The Second Now Turns First
Text by Ulrike Reinhard Illustrations by Nilesh Auti
The Rural Changemakers e.V. is a not-for-proďŹ t association based in Berlin. Its purpose is to support youth welfare, education, vocational training and cooperation in the ďŹ eld of developmentaid as well as to promote an international ethos, tolerance in all areas of cultural life, and understanding among nations. In particular, its Articles aim at the planning, execution, and supervision of interdisciplinary projects with and for children and young people in the rural areas and villages of India. www.rural-changemakers.com
1. Edition 2020 Copyright: The Rural Changemakers e.V. HauptstraĂ&#x;e 17 10827 Berlin Germany www.rural-changemakers.com hello@rural-changemakers.com Idea and Concept: Ulrike Reinhard Illustrations: Nilesh Auti Layout: Bea Gschwend
The Second Now Turns First
Text by Ulrike Reinhard Illustrations by Nilesh Auti
Ulrike Reinhard has been traveling throughout India since 2012. She is founder of Janwaar Castle and of The Rural Changemakers e.V.. Nilesh Auti is a freelance illustrator, based in Mumbai.
Flashback. December 2014. Janwaar A hamlet in the hinterland of India. Beautiful in its own way. Raw. Rough. A kind of dusty wilderness. Twelve young skateboarders from seven different countries arrive. Over the course of the next three and a half months they’ll build Janwaar Castle. The first skatepark in rural India. 1200 people live in Janwaar. Including 300 kids. Many of the families live below the poverty line. No sanitation. No health infrastructure. Hardly any electricity. Unemployment way above 60 percent. A village strictly separated by caste. The Yadav (upper caste) down-treading the Adivasi (tribals). Just like in any other village in India. Nothing special here. No villager really understood what these young men were building. Even though we’d shown them skateboarding videos on YouTube. Still, they were wondering. They’d never seen anything like this before. Skateboarding – what on earth is this? And what is it good for? 9
I guess they weren’t actually interested. Maybe some of the kids were. They simply took the chance to earn some money. To escape unemployment. At least for a little while. And get some regular income for a few weeks. So every day women and men helped the foreigners build. On the surface, everyone was all smiles. I don’t speak the language. So I didn’t know what was really cooking. Sometimes the vibes were good. Sometimes they weren’t. I sought refuge in ignorance. It was hard to figure out. So we just kept going. Why a skatepark, you might ask. Why not a school? Or toilettes? Or a hospital? Something these people obviously need. Something that would make their lives a little easier. Or a bit better. I’ve always seen skateboarding as something special. Even though I myself have never even stood on a skateboard. Skateboarding has a vigorous element about it. An identity of its own. A vibrant culture. Powerfully expressed. Just like rap music. Or Free Jazz. 12
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I’ve always understood skateboarding as counterculture! As something going against the mainstream. For me it’s all about disobedience. Resilience. Finding your own way. To keep it short and sweet: Skateboarding has just about everything this village Janwaar did NOT have! So for me the skatepark was a disruptor. And Janwaar Castle a social experiment. My goal was to trigger change. Change for the better. But not by providing “goodies”. But by changing village culture. Meaning to teach the villagers fishing. Instead of providing them with fish. My question was very simple. Can Janwaar Castle change the culture of Janwaar? Yes, it could! And actually it worked far better than I expected. The skatepark rattled Janwaar’s cage. And woke it from its deep slumber. School attendance went up. Girls achieved some recognition. Caste barriers started to crumble. The kids became agents of change. A whole new world opened up. Especially for the children. 14
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Learning became something valuable. Something to yearn for. They started traveling. They welcomed visitors. They became really good skateboarders. Some of them are now reigning Indian champions. Two of them even participated in the World Championships in China. The skatepark became their place to be. Boundaries blurred. Change became possible. Our story isn’t a linear one. It’s leading where the children take us. At their own speed in their own time. We do trust them implicitly. Everything started in the skatepark. Only I never defined the outcome. I always kept it open-ended. Sure, we’ve had quite some ups and downs. For sure we’ve taken detours. And for sure we’ve made mistakes. But we allow for mistakes, We don’t punish them. Instead we try to learn from where we went wrong and we hope to improve as we continue to move forward. Within two happy years Janwaar Castle became a success story. First in Panna. The next big town seven kilometres from Janwaar. Then in Madhya Pradesh. 16
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And then all over India. And when you ask skateboarders from around the world, some of them will have heard of Janwaar Castle. This in a nutshell is the story of Janwaar Castle. The ďŹ rst skatepark in rural India. The ďŹ rst skatepark in Janwaar.
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December 2019. Janwaar. Exactly five years later. Three French skateboarders arrive in Janwaar. A few days later two Germans join them. Over the course of the next five weeks they’ll build another skatepark. The second one in Janwaar. Slightly bigger than the first. This makes Janwaar “top of the pops”. With one point five square meters of skatepark per villager. That’s a world record. The greatest density anywhere in the world! A bitter quarrel over land use and tedious short-sighted power struggles led to its construction. And will leave the first skatepark largely abandoned. Only this time around the villagers knew exactly what was happening. They’d seen the impact Janwaar Castle made. They’d seen the changes wrought in their kids. So this time they were building for their kids. For the betterment of the village as a whole. They were truly committed. Now it was much more than just a job. Now it was part of their lives. It was about the future of the village. There was an explicit intention. A tangible purpose. You could feel it. See it. Hear it. This time a real team was at work! 19
Foreigners were no longer foreigners. Foreigners became part of village life. Many had come. To hold workshops. To learn with the kids. To skate with them. To explore village life. To document their stories. And sometimes simply to visit. Many stay in the homestays. They eat with the villagers. They sleep in their houses. They interact with them. And naturally they learn from one another. Conversations have started. Relationships have developed. Friendships have grown. Bonds have been created. That endure when the guests return home. Interaction with the outside world is now ”normal“ in Janwaar. It’s no longer something to be scared of. The children embrace it. The parents see the benefits of it. The teachers slowly adapt. And the elders tolerate. Something the villagers are proud of. Village life has changed. The village culture is changing too. Today Janwaar has a new identity. Something the villagers are proud of. 20
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Janwaar Castle has brought hope. Something, which wasn’t there before. Something promising. Something worth living for. Something based on mutual trust. And a new sense of community. I could sense all this on the construction site. It made me happy. And it made me even happier that everyone around felt the same way. It was fun. It was passion. It was life. It was a common collaborative eort. We shared the same purpose. To build a brighter future for the village. Especially for the children. The kids were a constant at the construction site. A few helped out. Never for very long though. Others messed around. Shouting. Crying. Laughing. Singing. Dancing. Jumping. Having fun. Enjoying the new playground. Which would soon be theirs.
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They used their skateboards to transport bricks and cement. They loved to water the walls and later the new ramps and banks. They built castles in the sand. They jumped around in the empty cement bags. They developed their very own version of a sack race. Excitement was in the air. We moved forward quickly. Day by day. We could literally see the progress. And we were lucky. Because it wasn’t a bad winter. Not too many rainy days. Rarely foggy. And when the sun came out, it was comfortably warm. Yet the early mornings and nights were cold. Very cold. So every now and then we made a fire at our new fireplace. Right next to the skatepark. The villagers themselves organised the labour. Sometimes we needed 25 or more people at work. Especially when we had two concrete mixers running. The villagers formed a core team of six workers. Four women and two men. These were also the people who help throughout the year. The others came in on a rotating basis. Meaning the team around the six changed every other day. A few of them had helped with the first skatepark as well. But we also had ”newbies“.
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Benni and Timo, our two Germans, perfectly fitted into the team. Jérôme and Leo, the experienced skateboarders from France, had taken the lead at the site. Fully accepted by everyone. Mic, another Frenchman, jumped in wherever an extra hand was needed. And Abhishek from Delhi – my indefatigable right hand so to speak – surpassed himself. Tirelessly translating back and forth between English and Hindi. Bringing order where there was confusion. He helped me organise all the material. We made sure that we never ran out of bricks, cement, sand and gravel. Or anything else. We kept everyone and everything in the loop. And within the budget. It was wonderful to see how everything fell in place. No major hick ups. Some small arguments for sure. But they were always carried out with a smile. Spirits were high. And that’s why we were able to complete things so quickly! The kids rolled out on the new skatepark for the first time under a faint winter sun in January 2020. The excitement was palpable as always. Yet what a world of difference there was from the time when the first one was completed five years ago. The second had now turned first. 26
We ďŹ lled 42 trolleys with mud from a ďŹ eld three kilometers away from the new skatepark. The mud was used to shape the ramps and banks of the skatepark.
JĂŠrĂ´me, a well-known French skateboarder, came from Toulouse, France, to help us build the new skatepark.
The ”empty“ structure of the center piece – banks and ramps – of the skatepark. First we’ve built walls with bricks, then we filled them up with mud, covered the mud with gravel, laid out iron rods and on top we poured a six inches of cement.
Our �on-demand“ electricity outlet.
One of the corners of the skatepark ďŹ lled up with mud. This corner holds banks, ramps, stairs and a rail. The four wooden pillars will soon hold robust cotton so that the kids will have shadow.
Same corner as on the opposite site. Now with gravel and iron rods on top of the mud.
Pappu, one of our team members, working on the stairs and rail at one of the skatepark corners.
Little Satyam playing with the empty cement bags. The kids were a constant pleasure at the skatepark during the construction phase.
We had two cement mixer at the skatepark. For each mixer a team of 11 people was required. One operator, fours ladies filling the mixer with sand, cement and ravel, two guys filling up the ”teslas“ with the wet cement and another four ladies carrying the cement from the mixer to the place where it was needed.
These village ladies are really strong. Easily they are carrying 50kg cement bags on their heads. Two guys were lifting the bag on the lady’s head.
Seglal Adivasi, one of our local masons, at work. Seglal, like all the others, did a wonderful job. He easily connected with the foreigners and didn’t hesitate to take them to the jungles. It really was a great team!
The center piece of the skatepark – done! The kids loved to hang out there and watched what all was going on.
Time for a break! Lunchtime. The ladies stopped by at our Villa Janwaar and jumped on the swing. They had quite some fun. These four ladies were the core team of the villagers working at the skatepark.
Finishing. Jérôme checking the finishing layer of the cement. The cement was six inches thick sepearted into three layers, one rough layer ( five inches) and then two finishing layers.
The First: 21 x 22 meters. It’s called Janwaar Castle. Construction work started in December 2014, the park was finished in March 2015 and the kids rolled out for the first time in April 2015. Photo by Gabriel Engelke
The Second: 29 x 29 meters – the new skatepark in Janwaar. On January 10, 2020 the kids rolled out for the first time. What a moment it was. Photo by Matjaž Tančič.
Thank you Anupam Bansal Jérôme Chevallier Benjamin Fritz Mic Kyroule Timo Hänssel Leo Sastre Abhishek Singh Betonlandschaften Decathlon The Skateroom
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