It was wonderful to bring Lord Caitanya's sankirtana to this village

It was so wonderful to bring Lord Caitanya's sankirtana to this village drums.jpg (30626 bytes)

Chapter Five - Part One

After the first few days, we noticed that as we were going up river, we would hear drums, "ding boom tic a tic boom boom...ding boom tic a tic boom boom."
I asked the villagers, "Do these drums mean anything?"
One man told me, "Yes. That is how we communicate between villages."
So I asked him, "What does this drum beat mean?"
To my surprise he said, "Big white ship coming with white man giving good food."

As word went up the river that we were coming, people with canoes would sometimes come to meet us. As many as ten to fifteen canoes would circle our boat asking for food. They also asked for medicine which we gave.

One village we went into was very small with no more than thirty-five houses, all made of wood. Somehow they reminded me of houses in America's old south - all up on stilts to protect them from flood. The people in the village were stunned as we came off the ship, chanting and dancing exuberantly. Some people stopped dead in their tracks. Others shut the shutters in the windows and locked the doors. Little children ran home. Only a small crowd awaited us, as we jumped and twirled in blissful kirtana.

The women devotees distributed books. I had never really expected anyone here to be able to read, but the Christians had seen to that. In each village there was a small little hut which served as a church and sometimes a school. Sometimes there was an American priest, or even a nun, living there. They also wondered who we were and were generally very kind and courteous to us.

As our kirtana continued, we noticed that the villagers became more inquisitive than scarred. In just a few minutes many children gathered around and followed us as we chanted down the villages' two streets. Despite me still having dysentery and feeling weak, I couldn't help but take lead of the kirtana for a few short minutes. It was so wonderful to bring Lord Caitanya's sankirtana to this village. After some time I sat down with the devotees and all the children, and told them stories from Krsna Book.

As we left the village I began to feel exhausted. I was actually very sick. The temperature was 45 degrees and I had no covering. Because of my dysentery I had been fasting and everything combined caused me to collapse in my room, to awake three hours later. My ill health did not, however, seem to affect the spiritual taste I was getting from this preaching mission which I continued to organise with much enthusiasm.

We arrived in the next village at dusk. As we alighted from the boat, we begun our kirtana under a huge pole. Suddenly we were frightened by hundreds of huge bats that came out of the top of the pole. One after another they popped out of the top and spread their three foot wide wings, flying off into the night. It gave me the creeps. Looking across the river, I could make out the village graveyard. I remembered what the priest from the last village had told me. He said that many of these people say that they know something about Christianity, but they strongly believe in black magic and ghost worship. I tried to concentrate on the Hare Krsna maha-mantra.

"Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare." The kirtana relaxed the atmosphere both for the villagers and for us. Books went out, children took candy and, after a few hours, we headed back for the boat.

Still the dysentery continued; that night I went to the washroom every fifteen minutes.