Sorry for taking so long to write my first message, as some of you have been eagerly waiting news, and others probably forgot that I'm in India, but the past month has been really hectic. Right now I'm in Ahmedabad Gujarat for Indicorps Orientation. We started on August 15th and we'll be going until September 15th. Before I begin, let me give you some background on what this is all about.

I am spending this year doing service work with a group called Indicorps, which takes Indian Americans to India to work with grass-roots NGO's that are doing highly effective work. I will be working in central India in a state called Maharashtra (pop. 90 million) where I will be working with tribal people (called Adivasis) on a development planning project called Community Resources Mapping. I'll be working with a local NGO that has spent 20 years in this area working with tribal peoples. I came to India on August 9th and arrived in Bangalore where I spent four days with my family. From there I flew to Ahmedabad Gujarat. I've been here for the past two weeks doing an intensive orientation program with the 14 other fellows and Indicorps staff. The other fellows are spread out all throughout India working on various projects.

I love the people here. They are all so committed to serving India and come from diverse backgrounds. We are traveling to 6 different regions of India, which means that there are 6 different languages being taught in our orientation to the various fellows. I am learning Marati, which is similar to Hindi, but much more difficult in my opinion. We are staying at the environmental sanitation institute, which is based on Gandhian principles of cleanliness and sustainability. The motto of this amazing place is "Cleanliness is next to godliness", which is a quote from Gandhi, and "water is life." This place has been engineered in such a way that it recycles all of its water five times and catches its rainwater for use. It is also working on using solar energy and becoming completely self sufficient. The goal of the institute is to spread hygenic sanitation practices throughout the villages of India, where sanitation is often an afterthought and becomes a public health crisis as overpopulation occurs. Needless to say this place is inspiring.

Everyday we get up at about 5:30 am and do "safai" which means we clean up our living quarters, i.e. sweeping and cleaning the bathrooms. We also wash all of our clothing by hand. The days are fully packed from 6 am to 11 pm. The first day we came here they sent us into Ahmedabad city with a group of children from the untouchable school (The Gandhi Ashram), blind children, and mentally challenged children. The fellows were split into groups and we were told to take these children through a zoo and an amusement park. that's all we were told to do. Half of us cannot speak Gujarati. It was quite the learning experience. Next time I write I will include pictures. Each day afterwards we've had speakers come and talk to us about various aspects of Indian history, society, government and development. Yesterday we had an IAS officer of Gujarat (Indian Administrative Service) speak to us about India's government. It was an eye-opening experience.

This past week we went to Rajastan for our "village stay" in which we were once again split into groups and made to live in a rural tribal village with a family. Luckily in Rajasthan the spoken language is Hindi, despite the fact that the tribals speak Daveri, a different language. My partner Kulvinder and I did a pretty remarkable job of communicating with our host family as both of us were pretty bad at Hindi in the beginning, and continue to be pretty bad. We provided endless entertainment for the villagers as we continually banged our head on the low doorways, I fell down a hill with a bale of hay on my head, I burned the skin off my hand while tryuing to grind corn, and we both insisted on bathing twice a day in the river, which was definitely the best part of the village. On our second night in the village we had a community gathering in which all of the fellows, their host families, and many other villagers gathered to exchange songs and dancing. It was great fun. These village children can drum and sing. Oh, the point of our stay in the village was to build "check dams", which is a development project aimed at stopping rainwater runoff from the hilly regions in which these people live, to raise the water table so that they can do farming. The check dams were no more than stone walls that we sledgehammered and piled high and then filled with dirt in order to stem the flow of water off the hills. The interesting part about this whole thing is that these tribal people live on a river that used to be huge, but after dams were built upstream in Gujarat, the river has all but dried up, which has seriously impaired their ability to farm. I'm already seeing in person the things I studied about Indian development (read Narmada Dam Project).

On another day last week we did a project called the "Amazing Race" in which we were split into groups of three and given a scavenger hunt throughout the city of Ahmedabad. We had to do various things like take pictures of certain monuments, bargain for tomotoes, find family members of friends of Indicorps staff, get the prices of goods, book our train tickets to our project sites, take the local buses and autorickshaws and stop at checkpoints where the Indicorps staff would give us food and more instructions. The race lasted the entire day and we had a great time. At the end we wound up at the Gandhi Ashram where we learned a great deal about Gandhi's life and saw the place where he began his movement in India. All in all it was an incredible experience that taught us how to be self-reliant and confident as we move about India.

A lot of what Indicorps is inculcating in us is the importance of self-reliance and the dignity of all types of labor, including washing our own clothes and cleaning latrines, in order that we learn how to fit into our own communities, where these things are luxuries. Ok I will write more later when I get a chance to come back into the city. Please drop me a line and tell me how you are doing. I am getting all of your emails, I just haven't had time to sit down and respond beyond 1/2 hour increments.