Veguma

Although I had such a bad night before, the next day was simply amazing. I went with a couple professors to visit a village called Veguma. It was about two hours away, half of which was on a terrbile dirt road with lots of pointy rocks sticking up out of it. I really thought we were going to pop a tire, but miraculously, we made it. Just when we thought we had made it to the most remote and isolated village, we just kept driving through to another village that was even more remote and isloated. Two of the children, Fender and Kuman, came with us because they came from the village. It was really beautiful there. It was very hilly and brown. The land was very barren, but then there were palm trees sticking up everywhere. It looked like a scene from The Lorax by Dr. Seusse when they cut down all the trees to make thneeds.

We had a big meeting and the professor and his students were all talking to the villagers. They were asking about their dialect and different words and such. Since I'm working on a sickle cell report, I asked if anyone knew about it and no one had. We also asked if they had a doctor. They said a doctor came "regularly" and when we asked how regularly, they said once a year. One woman had a goitre on her neck and we told her about the free clinic at Tejgadh, but I was wondering if and how she would ever get there. It was incredibly difficult for us to travel to and from and we had a car and everything.

I also got to meet Fender's father and Kuman's mother and father. Fender was really cute and acting like a proper ambassador/interpreter. He says he's about nine years old, but I think he's at least eleven. I told him I really liked his village and that it was really beautiful in Hindi and then he responded, "Really? What's the name of my village?" He totally called me out. I was like, "Uhhh...... Vey...gnumsthdidigioajgi?" But the proper name of the village is Veguma and about 8 children at our school come from that village.

It was really eye opening to see the village that they came from. There are about 750 people living in the village and most of them are farmers, but it's not very profitable because the land is so hilly and stony. The crops did look a little pitiful compared to the lush, green fields near Tejgadh. All the women are illiterate, although now some of the girls go to school. They have a government school and an unofficial school but each only go up to the 4th grade. If they want further education, they have to travel for about an hour to get to the next school. They don't really have a proper road leading up to their village because the land belongs to the Forestry department, even though there are hardly enough trees to make a forest, and they won't allow a proper road to be built. But they do have electricity, which is nice. I would really like to visit more of the surrounding villages. I was really an amazing day.