It’s 1:42am on Sunday, April 29th. Me and Sara wake up startled to lightening in the distance. We jump off our sleeping pads and out of the tent we’ve been sleeping in for the past week. The rest of our squad mates sleep inside the rooms on the 2nd floor of the building we’re in, but we made camp on the roof where we fall asleep to stars above us every night.
This is all-squad month part 4? I don’t actually know, there’s been a lot of time being with the whole squad. Luckily my team still makes a point to hang out just the 6 of us as much as possible. Team changes were something I honestly thought I would hate, but I’m so glad I was wrong. Team Luna has become such a close family already, and I’m so excited to spend our last month together as we finish our time in India and head to Nepal.
Sitting up this late, or early I guess you could say, my mind drifts back to our time in Sielmat and Lungthulien India before coming here to Assam. In Sielmat we were also with the whole squad. Our host was a man named John Pudaite and he is a part of a tribe that used to be head-hunters but is now completely converted to following Jesus. During our time with John we did ministry ranging from working at a rehab center, to running medical clinics, to putting on Sunday morning services at local churches, and to working alongside my mother for a week. It was quite an experience to have my mom come out on the field with me. It was like my 2 worlds were colliding. My world from back home and the things I used to call normal, and my world here with the things I now consider to be normal life. We ate curry, laughed, helped run a medical clinic, had heart-to-hearts and overall walked away with a better understanding of each other. I’m so glad she came out to the field to see me; it was something I had never excepted would happen.
After my mom left we were in Sielmat for a short while longer and then we travelled to Lungthulien via 3 pickup trucks and an old ambulance. We piled our big packs in the back of the trucks and had people sitting on them and then people inside the cars as well. We were told the travel was going to take 8 hours and it ended up taking 16. We realized after that to take time estimates with a grain of salt. And you better believe we were sore and bruised after that. We arrived at Lungthulien at about midnight and moved all of our things to the 2nd floor of one of their school buildings that had a dining area downstairs (but was actually usually used for school gatherings and weekly devotions) and the floor we were staying on was actually their computer lab/library. But we made it our own with all our sleeping pads lining the floor.
After a few days all the teams except mine and team Selah left for other villages. During this week alone with the mega-team (this is what we call it when 2 teams stay together somewhere) we worked in the schools and ran classes between breakfast and lunch every day. Then after lunch we would play sports with the kids in the big dirt field in front of the building we were staying in. We played ultimate frisbee, soccer and volleyball with them. We’d then eat dinner and go run a nightly devotional up the hill by their dorms (we were working with a high school but the kids came from all different villages and would live there during school because there was no way to transport themselves back and forth).
During this time the mega-team also learned a cultural bamboo dance where the women dance between bamboo that the men are hitting against eachother. Apparently this was something the tribes there used to do. When the other 3 teams came back to Lungthulien we performed the dance for them. Also during our week away from being all-squad we attended the first annual Ginger Festival for all the surrounding villages. The Chief minister even flew in for it which was a big deal. There were a lot of armed guards because an assassination attempt was possible. Manipur is actually trying to secede from the rest of India and there are people that aren’t very happy with the Chief minister for this reason. Luckily nothing actually happened and it was just a really fun time. We tried ginger tea, and I was also spontaneously asked to sing in front of everyone so I ended up singing Oceans by Hillsong for the people there. It is actually quite common for us to be asked to sing for almost every event we attend and this is especially so if they’ve already seen you sing or play an instrument. They just really enjoy seeing American people sing I think. Our host in Lungthulien was a woman named Rosy and she was really great, I miss her already.
After all the members of the squad were back in Lungthulien we headed out for Assam. This time we started our travel in the back of a dump truck where we piled all of our big packs, day packs and guitars and sat on top of them, all 35ish of us. It had also just rained and the roads there are terrible despite if it rains or not. They’re basically dirt roads with giant pot holes absolutely everywhere. We rode in the back of that truck for 3 hours and we once again were pretty battered and bruised afterwards. We were also all feeling pretty claustrophobic being that we were packed in a tiny space together and drove on roads where it felt like we were going to tip over every 5 minutes, meanwhile it’s about 100 degrees out in the sun and we’re sweating like crazy.
We arrived by the river where we were supposed to catch two boats to take us but we were too slow in getting there so we missed one of them and had to all pack into one boat. So we squeezed ourselves into what was essentially a giant canoe with a roof with all of our things and had to readjust our positioning in the boat many many times due to weight distribution. We then proceeded to go down the river for 14 hours with many stops along the way at checkpoints where they would look at our Indian visas and question why we were there. We arrived at Assam at approximately 2am, all completely exhausted. We hauled all our packs and things up a hill and to another building by a school which is where I am now. Me and Sara are laying in our tent in the stairwell coming down from the roof. The tents are mainly just used to keep bugs out because let me tell you the amount of bugs here, and flying bugs alone, is something else. If you have a light on you and aren’t in a tent, good luck not being attacked.
While we’ve been here we’ve helped pave a dirt driveway into the church and done house visits where we prayed for the people living there. This area is a lot less Christian and more Islamic and Hindu than the places we have been. We hear the call to prayer 5 times a day and there’s a lot more people who wear traditional clothing. There’s also a lot less places to go so we’re kind of stuck in the building we’re staying in. I play a lot of cards to pass the time. I’ve got to be honest, India is nothing like I expected it to be but I have enjoyed my time here.
