Incredible learning opportunity, but much more to learn
This is the summary of thoughts I had after a full day of the workshop with Forest Post. The experience was nothing but incredible. How would I ever have an opportunity to talk, engage and have a meal with people from a tribal community in India? But if someone asks me what I learnt in the day, I don’t know how to answer. I might answer by saying: I had a glimpse of the world I had no idea about. I could never say I learnt something specific because I don’t feel like I understood something to the extent that I actually say I learnt xx. The experience was more like: I was introduced to a life I could not have imagined before. It gave me some idea about it- but not fully. However, despite the topic being too large to comprehend in one day, it surely made me think.
Manju- the founder of Forest Post- said the three tribal women walked 2 hours and took an hours-long bus to meet us. Whilst feeling thankful for their time and effort, I could not help asking myself WHY. Why would they agree to meet us, especially if they have chosen to live in a very remote village with little contact with the outside world? Listening to their stories -how they do not have the same notion of time and date, how their life is not centred around work, how they grew up in a tribe without the basic infrastructure of the cities- my head was constantly surrounded by endless question marks. ‘Do you have any questions?’- Of course I have questions, I just don’t know where to begin, I said to myself. Not knowing what I don’t know is the most serious problem.
‘Be open-minded’ is easier said than done. When a different culture is slightly different from yours but still based on the same structure and common sense, it is not that difficult. You just have to like new things and be patient. But if the world you encounter is totally different from what you are used to? I can’t reason without basic common sense. However, not everything is different. Seemingly having nothing in common, the occasional laughter we shared, common experiences as women, and a strong sense of belonging to something, still seemed to somehow unite us in a unique way. I didn’t understand anything, but anything would be a lie. It was as if I could see where their motivations for some of their actions were coming from, but they were manifested in very different ways. It made me think that we all have common desires and hopes, but external circumstances made us achieve/try to achieve them in completely different manners.
After the long day, I wondered again. Why did they agree to meet us – a group of foreign students who don’t even have an extensive understanding of Indian culture-? Setting aside trust for Manju and other potential technical benefits, I wonder if they simply only wanted to meet us. They did not seem very interested in knowing the details of our background. After all, all they wanted to know about us was where our parents were. But perhaps, even by continuously weaving bamboo crafts for the majority of our time together, they enjoyed our company, in my wishful thinking. Or perhaps, they were happy to show us a glimpse of their life to strangers, just like we want to be nice to strangers without much context. What we have in common is hard to tell, yet perhaps it is the commonality with people from completely different backgrounds that uniquely characterises us as humans.