Dream Trip 2009

Great Travel Moment

In New York, I had met the social entrepreneur who started Barefoot College, an organization that teaches the illiterate and semi-illiterate rural poor amazing technical things, like becoming solar engineers without learning how to read. I was so moved that I knew I had to go there and see it for myself. When I got there, I knew it was a special place. Grants enabled women from Mauritania and Bhutan to spend 6 months there to learn to be solar engineers. Many of them had no voice in their village, but when they return, they will be solar engineers. They were in the workshop putting together solar lamps and circuit boards. Many of them, teaching each other, not speaking the same language. Today was the day before Republic Day. The women sat outside putting mendhi on each others? hands. All those clichés ? peace, sisterhood, oneness ? they actually exist.