While
we’re in Munsiyari we are doing service work for the local community. Since
we’re only here for 9 days, the work has been mostly manual labor, but that’s
not to say that it hasn’t been a blast. We’ve worked 3 days doing slightly
different tasks that all involve getting extremely muddy. The volunteer work
revolves around a local pond called Mesar Kund that has a pretty interesting
backstory.
The story goes that there once was
a god who presided over the pond named Muktesh. One day two beautiful women
came to the pond and Muktesh immediately fell in love with one of them. He
lured her into the pond with a lotus flower, leading her in farther and farther
until she was stuck in the quicksand on the bottom and couldn’t get back out.
The other woman ran and told the village about what had happened. Infuriated,
the villagers came to the pond and demanded the girl back. Muktesh said that he
wouldn’t give her back because she was happy to be with him, but the villagers
would not take no for an answer. Finally, after a while, Muktesh said that if
the villagers wanted their daughter back they could have her, tossing the dead
body of the girl onto the banks of the pond. He then continued to place a curse
on the village, saying that for every birth there will be a death. In order to
appease Muktesh the villagers perform a special pooja in his honor, even to
this day (the birth/death curse is also said to still hold true).
The pond in the story is the same
pond with which we are working. It is currently being affected by eutrophication
because the nearby stream changed course and no longer passes through it.
Because of this, the pond has shrunken significantly in size and been overtaken
by grasses. The first day that we worked we dug a giant hole nearby the pond
(at the time I had no idea why we were digging a giant pit to battle
eutrophication, but it has since been explained that we dug the hole to expel
grasses from the pond area so that the pond will have a vegetation-free area in
which to expand). This first day was probably the least muddy day, mostly
because we stayed farthest away from water and the dirt was fairly dry. We used
shovels and mattocks to dig out the roots of the grasses and then dug deeper
down to add depth to the hypothetical future pond. Part of the job also
included carrying the mud to a hillside a little ways away using homemade
stretchers fashioned from two saplings and a rice bag slung between them. We
thought we had gotten insanely muddy that day, but that’s because we hadn’t
seen what being muddy really meant.
The second time we went out and
worked our job was to redirect the stream so that it was flowing into the pond.
We got extremely wet while building dams, shoveling new trenches, and ripping
up reeds to make way for the new creek. Sometimes we were up to our knees in
mucky water and a lot of us took off our sandals after a while because there
was a very real possibility that we would lose them in the sticky mud (there’s
a reason the girl couldn’t get out of the pond when Muktesh lured her in – that
mud is incredibly like quicksand). It was hard work digging up rocks and roots
and moving them to create dams and riverbanks, but we thoroughly enjoyed
ourselves. For one, there were tons of frogs and tadpoles to watch and chase.
Additionally, there’s just a certain level of jovial camaraderie that comes
about as a result of working in mud, sweating profusely, and bantering with
pond puns. The most rewarding part was when we finally broke down all of the
dams we had created and watched the muddy water flow and circulate into the
pond.
Although I had a lot of fun the
first two times working at the pond, my favorite time (and probably everyone’s
favorite time) was by far the third and final work day. Our goal for the third
day was to dig up as much grass as possible for the same reasons that we dug a
giant pit the first day. Since we were covering such a large area, our digging
spot quickly became full of water and soon we were working in a giant marsh.
Using shovels, we would cut out blocks of grass, roots, and mud and then fling
them as far as possible over the water-filled area to get them to dryer land
for people wielding the stretchers to pick up. After two solid hours of working
and doing this, we were failing more and more at flinging the mud bricks all
the way across the marshy area, covering everyone head to toe in mucky water.
The local kids working with us took these giant splashes as an open invitation
to start a mud fight (which we all happily took part in). I think all of us
were a little worried that the adults working with us would put an end to our
fun, but, much to our surprise, they all just joined in with us. Soon it was
all out war and everyone was throwing mud at everyone else. Alliances were made
and broken. No one could be trusted. I am actually very surprised that nobody
got even slightly injured (Stephen had a close call with muddy water to the
face/eye, but he recovered quickly).
Afterwards there was hardly a clean
spot on my body and we all bathed in the icy river. Bathed meaning scrubbing
the exposed parts of our bodies (arms, lower legs, neck, face, etc.) and then
lying down in the water to get our clothes clean. By the end the water didn’t
even feel chilly, but the rest of the day we were freezing in our sopping
clothing. Chase, Jenny, and I had it the worst because the kurtas we were
wearing were cotton whereas the boys all had quick-dry clothes on. Even being
miserably cold later on (my lips were blue/purple for a solid couple of hours),
I think this is the new favorite experience in India so far.
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