Having been encouraged to keep a blog throughout my travels, I decided to start early. I will be updating this as much as I can. (Whenever I can catch a jeep to the "town center", then a government bus to the city of Jaipur, then actually locate an internet cafe...)
I plan to arrive in India on June 1st. I will be living with my homestay family from my trip abroad last semester for a week, before venturing into the desert for eight weeks.
I stayed on this organic farm for a week last October and worked in the fields with one of the three brothers who owns the farm. They bought the land in 1998 and have since developed a large and self-sustaining organic farm with an orchard of fruit trees, many cows and animals, and large fields adjacent to their three-generation family home. There is a school in the front yard that educates close to 60 students on a full time basis (Hindi, math, English, art, history, science, and local crafts such as pottery-making). When it is too hot in the middle of the day to be in the fields, I will be assisting in English classes and conducting computer classes (for the students and teachers) on the two new computers that were just donated.
Because I am on a scholarship, I have the amazing opportunity to travel around India as well. I plan to make a trip to the South of India (where I have never been), to Mumbai, to Varanasi, as well as visit other farms in the desert region.
I am VERY thankful to Charles Salisbury for so graciously providing me the means to do this, as it will help me in hopefully obtaining a Fulbright Scholarship next year, and go to graduate school in Anthropology.
I will update this as often as possible with photos and what I am doing!
Here are some photos from the last time I was on the farm a few months ago. Some of the village men (in traditional Rajasthani dress)
Teaching the students how to use a mouse
The students at the school, playing before they go home for lunch.
Some of the students, excited to see a camera
Weeding the coriander plots at 6am
The children's shoes lined up outside the school.
Where the bus let us out the first time we arrived.... We walked and walked until we found the farm.
