The idea appealed to us instantly. We knew that the State College chapter was too small to hold a conference in the near future. But, there were several chapters within reasonable driving distance and there was a good chance that they would welcome the idea of a retreat. We sent out feelers to other chapters and the response was an enthusiastic 'Yes'! We didn't even know of Baltimore chapters' existence until we heard from them! We spent some time surfing the websites of all nearby State Parks, wondering if there was any difference between rustic and primitive campgrounds, class A, class B ... We finally settled on Black Moshannon State Park about 25 miles from State College and were lucky to get the last 2 group camping areas.
We had expected 20-25 people to show up but as the weekend approached,we started getting more positive responses and the final count stood at 40! But with the Sonti's large basement able to house a fourth of them we knew that accommodation at least would not be a problem. AIDers from Washington DC, Baltimore, New York and a few others arrived on Friday night. AIDers from Pittsburgh and Boston arrived on Saturday morning directly at the venue for our fortnightly meetings. People from Columbus promised to meet us at the campsite directly as they were running behind schedule.
Sandeep Pandey (one of the founders of ASHA) was in Princeton for a 6 month fellowship studying nuclear disarmament related issues. We had been trying to schedule his talk at Penn State for a long time and were lucky to have him there that Saturday. Sandeep, who finished his PhD in 1992, went back to India and was a faculty member at IIT Kanpur for a short period before his "extra-curricular" activities caused problems with the administration. So he quit and now works on a wide range of issues related to education. His group has set up education centers guided by the philosophy that students need affection, interest etc. and that competition is not necessary for education to succeed. Unfortunately, his schedule was extremely tight and cut short what promised to be a very interesting Q&A session.
After the talk we had pizza (note: no one seems to like anchovies :) and left for Black Moshannon State. It is a forested area with a huge lake (and a bog ecosystem!) way up in the mountains. We had reserved two group camping sites - each of which can accomodate around 20-25 people. Groups of people went off hiking, boating or to play ultimate frisbee. Divas took over the camp fire initiation and monitoring roles. We had apples, bananas and roasted corn - all before the last set of people returned from a long hike. They were starving by the time we got around to baking the potatoes - essentially wrapping them in aluminium foil and placing them in the fire (delicious after you add some salt, pepper and lemon)! With hunger merely allayed but not vanquished we moved on to Anju's delicious lasagna and salad without any loss of time. By the time dinner was over darkness had set in and everyone gathered around the campfire.
At this point we didn't really know what to do - the campfire was blazing along merrily but the circle was so large that you couldn't really see all the people to have a serious discussion. No one seemed to be in the mood for it either - everyone had had too much fun to suddenly shift tracks into AID mode :) I am not really sure if there are any fun AID activities that can be done in the dark :) Anyway the state parks have a quiet hour restriction from 9:30 onwards so we had to quiet things down. Earlier in the evening, we had scouted out level patches of ground and set up all the tents. We weren't really sure if there were enough tents for everyone but the next day we heard about at least one person (Vaidy) who had a 4 person tent all for himself - so I guess things went OK :) And you can forget all that nonsense about quiet wilderness nights etc. Maybe because we were closest to the edge of the forest, maybe not, but the leaves rustled so loudly I could have sworn it was raining.
The next morning, we packed up, had bagels and cream cheese (hmmmm) for a cholestrol laden breakfast and came back to school. Mora from Boston screened a wonderful documentary by Drishti Media Collective called Patta Patta Akshar Hoga (On every leaf a letter). It described how the adult literacy campaign in Dumka district in South Bihar took a life of its own and led to women's groups, directly elected representatives monitoring development schemes, improved health and a whole lot of other issues. Of course, the collector was very supportive of the campaign etc. but it was an extremely inspiring, well made documentary. We had a small discussion after that and went for lunch to Shalimar. People left directly after lunch and I think the movie was the perfect finish for the weekend - people left refreshed and inspired.
-- by Vamsi Veeramachaneni
A group photo after Sandeep Pandey's talk
Hiking, boating, cricket, frisbee ...
Divas stokes the fire.
Nigamanth, Ravi, Shoba, Manju and Kiran work on the Narmada banner.
Breakfast on Sunday morning at the camp site.
Before leaving the campsite ...
Discussion after the video screening.