REMOTE. The Rural Changemakers Of Janwaar.
Our “cover girls” everyone loves them. And mostly they come as a quartett: Laxmi, Anka, Guddu and “Madame” Balloo ( from left to right). Photo by Vicky Roy.
The young “Adivasi Gang”: Virmal, Vinay, Vishnu and Brajesh ( from left to right). Photo by Vicky Roy.
REMOTE. The Rural Changemakers Of Janwaar.
Copyright © 2018 Ulrike Reinhard
Erschienen bei TUBUK digital
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Photos: Conrad Bauer, Pratik Chorge,
Shail Desai,Gabriel Engelke, Vicky Roy
Layout: Bea Gschwend
Copy editor: Paul Morland aka Shakespeare
Editor: Ulrike Reinhard
E-Book-Herstellung: Open Publishing GmbH, www.openpublishing.com
ISBN: 978-3-95595-070-5
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Remote. The Rural Changemakers Of Janwaar.
Through The Eyes Of The Kids And Villagers
Janwaar Comic Power
A Day In The Life Of Ramkesh
Two Girls – Two Worlds
Dreams Are No Longer Dreams
Tomorrow’s Leaders
Far From The Tree
On The Other Side
Miles To Go
Through The Eyes Of Visitors And Observers
The Barefoot Skateboarders
The Photographic Eye
The Skateboarding Bug
A Premise Of Disobedience
A Fraught Relationship
From A Distance
Form Pemberton To Janwaar
A Visit To India
It’s My Life!
Discovery Journey
Kittu
The Red Frock
The Kundarpura Kids
Timeline
Goman Singh with his buffalos during monsoon in Janwaar. Photo by Vicky Roy.
Ulrike Reinhard
The project ‘The Rural Changemakers of Janwaar’ is the quintessence of my life. It was never meant to be like this, but looking back I can see that in some very interesting way it has connected many dots throughout my life. This is a journey which has never been a steady straight line forward but rather a story which evolved gradually and organically and in which intuition, empathy and the art of letting go played an essential role. A journey which has ended for the moment in a small remote village in India. India, a country so full of harsh and irritating extremes, a country so overburdened with disagreeable traditions and realities – and yet, surprisingly, one I fell in love with.
India and me
It wasn’t love at first sight when I first came to India in February 2012. I arrived in Delhi for a conference and I remember how relieved I was to leave after five days. The city was way too big for me, too dusty, crowded and dirty. And it was icy cold. I had no clue about India and I came completely unprepared. So when the conference was over I looked at the map. My return ticket to Germany was out of Bombay – I always call the city by its old name, I simply love the sound of it – and I was looking for an interesting land journey to reach the megacity on the Arabian Sea. Bombay and seeing India Gate was a childhood dream of mine. And I was very much disappointed when I finally did. The area looked and felt like a stronghold – the surroundings must have completely changed after the 2008 terror attacks. You couldn’t reach the gate – it was secured with heavy metal crash barriers and thousands of tourists were competing for the best view. And of course where ever tourists are in India, especially western tourists, you’ll always find a huge milling local crowd of merchants, tour guides, wheeler-dealers and hucksters of all kinds surrounding them, trying to take a gullible tourist for a ride. These were my first and none too favourable impressions of India’s two megacities.
The journey in between though was amazing. I visited the Taj Mahal and I was blown away by its sublime beauty. It was stunning. My first view was from the other side of the Yamuna river in the late afternoon. It was slightly foggy which only added to its beauty. With the orange-red sun setting on the horizon – and surprisingly no people around – the ivory-white marble mausoleum looked like a painting. Delightful. Elegant. Magnificent. The next day, at the crack of dawn I entered the gardens – and when I stood right in front of this monument it looked even more beautiful. I did what I had been told to do and walked seven times around the mausoleum anti-clockwise. Then I sat down at the far corner of the terrace and fell asleep. It was a deep but short sleep and when I woke up I left the gardens full of energy and in high spirits. They were crowded by then.
From Agra I took a train and a car to Khajuraho. In Khajuraho – yes, it took me more than a year to pronounce the name of this small village in Madhya Pradesh more or less correctly – I got stuck. No, not because of its world famous Hindu and Jain temples but because of the rough, wild, innocent and largely untouched landscape in which it’s located. No wonder the temples were built there 1000 years ago. Forests – or jungles as the locals call them, the rocky river Ken with all its caves and waterfalls, dry landscapes with scattered trees, a deep blue sky and all the wild animals have attracted me ever since. And it’s precisely this setting which made me choose Janwaar for my social experiment two and a half years after first setting foot on the subcontinent. Janwaar is just a stone’s throw from Khajuraho – yet luckily far enough away for it not to feel the negative impact tourism has.
During my first visit to Khajuraho I met a family who really put a bee in my bonnet. They “invited” me to build a school in Khajuraho on their land. I was as much surprised by such an offer as I was tempted to accept. From Bombay airport I sent an email to my friend Egon Zippel in New York asking him: “Do you want to build a school with me in rural India?” And he staggered me by immediately answering: “Yes, why not?”
A few weeks later both of us returned to Khajuraho to figure out our options. We were fascinated and starry-eyed we decided to give it a go. One of our first activities after getting acquainted with our new environment was “A Hole In The Wall”. We installed two of Sugata Mitra’s self-learning environments at the government school in Khajuraho – right by the junction where the old and new parts of the village meet. These learning stations are still up and running today, though shabby and much worse for wear. The construction work gave us a glimpse of what it means to build something in India. We probably acted like greenhorns as we painfully slow adjusted to Indian time and working standards.
At the same time we were reading a lot about the Indian or should I rather say the “leftovers” of the British education system, and we were visiting many schools. Our idea of our own school took shape and we were eager to get the “promised land” from the family. Unfortunately our plans didn’t quite meet the family's expectations. While our idea of a school was more one of informal learning and creative processes, their plan was to make tons of money out of it. Simply to get a slice of the booming education market in India which is a multi-billion dollar industry. Charity – as they had said earlier – was no longer the name of the game. Over three months we had interminable discussions which led absolutely nowhere so we finally decided to move on without them. Our last meeting took place in the reception hall of their hotel. All of a sudden the father of the two guys we were dealing with stood up, left the hall and came back with a rifle in his hands. He positioned himself right next to me and stood there like a sentinel – legs apart and the rifle poised between them. It was hilarious and grotesque at one and the same time. And I still don't know what he wanted to express with his posturing. Anyway, we simply ignored it. But it left us wondering. Finally we left their place and started anew. This was a decision they didn’t like at all. And what’s more – as we heard later – one which they weren’t used to being served. It turned out that this family was very feudal and notorious for luring in foreigners and taking advantage of them. Luckily we had an inkling of this – even though it took us a while to read their faces.
Our “divorce” was highly unpleasant and ended in a trial. Their eldest son physically assaulted me, leaving me in need of hospital attention so I took him to court. And I won. Many people were happy because this was the very first time that this family had been taken to task for their wrongdoing. The lawsuit was quite amazing – it took place in Raj Nagar, a district of Khajuraho and it dragged on for an incredible four weeks. I don’t know how many times we went there in vain. Sometimes the culprit didn’t show up, sometimes it was the prosecutor or the judge himself who were notably absent. The only guy who was happy about this was the tuk-tuk driver we’d hired for the duration of the trial. During these four weeks I had 24/7 security guards. The local head of police wanted to ensure my safety. Maybe he expected further attacks from the family – I don’t know. So where ever I went two armed police guys were ten feet behind me. This was quite funny at first but after a while it became pretty annoying.
The courtroom was small and very crowded. The judge, the prosecutor and all the people working there shared this tiny slightly dilapidated place. Its door was always open for a constant flow of people coming and going. The lawyer of the family questioned me for a full eight hours. All of us had to stand in front of the judge who was sitting behind a huge table on his high chair. Of course I was somewhat nervous at the beginning but after a while I understood the game and started to play as well. Then it was fun. Egon, as a witness, went through the same rigmarole – he made it in six hours though. In front of the courtroom was the daily market – the colours, the smells and all the different kinds of people were not what you would normally expect from a “court”. Once in a while cows even tried to push their way in. Living through all this taught me a lot about the social fabric and dynamics of a village in rural India and helped me to get a better understanding of the family structures, the feudal system and the system of bribery in this part of the world. And it prepared me well for my future endeavours. After that lawsuit Egon and I were both ready for a break in Europe.
Egon never returned to India. The stinking garbage piles, the blatant corruption the all-pervasive feudalism, the tobacco spitting men, the never ending honking of all kinds of vehicles and the shocking discrimination of women were far more than he was willing to handle. I stayed for a few weeks back home in Germany, then I came back and started to travel through India on my trusted Bullet motorbike. I was on the road for almost a year and went from deep down south all the way up to the Himalayas where I spent the summer of 2013. And every now and then I returned to the Ken river.
An idea takes shape
One day Shyamendra Singh aka Vini, a local rajput (from the Sanskrit raja-putra meaning “son of a king”) and owner of the Ken River Lodge, asked me if I wanted to work on “his” side of the Ken river – meaning not the Khajuraho but the Panna side. He was familiar with what I’d been through in Khajuraho and I assumed that this prompted him to say: “Whatever you do, I will secure the land.” Two weeks later I made him a proposition: “Let’s build a skatepark!” “What on earth is a skatepark?” he asked. I showed him a video from Skateistan (an NGO which uses skateboarding as a medium for change) and he immediately said: “Yes!” The decision was made within five minutes in the beautiful Ken River Lodge treehouse overlooking the river Ken. Vini introduced me to a guy in Panna who owned several plots of land and without any hesitation I opted for the plot he had in the tiny little village of Janwaar. At the same time I also started the SKATEBOARDS/ARTBOARDS campaign to raise funds. I asked 15 artists from around the world, including some local artists and children from a village on the Haryana/Rajasthan border, to transform skateboard decks into ARTBOARDS. Then I auctioned these ARTBOARDS on ebay – skate-aid e.V. in Germany allowed me to do this on their platform – and with the proceeds I was able to build the skatepark. Skate-aid e.V also connected me to a German skateboarder, Baumi Baumsen who later became head of construction in Janwaar. In December 2014 we started to build India’s (and most likely the world’s) first skatepark in a rural area. 12 skateboarders from seven different nations volunteered and together with local helpers they finished the park in three and a half months. It was during the construction period that we came up with its name: Janwaar Castle.
The villagers had no idea what we were building. For sure they were wondering. For some of them it meant a chance to work and earn some money. An opportunity they don’t get all that often right on their own doorsteps. Others were afraid – as I heard later – that I would “christianise” their village. Three or four weeks after construction started I felt some strange dynamics and asked Lokendra Singh, the Maharaj of Panna, and I think I can say a friend of mine, to come and see what was cooking. He is truly a character. Over the years I’ve learnt to value his “one-liners” with which he precisely encapsulates situations in Indian society. More than one hundred villagers showed up at the skatepark when he came. They gathered around him while he was talking to them. Once in a while he asked me a question which I answered the best I could. I somehow felt lost and had no idea what was going on. When he said “chalo” I went back with him to the car and we left. On our way out he didn’t say much. No way would he tell me what the discussion was all about – but the one-liner came as expected and I will never forget it: “You haven’t won their hearts yet!” This stuck with me and really made me think. I believe this incident laid the groundwork for the strong personal relationships I have today with many of the kids and quite a few of their parents – even though I don’t speak their language there is this basic and very precious mutual understanding.
The bare fact that I don’t speak Hindi – and I don’t have any ambitions to learn it – is a very conscious decision I’ve made. It provides me with a “natural border” and protects me from getting involved in every tiny little detail of village chit-chat. Not that speaking and understanding Hindi wouldn’t help me in many instances … but still you can’t have it all!
This book features many photos of Janwaar. Looking at them, you can easily get an idea of how sleepy and badly developed Janwaar is. It’s a small village of 150 households in a remote area of Madhya Pradesh. From Delhi it takes a night train, a bus (2.5 hours) and a “tuk-tuk” (20 minutes) to reach. And the next big town, Panna, is seven kilometres away and has no real restaurant, only street food. The first tiny little supermarket arrived two years ago and for many tools and other things we need to go to Satna (70 kilometres away) or even Jabalpur (250 kilometres). So it’s an almost surreal setting in which to see a skatepark, isn’t it? The one basic question I asked myself about this social experiment in building a skatepark in the middle of nowhere was: Could it trigger change in such a very traditional almost untouched village? Today I can confidently answer: Yes, it can! And I would even go one step further and argue that only skateboarding can. No other sport would have achieved the same results. Why? I think it’s a cultural phenomenon. Skateboarding culture is counterculture! It’s almost a synonym for “against the mainstream”. It’s all about disobedience, resilience, finding your own way. Exactly the opposite of what went on in this village. And because of this I was pretty sure that something would happen in Janwaar once the skatepark was in full swing.
Sleeping outside in the courtyard at Arun's Homestay. Photo by Vicky Roy.
The Janwaar Castle skatepark – view from the Bamboo House. Photo by Vicky Roy.
Connecting the dots
Since my early days at university in the late seventies where I studied economics in Mannheim, Germany, I have always been drawn to this idea of using management tools to solve social issues. My mentor Professor Dr Hans Raffée called it “social marketing” and this idea has stayed with me until today. 15 to 20 years later the Internet has immensely broadened such possibilities, and under the guidance of Professor Dr Peter Kruse, a neuroscientist and network theory expert with whom I worked for almost a decade as a freelancer, I learned how to combine social, Internet and network theory. And Janwaar Castle is, so to speak, a product – the outcome – of all of this.
My key idea with Janwaar Castle was to engineer change – social, cultural and economic change. Such change is to be achieved through involving the entire village community, including the children and young people in skateboarding which grows their confidence and self-esteem, extends their education, and encourages them to become role models for change within their own village. The vision is one of rural changemakers uplifting the life of the entire village.
So how to trigger this change was the crucial question. The skatepark itself was meant to play the role of a disruptor and attractor. Disruption was needed to tip this highly traditional Indian village setting out of balance. And the disruption needs to be attractive enough to get things moving. You need momentum to achieve change. This is exactly what you’d do in a company if you were planning to drive change. What happened is that the kids started to come to the skatepark. I gave them 20 skateboards, helmets and safety gear and basically left them to their own devices. I myself can’t skateboard, so my only “help” was skateboarding videos which I showed to the kids on tablets. They loved to watch them and immediately afterwards they took the skateboards and tried to copy the tricks they’d just been watching. And it worked – the skatepark was attractive.
They were very quick on the uptake and the skatepark became our playground in which things started to flourish and from where beautiful stories emerged. Right from the beginning, the kids took ownership of, and responsibility for, the skatepark. They kept it fairly clean. They understood and felt that it was theirs! What they experienced at the skatepark was certainly different from what they experienced at home – and this was the disruptive moment. They were challenged to bridge these differences if they wanted to skateboard – and this created the momentum we needed.
Inspired by the work of Skateistan I took a slightly different approach. While the Skateistan skateparks are closely attached to a school and operate with “opening hours” – a closed system so to speak – I decided to keep Janwaar Castle as open as possible. This meant first of all no fences, no fees, no gate-keepers controlling the park. I remember the discussions I had with Vini and the owner of the skatepark land who both wanted to build a fence. They kept on insisting: “But we need a fence!” And I stoically answered: “No, we don’t!” I was more concerned with chasing the buffaloes, cows and goats from the skatepark than with building a fence. And over the years even the cattle have learnt not to clump over the skatepark. So it paid off – Janwaar Castle is accessible for everyone at any time – and the kids love it.
Secondly, “open” also means for us that we do NOT define any programs. We are open for what the kids will show us and what interests them. So we follow their lead. Skateistan offers what I call “pre-defined” programs – which isn’t wrong in itself but which is not inclusive. The program may be suitable for a few kids, no doubt, but it’s never as personalized as the individual learning paths we design for our kids. I had the same sort of discussion about this with Vini as I’d had with him about the fence. His contention was that: “We need a program! We need to know what we’ll be doing next month, next quarter, next year.” And I kept on replying: “No!”. I truly believe – and so far I haven’t been proven wrong – that all we need is a vision and a clear set of values and principles in which all our activities (= disruptions) take place. We should know what we’re aiming for. In business speak this is called the “open sandbox”. In reality it means that we observe what is happening at the skatepark and we take it from there.
I always feel that this is very much like the Internet: You cannot predict what will happen next. You have to live it! All you can do is to be as close as possible to the “playground and its actors” – only then will you get a feeling for what might come next. It’s all about empathy and letting things go.
The lakeside playground and library in Janwaar. Photo by Vicky Roy.
Villa Janwaar – our new community center in the center of the village. Photo by Vicky Roy.