Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration at the Asian Rural Institute

by Bob and Joyce Ray, Global Ministries Short-term Volunteers

Fall has arrived, but without the color in this region yet. The sun is warm by day, but nights are chilly. Without heat in the buildings, we wear hats, scarves and coats to supper. However, Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration weekend, October 12-13, was spectacular.

An estimated 1,500 people came to this annual event to enjoy both organic food from many cultures and stage performances showcasing ethnic dance and song. A bazaar with donated items from ARI supporters is very popular. HTC is ARI’s invitation to the public to celebrate the harvest given by God and also a major fundraiser for scholarships.

Weekly planning meetings began the first of September. Chakura team organized food, Shalom (Bob) planned two worship celebrations and handled logistics, Tree of Colors decorated an indoor and outdoor stage and organized musical performances, and Tano-C (Joyce) planned and constructed children’s games and decorated the game area.

The whole planning process is part of the participants’ leadership training. Some committees worked smoothly together, others had difficulties. Remember that most people are trying to communicate in a language that is not their first language. Ideas need to be repeated, even sketched out, to be understood.

Eventually, the week long preparations began. Vegetables were harvested for all the dishes, and a pig was shipped to the butcher.

Committees gathered materials for decoration, cut bamboo for huge gates and began creating signs and origami flowers. Tents were set, tables and chairs distributed. Two kitchens were busy from Friday night until early Sunday morning as participants prepared curry, dahl, momos, black beans, Japanese vegetables, rice, rice pudding and many more dishes. 130 volunteers came to help with parking, ticket selling and serving food.


The weekend arrived with gorgeous weather. The worship opened with the participants processing and presenting the harvest on the altar. We participated in both worship services by ushering and reading scripture. Throughout the day, Joyce enticed visitors to dress up in the participants’ traditional clothes and took their photos. Bob pedaled popcorn, checked recycling stations and emptied trash. We made our stage debut with other Americans singing “Country Roads.”

We offered an international fashion show, tours of the campus, Thai and Japanese massage, drumming, gospel singing, face painting and a children’s game called yo-yo fishing. The atmosphere was one of celebration. Everyone had worked so hard to make it a successful weekend. During all of this, the animals still had to be fed and the crops harvested during Foodlife work morning and evening.

Now at the end of this week, fish have been harvested, seed corn cut, and participants are readying their Reflection Papers.
  In their remaining seven weeks, they will have a Tokyo home stay, a Rural Western Japan Study Tour, including Hiroshima. They will graduate in early December and life after ARI will begin.

For us, one more week with these courageous, beautiful people.

We are blessed.

Asian Rural Institute HTC Activities

by Bob and Joyce Ray, Global Ministries Short-term Volunteers

 

I had to fill the role of Uncle Sam for the ARI Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration. Had my picture taken with many Japanese children this weekend to give them a positive memory of Americans. Popcorn was 100yen, The picture was free.

 

 Our German friend and co-volunteer Donata suggested we do a photo version of the American Gothic painting. American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. So this is our rendition in traditional ARI garb straight from the ARI boutique, ARI rice recently harvested, and ARI tools refurbished at least once. Enjoy!

Photo by Donata

But we also did an ARI version, Please note the happy faces filled with the joy of sharing foodlife work together with friends from many nations and trying to live out the ARI motto "That we may live together".

As Gandhi once said, "Live simply, So others may simply live."

Asian Rural Institute Harvesting and Farming Activities

by Bob and Joyce Ray, Global Ministries Short-term Volunteers

 

Bob’s foodlife work until now has been in the Denmark pig pens, mostly mucking out the pig manure for compost enrichment. This is NOT a favorite chore for participants or volunteers.




However due to the earthquake damage, ARI has constructed new Korean pig pens that significantly reduce the effort to care for pigs.



So recently we had pig moving day to move the sows to their new facility which has two foot deep organic floors. These floors are a mix of sawdust, cedar shavings, rice husks and other organic materials, and utilize the pig’s natural tendency to churn up everything near them. Their dung is simply mixed in, composted in place and removed when the floor needs to be refreshed.

Moving pigs is a BIG job since a 300 kg sow does not easily change her direction once she starts moving. The picture shows one of the smaller sows that we moved first who was very reluctant to be the first pig in the piggery.



We got the hang of it with pig sized boards that kept their view of the world focused in the direction desired and moved all five sows. Moving the later sows were less of a problem once the piggery was occupied.


Joyce is very carefully checking out mama pig while the two pigs were seeming to have a very animated conversation that could have been something like, ”Hey, sister, how do you like our new digs?” Even on a very soft floor, a pig stomping on your foot is very undesirable.

ARI corn is grown mostly for silage for the pigs. We had a community harvest day to cut the corn from one of the fields. Everyone was armed with a very sharp Japanese hand sickle and worked side by side in adjacent rows. It was a rather harrowing experience, not for the faint of heart.


Joyce is giving fast moving Abe-san wide berth. However everyone was careful in spite of flashing blades and the harvest went without accident.



Bob found that clearing corn for Kalpana-san was the fastest and safest way to proceed up the rows. Then all the corn stalks had to be loaded into trucks and moved to the silage bins near the men’s dorm.





A second team of strong young men were feeding the silage cutter with corn silage flying into the concrete silage bins.The pigs are surely happy to have full silage bins for the winter.

As always, ARI ends the day with a group picture and a celebration tea break.