy kept saying about Jyoti. Jyoti and Assa loved talking about boyfriends! “You boyfriend?” one of them asked me and when I said no they burst out into giggles. It was even funnier to them when I asked if they had boyfriends. We saw their homes (concrete structures), their fields, their water buffalos, everything. Such a great experience. “Come! Come!” they would beckon, and we climbed up the stairs of one house to the rooftop, where a mother of twins was cooking chai on a brick stove heated by kindling. We got to try some too.

After our tour we all went to the home of one couple and helped make our meal. Then we sat outside and enjoyed the meal, each group with three of us and one of the guides. Delicious! Then we came back to the hotel and watched a documentary about the tigers of Ranthambore. I hope we see one today!

Our contact at the village

Making chapati again 

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