Written by Bitsy Bond-Perez, a student from our non-profit partner Carpe Mundi
February 29th: From February 25th to March 3rd we are staying in Protovillage! “A prototype of a resilient rural community.” And by rural they mean that, in the state of Andhra Pradesh we are 25 minutes away from the closest village. We are surrounded by all types of trees and plants in mostly flat farmland. Besides the houses in the village, there are little neighboring homes but no one is right next door. We are however close to Veerabhadra temple. This temple was built in 1538 around 500 years ago. It is a Hindu temple and is carved entirely by a large granite rock! Which took 20 years to complete. There are many remarkable things about the temple that I could go on about; however, my absolute favorite sculpture is the 7 headed serpent. This sculpture is huge (excluding the Statue of Nandi). It is my favorite because of how greatly huge it is, it blew me away. Also, the snakes look like they are smiling and I love that.
We are staying in the village and have had several people staying here with us, people who live here full time and people who are also travelers. A man by the name of Neeraj has been organizing our activities and showing us the way of life in Protovillage. He is also a resident here, along with the many children who stay here! We are staying in a large dorm that we all share. We sleep in bunk beds and a mosquito net protects us at night. It is about 95 degrees every day and cools way down at night. We are ALL sunburnt! The dorm is at the very top of a long set of winding stairs. We have one western toilet and if that’s occupied we of course commit to using the squat toilets. Not as hard to use as you’d imagine and the butt guns get you very clean! We also take cold bucket showers, this isn’t a problem though considering the heat! The showers feel amazing after working in the heat all day. We also hand wash our clothes and leave them to dry, if you’re like me however you wash you and your clothes!
This place somewhat reminds me of living in Estacada, on occasion, we would leave our clothes out to dry, feel our animals’ scraps of food, and grow our fruits and veggies we also had huge mosquitoes but it is also very different. This village is almost completely self-sustaining. They grow all their own foods for humans and animals, we reduce waste as much as possible in all aspects. Just the other day we learned how to compost in large quantities. We limit our shower time to reduce water waste and the squat toilets also reduce water waste! The soap is made of ash since it has many antibiotic properties and can be used to serialize the dishes.
It’s also worth mentioning they have a skate park! In the middle of nowhere, they have a huge skatepark and all the kids are extremely talented skaters. I do not know where they learned to skate but some of them have even won championships with their skating talents. I think Protovillage would be amazing to visit again however I must admit I miss sleeping in a less hot cozier bed with more privacy. To change we have to send the guys out of the room and do a whole rotation and it is a bit complicated and impractical. The animals here are a few cows, dogs, and cats but the worst of all is the size of the bees! The bees put the bees back home in Portland to shame! They need to get their gains on.
We also unfortunately have seen the largest spiders I have ever seen in my life, when you can see them across the field you know they are huge. When we got to the temple there were monkeys! Now I am not fond of monkeys but seeing the babies was very precious and they love bananas and coconut!
The lessons I have learned here in proto are some that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, I have learned much about the world around me and myself. I cannot wait to come back home and share even more with my family and friends. Signing off now!
