When I thought I was going to go to India, I pictured New Delhi. I thought of Mother Theresa and playing soccer in the slums with Hindu temples at every corner. I thought of monkeys and Bollywood. I thought that was all India was.
We were placed in Northeast India, in the “Chicken Foot” part of the country. I didn’t even know that it existed on the map. We arrived and it was not at all how I imagined India to be. The people were tribal people who looked more Mongolian than Indian. The villages were on top of hills surrounded by jungle and a lot were Christians already. There were slums, but not what I thought they would be. I realized that I had never heard of these people: the indigenous tribes who are still unknown to the rest of the world. These are the Invisible People who stole my heart.
