Michael asked me to post some of the thoughts I've been working through. Each one of these could be its own longer post, but I thought I'd give you a brief impression of some of things I've been thinking about and struggling through. Let me know what you think.
Poverty--There really are starving children in India. I don't see them every day, but I do walk past nutritionally deficient children in the village. That girl can't possibly be 13 can she?? Strange that I don't finish what's on my dinner plate still.
Feminism--Why has feminism become such a bad word at BYU? Any BYU co-ed who came here and actually talked with these women* would thank their Father in Heaven for those bra-burning women of the 1960s and 70s. I sure have.
*These women=wives who can't travel outside their homes without their husbands' permission, college-age daughters who aren't allowed out past 6:00pm, 14 year old girls who work at factories instead of finishing secondary school because it costs too much money to educate a female, 40 year old women who wear only the sarees their husbands buys for them, and finally women who sleep in the corner with different bedding and use different dishes when menstruating because they are "unclean."
Hidden Environmentalist--Living among my trash here in the village has turned me into an environmentalist. Without the regular garbageman to take my trash away from my home I have to throw it in the pile by the side of the road on my way to the main road. I've started buying 2 liter bottles of water instead of 1 (or usually I just pump my own clean water), I drink out of reusable glass bottles when I buy a cold soda at the nearby shop, and I cringe at all the extra packaging my biscuits come in.
Maybe I would have always been this way had I been on a field trip to the city dump instead of the city's zoo when I was in second grade and third grade. Maybe.
Living a More Simple Life--Between carrying water from the government tap to our host family's cistern every 2-3 days, washing my own clothes by beating them on a rock, sleeping on a thin mat on cement floor, and going "native" by cutting out TP from my bathroom routine things have become a lot more simple. I wish it didn't take coming to India to show me how entirely and unnecessarily complicated I've made my life, but here I am with a "to do" list of things like: eat lunch, write in my journal, and spend time on the veranda with Matthew and Jeeva.
5 comments:
It will always dazzle me how Mormons (massive generalization coming) can be so anti-feminism. They're able to completely ignore all of the good that has come of women being able to assert their independence and make choices. It's unfortunate that feminism is such a byword at BYU, truly sad.
I suspect a dump field trip would have done nothing for you. Furthermore, I wonder if you won't be back to "normal" (or very close to it) after a month in the states. =(
I don't think most women around the world were treated like women in India before the rise of feminism, especially in western culture. India has long held some of the strongest distinctions between people of any country on earth. I don't know that feminism would be a cure-all for those problems either, as one of its side effects tends to be increased competition and tension between men and women. Having said all that, free speech and ideologies of certain types are frowned on at BYU. A disadvantage of a private, religious college.
I don't know that I ever went to the dump on a field trip. We did go to the "waste management facility" where they process the water. That was actually kind of interesting.
I did go to the dump several times as a little kid, and I was always amazed at how much stuff was getting thrown away. This wasn't in any environmental concern, just that some of it looked so neat, how could they just be throwing it out? I confess, that to this day when I go to the dump I look around for useful things. I have come home with things before. In fact my favorite pair of shoes, the blue ones, I found in a trash can.
I went swing dancing on sunday, and thanked my lucky stars that I know you.
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