Wellsprings of Peace
Submitted by peacemaker - February 28, 2008 | Add a Comment
Rujul Zaparde is a typical 13 year old, living in Plainsboro, New Jersey. Except for what he's doing. He's committing Acts of Peace far beyond what we adults usually try to do...even at our best. And they're already making a big, big splash. A year ago, Rujul traveled to his father's village - Paras, India - for the first time in his life. He knew his mother's former city, Mumbai (formerly Bombay.) But that was nothing like Paras, which is very, very poor. Mud and tin-roofed houses, no electricity, no running water, cows and buffaloes roaming the streets -- everyone steaming in 120 degree heat. Women walk two miles each day along dry, dusty roads to get water from the nearest well, wait in long lines, and then have to carry as much water as they can manage in clay jugs on top of their heads all the way back home. Every day. And this is all the water they have to cook with, bathe in, AND give to the animals on the farms where they labor. The villagers are themselves landless.
Rujul had never seen poverty like this, 7,840 miles from his Plainsboro home. According to a recent New Jersey Times article, he compared it to his life in New Jersey and just "couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like living there", where his uncle and grandfather still live. The stark differences really got to him. And then he DID try to imagine how he could "change that..."
He came back home to Plainsboro, and with his friend, Kevin Petrovic, both eighth graders at Princeton Day School in Princeton Township, set to work: they washed cars, had bake sales of pizzas and cakes, held sports tournaments with fifteen other friends -- all to raise money. It took the two boys a full year, but they managed to raise $1,000 to build the first tube well in the village. They even filed tax-exempt forms with the IRS to register as a not-for-profit, so they could become a legal charity and continue raising funds for more wells. They built a website, too: www.drinkingwaterforindia.org , full of pictures, news stories, information, and a way to donate.
This past December, Rujul and his parents returned to Paras. They hired workers who brought massive machinery that was able to incinerate rock down to 250 feet in search of water. The village elders chose the exact spot, said prayers, and the machinery started the big dig. Rujul was treated as a guest of honor -- old women kissed his feet in the traditional sign of respect -- but he was scared. What if they didn't find water? "Should I just sit in the car?" he asked his father...
Some 300 villagers watched and prayed for four hours. Then, at 70 feet, the soil suddenly became damp, muddy, wet, wetter...and when everyone realized they had "hit water", the crowd lifted Rujul up into the air in their happiness. Rujul gave the first jug of water to a village woman. Everyone drank from the new well. Fresh, clean water never tasted so sweet.
"It felt good," says Rujul. "We were working towards it for such a long time. It really felt good that we could achieve something." And back in New Jersey, his friend Kevin agrees: "They can actually feel it -- the water coming out. We've actually built the well there. That drives us to raise more money so we can build even more wells and change the lives of even more people."
Rujul just wrote me that they've already raised funds for two more wells that should be up in a month's time. "We've also started the Drinking Water for India Club at our school, where we have brought together a group of 15 students fundraising for the charity and raising awareness about the water crisis in India. We are also in the process of starting chapters of this club at other area schools. I don't think much has happened other than that."
No, not much. Just ongoing Acts of Peace that are dramatically transforming hundreds, eventually thousands, of people's lives -- every time they take a drink of water. Over 80 million people in India are without clean, drinkable water. Rujul may not even realize the full impact of what he's doing, as he and his friends build (according to his logo) "One Well at a Time." We never know where our Acts of Peace may lead. We just do what seems necessary in the moment.
I first heard about Rujul, not from the news media that have gobbled it up, but during a phonecall from one of my closest friends, Barbara Osburn, a dedicated teacher, who has known him for two years. She was the FIRST teacher to introduce our KIDS' TAP program -- journaling three Acts of Peace a day -- into her classroom last Spring. And she's contributed greatly to our Teachers' TAP guidelines as well. She is so proud of what Rujul has already accomplished!
Three Acts of Peace a Day...like three drinks of fresh water a day...will add up to over One Thousand a year. For every man, woman and child in our global village. Funny how fast Peace travels...just like running water...bubbling up from the ground. Changing peoples' lives.
At the site of the new well in Paras, there's a hand-painted sign: Well #001. For Rujul and his friends, it's just the beginning.
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