Day 18 - Sirsa

We've been on the Grewal family farm for two weeks now and certainly have done a lot. We planted sunflowers in a section of the garden that surrounds the grass which are beginning to grow. I believe the plan is to plant some other flowers throughout the rest of that garden. We've also created a lot of garden plots around, cleaning up garbage and debris, tilling the soil and marking rectangular plots. It's hard, sweaty work for surre. We've sown spinach, fenugreek, lettuce, broccoli, garlic, leek, parsley, and a ton of carrot. We'll soon be planting tomato on the ridges of the carrot plots because, according to Harpal, tomato helps carrot to grow. He also said we'll be planting some cauliflower, but I also heard we may be planting radish in that same area. Who knows.

Most of the work I've done has been out in the gardens. Some work is in the kitchen, but mostly peeling vegetables. It seems men aren't really trusted in matters of the kitchen. Laura has learned to make chapati (I think) and has made some bread dough as well. I guess, as a man, I'm just expected to eat.

This first stay has already been a test of patience. Communication is often difficult and, withouth going into unneccessary detail, we get different directions and requests from the husband and wife. We're constantly questioning whether we're doing things right and it seems we often please one while disappointing/angering the other. This, plus getting constant stares and jeers from the workers definitely frustrates me. Today I went to the room to grab the journal and one of the women was just coming out, laughing with another woman who was standing outside. It was certainly unnerving. Everything in our room looked to be in order, but why was she in there? What was so amusing to them?

This is not the ideal situation to do other volunteer work. It's just the family and it's rather isolated from the town. That's okay for now. I'm enjoying the garden work and I didn't expect much more than that coming here. The next farm, in Jaipur, will hopefully have other opportunities in addition to farm work. We'll see. I just know that the coordinator of WWOOF Nepal told us we'd be able to work out other opportuniites with the farm in Chitwan. I hesitate to bring up the issue of HIV/AIDS in India with the family. I don't know what kind of reaction to expect. Plus, based on how conversations have gone so far, I don't know how realistic the response would be. Almost every conversation we begin (no matter the topic) turns into a lecture about how much better India is than everywhere else. I'm sure a discussion of HIV/AIDS would yield similar results.

I've been under the weather a bit recently and have been feeling kind of useless. But Laura takes great care of me. I'm hoping that I'll feel better when we leave. It's definitely a tense and stressful atmosphere here. But, we're leaving in a couple of days for Chandigarh and then to Dharamsala, so stayed tuned for those adventures.