Gandhi Revisited II

Ahmedabad, India, 7-30-08, (Gandhi Revisited II), We visited an exclusive private school way out in the country. I think due to the bombings, we have been moved out of the city. The city of Ahmedabad has a history of being the hotbed for political unrest with all the different tribal groups that are here. This is where Gandhi started working on his political ideas early in his career. It was suggested to us by a local teacher to avoid the internet cafes as that is were the notes about the bombs were sent from and foreigners might not be welcomed. We had a two hour question and answer session with the teachers and the question of how they handle such incidence. They have emergency plans just like us. They bus all their teachers and students in from the city so they are somewhat isolated. They talked about the riots that occurred here back a few years ago and about the big earthquake that occurred a little farther back.
I took a video of the schools opening morning assembly of prayer and meditation as every school in India we have been to opens school with an assembly. It certainly calms students down and gets them in the right frame of mind for learning. The trip out into the country was great because as I have said before, the beauty of India is out in the country not in the cities. Ahmedabad used to be one of the top ten most polluted cities in the world and you don have to look past a lot of pollution. We saw people working the fields, monkeys, water buffalo, camels, donkeys, dogs, people, rickshaws, trucks, motorcycles and animal driven carts all sharing the road. We saw lots of construction which means there are lots of people living in makeshift tents. They remind me of the tent cities the homeless in Seattle put up. Here the construction workers move their entire family and belongings to the job site. We have seen some families actually living in parts of unfinished buildings. The children don’t usually go to school. There are many people that live this nomadic tent life style and then there are the homeless that live the same life style, probably not by choice. You see this type of living everywhere.
On the way back to the city, we stopped at another Gandhi stop. This is my third major Gandhi museum and second Ashram I have visited on this trip. I am getting to feel like a Gandhi groupie, but the man lived an amazing life. The museum found out we were Fulbright-Hayes participants from America and opened the door to Gandhi’s sitting room. We got to visit the place were he would sit and spin cotton and talk to his followers. They even had one of his original walking sticks there. There was a group at the Ashram that was preaching nonviolence and asked us to hold up signs. The signs were misspelled, and the situation seemed odd as television camera’s showed up. Our leader noticed the message of the group on the bottom of the pages and axed the idea. There were some terse words exchanged and we went on our way. I got the feeling we might have been sucked into something political. Oh well, we dodge another International incident. I am trying to avoid being liking Homer Simpson, and avoid any International incidence.