Buddha Smiles & Bamboo Tree Houses

In 1974 India detonated a nuclear bomb in the desert in the north of India. The code phrase for the successful test by the Indian security establishment: "Buddha is smiling". Hundred's of thousands of Indians (Ramu included) protested the country's expensive entry into the nuclear arms race in the face of great human need across the country.

Decades later the phrase stuck with Ramu - he wanted to take it back. Thus the name for this overall project centered around the Ghandi-Mandela-King school: Buddha Smiles. The project, a couple of miles outside the village of Kaniyanbadi in the northern part of Tamil Nadu,. features the school for 150 students (now grades k-5 and soon 6-8 as well). It also doubles as a retreat center for social movement activists, includes a diary and vegetable farm called Garden of Peace (which partially feeds the kids), and hosts workshops on natural building (the open air lunchroom and a couple other buildings were built in a clay/straw brick traditional Tamil style).

The latest natural building workshop: how to build a giant tree house out of bamboo. Five Khasi speaking builders have journeyed from the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya (the hills above Bangladesh) to build it. The first step: procuring the bamboo. On Saturday ten of us crammed into the 1970 Indian jeep the school owns and made the dusty drive to the City of Velore to set about getting bamboo. I mean a lot of bamboo. Really its helpful to stop picturing pandas at the National Zoo at this point. I'm talking about 240 pieces of two story high bamboo wood.

We made our way to the bamboo district of the Velore industrial market. I'm not kidding. This place exists. Amidst the innumerable concrete and paint stores there are eight or so competing bamboo shops with thousands of two-three story high pieces of bamboo leaned against their (concrete) walls. The builders caged each shop and inspected the quality of various lengths of bamboo. Three shops had the right stuff.

After about three hours of my pacing up and down the street inspecting the various shops one of the shop owners showed up with tea in plastic cups. When we finished we looked around blindly for some sort of receptacle to place our used cups. The owner made a show of tossing his plastic cup in the middle of the street and crushing it with his foot. The Khasis noted through translation that their village of 100 families had a communal garbage pick up scheme and placed their cups one inside the other against the man's building. Negotiation's ensued in a windowless back room. The Khasis experienced sticker shock. They said they could pay five rupees (10-15 cents) for a two story high piece of bamboo if they felt too lazy to wander out in the forests to cut it down themselves. The price in Velore is 90 rupees a piece, almost 20 times as much. The English word "insult" floated out of the Tamil during price negotiations. Finally a bargain was reached including the procurement of a truck to take the bamboo from Velore to the school.

During the loading process my job was to count pieces of bamboo to make sure we didn't get shafted on the long end of the deal. Note to future bamboo counters: when someone asks you to count bamboo they mean you should count while the bamboo is being loaded. It is extremely difficult to count pieces of bamboo after they have been placed inside the truck. (By inside here I mean mostly inside - about 1/3 of the bamboo stuck pecariously out the back end of the truck).

When I first got to India Elizabeth asked if I had seen the India's Deadliest Truckers yet. Now I can safely say I've ridden shotgun inside one of their trucks. And I was lucky. The Khasi's decided to ride in the back on top of the bamboo. This trucker was just as wild as the rest of India traffic - except that if he accelerated quickly one ton of bamboo might have been inadvertantly unloaded on the motorcycle behind him. This trucker did have a picture of the Last Supper on the dashboard so that was comforting. We arrived intact and unloaded the bamboo at the school late into the night. The Khasis have made quick work of it - building one floor in the last 24 hours. I can't wait to sleep up there in a couple of days.

I think I'll stay at this school for a couple of weeks longer. They've got me subbing in some English classes and the kids are a joy. And the night watchman has a bicycle that I can take into the village to repair and then ride around while I'm here.

To clean myself up a bit after a couple of weeks of not shaving I walked into the barbershop in the village. After a twenty minutes or so someone got the barber. I've always wanted a real shave. Warm shaving lotion and a simple blade. This blade might have been a bit too simple - maybe even dull. I could feel the skin being peeled away as he shaved. Really frightening when he hit my neck. Tools notwithstanding this man knew his stuff. He got every single hair out - perfect execution. Except that my hand singles for "shave my beard" seemed not to have included "and my mustache too". Mirza says I could be the American villain in a Tamil movie. He also says that Indian soldiers get a special stipend if they have a mustache. I asked "for maintenance"? "No, no" he said. "For oils to make it as magnificent as possible". I'm signing up.

This week features the Indian holiday of "Republic Day". The children have been marching "left, right, left, right" around the school grounds since I first arrived. Half the girls already have  flowers tying up their hair. Looking forward to the parade.

Ryan