With week 7 over, we are in the last month of our time here which is both really exciting and also really hard to believe! We have 3 weeks left to work on our project, and then we will be spending our last week road tripping and exploring a few new cities before we fly out. Until then, enjoy all of the adventures that week 7 brought!
Project
Sophia and I hoped to start testing this week, but we still needed to put the bricks and rocks inside our oven. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and the monsoon rains stuck around all week. It is really hard to get an oven to work if the stuff you are trying to heat up is saturated with rainwater! So we set fire to the rain (quite literally) and burned the bricks and rocks to allow any moisture to turn to steam. This was way harder than it looks as the air was so full of moisture and we didn’t have any twigs or dry logs to burn, so we had to come up with an alternative plan of using egg cartons and newspaper. I definitely channeled my inner caveman!
We have worked really really hard on this project and between slicing not just one but both of my big toes on the metal edges, Sophia’s heat stroke early on in the summer, and both of us crying out of frustration or homesickness at some point, we really have put some serious blood sweat and tears into this. Our fingers and our (now bandaged) toes are crossed that this oven improves at least a little bit from the previous one.
Saree Show Off!
Alright so I wrote a few weeks back that Sophia and I bought sarees but were still getting the blouses stitched. After sweet Sister Flora sewed my blouse 3 different times (think goldilocks – first it was too big, then it was too small, then it was just right!) all the fabric was finally ready. Sister Flora and Soni (an orphan who sometimes lives here and has become one of our best friends) came to help us put them on. They gathered everyone who was home so that we could show our sarees off and it was like being at prom all over again – Fr. Paul and Fr. Jesu were our proud dads and we posed for so many pictures. They were all very excited 🙂
Nepal Border
Sophia and I did a bit of travelling this week, and it was probably the most adventurous, chaotic, and wild trip we’ve taken so far. Fr. Jesu took us to meet a family last week that had just welcomed their 2-week old baby into the world. We had dinner with them and Fr. Jesu told us they were going to the Nepal border to get their baby baptized. Earlier on in the trip we had expressed interest in visiting Nepal, and so Fr. Jesu arranged for us to go with them.
I don’t know what I expected out of this, but I guess I thought it was going to be Sophia and I with this couple and their baby, we’d go to the border, do a bit of sight-seeing, attend Mass, and go home. I was WAY wrong.
Let me set the scene for you: picture a 5-person van filled with 9 people and their luggage plus a tiny baby and no air conditioning for 4-5 hours. Except those 4-5 hours very quickly turned into 9-10 hours when we hit traffic on the main road, tried to take a different route, and got lost in the bumpy dirt backroads of middle of nowhere India. Now take all of that and add a very carsick grandma who puked out the window at least 4 times on the way there, and you are just seeing the beginning of this story!
We did stop for a break at a social action center in Muzaffurpur where Fr. Jesu was stationed for a few years before coming to St. Mary’s. While we were there we got to meet a classroom full of students who were very excited to meet us. We couldn’t really communicate with them and our interaction was quite awkward, but the smiles on their faces and the rapid and excited chatter from them as we left the room told me that it didn’t matter.
We also stopped for lunch at the family village. We sat in a small room with a fan and were served mutton, rice, and daal. This was the poorest and most rural part of India I have been to by far, and yet it was the most peaceful. Everything was so green and scenic and with the children riding the cows out in the fields and some of the older women picking grass on the side of the road, it felt like I was living something out of a National Geographic picture. With John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” playing in the background (ironically the only English song the family had on their playlist), it was perfect.
After lunch, we got in the car and made our way to the Nepal border. Sophia and I only have visas for India so customs only let us walk across the Koshi Barrage and we couldn’t actually go to the other side of the river. Either way it was really fun and the whole family enjoyed taking pictures with us, showing us the water, and walking along the Barrage. There was LOTS of water and several times throughout this trip we passed villages that had been flooded because of the amount of water. Rescue vehicles would be parked on the side of the road and all the people and their cows were living in tents on higher ground. Fr. Paul later explained that this is a typical occurrence and it made me wonder – what do people do when it floods like this? Wait for your house to dry out? Build a new one? Continue living under the tents? I saw several people swimming out to their houses and I wanted to know what they were doing.
We headed back from the Nepal border (welcome to India – round 2! 🙂 ) and began our journey to Sacred Heart Church in Latona, where Sophia and I would be staying. This journey was not complete without an adventure of its own – as I mentioned before, there was LOTS of water. Well, the monsoon rains came and made the already muddy dirt roads even worse and there were several times I thought the car was going to flip. Thankfully it didn’t flip, but we did end up with a flat tire. The father of the family just so happened to be a mechanic, so he hopped out of the car and replaced the tire with no problem. Except something wasn’t quite right – the tire was making a weird noise every time we hit a bump and we stopped several times at different roadside stands to put air in the tire or have someone look at it. Well about a half an hour later we hit another really hard bump and popped the tire again. So – two flat tires in the dark, rainy, middle of nowhere India – I have definitely lived! This time the metal on the tire was also really warped and it was getting close to 9pm (and we were already late to our destination). Some random men came by, talked to the family, and all of a sudden Sophia and I were put in a cab with one of the teens that was travelling with us. One of the random men handed the driver some money, and we were driven to the church. I have no idea if these people were friends of the family or just good Samaritans who happened to see us stranded on the side of the road and helped us get to the church just out of the goodness of their hearts. Either way, we wouldn’t have made it without them, so I am very grateful.
Sophia and I spent the next day at the church enjoying chai, spaghetti, and the best egg curry I have ever tasted with Fr. Francis and Fr. Matthew. We also went to the convent and met the sisters there, and they made us popcorn! They kept asking us why we were only staying for one day, and they were very sad to see us leave.
After stopping at the family village one last time to say goodbye and to hold the now christened baby Aaron for a bit (they don’t choose names for their children until baptism). The father was so proud showing Aaron off to us, and all the family came out to watch us hold the baby and see us off.
Our trip home was much smoother as we left the mother, baby, grandma, and several of the teens at the village where they will stay for 1 month. After all the craziness of this trip Sophia and I were so happy to be back at the compound. This was definitely a memorable adventure!
Impromptu Wedding
The last adventure we had this week was we were able to attend a wedding! It all started when Sophia and I were sitting in the kitchen on a break, enjoying some chai. Fr. Paul ran in and excitedly exclaimed “I need a pitcher for a baptism!” Turns out, there was a couple – one Baptist and one Hindu – who wanted a Catholic wedding. Sounds like a great joke, right? A Baptist and a Hindu walked into a Catholic Church… anyways, in order to have a Catholic wedding they had to become Catholic! Sophia and I asked Fr. Paul so many questions about the whole situation that eventually he just said “well, the wedding is on Monday. Why don’t you just come?” And so we went 🙂
The wedding was actually quite comical. It was very obvious that the couple had never been to a Mass before and any time we had to sit or stand someone would get up to tell them to do the same, as they had their backs to us and couldn’t follow along with what we were doing. The microphone kept squeaking, the family kept getting up to fix the bride’s veil or pull the groom’s coat down in the middle of Mass, and someone had to show the bride and groom how to go up and receive communion. Along with that, Sister Justa (one of the older nuns here) kept trying to run the show and anytime she wanted to sing an extra verse or say an extra prayer – even when everyone else had stopped – she would just go for it and we would end up joining along. Even the vows were haphazard and I couldn’t tell if the bride and groom actually said everything they were supposed to. Either way, by the end we were drinking celebratory “thums up” (coke) and sprite outside the church and everyone seemed very happy. The bride came up to us and invited us to her reception and of course Sophia and I said yes.
That evening, we went to the convent around 7pm and waited with the sisters, Pastor Ignacio and his wife Rita, and our friend Priyanka, for a car to come pick us up. Well the car didn’t arrive until 9 so we spent 2 hours chatting and laughing with our little church family. Interesting story about Pastor Ignacio and Rita – they used to be Hindu, converted to Christianity, and are now serving a Catholic parish. Pastor Ignacio usually grabs all the little kids to help with the offertory gifts and can be found leading the prayers at the beginning and end of Mass. Rita is always sitting with the sisters and usually helps lead the songs. I want to know how they ended up serving a Catholic church, and why they left Hinduism. Of course, I will never know the answers to most of the questions I am asking in these posts, but it does make me appreciate how open and welcoming the community is here. Life happens – no questions asked. Support and love are always given.
When we finally reached the reception we were invited to bring gifts to the couple and pose for pictures with them. We sat and watched them receive gifts from other family members for a while, and then went outside to get some food! We enjoyed a giant buffet full of paneer, naan, chicken, fish, ice cream… pretty much every party type Indian food you can think of. Priyanka (and the wedding photographer) had lots of fun taking pictures of me eating with my hands – Indian style 🙂
The reception was very low key and quite small, but I found out later that the couple had actually been married in the court 3 years ago and were only getting married in the Catholic church because of some sort of family problem that not even Fr. Paul could explain. So, the celebration did not need to be fancy. Either way it was very enjoyable and I felt so loved and accepted by my little church family – from Sister Flora trying to feed me noodles off of a spoon to Sister Justa clapping off beat to every song, a great time was had by all.
The Unknown
I was thinking about everything that has happened this week – remember that list I made about the things I am learning about myself a few posts ago? Well I have a new one to add – I have realized that I really do not like the unknown. No one spoke any English on the Nepal trip, and when we got our flat tires I realized it was quite possible we would be stranded all night. I also didn’t know how to ask them how much longer the car ride would be, or if their food was safe. I just had to trust them.
When we were invited to the wedding reception, we were told “just be ready at 7. A car will be there.” At the time, Sophia and I didn’t know that anyone else from the church would be going, so I was prepared for it to just be the two of us in a random car going to a place we didn’t know to celebrate a family we had never met. I also was a bit concerned – if we wanted to leave the reception early, how would we tell someone? Would we have to call an auto by ourselves? Would we be bombarded with people wanting to take selfies with us? I just had to trust that I would be safe, and the situation would be fine.
There are many times in life, especially right now, where I don’t know where I’m going next or how I’m going to get there (quite literally). I don’t have the answers to the many questions I’m asking, and it’s possible I will never have the answers. I just have to trust.
Trusting is difficult, and there have been several times where this immersion experience has been incredibly difficult. But the difficult moments are the moments that make the picture perfect moments so worthwhile. A picture is worth a thousand words, but no camera could ever capture the dialogue India is writing on my heart.
An Indian Summer 