Our project and The Jungle Blog are featured on Duke News today:
http://news.duke.edu/2009/07/biogas.html
The article talks about our biogas project and links to our Junglecast on Youtube and iTunes. Cool stuff!
(In other news, I'm still in Bangalore and I'm really sad that Karan and Katie aren't here...)
Friday, July 10, 2009
Goodbye India
There are times in life when one simply must reflect—and here, sitting in the Delhi Airport waiting for my connecting flight to take me away from India, is one of those times. My first trip to India was full of surprises, and I learned so much that it is strange sometimes to think that I am returning. As short as 8 weeks is, this DukeEngage experience has felt like a mini-life within my real life, and returning, as excited as I am, doesn’t really feel like an option. But, as I am leaving, it feels like just about time to say a few words, as a guest saying goodbye. So, here it goes.
India has been extremely good to me, and I will miss it terribly. I will miss paneer and gobi and masala and dosa… (I guess I’ll just miss all of the food—I better find good Indian restaurants pronto), I will miss seeing cows carefreely trotting on the streets while the crazy Bangalore traffic respectfully zooms around them, and I will miss being able to say the few Kannada and Hindi words I learned. But most of all, I will miss these people. Indian hospitality made me feel so welcomed when I expected to feel like an outsider, and I am extremely grateful. Families opened their homes to us, feeding us and letting us in on the beautiful family relationships they share. I was consistently blown away as I realized that the grandfather and aunt were just as involved in the care and love of the children as the mother and father, and that families, including distant relatives, were such an active part of daily life. These experiences taught me the cliché traveler’s lesson: We are more similar than we are different. And as much as it is a cliché, it is also the key to solving so many of the environmental problems we face. We can set aside political, economic, social differences and unite in a cause that affects every inhabitant of earth, and only once we do that will we begin to see results.
This trip was hard in ways I didn’t expect, full of surprises, and because of that I learned much more than I expected. I learned that it is possible to spend two full months exclusively with 2 people, learn all of their silly ticks, and still come away missing them just a few hours after leaving. Karan and Sandeep became my family-away-from-home, teaching me and guiding me, and learning to work as a group was such a challenging and rewarding accomplishment. I learned to remove snakes from my room, and to live with spiders in my bathroom. I learned to eat with my hands. I learned that I could do the things that I’m most scared of and live to tell the tale. We are all stronger than we think, and I hope that I will have to courage to push myself again.
So, although I’m sure much smarter and wiser people could figure out all of my lessons when they were much younger than I am, I leave feeling extremely enriched. I hope I can return to India soon, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed our stories. If you really want to know what we’ve learned and experienced, come to India and get your hands dirty—in the twisted weeds of Cardamum fields, in a steaming pot of paneer butter masala, in cement from a biogas plant, in the slobber of the neighbor’s puppy. You will love it. And let me know if you have a blog because I will surely read it!
India has been extremely good to me, and I will miss it terribly. I will miss paneer and gobi and masala and dosa… (I guess I’ll just miss all of the food—I better find good Indian restaurants pronto), I will miss seeing cows carefreely trotting on the streets while the crazy Bangalore traffic respectfully zooms around them, and I will miss being able to say the few Kannada and Hindi words I learned. But most of all, I will miss these people. Indian hospitality made me feel so welcomed when I expected to feel like an outsider, and I am extremely grateful. Families opened their homes to us, feeding us and letting us in on the beautiful family relationships they share. I was consistently blown away as I realized that the grandfather and aunt were just as involved in the care and love of the children as the mother and father, and that families, including distant relatives, were such an active part of daily life. These experiences taught me the cliché traveler’s lesson: We are more similar than we are different. And as much as it is a cliché, it is also the key to solving so many of the environmental problems we face. We can set aside political, economic, social differences and unite in a cause that affects every inhabitant of earth, and only once we do that will we begin to see results.
This trip was hard in ways I didn’t expect, full of surprises, and because of that I learned much more than I expected. I learned that it is possible to spend two full months exclusively with 2 people, learn all of their silly ticks, and still come away missing them just a few hours after leaving. Karan and Sandeep became my family-away-from-home, teaching me and guiding me, and learning to work as a group was such a challenging and rewarding accomplishment. I learned to remove snakes from my room, and to live with spiders in my bathroom. I learned to eat with my hands. I learned that I could do the things that I’m most scared of and live to tell the tale. We are all stronger than we think, and I hope that I will have to courage to push myself again.
So, although I’m sure much smarter and wiser people could figure out all of my lessons when they were much younger than I am, I leave feeling extremely enriched. I hope I can return to India soon, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed our stories. If you really want to know what we’ve learned and experienced, come to India and get your hands dirty—in the twisted weeds of Cardamum fields, in a steaming pot of paneer butter masala, in cement from a biogas plant, in the slobber of the neighbor’s puppy. You will love it. And let me know if you have a blog because I will surely read it!
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