THREE TIME’S A CHARM…

In February 2007, when I led the first group of Rotarians to India to participate as common laborers in a work project in a remote and desolate Muslim village about seventy-five kilometers south of New Delhi, I could not have dreamed what impact our presence would have on the villagers, as well as on us. Several people from our district joined me that year, including Jayne Britton from Fryeburg, Joan Nickel from Portsmouth-Sunrise. When we arrived in the village of Chahalka to begin work, some of the villagers were waiting in the schoolyard where our bus was to drop us. Little did I know that I was the first white westerner these people had ever seen – and what a scary sight, since I am a pretty good sized guy, especially in comparison with the stature of the people in this village. It took a while before the villagers began to warm up to us, although all of the women and the girls kept their heads and faces covered, particularly when in the presence of the men in our group. They were naturally shy and very careful never to show their faces to us.

The project that year was funding and constructing two washing platforms at one end of a common area, shared by the grade school at one end and the town’s water supply that was covered with a well tile, about sixty feet in diameter. Up until our arrival, the women and girls would come to the well each day, maybe several times a day, dip their buckets down on a rope through one of the three openings in the well tile cover, pull out buckets of water, transfer the water to earthenware jugs, other buckets or gleaming brass jardinières which they then placed on top of their heads and carried the water back to their huts. This was the case, with the exception of those who had brought their laundry, their pots and pans and their water buffaloes, which they proceeded to wash there, on top of the well cover, with all of the filthy water spilling back down through the same openings from where they had dipped their water. Dozens of the children were getting terribly sick from dysentery, and some were dying. The people of the village did not equate the polluted water with their ailments.

Our group passed about twenty-five thousand bricks in brick lines from the neatly stacked caches of bricks to where they were needed. We watched as boys wearing flip-flops or nothing on their feet, mixed the cement or the concrete (called masala – Hindi for mixture), we carried basins of large rocks, smaller rocks, crushed stone and sand. We carried basins of masala on our heads and dumped it where directed by Ramish, the brick mason from the next village. On day three of our work, Ramish finally invited me to actually lay bricks and mortar them into place in the walls we were building – having dug the ditches, dumped larger to smaller rocks, then masala and created the footings for the walls. At the end of a week of work, we had completed the construction of two washing platforms, which would have spigots for water installed, and which the ladies and girls (hopefully) would use for washing their household laundry and cooking utensils (water buffaloes were not to be allowed in this area ever again). To ensure the non-use of the well cover for washing purposes, we dumped a fairly coarse masala concoction on top of the well cover, to make it impossible for the women to use for anything other than dipping to get their water. While we worked for that week, many of the men, both young and old, sat and watched as we worked, and probably had no clue as to who we were nor why we were there. We were working cooperatively with members of the Rotary Club of Delhi-West, and the wife of one of the members came to the work site one day and asked me if the men sat there all the time. I told her they did, so in a minute or two, she turned to them and blasted them for sitting idly by, while, “these people from seven seas away, have left their families and their businesses to come to your village and to improve your lives through this construction project.” They immediately dropped over the back of the wall and stayed in the mosque for the remainder of that day.

At the end of our week of work, we were invited to a blessing ceremony, conducted by the local mullah, who offered prayers of thanksgiving to Allah for our work, and thanked each of us by sharing a puffed rice sweet with each of us – a very traditional practice during special occasions. We left on the travel portion of our trip and some looked forward to the potential for other projects in the same village.

Fast forward to early 2008 – a group of fifty-four Rotarians and Friends of Rotary from seven countries gathered at Chahalka to renovate an unused, vacant and derelict government building, adjacent to the site of the washing platforms to transform it into two facilities for the benefit of the village. First, we raised funds from individuals and clubs to not only pay for the renovations, but also to purchase some thirty computers, desks, chairs that would be placed in one end of the building. The concept of THE ROTARY CENTRE FOR COMPUTER TRAINING OF CHAHALKA was not only born, but it became a reality for us and for the town. The other third of the building was transformed into THE ROTARY DAY-CARE CENTRE OF CHAHALKA. Out team came from several states in the USA, three provinces from Canada, Ireland, England, Sweden, Australia and France. What an amalgamation of talent and enthusiasm! Three members of the Rotary Club of Sanford-Springvale joined me and truly came to understand the strength and the breadth of Rotary on an international basis.

When in 2007 the villagers had been somewhat shy and hesitant to greet us, 2008 was entirely different. Our six buses arrived at the work site on the first morning, and Ramish, the brick mason, who had taken nearly three days to allow me to lay bricks at the construction of the washing platforms, was actually waiting at the drop-off point and smiled when he saw my face, came and took my hand, and we walked immediately to the project site and I knelt beside him and we worked together to lay bricks for the construction of the wall that would surround the day-care play yard. A few barriers had been broken down, to say the least. Within a few minutes of our arrival, we would hear Mark Little from England holler out, “Okay, everyone line up for a brick line!” The number of bricks we would be passing over the week of work would be exponentially greater than the twenty-five thousand from the previous year.

The Rotary Dream Team – India 2008 would successfully dig trenches for the footings, carry basins of various gradations of rocks and then sand and then coarse masala and then fine masala, and then begin to lay rows and rows and rows of bricks until the height of the walls surrounding the two “green” areas reached a height of five feet. Meanwhile, the Brits and our friend from France were working on the patching and the painting of the walls and ceilings inside both sections of the building, as well as the exterior walls of the building. Inside the end where the day-care center was to be located, one of the chaps from England sketched a mural covering the entire end wall, depicting animals and birds and fishes and butterflies on a flowery landscape. Many of us took a turn at brushing on some paint and even a local girl, Arasthun befriended one of the younger children we had in our group from Minnesota, and sketched some flowers to create a welcoming border to the mural.

Because of government regulations in India, when such a project is undertaken like the computer training center, the requirement is also to fund the salary of the instructor for a minimum of three years, along with the salary of the care-giver for the children and the watchman. All in all, members of our group had not only spent their own money to travel to India to participate in the National Immunization Day against polio and the work project, but they also had raised sufficient funds to underwrite this project for a three-year period. During the course of the week, small groups of team members wandered through the narrow streets of the village, speaking with and befriending several of the villagers. Although the women and the girls of the village continued to keep their heads covered, the veils covering their faces began to drop away, and smiles covered their faces. Some of the little children, both boys and girls, even joined the brick lines and helped by retrieving the empty masala basins, carrying them back to the pile of wet mix to be re-filled and passed back along the line for depositing wherever Ramish directed. It seemed there were fewer of the men sitting on the wall overlooking the project. Had a message rung through to them? Time would tell. In addition to personal clothing and work gear, our team managed to bring well over twenty thousand gifts – trinkets, toys, stuffed animals, school supplies, etc., for the children of the village. Some of the folks took on the responsibility of sorting through all of these items to be distributed to the children of the village on our last day.

We planned to provide prize bags to the top three students in the first five grades in the elementary school, to reward them for their continued hard work, and to inspire and encourage them to remain in school in the future. With the hope of being able to get training in computer technology by passing the tenth level of education, and possibly land employment at higher than base wages of the equivalent of five or ten dollars a month, little by little this village and its people could enjoy what the Indians refer to upliftment. We were providing some of the tools to help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps and move forward into productive lives for years to come.

Each day, when members of the team walked through the streets and alleys of the village, more and more children followed them – they had become the attraction, with their light skin and their baseball caps or tee shirts and jeans. One day, I remember walking up the main street (a dirt road with its own speed control system comprised of huge potholes filled with urine and muddy water), I saw a man at the top of the hill, standing behind a cart. On the cart, he had stacks and stacks of eggs (are brown eggs, the local eggs always best?) as well as a burner fueled by a propane tank. As our group drew closer, we noticed he was cooking omelets. However, these were not your ordinary omelets – these were omelet sandwiches. He made the egg mixture, added chopped red onions, capsicum (green bell peppers) tomatoes and coriander leaves (cilantro). He dumped the mixture into the large frying pan, partially cooked it and then as he turned over the omelet-in-the-making, he put a slice of white bread in the center, flopped the egg on top of it and nearly magically, after folding everything together, he had created an omelet sandwich! I ate one, much to the concern of the other team members, and it was delicious. We then moved on around the corner to see the laundry presser – using an enormous flat iron the bottom of which was filled with burning charcoal. We stopped at the tailor’s shop and bought a hand-loomed head covering, about the size of a card-table cloth, and the men tried to teach me how to create a turban with it.

The impact we may have made on the village and its people was to be shown on our final day. Where the previous year we had been asked to join in a blessing ceremony by the mullah or priest from the mosque, this year would be entirely different. All of the school children had been gathered in the yard outside the drably painted school building. In front of the children, several benches and chairs had been set for our team members had been invited to sit. Rotary International Director Kjell-Ake Akesson from Sweden and I were asked to sit front and center. The sar panch – or head of the Gram Panchayat or elder council, began to speak to the gathered crowd of several hundred people. With a translation from one of our team members, the villagers were being told that our team had made a tremendous impact through our hard work, but also our smiles and our friendly manner as we had come to know a number of the villagers. As a token of their appreciation and as a tremendous honor to each of us, all of the men and boys in our group were turbaned by a member of the Gram Panchayat, and all of the women and girls in our group were given head scarves by some of the ladies of the village. Basically, we had been handed the key to the city, on a very personal and deeply meaningful way. In turn, when we recognized the top three students in all of the classes, we passed book bags to each one, filled with goodies and gifts. We boarded our buses to depart on the travel portion of our trip, and I am sure it was quite difficult for many of us, as well as a number of the villagers to say, “Good-bye”. Some of us promised to return.

And return we did… in late January 2009, the first group of our Rotary Dream Team – India 2009 arrived to begin work on a third project – the construction of sanitation enhancement facilities (toilet blocks) for which we had raised funds and obtained a Matching Grant from The Rotary Foundation. The building will contain thirty-five toilets and thirty-five showers, to be used by the women and girl children of the village. At present, the women due to modesty are forced sometimes to walk two kilometers away from the village not only to complete their toilet but also to bathe in privacy. This year, the members of the Gram Panchayat met us at the work site, placed garlands around each of our necks, and greeted us warmly, with hints of recognition for some of us. The children became a permanent fixture, once more, but since there was no wall, there were very few men who squatted and served as Monday morning quarterbacks. There were other differences too, but the most obvious difference was the fact that many women and girls no longer covered their faces or their heads in our presence. Some of the local ladies invited the women on our team into their homes. Children and of course the camel driver learned our names and called us by our names, sometimes with their own unique pronunciation. We saw smiles on almost every face. More and more children and some adults joined the brick lines and the masala passing lines. This third year of a sustainable relationship was so different from the first two. One barrier after another had been torn down. Throughout the week of work for the first group of the team, and then again throughout the week of work for the second group, one step after another was taken, not only by our team but more importantly by the villagers. During the first week, a tiny child of eighteen months had died and her family invited our entire team to come and sit with them in their home and drink a cup of tea with them as they pondered their tragic loss. During that same week, when the team members had walked into town, some children presented Dianne and Boone Powell from Texas with a nearly newborn baby goat, still damp from birth.

During the second week, the team was invited to join a wedding feast – a Muslim wedding feast, nearby the project site, where they were invited into the home of the soon-to-be-married couple. This was an arranged marriage of a young man from Chahalka, seventeen years of age, and a girl from another village, fifteen years of age. The team enjoyed a lunch prepared and served by the groom’s family. We were invited to return that evening, when the groom and his bride would return from the actual marriage ceremony that had taken place in her village. We waited as darkness descended and finally, the SUV arrived carrying the bride and her attendants, along with the groom. Fireworks exploded into the night sky, cheers went up from the gathered crowd of villagers, and the bride, her face totally covered as demanded by tradition, was escorted into her new home. Not only was she escorted into her new home, but also the women in our group were invited to enter her living quarters and to greet her, as she uncovered her face to them. When we were about to leave, the grandmother of the groom came out of the house, and although only about four feet two inches in height, she stood on a step and placed her hand on my head and kept it there, blessing me. I bent down, touched her feet and she said, “Nay, nay,” and took my two hands in hers, invited me to stand and together, she and I walked hand-in-hand to where our buses were waiting to take us to the farm. Anyone who has traveled with our groups knows full well that men and women do NOT walk holding hands with one another, and certainly not a white westerner with a Muslim woman from the village, who incidentally did not have her face covered. She smiled and displayed a toothless grin on her wizened and craggy face.

What had just happened? What had been happening during the two weeks of work? What had been happening over the course of three years? Slowly, as with one brick at a time, walls of forbidden practices and traditions had been knocked down. One handshake at a time a greater level of understanding, respect, honor and yes, even love served to help to someday create a lasting peace among the peoples of the world. Whether it is two drops of polio vaccine on the tongue of a tiny child, three cups of tea, the turbaning ceremony, the tacit embracing by our team of a grieving mother and father, or the toothless grin of a proud grandmother, the members of the ROTARY DREAM TEAMS – INDIA 2007, 2008 & 2009 have truly impacted this village and Shared Rotary and helped to Make Dreams Real, all the while proving that The Future of Rotary (and yes, Peace) Is In Our Hands.