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We reached Raiganj late on Friday night, so Saturday morning I decided to sleep in. I woke up around 7:30am because Hannah was calling from the village. She was staying there for a few days and was calling to chat. After eating a lazy breakfast with Puthumai I discovered that the wireless Internet isn’t working anymore. I can still access the Internet from the office computer, but my laptop won’t connect until the connection is fixed (last time the ‘fixing process’ took 3 weeks). I ran to the phone store, bought some minutes, and spent the morning on the phone with Mom. I am excited to see what she thinks of the fabric I bought in Calcutta. I had an assignment due for my IDIP class (I wrote about the differences in dress and traffic), and so after speaking with Mom I finalized my assignment and posted it on the Internet. I also used the empty office to reply to quite a few emails, something that I will have much less time to do now that the wireless isn’t working. In the afternoon Hannah arrived back from the village and together we went to St. Xavier’s for their annual fair. The annual fair is a circle of booths set up around a large field, where students host fair type games. The money from ticket sales goes to support the social entrepreneurship of the school. There is also food available and music playing in the background. Quite a few people attend the fair, the students, their families and other community members looking for a night out. Puthumai shared some of his tickets with us, so Hannah and I played a few of the games. We had a good time and I was surprised at how many students I recognized from previous meetings. All of the students were very friendly and excited that we came to support their fair. Hannah and I spent some time chatting with Regina , Johannes and their friends. We attracted a lot of attention being 6 white people all standing together. Although Hannah and I saw an old white man walking down the road the other day, so we are unfortunately not the only 6 white people in Raiganj. Hannah and I snaked on some ice cold Sprite (the cold temperature being a luxury here) and some Lays potato chips called Spanish Tomato Tango, which are actually really good. We also had some of the local food, but I don’t know the name for any of it. Everything was really tasty. Puthumai took Hannah home on his motor bike and I took an auto home (DDC is down a long dark dirt road, and she didn’t want to walk down that alone). The auto ride home was fun. There were two families consisting of mothers and their small male children. They were leaving the fair as well, and I could tell that the boys were St. Xavier students. They were speaking in Bengali, and even though I don’t understand the language I knew that the mothers were trying to convince the sons to ask me what my time is and where I am from. The kids were being really shy and didn’t want to. Eventually one of the mothers asked if I spoke Bengali, I said no, only English. Then I looked at the boys, I asked if they were St. Xavier students, they nodded. I asked if they spoke English, they nodded. By this point the mothers were laughing. After a few minutes of conversation we had covered the basics, name, county, duration of travel, where I am staying and what I am doing. My favorite part was instead of waiting for the kids to ask me where I was from I asked them if they could guess what country I am from. They looked at me as though I was an alien. The youngest one said, you’re not from India? I don’t know how the mothers understood but they were laughing at the little boy. I explained to the little ones that I am from America, and they looked at me as though I was talking about another planet. They were only in class 2, so I understand their lack of understanding or world geography, but it made me think. When I say I am from America, what do most people think? What do the villagers think? What does an Indian think American society is like, and in what ways has politics influenced that conception. All very interesting questions that I will probably always have insufficient answers for, but the questions themselves are intriguing.
For dinner Puthumai and I had pork for the first time since I arrived in India. It was very good, although my lips were pink afterwards from the spiciness. The highlight of the evening was killing large amounts of mosquitoes with an electrical flyswatter. As the weather warms (oh yea, did I mention, the weather is getting much warmer as each day passes) the mosquitoes are multiplying like crazy! So zapping them with the swatter was very entertaining and a great way to laugh at the dance like motions required of large-scale mosquito massacring.
And on that note, Happy Valentines Day.