Go with the flow...

As most Rotarians have come to understand, the name of the game is flexibility and this trip is going to be no exception. Whether a member of a Rotary Club for three weeks or fifty years, I am sure each of us has encountered the need to be flexible, or to go with the flow. This phrase - go with the flow - seems particularly appropriate, since one of the two tasks before us is to assist in the construction of a water harvesting dam in a remote and arid area.
This past year, our DREAM TEAM was successful in serving beside local laborers in a work project, not too far from the Sariska Palace in the state of Rajasthan. We stayed in a Heritage Hotel - the Sariska Palace, and although the facility had seen better days, one could only imagine what it must have been like to be welcomed as a guest by the Maharajah and his Maharani. Arriving, perhaps on an elephant or in a camel-drawn cart, the pageantry of those times is captured in the many paintings and photographs adorning the walls of the Palace. One inconvenience we encountered, however, was the distance the Palace was from our work project.
Each morning, we would arise from our beds and dust the sleep from our eyes, dress for the day and walk to the dining room to have some breakfast. We would then board our bus and set out on the hour-plus ride through the Sariska Jungle to reach the other side of the jungle, be processed through the gate, pay our toll, and then travel an additional fifteen or twenty minutes to the dam site, located in Teench Wala. Believe it or not, this was the SHORT way! If for some reason we might have missed entering the jungle park during regular operating hours, we would have been forced to take an alternative route, which I recall would have added yet another two hours to our journey, each day! Fortunately, we did not experience the longer trip.
This year, our project was to be located about fifteen kilometers away from the 2010 project, and after discussing the matter with many members of last year's DREAM TEAM, I decided to ask Sanjiv if there might be a possibility of creating a sort of tent village, right at the site, near the villages we would be serving. Doing so, we would achieve a number of objectives: first, we would eliminate the need to waste a minimum of three hours each day, when we could be more productive; next, we would add another dimension to the adventure, by actually living outside in tents; and finally, and in the mind the most important bonus would be that of mixing our cultures (after all, we are comprised of more than sixty members from seven countries, including India) not only among ourselves, but best of all, perhaps as we sat around the fires at night, possibly singing our favorite old songs or telling stories, some of the local villagers would be encouraged to join us and share some of their songs and dances. Who knows?
At about 9:30 on Sunday morning, I received a phone call from Sanjiv. he had some news to share and was concerned that it might upset me. Due to the amazing amount of rain during the past monsoon season, and afterward, areas of India which would normally be arid were plagued by flooding and in some instances, thousands of acres remained under water. The result of these rains caused the governmental agencies to halt the construction of dams in certain areas - namely where we had planned to work! However, being "flexible Rotarians", Sanjiv was confident we would rise to the occasion and adjust to a different location. One of my concerns was that we would still be working on a dam construction and once completed, a few thousand of the local villagers would benefit from our efforts.
So now, sitting on our Continental BOEING 777, and only about four hours away from landing in New Delhi, we are primed for yet another adventure - the construction of a water harvesting dam, but rather than being located in the state of Rajasthan, we will be located nearer Sohna, and the area that several members of our current team had worked in previous years, when a part of another DREAM TEAM.
We can only trust this project will move forward and be a successful one, as other projects have been. After all, we will be working together as a TEAM, alongside local laborers, utilizing the rudiments of construction and engineering; we will develop relationships among ourselves, as well as with the locals; we will create a dam (or at least participate in the construction of a dam) that will benefit the villagers we serve, through providing sufficient water to irrigate and grow crops, thus becoming self-sustaining; we will still experience living in tents, although ours will be away from the village (actually set up at Dera Aravali - Sanjiv's country home). When I shared this bit of information with some of the team members who met in Newark, I noticed the slight relief which spread across the faces of some of the women in the group, as Kelly Wike ( a three time veteran of the DREAM TEAM) explained, "This means we will be using inside plumbing!"
So, fellow Rotarians, sit back, relax, and go with the flow - after all, there is precious little we can do to change things, anyway!