My time is Chavadi Pudur is coming to an end. I have like eleven days left in th village. From there I go to Mysore for two days, Svenabellagola, Hyderabad, Bodhygya, Varanasi, Dehli, Armistar, Dharmsala, and Dehli again. Mysore will be the beginning of the religion tour that will last five weeks. The program ends at August 15th. My mother and brother are planning to come and spend a week with me here. Then I will spend a week with my brother and sister-in-law in California. I will be able to see most of your smiling in like two months. Where has the time gone?
As I evaluate my experience in the village I think about how the village was different at the beginning. When I first arrived I was approached by several villagers who had been good friends with members of the field study in years past. There has been a group coming for fifteen years, of course there are going to be people that know other members. And then there are the kids that come and ask you to dance. Sometimes one of the girls will show me how to swing dance. Or some of the children know how to do patty cake and others know 'head, shoulders, knees and toes.' And then you get th people that will ask you for money or sometimes you will get people asking you to take a picture and give you the copy of it afterwards. I have been to at least three homes where they have taken out a picture with Tausha and Courtney. They are everywhere. I realize that creating any sort of human relation will leave a mark on the people involved but what about creating a dependency that can't be filled. It is not like we are giving hand outs of candy and money. What about the idea of leaving a place better than you left it. What if we educated some of the people about proper hygiene and sanitation. This can only have a positive effect, right?
It would only be right to give back to the community because they have given so much to me and i imagine the same goes for my peers who are using this village for academic purposes. But who I am to say that I can leave the village better than when I found it. As always i feel like I have been impacted more from this experience than vis versa.
So the point is... the point I will probably help organize a woman's health class for some of th village woman. I will probably come to the conclusion that leaving a mark was inevidable. I didn't mean to, it wasn't part of the plan.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Leaving a Mark
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as humans we can't help but leave a mark. We just need to try and make sure we leave one for the better. Good luck with finishing everything up!
Kirsten is right that for better or worse, as people we always leave an impression upon those we come in contact with. Sydney I'm pretty sure knowing you always leaves a positive mark on people "sydmark". And the fact that you are going to try and get a health class going instead of focusing on yourself and where you're going next and how many field notes you have catch up on, shows that people are basically good. We need more people like you who continue to be 'basically good' despite influences and ideals that inevitably create a society where we hand out candy and hope that's good enough while we go along our own path.
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