Sisters student travels, works and finds challenges in India

Monet Tyler (third from left) taught summer camp at Darmsalla. photo provided Monet Tyler, Sisters High School senior, has experienced the joys and pains of traveling in a foreign country. This summer she spent almost three months traveling and working in India.

Tyler says, "I went to India because it was the most diverse country that I could think of that was relatively safe. I'm really interested in Islam and different religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. And I had heard it's really crazy and I wanted a challenge. And I was looking for some independence.

"I was originally going to go alone," she said. "But, my mother wasn't too happy about it. So she chose the group for me to go with. Now, I think going alone would have been a bad idea."

She describes the Indian culture as harsh and full of contrasts. Some people are incredibly friendly. Others are rude or, if you are an American woman, sexually aggressive. There is harsh poverty next to extreme wealth, "Way beyond what we have here."

Tyler describes the poverty as not as bad as portrayed in this country.

"I don't think they are as unhappy about the way they are living as we are when we look at them and their situation," she said. "It's just life to them. They don't necessarily think of it as negative to sleep on the street."

Delhi, Tyler's "home base," was hot, polluted, loud and crowded.

"The kids there draw pictures with gray sky," Tyler said.

Camels, elephants, cows, and beggars vie for space with cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, and bicycles. Drivers use horns instead of turn signals.

She described the Indian men as "sexually rude." She said it was not relaxing to wander through the beautiful sights. She said, "Their culture is very conservative and they think of our culture as morally very loose. They are way ruder than anyone has ever been here."

Tyler talked about marriages and the caste system.

"They don't really marry for love," she said. "They marry for convenience. Pretty much all marriages are arranged."

Her favorite part of her tour was going to a Sikh temple on the Pakistani border:

"It's all gold and lighted up. There is a lake inside the temple, with a gold palace in the middle of the lake where the holy priests sing and draw. Nobody stares at you, nobody bugs you. It's really like a holy feeling there."

She described the Sikhs as the most respectful people she met in India.

Talking about the education system, Tyler said the teachers would get up and leave when they felt like it -- or not show up at all.

"They don't have papers or books or pens -- or desks," she said.

She felt that the slower kids fall through the system. On the other hand, some of the kids were doing calculus at age 13 without calculators.

Everyone pretty much knew English. She said, "The well-educated Indians were a lot better at English than we are -- correct grammar, spelling."

Some of the cultural aspects of the country were jarring. At one point she saw a family that was tending an injured cow. In contrast, a couple of miles down the road a man was hit by a car and not a driver stopped.

In Rajgarh she taught in a small school, 20 kids for five hours a day. Supposedly she taught them English, "But I think they taught me more Hindi."

Tyler worked for a short time at a summer camp in Darmsalla for kids first to sixth grade.

Back in Delhi she became feverish and nauseous. The doctors responded with "Go back and rest." After several weeks, partially recovered, she returned home.

About being back home she said, "Coming here, the clean air helped. Sisters is just awesome. So clean and everyone's so friendly, polite. I really loved being there but it's nice to have a calm place to come back to."

Will she go back? She hopes to and she already has put the difficulties of her trip in perspective.

She says that the negative things were not really negative, just challenging.