Fantastic trip to Dang, Gujarat

Our school took us on a 4 day trip to Dang, a tribal district in Gujarat with a mixed culture of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh due to border of all three states. People there hence know Dangi, Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi. We started from Pune on 5^th September 2013 (teachers’ day!) and reached Pune back on 8^th September at 11pm after a wonderful experience as part of our community service curriculum. My first multi day trip without parents!

Day1 (5/9/2013):

Hurry! Need to get up early. Suhas! Suhas!! That’s how I woke up. I got up early in the morning at 5 to get ready for a long awaited trip to Dang –I got ready as soon as possible. I, my mom and dad started from home to school. It was 6:10 when we started. They dropped me at school and after the boring but important last minute safety talks, my mom let go and we started for Dang at 7:30AM. Vroom Vroom!

Oof… The whole day was journey! After starting for Dang at 7:30, our first stop was at a petrol pump where everyone who wanted went to use the washroom. All through this time, we tried to entertain ourselves by listening to music and also by playing games such as antakshari etc. We were energetic! After the stop, my friend Abhay and I played Uno cards for a while. After a while, there was an obvious exhaustion triggered sleep! After waking up, we stopped at a South Indian hotel, Kamat where we ate lunch. After lunch, there was a short teacher’s day party.

Next, we stopped only at a tea-coffee shop in Gujarat. After having the drink, we started for our next and final stop – Dang! We entered the forest area in a while. It was pitch dark! It was one of the spookiest places I had ever seen. We were very tired, so we were looking for someone to entertain us. Sir started telling us ‘PJs’ at first and then horror stories. Some people were so scared that they tried to sleep. Then the information leaked; We were lost! We roamed in the forest for long and then we finally reached the farm house at around 9:45pm. We were allotted rooms. The farmhouse was so scary and looked like a haunted house that children hesitated to go in. My roommate Abhay and I came to know that we had the last room in the row. It looked scary. We freshened up, ate dinner, listened to the following day’s plan and zzzzz……

Day 2 (6/9/2013):

The next day was the first main day when we were going to meet the tribals. We came to know that our farmhouse was in Subir and the village was around 5 minutes from the farmhouse. We all were excited, especially some who had never witnessed rural life. That ‘some’ includes me. When we reached there, we were introduced to Soniya bhai who was the owner of one of the houses over there. He was going to guide us in various techniques for the rest of our time. We were greeted wonderfully with a teeka and a rural pleasure hat, which was provided by the hosts of our camp – ‘The Rural Pleasure’. The first thing we saw there was a bunch of curious children waiting to know who we all were. We went and introduced ourselves to them and before we knew, we were part of them.

The first thing we were given to do was the ‘chakki’ in which they put wheat and grind it to make wheat flour for chapattis. We all tried it and it was not as difficult as I had thought. After this short activity, we all sat on the floor which was made out of cow dung to have a short conversation about that particular tribal place. It was fun to know the way they lived using different plants, herbs, farming, art, culture etc. By then we wanted to be with them for as long as possible and learn so many things. (Later after coming home I came to know that cow dung has anti-bacterial properties and is extensively used in rural places to coat floor and mud walls).

When going to the school, we could see several earth-worms together. Then, we went to the rural school. We were sad to know that there were only two rooms for five grades. We all assembled in one of the rooms for a classroom session. We took up the challenge of teaching the children English animals, birds and professions. All the children were very enthusiastic. After this short session of Gujarati and English talk, the next chance was theirs to teach us a little Dangi. We learnt two sentences – ‘mana nav xxxx aaha. Ma Dang ma yyyy herla aaha.’. This meant my name is xxxx and I want to see yyyy in Dang.

After this activity, we went back to the tribals’ house where we were given lunch. We ate wonderful and tasty lunch on banana leaves and then had two more activities. One was de-husking of rice and the other was making a cow dung wall. I didn’t do the second one as I got a severe allergy triggered by the de-husking activity. We also tried other activities. After this we had leisure time with the tribals. We played marbles together.

Later, we all had a short snack and left the tribals for the day to go for a forest trek. The forest trek was scheduled for that evening. We all took some precautions, axes and plants for planting and started off for the trek. There were so many different plants that we saw and also a huge variety of insects to watch (but I was scared of the insects brrr..). We walked for approximately one and a half hour and came out onto a road. We went back to our bus and then to another surprise place. We went to a forest road which led to a river. We had to cross it and then enjoy the view from there. We all slipped into the water stream at least once to get our pants and shoes wet. Some fell totally! We enjoyed more and more until it was time for return. Then we sat back in the bus for the lane leading to our farmhouse. There we got down for a nature walk back to the farmhouse. It was dark and a lot of fun. We talked and enjoyed the walk to reach hungry. We ate a good dinner and were exhausted to bed. But, we had a small dance party and only then came zzzzz….

Day 3 (7/9/2013):

This day too was an important day. Ah yes, before that, I forgot to tell you the morning scene. It was like in actual villages where there are no heaters! Early in the morning, after 6:30, water was heated and given to us in buckets. My roommate and I used to be the first ones to grab a bucket of water! In getting ready too, we were always the first ones. So, we would go around the farmhouse clicking pictures. Then, we would have our breakfast and sit in our bus to go.

On a side note, I was exposed to several habits of my roommate which I never knew before. I wanted to stay with him at first, but sometimes I had second thoughts (J). He used to sleep for so long, so long, even when I pinched him, he wouldn’t get up. I would have to shake him hard to wake him up. I still remember my teacher telling my roommate Abhay to take care of me – I being the younger one. But it ended up I taking care of him (Hahahaha…)

Instead of going to the tribals’ place directly, we first went to a Shabri mata mandir on top of a small hill. We climbed and chatted along the way to the mandir. Over there, we prayed and then bought some berries (‘Ber’ fruit)of that region. These berries were the ones offered by Shabri mata to Ram bhagvan. We then sat down to hear the story of that particular temple. We came to know that the temple was built after Shabri mata met Ram bhagvan at that particular place after a meditation taking her whole lifetime. She served him well with the berries. Then we saw the ‘five gods of the tribals’ pillar. It showed the tiger, peacock, snake, moon and sun.

Then, we went to the NGO, BAIF (Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation). Here we were to know about how the NGOs in that area work for the betterment of the living of those tribals. They told us about how they helped the tribals in different ways like how they helped in banking, farming, in solving their problems, etc. But that was not all. It was going to be an interactive session that we all had to participate. So, we all asked them the questions that we wanted to ask and they cleared our doubts really well. They were even more generous to take us to the cashew factory and farms. We came to know several facts and it was wonderful to know such people who helped the people.

After going to the cashew factory, they first showed us the original raw cashew. To some of us including me, it was unbelievable. We were even more surprised to know how much they process the cashew before we eat it – dry, cut, clean, dry, remove skin, dry. But the people who were working over there were quite enthusiastic about doing their work. After a while of looking around and the process explanation, we were given options of either going to the farms or try the cutting or cleaning. I opted for the cutting and cleaning but it was too late before I came to know that I may get allergy by doing it. So, I ended up doing nothing. Later, a woman started talking to me and she showed me a cute calf (2 days old). Oh... I forgot to tell that we could see hens, cocks and chickens and parrots almost everywhere! Ya, as the picture shows, now, people don't even spare parrots of junk food! (hahahaha!). It's eating chips!

Then, we finally went to the tribals’ place to have another yummy lunch. It was actually yummy like the earlier days’. After having the lunch, we moved onto the next activity that we were going to do. It was Warli painting!! Warli paintings are the paintings of the Warli tribes. We were shown the basic art structures such as a man and a woman. Then we were given hand-outs. We could draw anything from it on the cow dung walls as we were given white paint and also brushes. We could make our own changes and add our own techniques too. But the final long painting was awesome.

After this, we had leisure time just like the previous day. This time, Saloni, Abhay and I went for a walk around the area. Along with some of the village girls, we went to fill water in buckets the original way people used to and still do in villages. We hand pumped the water and carried some of the buckets. Some of the girls of the village could carry the buckets (some weighing up to 6-7 kgs) on their head! This was when we came to know the strength that could be developed in those rural areas. Then, we all together took photos of flowers, plants, trees, the landscape and of course ourselves.

Then we were called for a short snack. Eating the rava upma, we went to the open area next to Soniya bhai’s house. We did not know the dangers over there (I will tell… patience). We were going to have catapult making and then a catapult competition. In this competition, we had two rounds – each with three turns. Over here, we made excellent catapults and then played the competition. Although I had no hits, all of them were quite close to the target (L). In the meanwhile, between rounds, I was practicing targets. I was scared by crabs thrice. The village children were playing with the crabs (the danger!) that were all over. I wanted to get out of that creepy place and this was for sure, definitely sure. Then we returned to our farmhouse in our bus.

It was already late. But, we had one more – last activity for the day – some competitions! We had three competitions – a presentation, a quiz and a debate. We were made into groups for the presentation part of our competitions. We were group B and we had to speak about flora and fauna of Dang. We had around one and a half hours to prepare. Then we had a long awaited dinner at 10:00 (!). After this, the competitions started. We (9 of us) were the first ones to present. We presented quite well but were told that we went a bit off-track. Then groups A and C presented. We were not yet told the results.

Then was the debate. Two from each group had to go for the debate. Indira of 11^th standard and I went from our group. Then we were divided into groups of three to debate on the topic “Should rural areas be untouched or should they be modernized”. My group chose to debate from the side of being untouched. We debated quite well for around 8 minutes (given time) and then concluded in the rest 2 minutes. They did not tell the results for this too. (L)

Next was the quiz competition. I was already feeling drowsy by that time (past midnight) we had the debate. But I was still active in the discussion. When it came to quiz, I was very excited and my whole sleep was sort of driven away. I was very active in my group and most of the answers of my group were given by me! We had all sorts of questions based on general knowledge, observation, listening etc. Now, we were going to be handed awards (!)

There were several awards like best catapult player, best warli artist, best observer, best presentation, best debate team, and quiz winners. Out of these six awards, I got three – best observer which I showed in my presentation, best debate team as our team spoke both offensively and defensively and quiz winners. When the quiz winners were being announced, they told us that there was a tie. I was thinking of how is it possible as we had left the other two teams quite behind. Then, when we knew the scores, it was the loser teams who had the tie and we were ahead by 30 points! For best observer, I got ‘khichiya’ (papads made using ragi), which is some traditional item of Gujarat; for debate, a trophy and for quiz, a pen. All prizes were quite good.

Later, we went back to our rooms. It was already 12:30 the next day. My roommate and I played a few games of uno and then went on for a very peaceful sleep.

Day 4 (8/9/2013):

The last day, we woke up very late. Yet we were the first ones to wake up. We packed our bags and got ready for the travel back to Pune. We still did not have signal in our phones (I forgot to mention earlier) by the time we had started from our farmhouse after eating breakfast at 9:20. At this time, most of the children were very active as it was morning (some were not, who played until 4 in the morning!).

We all were listening to music, playing games on phones and having fun with electronic gadgets that we had with us. Many of us slept for a while after this because we were getting bored without having anything to do. By this time it was noon and we all were getting hungry. Just at that time, the bus had a flat tyre and we waited at a lonely grassland highland with nothing to do but wait for the tyre to get repaired. We all ate for a while (mostly snacks from my bag!) and started off on our route and reached the outskirts of Nasik where we stopped for lunch. It was a long break.

Next, we heard that it would take at least 7 more hours to reach Pune (L). That was really bad news for us as we were getting very bored. That is when I remembered that I had a pack of Uno cards! Then, around 10 children played Uno; first five, then six, then seven and then back to five children, many of us backing out and coming in. This whole thing went on for quite a long time and when it was evening 7:00pm, we reached a tea-coffee shop where we also refuelled our bus.

By then, everyone was desperate to get out of the bus to their homes but that was not yet possible (L). We were sitting helpless in the bus – some sleeping, some just exhausted and some listening to music. The bus was as silent as never before. We were just waiting and waiting. By now, we had got our phone network. We were calling and getting calls from our parents – ‘How are you?’, ‘Where to pick you up?’, ‘What are you doing?’ etc. I was fed up not because of the calls but because I was not understanding our route to explain it to my parents. Finally, my sir talked to my father for the pick-up point. Here, I got down at 10:30pm to finally be relieved of the bus (Thank God). I was the first one to get down along with three others. We were extremely happy. It was raining here in Pune at that time. I quickly got into our car and I was back home in 5 minutes. That was the end of my wonderful trip…. (Yippee).

My takeaway from this trip...

Learning to be away from my parents, I learnt to be more responsible than always. Earlier everytime, I would be cool and leave my work to my parents thinking that they would handle some of my work but there, I was very responsible and took care of myself very well. In fact, I always would trouble my parents at home to get up but there, I even took care of my friend (roommate) and woke him up everyday. I learnt how it feels to wake up someone. Also, my mom was surprised to see how well I arranged my suitcase after coming back (me too)!

As for the trip, it was a community and service trip. As we did not know how exactly the life in rural places functioned, we couldn't do much of service but we did tree plantation, helped them in making a cow dung wall. Apart from that, the whole trip along with fun was a learning experience. We could learn different lifestyles from their community such as warli art, catapult making, rice dehusking etc.

Basically, community and service means learning from the community and then doing service to them. This was our first trip to a village tribal area so we could not do much of service but just learn from them. If there would be any next trip to another village area, maybe then I could implement what I learnt here to do service over there.

My attitude towards village lifestyle completely changed and now I appreciate their cuture a lot. I like the eco-friendly way they live without any machines! I would love to stay in a place like that. Hence, the moral of the trip as I give is "The villages should be left alone as they are!".

 -Suhas

29/9/13

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