Today has been really great so far and very eventful before the time when I usually go to school at 9:30. Ranjan and I left at 7 and stopped for two cups of chai in the town center first.
We went to a small community just South of Ranjan’s home, close to where the elephants are kept beside the jungle. We first stopped at the home of one of the students from Class 7 whose sisters had collected some sort of bright green fern stalks that they were sorting into bundles to sell at the market in Parsa. Ranjan bought three or four bundles for our lunch and dinner today.
We continued on to a busy part of the mud hut commune where some young children were gathered playing. I recognized a couple of the kids from my school, but many were very dirty, shy and most likely did not attend school at all. I was so impressed by Ranjan’s kindness and interest in the community.
He biked off to get some notebooks, pencils and a big bag of chocolates to distribute to the children who were gathered around playing their version of roulette in the dirt. I was even given a 5Rs note with which to try my hand, and doubled my loot in one go! I should have walked away, as the best always do, but thinking it a tad slimy to gamble and take the money of these impoverished children, I bet again, and lost ‘er all. Damn kids probably had it all rigged. ;)
Nearby there was a tiny house that had some holes in it and looked a little more disheveled than the others. Ranjan pointed out the structural flaws and problems they would cause during the monsoon season. The home belonged to an old lady who had been hanging around, bashing kids on the side of the head when they misbehaved and watching the commotion that we had started with our arrival. She had moved to sit on her small porch and I started recording the conversation Ranjan was having with her.
She was eighty years old, her husband 79, and they have lived in this tiny little mud hut for the past 35 years, since being displaced from their previous home along the riverbanks when the river flooded. The area where they live has been supplied to the community of approximately 100 families by the government and it is clear when driving from the fields of rice and modest, yet comfortable homes where Ranjan and his family live, that these families struggle to get by. I was shocked at the size of the space these two people have shared for 35 years. It was smaller than most people’s bathrooms and consisted of a little pit where they cook their food and enough floor space for both of them to lie down, in the mud, and a shelf that was disorganized with every single thing they own. We spent almost half an hour talking to this woman and her husband, when he returned from gathering grass in the jungle to feed their ox.
I was taking a video of Ranjan speaking to her and interpreting my questions when she started describing what had happened to her son. She told us that she has three children, all daughters who have moved away to live with their husbands and their families in other villages. Some families are fortunate to have their daughters marry and stay close by, but others, like this lady, are not so fortunate if they do not have a son to stay with them and take care of them when he marries. She acknowledged this fact saying they are “unlucky.” I felt this to be a bit of a chide toward her daughters (do my parents feel the same way!?), but then she told us that she had a son who was carried off by, wait for it, a TIGER when he was only 10 months old!
When we said goodbye to the lady and her husband, Ranjan handed her around 300Rs and promised that they would be the first to have a place in the home he was planning to construct for older people in the village with donation money when he has enough.
He also told me about another project he is planning which is to build a small school for the young children in the community who are not old enough to attend the regular school. He said that there are often accidents as these children are left unattended or with young siblings throughout the day as the parents have to leave the home and the community to work. Even as we stood speaking to this elderly couple, one toddler was wandering in the road alone, toward an oncoming cart being pulled along at a speed that would surely have finished the little boy, but two charging buffalo. There was a bit of commotion as someone had thankfully turned in time to see this impending disaster and yanked the little one out of harm’s way. The nearby river also poses a threat as the children spend a great deal of time swimming and cleaning there and can easily be carried away by the strong current during monsoon season when the river is high, or simply by drowning in the shallow water.
A quick tour of the tiny 6X4 foot space this couple shares.
When we returned home, Ranjan, Ama and I prepared the “nu-ro” (the leafy greeans) and our delicious breakfast was prepared.
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