Sorry I haven't updated recently, the last two weeks or so in India were just mass chaos trying to get everything we needed to complete finished before we left. But I succeeded in finishing all of the projects! James and I built two bookshelves from scratch, painted them, catalogued over 1,000 books for the library, made library cards for all of the students at St. Mary's and teachers, and arranged all of the books in the library space they gave us. So now St. Mary's has a real, workable library, complete with a laptop (I donated my old Villanova one), scanner, and barcodes on the books. The headmistress says she will give the kids a "reading period" every day to take out a book and read it, and all of the 7th graders and up can borrow books whenever they'd like. I am such a huge book-nerd and I think that this is awesome-- kids who had probably never in their lives read a book for fun will now get to take one out every week if they want! Yayyy.

Besides this project I also wrote a health play for the elementary school kids and had one of my Indian friends translate it to Tamil. Then some of the boys we were living with acted out the play, and afterwords all of the kids practiced washing their hands with the hand-soap the program got for them. I bought 10 big bottles of soap, so hopefully it will last them a while. We also bought and organized a much needed first-aid kit for the elementary school.

The last day in India came all too soon. There was a bit of a flurry of activity at the end when we thought our flight might actually be canceled because of the volcanic ash over Europe (bizarre!) but it turned out James and my flight was ok because our layover was in Dubai, not Europe. Our friend and co-intern Sarah was flying British Airways and her flight was actually delayed/canceled until May 1.

It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone at SAMSSS and the schools where we worked. I feel like even though I was there only two months that I have known all of them much longer. Especially the four boys who lived at SAMSSS-- I started calling them my "thambys" (younger brothers in Tamil) and I was their "akka" (older sister). We gave each other parting gifts and we exchange emails every day, but still it feels kind of heart-breaking to be so far away from people I care about so much. Its hard to think of them sleeping on the floor, eating rice every day, and sweating without air-conditioner in the 100 + degree heat of India while I am living up life here in America. If only life were fair for everyone.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Vacation

This past weekend all of the interns here had a little break for the Easter vacation, so we went on an adventure! Our first stop was Mumbai (Bombay) the site of the recent Slumdog Millionare movie. I wasn’t expecting it to be like this, but it actually does somewhat represent the way the city is portrayed in the movie. There are huge modern malls that rival any mall in America (in fact we saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D there) right next to shantytown slums where people dressed in rags are practically starving to death. We ate a meal in the Taj Hotel (one of the most famous hotels in the world—but at $800 a night we definitely were not going to be checking in!—and saw the Gates of India.


One night we saw that there was an artsy documentary on poor rural farmers being shown nearby so we showed up for that. It turns out there was a famous Bollywood director there (I never would have known!) and a bunch of elite well-educated Mumbai-ites. The film talked about how hard life was for rural people and how debt is causing them to commit suicide in record numbers. James and I kind of just looked at each other as the rich Indians around us gasped in shock throughout the movie expressed how moved and surprised they were during the discussion afterwards. Could these people really not know what is going on right outside of their doors? Literally a few hours on all sides of Mumbai there are rural people living this way—and people who lived in India their whole lives did not realize until they saw this movie? After spending just a little over a month in rural Tamil Nadu it seemed that us Americans were way more informed about the rural poor of India than some people who had grown up in Mumbai. It was a crazy experience and left me with a sour feeling. It made me think of Americans and how a lot of us do not understand poverty in our own country as well.

Overall Mumbai was not my favorite, because the stark contrast between the rich and the poor just made me feel too guilty to actually have clothes on my back and food in my stomach.Next we headed to Goa, which is a stretch of about 2 ½ hours of just gorgeousss beaches, as far as the eye can see. The whole place does not feel like India at all, it has a more laid-back, less-chaotic, almost Latin American feel to it. The random Indian cows hanging out on the beach definitely helped us remember where we were though. We rented a beach hut on the beach for $8 a day and kicked back and enjoyed ourselves for a while. It might have been the first time since arriving in India that I actually felt completely and utterly relaxed. $2 Daquiris in a beach hut next to softly rolling waves will do that to you. It was a terrific retreat from the frenetic and overwhelming chaos that is the rest of India.

Twelve Shining Stars

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This week I’ve been doing something especially near and dear to my heart. Ever since I started working in developing countries, women’s issues have caught my interest. The way women are treated in some countries is appalling, and India is a pretty bad offender on this particular issue. The literacy rate for men in this area is around 76%, while girls have a literacy rate of only 52%. As has recently made the news lately, there is a huge problem in India, China, and other countries with “missing girls”—girls who are aborted before they are born or not given the food and health care they need in early childhood, causing them to die. In these populations there are significantly more males than females, and this can lead to many societal problems. Obviously women and girls are not valued as much in societies such as these, and often they are practically sold to a husband at a young age or are treated as a household servant. This has led me to a desire to work with women in India, to build self-confidence, teach them to stand up for themselves, and to further their education as a whole. Here in Vikrivandi I’ve found the perfect opportunity to do this. />
At St. Mary’s, a local catholic school where James and I are teaching, we met a great group of girls. All of the kids are wonderful of course, but we found the 9th grade girls to be particularly eager to learn both about English and about life beyond rural India. An idea that has been bouncing around in my head for a while seemed like a perfect fit for these young fifteen year olds who will have to overcome so much in life—a “women’s club” just for them, for them to inspire and teach each other and also to have a strong group to turn to in times of adversity. Women in India who want to have a career of their own or a life of their own in any way are shunned and outcast from society, and girls have to struggle to defend their right to stay in school and have an education. The girls in this class have already made it to 9th grade and have high hopes for their futures.

After discussing the idea with the headmistress at the school, I convened the girls for a few hours after school last week. They were all very excited to be getting special attention, and all twelve of them stayed after school to participate in the group. They named themselves “The 12 Star Club” because there are twelve of them and they are beautiful like stars. Along with snacks and games, we talked about the challenges for women in India, what being a girl here is like for them, and what they envision for their future. Four of the girls were Christian, one is a Muslim, and the other seven are Hindu, so we had a wide range of religious backgrounds, making it even more interesting.

I was surprised to hear that despite all I know about the challenges women face in this country that the girls all had a pretty optimistic view about their country and their future in it. All of them aspire to attend college, and all besides one feel that if they earn high enough grades they will be able to achieve this goal. The one who is not going to continue to college was a Muslim girl named Nabe, who’s family tells her she will continue to 10th grade and then drop out to get a job and get married (at age 17). This seems to be the tradition for Muslims in the community, but otherwise the girls had no thoughts of marriage quite yet.
The group acknowledged that at times they are treated as the household servants, having to do all of the cooking, cleaning, etc for the family. They also are not allowed to do a lot of things boys can do: stay out late, go places unaccompanied, or drink alcohol (even when they’re adults). Their biggest gripe seemed to be that they want to wear pants like westerners but their parents would never allow them to do that. The common practice in India of requiring dowries from girls’ parents in marriage is also a big issue for them. The 12 Stars Club believes that this practice is wrong because it causes a lot of problems among the girl and her new husband and his family. The girl goes to live with the man and his family and if they felt that her dowry was not sufficient often she is beaten or not treated well in her new home. The girls in the group felt very strongly that the practice of having dowries is wrong and outdated, and they all say that they would not marry someone who demands a dowry. I also found out that having “love marriages” is slowly becoming more accepted here. About half or more of marriages, however, are still arranged by the families involved. Overall, the girls think that they have a better quality of life than their mothers before them, and have better opportunities in life. I left the group meeting feeling pretty optimistic about how women are becoming more valued members of society.

We also watched some movies, had snacks, and played a few fun games. The club has to take a break for now because they have final exams, but after their exams are finished we plan to continue the group, and even after I leave here hopefully they will continue having meetings of the 12 Stars Club. These girls are amazingly talented, intelligent, and outgoing and the hope is that the group will only strengthen them and give them more confidence. Although I don’t know all of the challenges they will face, or how their lives will ultimately play out, I do know one thing—I wouldn’t bet against these girls.

Stepping Into the Future

Sorry I haven’t written in so long. Time is flying by here so quickly, it is almost impossible to believe I ever thought I might be bored at night in rural India.
Not this past weekend but the weekend before James and I took a three-day trip to Bangalore, the “IT City” of India. If you’ve ever read Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat”, you will recognize that Bangalore (actually now Bengaluru) is the up-and-coming city he talks about extensively as an example of the world being “flattened” by technology.

Bangalore is quite a sight to behold. I haven’t gotten a chance to travel too much here in India so I’m not sure how it compares to other big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, but man oh man is Bangalore different from rural south-east India. Stepping off the five hour train from Chennai into Bangalore was like stepping into a different country in some ways. Sure there were stray cows here and there on the city sidewalks, and sure there were lots of urban poor. But instead of grass-roofed huts they have enormous IT buildings, and instead of roadside “tandoor” shops selling street food they have McDonalds and KFC (albeit with “veggie burgers” instead of the usual fare). Bangalore looks like a growing place, a city on the move, really on the rise. A new metro system is going in, and new luxury malls are starting to appear in the nicer section of town. Outside the city in the aptly named suburban area of “Electronics City” familiar companies such as Siemens, IBM, Goldman Sachs, and GE have their sprawling corporate offices, side by side with Indian companies such as Infosys and the Bank of India. We had a great time exploring the city, meeting up with some foreigners at last (no foreigners except us out here at CR, which is why we cause such a fuss everywhere we go) and enjoying some non-south Indian food for once.a>
After living for a month in rural India, where we literally drive over harvests that are laid out on the road, where seeing oxen teams pulling carts on the National Highway is a daily occurrence, and where many villages don’t have electricity let alone internet, seeing a different side of India was very interesting. Bangalore is also a mix of people—although it is in the Indian state of Karnataka, there are people from all over India who have migrated there for work, including the people from neighboring Tamil Nadu (where I’ve been living) who originally came to the city to work under the British rulers. This diversity is apparent from even a walk into a movie store—there are sections with movies in English, Hindi, Tamil, Teluga, Hindi, and more. Over the years they’ve developed a very cosmopolitan and diverse city with Indians from many different backgrounds all living together, speaking different languages, and becoming the entrepreneurs and leaders of their country’s future.

March 4

The Library at St. Mary’s has been a success so far. We had the 7th and 9th standard (grade) take out books already. Unfortunately there are not enough easy books for all three standards (7th, 8th, 9th) to take out books at the same time. With 59 kids in 7th standard alone, there just aren’t enough to go around. But the kids who do have books out so far seem really excited about the prospect of having a book all to themselves for a few days, and I’ve noticed that they’ve been carrying them around with them everywhere they go. a>

There was a horrible incident at St. Mary’s that we heard about from Father Felix the other day—a girl in 6th standard, who has known heart problems, was beaten by her teacher until she fainted. Beating of kids by teachers with a thick wooden stick is common practice here in rural India, and I’m sure most kids get a whack almost every day. But I was really shocked to hear about a girl being beaten until she fainted, and probably just for talking in class or forgetting her homework. It seems so abusive by our standards.

Not to diminish how horrible that was, but I do almost kind of understand why they use that kind of “easy” punishment so much. Especially in elementary schools like Periathachoor where we work in the afternoons, there are just too many kids in each class. If the teacher didn’t have access to corporal punishment it is nearly impossible to keep a class of 60 + young kids (most of whom are complete hooligans because they are neglected or abused at home) in line well enough for them to learn something. It is a sad fact but also just a reality of overpopulation and the government not having enough money for enough teachers. The system really needs to improve or India will never bring its 55% literacy rate up, especially among the rural populations.