Hello Everyone!
A lot has happened since I last wrote to you! First of all, I was able to celebrate my 21st birthday here! That day we happened to have a site visit in a very remote village about two and a half hours outside of Jaipur. We spent the day at a school interviewing teachers and talking with the young students-they were very curious about our life in America! When we returned from the site to our program center, the staff that had stayed behind had hung up Christmas lights, were setting off fireworks, and had even rented disco lights and giant speakers, so there was also Hindi music blasting from our patio. When we got upstairs to the patio, there was pizza, fries and drinks waiting for us and they even came out with a birthday cake for me. It was more than I ever expected, and definitely a birthday to remember.
The following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we spent time in Ranthambhore to learn about issues surrounding the disappearance of the tiger and the people of the Mogiya Tribes who rely heavily on the resources of the tiger r
eserve there. Nongovernment organizations have set up camp in this area hoping to reduce the pressure on Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve and improve the quality of life for people living around it. In 2004-2005 there were an estimated 47 tigers; at this point it is estimated that only about 15 tigers remain in this huge reserve. Because of the poverty in the area, poaching is extremely popular among village men in order to gain monetary reward. There is also the issue of relocation; many officials want to relocate the villages on the periphery of the park, but those citizens will only move under the right conditions. One man said that “the land they [the government] show us is so barren that it is only good to break your head against it”. Another problem is using the natural resources of the park for things like cattle grazing and logging for energy purposes; this all strains the ecosystem o
f the park. We spent a lot of time with the Prakratik Society discussing what they were doing to improve the situation, and we learned that their work is based on the idea that to save the tigers, a change must be made in the people’s thinking and lifestyle, and they must be offered sustainable alternatives to using the park and tigers as resources. On this basis, they built a hospital in order to improve healthcare and to promote family planning (there were 6,000 babies being born every year in this small area). Diary development is another initiative of the organization. They have been trying to breed cattle that eat less and produce more milk, in hopes that families will need fewer cows and therefore will not have to enter the park to graze. A really innovative program they have started is the bio-gas program. If families install a simple structure they can have enough methane to cook two meals a day for 4-5 people as well as light a few lamps in their homes. The structure requires no electricity of its own and runs entirely on cow dung, which is readily available. Education also plays a huge role in preventing poaching, which is why they have set up a school for both boys and girls that educate them up to grade 9. This education includes free books, free transportation, and discounts for girls. As a bonus, we went out to dinner the last night and discovered that the restaurant owners had an elephant as a pet, so we got to feed her! Here is a picture; she is seventy years old.
Overall, it seems like the NGOs in that area are very creative and doing a great job at improving the lives of a lot of people. However, my class did get into a debate about the true nature of these organizations. Quite a few times, officials said “we are here for the tigers” or “we are helping the people so the tigers can survive”. Some of the girls questioned whether or not the people are really getting the most effective programs they could, or if they will be hurt in the long run because the survival of the tigers is the immediate goal. Another argument to support this view was “what happens if the tigers disappear, or become populated so it is no longer an issue? Will these people still get help?” Other girls think that as long as they are getting help, it doesn’t matter why, and they should use what they have to draw attention to themselves and get help. However, this brought up an entirely other issue for me: why does a community have to have some type of gimmick to get help? For this one community, how many others have no gimmick and therefore get no help? It’s a good question to think about, and as one of my classmates said “I’m only 21…I don’t have all the answers”.
The day after we returned, we had our Hindi midterm! I haven’t gotten the grade back yet, but our teachers reviewed with us while we were on our excursion and made the test simple for us so I think I did well! Then it was the weekend, and I just relaxed. I did some shopping in the jewelry bazaar, watched an old Hindi movie at my friend’s house on Saturday, and then spent yesterday cleaning my room, reading for class, and doing laundry-a much needed calm, average weekend! That’s all for now…I have one more week of classes, then I am heading to Varanasi (possibly the oldest continuously occupied city in the world) for a weeklong workshop/internship with an NGO there. After that its one more week of projects, presentations, and exams, then off to Delhi for my independent study project. The semester is going WAY to fast!
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