The Village (Part I)

We’ve only been here for 24 hours, but it feels like we’ve been living with, sharing meals, and giving “Good News Messages” to the villages and villagers of the Iduki district of West Bengal for a week. Life here is very different. The villages are stacked, one next to another, for hundreds of miles, living in small communities of 300-400. As we drive, we see thousands of fields stretching beyond sight, filled with villagers farming rice for their subsistence lifestyle. Winding paths and bicycle filled roads weave in and out of the countryside, occasionally interrupted by small, red, dirt roads that lead to collections of mud huts with thatched roofs, under which villagers sort rice, stack foods, cook, recline, and tend to cattle. Providing constant company to the villagers are thousands of small goats, proud and strutting roosters along with their hens, and the ever present meandering of large bulls and cows. Children run about on various missions, chatting and yelling at one another as they play. The older teenagers help with their parents and have more serious faces to match their heightened responsibility. Older men and women of the village often lounge in the shade, or squat on their heels as they invariably manipulate various objects in their hands. We see fewer women, as their lives are lived mostly inside, constantly preparing meals for their male counterparts in the fields and streets and performing chores around the house. These are the communities of the “dalit”, or those more commonly dubbed as “untouchables”. Their thick black skin, scorched by years of hard labor in the streets and rice fields, marks them as permanently “worthless” to the rest of society. The privileges of even a basic civilization have made few inroads here.

This is where Compassion Service Society of India (CSSI) does its work: in the places that no one else goes. Our initial destination is the original CSSI compound, which is a small building located in the middle of the village. The building looks the age of a structure five times its lifespan, and in it dwells the local CSSI head and his family, Sahadeb. As we open the car doors, we are greeted by what will become a common phenomena: the sucking of cool, air conditioned air from our vehicle as it is replaced by the stifling, hot, breezeless atmosphere of the village climate. Kyle, Shaji, and I will be dripping with sweat within minutes, and the frequent blackouts that plague the countryside will make sure we stay this way for much of the next 24 hours. Accordingly, cold showers and the all too brief respite of a ceiling fan at night will become heaven on earth for us.

This particular village is the first of many that CSSI has set foot in. Sahadeb grew up in a nearby community and is a capable servant, leading about 15 ministers and teachers who reach out to the local communities. Here, CSSI has built a small school for the villagers. Almost all are illiterate, and have been for hundreds of years. Like their fathers and mothers before them, they have grown up to be cooks and manual laborers, struggling to get by as they pray to various Hindu deities to bring blessing and protection. A school, then, is a revolutionary sight; and dozens of children crowd into dark rooms lined with windows that struggle to keep the walls lit as the children learn in English, Hindi, Bengali, science, math, and Word classes. Nearby stands the villages first well, built in 1998 by CSSI and since replaced by two newer ones that bring water and life to the villagers.

The children and teachers are excited for our arrival. They greet us eagerly and lead us inside the dimly lit rooms of the schoolhouse skeleton to say hello to the children. After doing so, the children stand up and yell “Good moring!” or “Hello!” and sing us songs—hand motions included—for several minutes. Their faces are both excited and seem, admittedly, a bit confused with the village visitors. This will be first educated generation of children this village has ever seen.

The rest of our night is marked by excursions to various places. After an afternoon nap in the coma inducing heat, we awaken to find that it is now time to travel to a nearby village to see a children’s fellowship (similar to a Sunday school).Several of us crowd into Shaji’s small van as we make the ten minute journey. In this new village, another well is being built to provide clean drinking water. Villagers argue about the site of the well for several minutes before settling on a spot they proudly place their feet on while smiling, as if explorers setting foot on a new land for the first time. We take a picture. After the commotion has passed, we walk over to a mud school house that has also been erected by CSSI. Knowing of our arrival, over 70 children beat us to the spot and form a large crowd. They begin singing songs of the Bible, about creation and Jonah and how great our God is. They are so hopeful and excited. As they sing, the families of the village begin to form a ring around our back, watching…Shaji says,”You share a Bible story!”, and after a few nervous minutes of thinking, I tell the children and villagers a story about the Prodigal son. While the context for such stories is very distant for us in the west, its relevance takes on a new nature for these villagers who more immediately grasp its meaning. It is such a blessing to be able to share the Word so simply, yet beautifully, with those who are truly desiring to hear something new and fresh to their ears. All but a few in the crowd are Hindu, and the story of a loving Father who waits expectantly for His undeserving lost son to return home is something that must be strange and attractive to a people who worship a goddess who threatens death and destruction if they do not make appropriate sacrifices. We do not understand how truly different our loving Father is from that.

Once we arrive back in our original village, we walk to a local house to take part in a night time Christian fellowship with several other Christian villagers. All of them have come to know the Lord through CSSI. We sing songs in Bengali for an hour or so and pray intermittently. As we praise in words I cannot understand, I am struck by how big our God truly, truly is. Halfway around the world, Jesus has reached this village of dalit people, and they are praising Him under a sky filed with fireflies and stars that He has made for them to enjoy in the middle of the rice fields and jungle. Their voices are beautiful as they sing to the same God I do 13,000 miles away in an air conditioned gym in north San Antonio. God’s love and scope and the breadth of His movement are absurd in moments like this.

The power has again gone out, so the light of a couple small candles is all there is to illuminate the small Bibles the villagers produce to “hear the Word” tonight. Shaji, again, motions me to share. This time I talk about the Exodus and God’s faithfulness to the Israelites at the Red Sea, how He always “makes a way where there is now way” and how they are called to be like Moses in pointing their villages toward God and Jesus, who also makes the way toward God’s promise where there is no other way. Shaji translates and proceeds to exhort them in Bengali after I finish. We then pray and conclude our time together, but not before we share one last chai tea time, just before we turn in for the night. Fortunately, the power comes back on 45 minutes after we return, and the electricty survives the night. We sleep soundly on a sturdy, firm, bed that keeps us glued to it until we are awakened by the next power outage and the accompanying heat at 7:45 the next morning.