What an amazing learning experience I had on my nine day field excursion. A Visthar employee named Sagar, who works in northern Karnataka, organized the entire trip. Sham was our “chaperone” from Visthar. We concentrated on Devadasis, child bonded laborers, child laborers in mines, and the NGOs that work with these groups. We arrived in Hospet September 20 at 8:00am, after a “night’s sleep” on the train, the other five students and I were greeted with flowered necklaces and single roses from Sagar and a couple of his helpers. In the afternoon we drove to a neighboring village to talk to devadasis living in a colony with about 55 devadasi families. Devadasis’ occupation used to consist of living in the temples and being worshipped as goddesses. This job slowed morphed into becoming servants in the temples
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