Is there something wrong with me? Rooted to the fire again ... that's me, last to want to leave, trying to talk to the locals ... I really have this thing about the indigenous people - the lovely ones who are so incredibly different to us; the ones who when you're sitting round the straw fire (they add a bit every 10 min or so) v late at night in the village, they try to teach you a bit of Hindi, or say "I want to learn English" - the differences between us you couldn't count; but also the similarities too.
If you could go back 2000 years & enter right into one of the parables (oxen ploughing, sowers hand sowing in these villages) or sit in the crowd at one of Jesus' teaching sessions, you could feel at home here.
We arrived in the bus making a "right racket" (Yorks.) ... there are no street lights and the constellations are blazing above - this morning's fog had finally been burnt off after a really cold night previously. Can you smell the wood fire & the buffalo doo? We set up in the market place ... I was on guitar; Indre on the Madal drum; one of the Mahima Niwas girls on the tom toms. Around 80 people just squatted (as they do) silently on the ground in the dust, wrapped in blankets for our quick nativity skit and carol singing.
... We then set off on foot for this mud / clay house with thatch to visit a man who is dying. He is only able to breathe; he is paralysed, can't even eat or move.
I finished stuck to the fire trying to make sense with a gang of the local guys; we have in common that we want to learn each others' language... some say there is no hope, I say " ... " well, my Hindi isn't good enough yet... save that surprise till later.
hugs
Roy & Gill
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