TOILET PAPER!!!

Oh how I love toilet paper! It can be used as packaging material, cleaning your glasses, wiping your nose, removing make-up, making toilet seat covers. making wedding dresses and most importantly wiping your bottom.

Naturally, I forgot the most important hygiene material on the planet. Don't get me wrong, I love wiping with my hand but there are some problems that follow. First, your hand is wet and you feel like it is the most unsanitary thing on the planet right after you wipe your bottom after defecating and then you have to open the door to wash your hands....Yuck! Second, in many cases the water spout is on the right side of the squatter toilet  and you have to use your left hand to wipe and in order to do so you have reach all the way around your body to get to the spout just to loose all the water as you steer it towards your bottom and, in some cases, you hit the handful of water right into our undies which leads to my least favorite thing about wiping, getting wet. How I hate having to squat on the toilet waiting for your bottom to dry and realizing it is nearly impossible so you pull on your pants just to realize that it is going to take a lifetime for it to dry through two layers of clothing. When I was talking to Beau I came to the realization that boys and girls have very different anatomy making it more difficult for girls than for boys. So, due to my passion of hating being wet I bought toilet paper.

I might consider my squattet-toilet-wet obsession the larger extent of my culture shock. I am adapting to the Indian head nod that many of the Tibetans use also. Here is a video that can certainly show it better than I can explain it.

I think it is really interesting. I didn't understand it too much when I arrived in India but the more I have interacted with individuals through interacting with rickshaw drivers, bus drivers, tailors, and friends I am beginning to understand the variety of things it can mean, including: yes, no, okay, and I am listening.

Now for the exciting stuff.....

 

 We are officially in the camps now. Our PAP's came on last Monday and we registered with the police on Tuesday and moved into the camps. I called Damdul, the manager of the Organic Research and Training Center (ORTC), and he asked me to start on Thursday. I have now worked 3 full days. I expected to work just a few hours a day but it has turned out to me a lot more (usually 7 to 8 hours a day). The first couple of days Beau helped me out to make sure I would be comfortable being on the farm by myself and knowing a little bit about the Tibetans I knew I would feel more than safe. 

The first day Damdul sat us down and talked to us about his plan for me and made sure that it was suitable with my plan for myself. We decided I would volunteer 4-5 days a week and one of those days we would discuss any questions about things I was learning. It has been the perfect plan! Damdul took us around the first day and showed us how to make natural pesticides out of custard apple leaf, lantana, boganvia, neem, and cow urine. The best part was that everything you could find growing on the farm. He helped us cut off what we needed from the bush and then it was our job to chop it all up. I really enjoyed his teaching technique. He would show us how to do it then just leave it up to us. By the end we had a wonderful slurry of natural pesticides.

The methods of the farm are very economical. Under U.S. law cow dung cannot be directly placed into a compost so they first make a slurry of 10 percent dung and 90 percent water and place it in a cement dome where it can build up methane gas. That gas is directed towards the kitchen where it can be used on the gas stove. Once the dung is sufficiently drained of methane it can be placed in the compost and eventually contribute to growing healthy plants. The plants are later sold and the remains are fed to the cows where the cycle can start again. It's really a brilliant way of cycling a single product, dung. The farm is mostly self-sufficient because it grows plants they can eat, they have a well to draw water, and gas from the dung -- very little things are outsourced at all. 

The next thing we learned on the farm was how to carry out vegetative propagation of sweet leaf (stevia). This is no short process though it is fairly simple. For certain plant species you can cut off the flowering portion from the root and use the mature sections of the plant to reproduce the plant. To do it properly you must cut the stem at a sharp, clean angle to allow it to absorb as much nutrients as possible so it can grow roots and continue plant growth. This project lasted the major part of 3 days and there wasn't even that much stevia and I will be doing some more in a week or so. Damdul informed me that his purpose in doing this is to plant 2 acres worth of stevia. Currently, the ORTC dose not export their products but by just selling it in India they make 150 rupees per kilogram. 

The other day it was my job to fish through all of the black pepper plants in the nursery and discard the dead plants from the live plants (80 percent were alive).  So I moved over 1,000 black pepper plants from one spot to the next. By the end of the day I was completely sore and it is not going away. I have been stretching, walking, and having Beau massage but I still feel like a crippled turkey. I am hoping the pain will leave soon because the work on the farm just continues. 

 Well, I think that just about does it. I am loving the people here and the experience is wonderful. Someday I plan on coming back because it is such a beautiful place. See for yourself:)