Now that I can understand at least a little bit of Hindi, I realize what a sheltered world I had been living in in Jaipur. There are so many sweet and friendly English-speaking people who are eager to make blonde girls feel at home...but so many of them treat people from lower castes like only so much flesh and bone. My host family is really harsh to Purnima; and even the esteemed leader of our health non-profit keeps servants around to bring him biscuits and tea.

All of the philosophical issues that come up with development work that had been previously tying me up in knots have lost their importance to me. There is no way that we can ever really escape our moral ties...There will always be some way to argue that anything I do is reprehensible. But you live from moment to moment, and it is clearer what to do when you are faced with one situation and one person at a time. I feel like criticisms of development are important, but sometimes are too harsh for their own good--if we all allowed ourselves to be paralyzed by the desire to do things perfectly, nothing will ever be accomplished. No, it is not sustainable to steal electricity on the behalf of a community. But at least their water pumps will work.

Alllso, the fact that LSS is so bothered by staff conflicts and gossip and bad coffee and lack of documentation and finance problems is almost comforting. In the future when i am bothered by the same things in some hum-drum non-profit in America, I won't have romantic notions that grassroots human rights organizations in the developing world are better.

I am so in love with everyone here. We have a giant bag full of guavas in the office that are free for the taking, and I'm learning how to make roti like a good di-di, and a few of them have mastered "Old MacDonald."

LSS is incredible. I can't believe I'll have to leave.

I don't even know where to start. I guess maybe since my last post, or something. That might be logical.

So we hopped the bus to Delhi with a bitter old fatso called Gordonji and a farmer from a nearby village called Shulanji. Karun told me all of his stories of times when he's beaten people up defending women's honor, and showed me how to break thumbs, cut off circulation, how to hit someone in the neck so their windpipe closes up. I have no idea whether or not to take him seriously.

We arrived in Delhi in the wee hours of the morning. I flew into Delhi a few months ago, and I guess at the time I was kind of shut off from what was happening around me, or maybe just taken aback by how different everything was. This time, I can see how much the poverty there sucks. There is nothing romantic about it. Waking up in the morning and taking a bath in the sewer is no picnic for anyone and neither is watching white tourists ride by in rickshaws with Marie biscuits in their mouths. We'd heard that "accomodations had been arranged for us," and we eventually found them in the middle of an enormous dusty feild with three tents that were about an acre in area. There were thousands of activists from all over India staying on the ground there with noooo bathroom! It doesn't sound awful, but it sure smells awful.

The actual social forum was similarly dusty, with thousands of representatives of different NGOs all competing for eachother's attention. Groups of villagers performed their respective traditional dances in random places; a union of hundreds of bicycle rickshaw drivers circled the grounds; and swarms of protesting crowds all crunched through two non-functioning metal detectors. A really great band called Log Dixshit (haw haw) performed with a group of Nigerians who had come, and when I went up to the dusty front pit to dance with everyone else I was again subject to the same video camera attention I'd been avoiding in my little village.

We were lucky enough to find Chayya from the office in the crowd, so I ended up in her hotel room that night instead of the circus tent. A couple of the heads of one of the central offices invited us to dinner. One of the older, more respected heads got a little tipsy (off of two beers), was loud and inappropriate, fell into the depressed drunk "I want to die" talk, and then vomited all over himself in the restaurant. What is seen as a regrettable but understandable mistake for US college students is seen as a truly shameful offense for upper-caste Indians like him. I felt terrible for him.

The next day Karun got a call from LSS, saying that almost the entirety of our staff had been attacked and three of them were in the hospital. What had happened had to do with the land dispute we'd been working on in Bheeladi. The upper caste of hte village had called a comunity meeting to settle the dispute once and for all. The LSS staff went and demonstrated that the local government did not have the right to bulldoze Bheel land on four or five legal counts. Within the space of ten minutes, a few dozen women showed up on a tractor weilding sickles from the North, and then about a hundred men with sticks surrounded them from the other direction. They were all fortunate to get out alive witht he help of a few policemen. Everyone was bruised and battered but no one was seriously injured. The upper castes destroyed almost all of the Bheels' crops for the year.

Everyone recounts the details of that day as though it were an action film or a slapstick comedy. RamJahn was chased through a cornfield by a man on a motorcycle. He'd been sick with chickenhunia, so after a few minutes of running he started vomiting and had to give up--but he adds pulsing music and vivid vomiting noises to the tale. Narunia didn't run, she went into the nearest Bheel house, changed into Bheel clothes, and stood outside pretending she had nothing to do with LSS. A crowd of men picked up our frail little Khemraj high above their heads and slammed him on the ground. Ramrai, the guy who's leg I'd been trying to fix for awhile, couldn't run--so he stopped, surrendered, put his head on the ground adn told them that he had a broken leg. They asked where it was broken, he showed them, and they hit the spot with their clubs. I guess it all sounds pretty gruesome when I write it down, but every time we talk about it we all laugh until we cry.

Sooo Madhu, Karun, and I all stayed up all night at the main office in town writing a summary of what had happened as well as a petition to be passed around. The next day we had called a dharna in front of the Collector's office, so we had everyone from the village and the organization sitting under a canopy, blocking the front gate of the governor's office all day long. Prasand Ajit and Palkah were there...everyone's old friends showed up to show their support so the whole thing felt a little bit like a picnic to me. Eventually we made our way intothe inner courtyard of the government office. All of the women walked behind everyon eelse witht heir heads covered. There was a family of stray puppies living under one of the pillars. We waited for about an hour for the collector to pay attention to us. When he finally did, he gave us about two minutes of his time and then brushed us off claiming that it was the duty of the police to take care of the dispute. This government system is so frustrating...the media and the police and the government area lal dominated by the same upper astes who don't care about the same people.

The dispute still isn't resolved. We've been scrambling to find legal reasinging to back up our position, but it's getting harder and harder by the minute. I'm really amazed by the Bheels--at first they hesistated becasue they were so afrid for their safety, but now they're ploughing ahead with the legal battle even though they live in constatn fear of sticks. The summary that we wrote appeared in "The Hindu"--the most liberal of the three major newspapers in India. But even that doesn't seem to be enough.

Yesterday I went with all of them to the police station to file their complaints of what had happened for hte second time. They are all so cheerful, everything is a joke, even for the old farmer men who are trying to defend their land. There is one man who was beat up so badly that he was bleeding badly from two or three places on his head. He didn't have any other clothes, so he wore his blood-stained shirt for more than a week afterwards.

Phew...what else...

Since I've learned more of my broken Hindi my so-called "social life" in Amarpura has picked up considerably. Every morning when I go running a bunch of the kids come to do stretches and calisthenics with me. Manoch also goes running early every morning, but when I join him he goes ten times faster than is necessary. My adopted dog usually comes with us, and one time he tripped me so I had a few small abrasions on my hands and elbows. Within an hour or two all of Amarpura knew about my "accident" and was giggling and asking me about it for the next week. Every time I visit a house, I end up singing one of the old folk songs I know, and they try to teach me a Hindi song and laugh at my accent. The awkward routine has become so normal for me that I almost enjoy it.

I finally went to Manoch's house to drink tea with his family. They're wonderful, his brothers are really charming, and Ashish the photographer is always greeting me with some roasted peanuts and a flower and some of his prints. Manoch is sweet, but everyone in the village has been following our interactions very closely and whenever I flake out on showing up at his house he gets really flustered because everyone thinks I'm refusing a marriage proposal.

Speaking of marriage: I'm thinking maybe I won't.

Yesterday after an awkwardly scrunched car ride, Kapil and I played hid and seek in a guava orchard. The other night we had flower wine and chicken at Prakash's house with Gita. I really love this place.

Oh man, I'm getting more and more homesick every minute. I'm feeling kind of nautious from the smell of urine, boiling fat, and some tragic mix of easy-listening Hindi jazz coming over the radio. The bus ride was a crowded hour and a half--a woman who was being crushed in the aisle deposited her adorable children on my lap. The smallest, a baby, had a tumor the size of a plum on the back of its head. The health system here is absolutely atrocious. I've been trying to get my frien RamRai the right attention for the gaping wound on his leg but the government hospital seems like nothing but a great place to get an infection. Gloves? what are gloves? We've been visiting the homes of people who have died pretty frequently to pay our respects to one elder or another...My friend Shyamji has the unfortunate tradition in his village that every time a man dies, all of the men who are younger have to shave their heads. So he's never happy with his haircut. He asked me to bring him a wig from the city, but I've pointed him in the direction of baseball caps instead.

Speaking of hats, by some strange twist of fate a strain of neon fabrics have entered the local market, so a lot of the farmers wear hot pink and hot orange turbans out in the fields. I've interviewed a few people who have worked as bonded laborers... Some of them are really grateful to have been released, but others miss the steady income of Rs 6000 ($10/month) and the guarantee of some kind of food, no matter how bad, on their plates. Poverty is not good. I've started thinking that a lot of the pity that we westerners have for those who have less is unwarranted. It's silly to pity someone for not having a floor--it's like pitying someone for not having a corvette or a swimming pool. I guess the only real conclusion I've come to is that even though poverty is awful, the greatest joy that anyone can have is to be happy in spite of their chains. And that applies to everyone in the universe, no matter their income.

Madhu is amazing; I"m so lucky to get to whisper with her every night. She is trying to start a girls' youth group that would inform them about their legal rights as women. She is ashamed of herself for getting married, because it would have been a great way to set an example in saying that you don't need a husband. Marriage is really crippling for women here. It's sad to get to know all of these young, energetic girls and know that soon they'll be married and made ot sit in silence ein the corner making chapati from behind a veil.

It's starting to drive me crazy having people tell me what to eat and how much and where to sleep and what to do and that I can't go into town by myself all the time. A few days ago I drank some bad water, and they insisted that eating would help and shoved a bunch of chilles swimming in oil in my direction. When I said that I'd rather not, they wanted me to have Chaach, a mixture of buttermilk, yogurt, salt, and lemon. Bah! Humbug! Help! Actually, they're just very caring and hospitable and I'm just looking for a reason to complain because I'm feeling like Little Miss Crabby Pants.

Khemraj has told me that I should neglect my obligations to airplanes and just stay and work here. He is right in his assertion that a bachelor's degree will do virtually nothing to help my understanding of the world. I'm not very tempted, but it's a thought-provoking notion. It's strange, though, because I'm never quite the free spirit I get to be at home while I'm here...if it were acceptable, I would have jumped in the temple's well naked a long time ago. And my initial romanticized views of the organization have changed as more and more of the inter-personal drama has been revealed to me. If this place can't escape the irritating problems of bureacratic inefficiency, lack of funding, lack of consensus, bad coffee, gossip, etc., then no non-profit can. I was wrong to think that there is someplace in the world where morals pave a clear path for do-gooders. We're all doomed to hack our way through the brambles in order to try and accomlish anything at all. Actually, it's a pretty comforting notion, I think, because wherever I go, wherever I work, when these things get in the way I won't have that itching feeling that somwhere else would be better. As an intern with no language skills, I have surrendered myself to feeling slightly useless and now and enjoying the ride. I'm glad I have some college credit as an excuse to do so.

I saw a sign for a "Fool Body Massage." I should start keeping a written record of all the priceless mistranslations around here. Headed to Delhi for the India Social Forum tonight with Karun and Pankach--it should be a really great bus ride!

Sitting in this curtained internet cafe, I have realized that this is the first time in a long time that I have been alone. Which really speaks to the insanely powerful community I've been living in at Logxiksha in Amu Amar, which is outside of Bhadesar, which is outside of Chittorghar, which is about six hours outside of Jaipur. Which means more or less the middle of a green desert nowhere. The people here really laugh belly laughs and offer more dahl all the time...the first night I was here, about twenty of us sat around a cow dung fire cooking special Rajasthani balls of dough. Khemraj, our age-old Marxist director, believes very strongly that the professionalism of modern NGOs distances them from the real spirit of human rights activism. Only recently Karun applied to recieve foreign funding, but most people seem reluctant to embrace the changes it would imply. There are maybe eight or ten of us that all live in our little office and eat out of our little garden. Finally I'm in a place where it's acceptable not to bathe every day. Every morning I go running through gorgeous countryside to watch the sun rise over a lake next to a temple with a banyan tree that's more than two hundred year old. The priest there has one of the best moustaches I've seen and greets me with a jolly "thank you! thank you!" each morning. The guys here are a lot of fun; they're the first Indian guys I've gotten to be friends with without feeling threatened at all--because they're all twenty two and married with two kids. Shyamji, a member of the Bhil tribe, was a bonded laborer with his father from the time he was twelve until he was fifteen when he decided to run away. After his parents died, when he was seventeen, his three sisters and a grandmother came to live with him. Recently his wife (who he married when he was about four) came to live with him, so this twenty year old guy is providing for six people all by himself. Sadly enough, even they, the human rights defenders, see their wives as cooking-cleaning-child-rearing physical entities, and would much rather hang out with us at the office from dawn til dusk instead of spending time with their families.

The only real issue is that they all speak Hindi. The whole "let's laugh at Sandy because she said/did something that didnt make sense" schtick has lost its novelty for me and the fact that my relationships can't really progress much further is trying my patience. I've been living more or less cheek by jowl with a little dude from Assam who speaks English. He is hilariously eager and takes himself and his work extremely seriously. The other day he took me out to 'conduct a case study' of one community where we'd helped with a land dispute case. The Bhil tribe had been living on one piece of land for more than a thousand years, and when the upper caste tribes decided to construct a road for their newly acquired cars, they deliberately plowed through Bhil houses when it was clearly much easier to go around. It was an absolutely absurd site to behold--it was like someone had given a bully a bulldozer. Anyway, it seemed to lend the village leaders a sense of accomplishment and legitimacy to have a white girl following them around with a digital camera and a notebook.

In a few weeks we're going to camp out on the lawn of the Rajasthani parliament in the hopes that they will surrender welfare funding they promised to our district, and after that we're going on a five day camel-cart tour of the area giving lectures on different human rights issues. I'm hoping to be able to find funding for them to start a girl's school here and hopefully Assam and I will get this youth group under way. This bumpy-motorcycle-ride lifestyle really suits me--I could easily be addicted...a dog I have christened Jordan follows me up the mountains on my rugged moonlight searches for cell phone service. And Pakal fusses over me the way Ashley doe back home, dressing me up with nose rings and Mendhi and jewelry that doesn't make any sense to me.

During my night in Chittorghar at the main Prayas office I made friends with Vikash and Prasand Ajit, who stole my heart under the pretense of teaching me Hindi. Prasand is the geography major son of two Rajasthani human rights activists, and can do a mean impression of Shakira. They tried to come to Bhadesar, but sadly they coudn't fit on Khemraj's motorcycle with me and my embarassingly enormous backpack.

I miss home a lot. I have more or less lost any real sense of purpose or direction in life, and certain traumas remain unresolved...I can see how she dumped her boyfriend afer returning from India...we all need so much less than we think we do. It's sad, but freeing, I guess. I don't know. I have to pee. Where is the bathroom? Does it even exist? Where the hell am I?