It's surprising how there are still so many places in this country that are not located in google maps! This location is the only nearby location I could find to locate this village.
In the month of October of 2017, I was placed for my very first rural community field work in a village of Sivasagar, Charaideo District of Assam for a month. It's been almost three years now and till now I have done field works in many interior villages in different parts of India but even today when I think of an actual village life experience, Singlopathar is the first that comes to my mind.
"Singlopathar" is a small village near the Assam Nagaland border; an untouched beauty. It was not easy for us to even reach the location as it was not located in the google map. The population consisted of a mixture of different tribes, but the two most prominent tribes were Bodo and Adivasi and with a primary livelihood dependent on agriculture, mostly rice cultivation and tea plantation. This virgin land was not even well connected to any nearby townships. Vehicles to the nearest town were hard to find so that meant throughout our stay there for the entire month, we saw a hint of town only twice. And let me tell you, that was not easy to arrange!
We were far away from home, I did cry on my very first night there but our host within a month made us feel like we were just a part of their family. People were warm and welcoming and so generous that you will feel like these are the richest people in the earth.
But it took us no time to see how difficult living there was!! Have you ever had to drink muddy water? Well I did for almost the whole month, except for when we managed to visit the town and bought us some drinking water gallons. But the point here is they have been drinking that unhygienic water for a very long time.
One good downpour and the commute from one side of the village to the another becomes extremely difficult. Out of many challenges one of the highlights for me was to take a shit in a toilet where the walls (Tarpaulin) were filled with leeches.
But that is not what concerned them, they were concerned about wild animals! They sustain on their agriculture and livestock but being so close to the forests, wild elephants often come inside the village and destroy their crops and the threat of tigers killing their cows and goats. I definitely was planning to run off when I heard tigers, but these villagers assured us if they don't harm the animals, the animals won't harm them back.
Seeing all this taught me the simplicity of life and how grateful we should all be for the simplest things we have in our life. Although that doesn't imply that this city life is any better than that village life. We are just used to the facilities and to this easy lifestyle.
I say this because I have never had so much fun cooking chicken and eating it after almost two weeks!!
Meeting new people and seeing how accepting they can be!
All the blessings that I got from the cute grandma and grandpa's!
Sipping evening tea everyday at a different house of the village, chatting and hearing a new story; we would quite regularly get a tea invitation.
The bonfire nights, drinking rice wine and dancing around the fire.
But we were there with a different purpose and being first year students we did what we could. We were to conduct a socio economic survey and submit a village profile to the organization, which we did. But I have a prominent incident to share from that experience of mine-
After the first week one day I saw something after which I lost my appetite for the next 2-3 days; they were washing their utensils right where we were shown the urinal is. As the toilet is a bit far away from the house, they had one common area which was a water storage, place to wash utensils, bathroom cum URINAL!! We then slowly realized that was the case in most of the houses and that was why our host's two year old daughter Maina, keeps falling sick so often. Our group, with literally no previous field experience decided that our goal before leaving will be to do something about it. From then till leaving we conducted a few sensitizing street plays on safe drinking water and the importance of sanitation. As we were there as guests and pointing out a part of their lifestyle as wrong would have been nothing but rude, especially all they have tried to do throughout was make us feel comfortable. But to our surprise they definitely did understand our message and the day before we left, we organized a discussion/farewell meeting they thanked us for all our efforts. Our eyes were teary, both with happiness and sadness.
The whole month can be summed up as a lot of learning and a lot of living. These experiences I had have made me who I am today as a person and as a social worker.
#VillageLife
