belly laughs and liver plants

My intention for this entry was to go non-silly, and I sat around for a while thinking of what on earth I could report, and when I kept coming up blank I realized that I have really been laughing here....A LOT. I laughed as my butt flew 6 inches off the chair every time our "safari" (read: miserably rainy hour long deer watching excursion) bus hit a bump, was in muffled hysterics as a 90 year old talked to us very seriously about the "not so pretty venus williams", laughed (albeit ironically) as I trudged for the millionth time to the bathroom, and have been chuckling along pretty much daily since. Obviously there are negative aspects---it hurts to see the desperation of beggars or the animals so bony they look like they only have a week or so to live, and confronting those things has been hard. But while there is an acute awareness of hardship, inequality, etc. there is also a general feeling in the Indian culture of silliness, fun, and raucous enjoyment of even the smallest joke (ex. when at a dinner party one of our group remarked that if he ate any more they'd have to roll him out of here and this woman was in hysterics for SO long, clapping and smiling, before eagerly trying to offer him more butterscotch.)

A few non-silly things:

The organic farm! This place absolutely blew my mind. When picturing an organic farm one thinks maybe of any stretch of farmland, perhaps on a smaller scale and (in my mind) growing a "hippie-er" set of plants. What we arrived at was seriously a forest...No rows of plants no tilled up soil no areas set apart by species...this farmer takes the absolute purest approach to "organic" and "natural", which is barely farming at all. Nature knows how to thrive, if you just let it. There are plants that make perfect mulch when their leaves fall, plants that make nutritious meals for the snails ambling along, plants that will make a clean killing of snails in the case of over-population, plants to sell in the marketplace, plants that cure H1N1 (!), I mean I could go on. And this man, walking barefoot among his magnificent garden, knew the benefits of every single one. I got quite the fill of plant tastings while following him, including one that is supposed to refresh the liver, another that makes it so you can't taste sugar for the next hour after you eat it (it worked!!!! they gave me sugar after and it just felt like sand in my mouth...so weird.), and he tried to make us eat another one and then laughed for quite a while when we went to sniff it and it smelled like poo ("Yes! this is Poop plant! AHAHAH!")

We also visited the tribal school and hospital, which was really interesting. Most of the "tribals" are forest people, meaning that live in the forest and get all of their sustenance from the plants. Unfortunately the forestlands are quickly diminishing and in many places tribals are being forced out in the name of development. The Vivekanada institute built facilities for them in order for them to be able to become more viable in a changing world, giving them access to healthcare and education which were things completely alien to their culture prior. The people who had been working on the project since the start said it took YEARS for the tribals to attend the school, and that just getting kids to sit inside of a building was an enormous ordeal (they would just leap out the window and run back into the forest.) Now they have a system where the first few years of schooling are spent playing/learning outside, and then when they are ready students move into buildings (but they still are WIDE open, with huge windows and access to the outdoors at any point.) Both tribal and "mainstream" knowledge are taught. It definitely sounds sad--like the "taming" of a group of people, but the alternatives are worse. I of course, was beside myself with how cute the kids were and could barely focus on what was going on.

tribal school:

one of the tribals...like the guy at the organic farm he knew a purpose for EVERY plant...if I remember correctly this one was for easing the pain of childbirth (hence the facial expression HA)
this was at the organic farm....did I mention i'm living in paradise?