Guru Santa
on Margaret Campbell's Rambles (India), 26/Jan/2010 07:01, 34 days ago
In a small village near Ramgiri, Guru Santa awakens at 4:30 to heat water for the cattle. It is cold in January in the Odisha hills and the stock do not have a shed for shelter. Guru is meticulous about the care of the cows that he uses to plough his half acre of rice paddy. Indeed, he must be, as there is no veterinarian for miles and Guru's family depends upon his livestock. This season Guru raised more than 800 pounds of rice and other grains, an amount that dwarfs Guru, who, at only 12 years old, tips the scale at far fewer than 100 pounds. The village leaders say Guru is doing a hero's job here. 2 acres of land is considered the minimum for supporting a family in this region and Guru only has 1/2 acre. Yet, he has saved enough from their meager resources to buy school supplies for his 9 year old brother, Gopi, who attends a residential school 7 kilometers away and for his littlest brother, Santosh, to attend the village school. He has also set aside enough to buy a bicycle to transport Gopi to and from school as needed. Sadly, although intelligent and industrious, Guru will not have the opportunity to attend school, but he has learned to sign his name (which to many in India means he is literate) and he understands that an education is the critical success factor for his younger brothers to avoid a life of poverty. We visited Guru to see for ourselves how a boy of just 12 could manage such a tall task, to take them some household supplies to keep them warm and comfortable, and to see that the labor to complete their half-finished mud hut is arranged in order to keep out the winter cold and monsoon mosquitoes. Malaria is epidemic in this region. I came away re-thinking my conception of what it means to be accomplished. If we only had a world of Gurus. Just imagine.     Left: Guru in front of his rice harvest. Right: Santosh, Guru and Gopi.  All of us in front of the Santa house.