Small town life in Setrawa, India. (Shaitrawa, सेतरावा)

Small town life in Setrawa, India.

Jaime and I spent two weeks in Setrawa Village while we volunteered at the empowerment center as part of Sambhali Trust in India. Setrawa (also known as Shaitrawa or सेतरावा) is a small village of about 3,000 people located near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, India

Staying in the village sometimes felt like we were on some kind of Wizard of Oz meets Truman Show movie set. Everything perfectly placed to remind you that you’re in rural India. The sand, the cows, the peacocks, the goats, the trash, the locals all saying hello as we walked by.

The power went out for at least an hour a day. There was a mouse in our room that we nicknamed “Mighty.” The kids would come in and be fascinated by our computers and cameras and always wanted to see what we were up to. They took me to temple. We played musical chairs by banging on a metal pan.

Every day we watched the neighbor across the way kicking out a cow from his yard and locking his gate behind it.

Every day we encountered the same cow standing in our doorway.

We established routines, like going around the corner to a roadstop stand to buy bottles of Thums Up and water. And when that wasn’t open we trekked to the main road for Pepsi and chocolate cookies. It was the only thing keeping us sane some days.

And when Jaime and I were seemingly going crazy — from the heat, from the lack of anything to do, from handling children all day, from not eating meat — we adopted a cricket named Ricky that we captured in a soda bottle. We fed him drops of soda and water. He escaped and we caught it again. I gave him a cookie. And then he seemingly died but when we picked up the bottle a few days later he was gone. An unsolved mystery.

And that was small town life in Setrawa, India.

 

Photos from Setrawa, India (Shaitrawa, सेतरावा):

Learn more about Sambhali Trust.