Asian Rural Institute in High Gear

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

The weather has changed. The Hokkaido Express (like the Montreal Express) seemed to blow in, and everyone is bundled up. Enet from Malawi has been crocheting colorful hats for all her African sisters. Of course, we are enjoying the cooler temperature.

It’s been three weeks since the ARI class of 2013 returned from their Rural Community Study Tour. There are 14 women, 17 men and one male Training Coordinator. They come from Brazil, Ecuador, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Malawi, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Nepal, Japan and Sri Lanka. Through working together in the kitchen, cleaning eggs (Joyce), caring for pigs (Bob), harvesting rice and working on planning committees together, we can call each other family. To some, we are Auntie and Uncle. For Joyce, that’s a promotion. The first day she tried to hoe and make planting beds, the young participants told her to “Please take a rest, Madam!”

We are no longer eating cucumbers three times a day, and the tomatoes are about gone. We’ve moved on to squash, pumpkin and soybeans now. Eating in season is very ARI. It makes sense, and of course that’s what people used to do, but even when we resolve to eat what’s in season back home in NH, we can’t resist lettuce and salad veggies in the winter. At that time, the ARI community eats root crops or vegetables preserved through canning or freezing, rice, eggs, pork and fish produced on the farm.

ARI’s 40^th Anniversary Celebration has now come and gone. We even welcomed a typhoon as a guest! Despite the wind and rain, it was an amazing time with over 50 graduates returning, some for a week or longer. Jerome from Bangladesh represented the very first ARI Class of 1973! We were thrilled to renew friendships with Hoshi and Manar from the Class of 2010.

All these graduates have been either working for non-government organizations that help women, children and disadvantaged or indigenous people, establishing their own NGOs, preaching and caring for congregations, or creating demonstration farms to train others in organic farming, food preservation and sanitation. Our event was a true international symposium with seminars, panels and breakout sessions. The grads shared their experiences and generated ideas of how ARI can further support future graduates. You can imagine the powerful impact their presence made on this current class about to graduate in December.

About ten AFARI (American Friends of ARI) members from the U.S. and Canada attended the celebration. One night we prepared the meal - pasta and soybeans tossed with basil pesto, roasted vegetables, pumpkin curry soup, rice, chocolate chip cookies, and rhubarb cobbler. All ingredients except pasta, wheat flour, and chocolate chips were grown at ARI. We cooked for 150 people. On the main celebration day, the ARI kitchen served 300 people.

Community Rice Harvest Day was a first for us. Most ARI paddies are harvested mechanically, but rural South Asian participants usually harvest by hand. After songs and a prayer, we sallied forth in a line and cut bunches of rice stalks with a sickle. Others constructed a bamboo drying rack, bundled the stalks with twine and hung them upside down on the bamboo pole. Joyce harvested in an experimental non-tillage paddy, meaning the rice was allowed to grow naturally with no weeding. Therefore, weeds had to be extracted before bundling - a nice sit-down task! Walking on the banks of the paddies to participate in the usual group photo, Joyce stepped in a hole, twisted her ankle and fell. After some rather painful stretching massage by an Indian guest and acupuncture by a Thai participant, her ankle healed quickly.

  

There is such a spirit of caring here. If anyone becomes sick, someone is there to help. We sing and pray (in many languages or silently) before each meal and community event and at weekday Morning Gatherings which are led by community members in turn. There is a strong awareness of God’s grace throughout each day and many opportunities to share our faith. On Monday evenings, a prayer group prays for community concerns. On Wednesdays a gospel choir, practices and attracts local Japanese community members. A Lectio Divinia group meets for Bible study on Thursdays. One can choose to worship at several churches on Sunday morning. Enet’s strong voice praised God one Sunday at the Nishinasuno United Church of Christ. 

Asian Rural Institute Orientation

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

We have been at ARI almost two weeks now. The buildings are new, sturdy and lovely to look at due to tremendous global support after the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. The same ARI spirit of acceptance and love remains! Our re-introduction has been more relaxed because the participants and three staff members are away on a Western Japan Rural Study Tour. They are visiting organic farmers to learn additional farming techniques, so only remaining staff and volunteers have been running the farm. The participants are arriving Sunday night, and we are planning a welcome home party for them. We are eager to meet these dedicated people from South Asian, South East Asian and African countries!

 

There is so much work for a few people while the participants are away – feeding chickens, pigs and fish and cleaning their areas, harvesting vegetables (think cucumbers!), preparing meals, preparing materials for ARI’s upcoming 40^th anniversary and screening materials for the 2014 applicants. We have been blessed with Japanese young people from universities and student fellowships coming to volunteer for a week. One group invited us to a barbecue where we sang together and watched a fire dance! Now there are long term young volunteers from Germany, America, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. We’re in the name learning process, but working and planning together and listening to individual Morning Gathering presentations helps us become familiar quickly.

Due to regulations, we are not allowed to work in livestock areas until we have been in the country for two weeks. It’s been breakfast and supper kitchen duty for us. With from 16- 30 people to prepare meals for, the kitchen is a more relaxed place than it will be when 60-80 is the norm. The third week in September, we are expecting to be cooking for 150! Each meal we serve rice, soup, main course and a side dish or more. The produce, eggs and pork all come from our farm. At ARI we constantly think about our connection to the land and the food it produces for our bodies to use. We eat only what is in season, but it is all delicious, and the cooks are so creative. One day we had soybean falafel with fantastic cucumber yogurt sauce! Another night we enjoyed a traditional Malay cake with a rice base and a yogurt blueberry top layer. Tonight we are having a pork and fish barbecue, so I prepared good old American potato salad. I learned how to make mayonnaise for the first time!

 

During the weekdays, we both help in the office. Joyce is learning the process for managing the incoming travel documents of graduates returning for the 40^th anniversary in just two weeks. Profiles have to be written about their activities since graduation. Bob and Joyce are creating booklets with pages on each 2014 applicant. Staff will start the screening process this week.

 

The new couple’s room in the just completed men’s dorm is beautiful. It was lovingly prepared for us by JeenHae, complete with flowers and a tea set. There is a private shower and toilet area for our own use. Our balcony has the required clothes pole so laundry can hang even if it rains. If you want to volunteer, you’ll have a great space to call your own!

And today we had a 9 sec shake of the building due to a 6.5 earthquake off Tokyo.

Greetings from Singapore

Hi, Everyone. En route from Kathmandu to ARI, we have been gifted with one night and day in Singapore due to a flight cancellation!

On August 7, we reached our first destination in Nepal after five flights. Over two days worth of traveling is perhaps a bit much for our age, we have decided! We have learned so much about rural life in Nepal and the challenges ARI graduates face. Their leadership skills are being put to good use as they work to help provide basic education, raise awareness about women’s issues and encourage indigenous people to claim their rights. We have seen the many challenges a developing country faces, such as load scheduling of electricity, sanitation and road improvement.



Our first reunion was with 2010 ARI graduate, Sandeep Lamsal from Taulihawa in the Dang District. This is the Lower Terai, or plains of Nepal bordering India and is rice-growing country. It’s approaching the end of the rainy season and in the temperature hovers around 95 degrees. Sandeep guided us all around Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, on a scorching day. Of course we got seriously sunburned. The next morning our driver dodged goats as we drove along lush green paddy fields. We visited the ruins of the palace where the Buddha grew up as a crown prince. Later, we collapsed from either jet lag, sunstroke or both! We managed to meet and share meals with Sandeep’s family.

 

Breakfast with Shanta, Ammar and Simon Chaudhary



On August 10, we traveled to Ghorahi in the Upper Terai, a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains. It resembles the location of ARI! We were welcomed by Shanta and Ammar Chaudhary and their son Simon. Shanta is an ARI grad who also returned to be a Training Assistant. She works with BASE (Backward Society Education www.nepalbase.org), an NGO that helps provide education, works with women’s groups and advocates for the now freed bonded laborers to get land promised to them by the government. We kept hearing echoes of our own Civil Rights Movement.

Ammar and Shanta are members of the Tharu caste, indigenous people whose property and rights were taken away by a higher caste. Ammar works to educate all indigenous people about their rights and lobbies the government to recognize these rights in the constitution. In addition to their social work, the farming family grows rice, corn, vegetables and keeps three cows. They have a well but no tap water. Shanta cooks rice, potatoes, green beans, pumpkin leaf, chicken and soup (Joyce was thankful her dishes were not too spicy) on a two burner propane stove. Dishes are washed outdoors, and we enjoyed bathing in the stream after a hot day! If the sun had not shined, we would still have Simon. His joyful disposition kept us smiling, and he insisted that Bob Uncle and Joyce Auntie see him off on the school bus!



Siddartha Academy



We visited three different schools. Each time we rode buses stuffed with passengers and crossed rivers where water flowed over concrete pads instead of under bridges! Joyce closed her eyes and prayed. Sister Home Boarding School was started by ARI grad Sayni Chaudhary. Primary students are taught Nepali, English and Social Studies by young teachers who either have their Bachelor’s degree or are working toward it. There is also a Women’s Learning Center where women meet to discuss their concerns and are trained in skills such as sewing.

Siddhartha Academy is a private school, both primary and secondary levels. The principle gave us a tour of the secondary school, where chemistry, biology and physics labs are still under construction. We spoke to two groups of 10th graders where everyone seems to want to be a doctor or an engineer.



Rural Government school



In Tulsipur, we met the principle who started the government school twenty-two years ago with support from Shanta’s organization, BASE. He will retire in two years but dreams of a computer lab and a library before he leaves. Here, the children recited their lessons for more seasoned teachers.



We attended the 19th Indigenous People Cultural Program and enjoyed the local Tharu folk music.

 

Folk music at Indigenous People Cultural Program 



We’ve had the privilege of being the first foreign guests in Ammar’s family home, the challenge of walking narrow foot paths through rice paddies, and an arduous 13 and a half hour bus ride from Ghorahi to Kathmandu. Tomorrow, ARI!



  

Planning for August trip back to ARI

We are beginning to plan for August trip back to ARI

cherry blossom mantle

 

My mind is so much on Japan these days. We spent last summer in the north, a little west of the tsunami area. While volunteering at the Asian Rural Institute, we traveled a bit.

One June weekend we explored the beautiful bay area of Matsushima, where the poet Basho stayed for a time. This month, blogs report that the many pine-capped islands throughout the bay broke the brunt of the wave, or else the loss of lives and damage would have been much worse. Still, the town is suffering.

As northern Japan comes into its cherry blossom season, I remember the snowfalls of last April’s cherry blossoms. Perhaps this year, some of the devastation will wear a mantle of beauty. If so, to me it will symbolize the dignity of the Japanese people.

cherry blossoms snow

over shrines and splintered dreams

fragile pale beauty

Remembering Matsushima

After the tsunami that hit the northeast coast of Japan, I could not help thinking of Matsushima Bay and the 2 days spent in one of the three most beautiful places in Japan.
                     view from Godaido








Matsushima harbor

Entsu-In Temple garden



More pictures are posted here.

Bob's photos : http://www.flickr.com/photos/robray_nh/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58228&id=100000116155876&l=f7893955b9

“I came to ARI as a bamboo but went back to Bangladesh as a flute.” Mr. Jerome Sardar Dwijen, 1973 ARI graduate and Deputy Director of the NGO, Society for Social Service, on his visit to ARI in July 2010.

                                            

We’re back home, making new routines, but trying to retain some parts of the life we were so fortunate to experience at ARI. Joyce still makes brown rice - yes, even for breakfast, miso soup and stir fries whatever is in the fridge. She located Hijiki seaweed (very expensive, here!) to make Satomi san’s salad and bonito flakes for dashi. And yes, we use our new hashi to eat with. We’re also making more of an effort to patronize local farm stands.

We’ll post a few more accounts of ARI life since the summer heat, humidity and resulting general exhaustion kept us from reporting as much as we wanted to while there. Here’s a summer day in the life of ARI.

6:00 AM  Good morning. The sun has been up since 4:00, it’s already warm and cicada wings are singing away.

6:30  Join the outdoor circle for 5 minute morning exercises via Japanese radio and the morning prayer. Meet briefly with your group to learn Foodlife duties. For half hour chores, Joyce goes to the feed mixing room for two months – sweeping the floor and breaking down Styrofoam boxes that held fish heads and tails and okara from tofu, which were used to make fermented animal feed. Bob goes to the men’s dorm to scrub the bathroom.

7:00  Foodlife time. In July, Bob and Joyce job share duties in Pig and Cow and Poultry sections. Joyce cleans manure from the cage-like farrowing pens of three sows and their piglets. Hose down the pens top and bottom. Mix feed for sows and make sure older piglets have enough milk powder. Bob turns the fermented floors with a pitchfork in the poultry house. Other volunteers and participants are working with us. We are so hot and sweaty by 8:00 that we choose showers and are late for breakfast.

8:15 Breakfast – rice, vegetables, soup, eggs, yogurt. Yea, chai! Group B dishwashing.

9:10 Morning Gathering.  Our daily weekday meeting with a mix of scripture, song and sharing. Everyone is assigned a day to lead Morning Gathering, so we gradually learn more of each other’s backgrounds. This is truly how we become a community and find the strength to do the work!

10:00 Morning work – Bob becomes computer systems consultant. Joyce settles into whatever writing, editing or photo research she has been assigned. Over 90 degrees, no AC, but a direct fan! Participants go to class. Farm volunteers (bless them) weed rice paddies, harvest potatoes, and do backbreaking farm work throughout the day.

12:30 PM – Lunch – rice, soup, pork curry, tempura carrot tops, salad. We’re in luck, a birthday means JeanHae’s delicious banana cake! Back to dishwashing, Bob!

1:30 – Afternoon work. We go back to the office, except when the heat and humidity get to Joyce and she takes a shower and maybe takes a rest until 2:00. Participants have two hours of class, and farm workers are in the field.

5:00  Foodlife – Work in the pig pen is difficult for Joyce twice a day, so Bob switches with her in the afternoon. What a sweetie! Bob cleans the pig pens, and Joyce gathers eggs and cleans them. We may be the first couple who job-shared at ARI.

6:30  Supper – rice, soup, fried tofu, vegetables, salad. Oh, yes. Yesterday was butchering day. Chicken feet! Last dishwashing for a week, Bob.

7:30 Monday- Prayer Meeting, Wednesday- Joyce’s English class, Thursday- Bob’s computer class. On Sundays at 8:30, we Skype with family. They are just waking up.

9:30  Main buildings close for the night. We fall into bed. The cicadas are still singing.