Day Nine Part Two

After lunch, we went to a classic Indian village called Barara. This village is about 30-45 minutes outside of downtown Agra and is entirely self-sufficient. I fell asleep on the drive there, because of the gigantic lunch I had just eaten. When we arrived, I was a little discombobulated, but I came to my senses soon. As I got off the bus and looked around the town, I saw a few things.  There were LOTS of cows, a few children shyly looking at our group, and a hut. We walked down a road to another building where we met a man named Rajiv. Rajiv seemed like quite a nice man, and seemed pleased to meet us. He started out by telling us a little bit about Barara. Rajiv grew up in this village, and still lives in it (more on that later). After the short talk, he took us to the village school. The kids in the village are quite poor, but you would never be able to tell by their playful and happy attitude. On the way to the school a small procession of them started to walk behind us. Whenever I made eye contact with one of them, I gave them a big smile and they shyly smiled back (most of the time). When we got to the school, class was in session. There were a bunch of schoolgirls sitting outside (on the ground) watching us. Rajiv picked up a schoolbook and showed it to us. It had all kinds of very basic things in it, but it was amazing because it had the entire English alphabet. Rajiv told us that these schoolchildren start learning English in third grade, which I found very cool because that is earlier than when we start learning French at the Ray School. I took some pictures of the schoolgirls and other children around the village and we headed back to where we first met Rajiv. There, I met a couple boys, Mohit and Aditya. They seemed like they were in their twenties, and they were REALLY nice. I was amazed at how good their English was and how happy they were to speak with me. You could tell how proud they were of their village, as they should have been. It was an amazing village. They used all kinds of things to their advantage such as water buffalo and cattle and Mohit told me that he had Wi-Fi in his entire house. While I was speaking to Mohit and Aditya, Rajiv had us talk to three village women. I noticed that two had a veil over their head, which hid their faces. My mom asked Rajiv to ask the women why (the women didn’t speak English and Rajiv could translate) this was the case, and they said that it was because there was a family member in their midst. They still stick with the old traditions of covering your face when a family member is present, which I found to be quite interesting because I had never seen anything like that before. After speaking to the women, we started to hear music playing and suddenly saw a snake being taken out of a straw basket. There were snake charmers from the village showing all of us this cobra. The snake charmer that was holding the snake brought it right up to Will and had him touch it. He then moved the snake around the circle everyone had formed and each of us got the opportunity to touch it. After that, the snake charmer took out a gigantic python that had just been caught the previous day. The python didn’t seem particularly happy to be in the situation he was it, and still seemed to be quite wild (which isn’t surprising because he WAS caught yesterday). At one point, the python starting wrapping himself around the arm of the snake charmer and the snake charmer had to pry the snake off of him. At another point, the snake charmer accidentally let go of the snake and the snake started to slither away. Luckily, the guy caught it       before it did any harm. After the snake charming, Rajiv had us speak to an elder of the village who told us how the village is governed. While the group was talking to him, Will and I caught the eye of about ten kids who were all looking at us tentatively. I took my camera out and took a picture of them, and they got really excited and wanted more. They wanted ones of just them and ones of them with a friend etc. etc. After taking about twenty pictures of them, we went to see some water buffalo that the villagers kept for food and milk.

We were only able to see them a few people at a time because we didn’t want to water buffalo to get nervous or scared. They were VERY cute, and seemed happy to see us. That’s something that I began to notice about Barara: it’s a big bubble of happiness. Everyone is smiling and enjoying life.  The kids that we had taken pictures of earlier started to follow us around laughing and wanting more pictures. Of course, we obliged, because it seemed to make them so happy. After the water buffalo, we were taken to a shop on the other side of town where all kinds of medicine for all kinds of things were sold. As I walked into the shop, one of the first medicines I saw was liquid opium. I had to read it twice because that 1. Seems like some very strong medicine and 2. Seems like it would do more harm than good. The person running the shop wanted to give us things to heal all of our little problems and Rajiv guaranteed us they would work. One of the students got a bunch of different herbs to heal tendonitis, and another almost bought eye drops that were meant to heal glaucoma instead of allergies. It was awesome to see all kinds of conventional spices and things being used and medicine. It was more fun to look at than drugs in America, which have weird names with x’s and z’s and 20 letters and all that. By this point, there was a big crowd of people following us around. As we walked out the same kinds wanted even more pictures. There was this one boy (I didn’t catch his name) who was in almost every picture we took. He seemed to love it when we took multiple pictures of him doing the same thing, which I found very cute. After the medicine shop, we headed over to Rajiv’s house because we were supposed to have dinner. Sadly, though, a couple students were really not feeling well (my mom wasn’t feeling well either) so we had to cut the visit short. We still went to his house, though, and spoke with his family for about 20 minutes. They were all smiles and seemed happy to tell us everything we wanted to know. We talked to Rajiv’s wife, who was a schoolteacher in Agra, about the school life and other things. It turns out that Mohit, who is the nice guy I was talking about earlier, is Rajiv’s nephew. In this village, it seemed that even if you weren’t related, you were still a family. There didn’t really seem to be individual families, but rather one big, curious family who couldn’t be prouder of the village they were living in. I think that’s what made this village so self-sufficient and happy. Everybody is looking out for everybody else, whether you like it or not (I don’t see why you wouldn’t like that). After Rajiv’s house, we headed for the bus that would take us back to the hotel. I got a picture of Rajiv himself, who said some very kind things to me. I also spoke to Mohit and Aditya on the way out and we all agreed that we should be friends on Facebook. Aditya friended me and I friended Mohit. They were so nice, and I wished that I could stay longer. Mohit and Aditya both said that they wanted to end up in the U.S. someday and maybe go to Pennsylvania and Virginia. I have no doubt that they will, because it was evident how smart they were and how hard they worked. The crowd of kids followed us the to the bus and then waved to us until we were out of sight. It was one of the best sendoffs that I’ve ever gotten, because everybody was waving, smiling, and saying that they would pray for us to feel better. Looking back on it, it was one of the best things I have ever done. 70 percent of India is villages (I think that’s right) and I had always wanted to see true India. All of my relatives live in big cities, so I had never been to a place like this. Someday I want to go back and see all of these kids grown up. The amount of pride and happiness in that village was probably the most I’ve ever seen in any town, which is one of the things that made our visit so special. Every single person was also EXTREMELY welcoming and said that we could come back and visit anytime and that we would be welcomed into their homes like family. I kind of wish Hanover was like this village. If every town had everybody working together and working hard to make it the best town it could possibly be, we would live in a great world. I lived in a truly great world that afternoon, and I can’t wait to do it again.
The snake-charmer with the snake:

A few of the girls who wanted a picture:

Some of the crowd that was following us:

Rajiv:

part of the village: