India...and all it's lessons

It has taken me a long time to write this post. Iv been insanely busy, but mainly, iv just been trying to digest exactly what I experienced in country of colour, cast, and oh so much contrast… India. 

It’s taken me awhile to write this blog post because I struggled to put into words exactly what I experienced in India.

 I knew before I went to India that it would challenge every moral, emotion and belief I have, that it would overwhelm me physically, emotionally and mentally. But I didn’t plan for it to change me in the way it has.

I was so incredibly fortunate to be offered a grant to travel as an ambassador for the 40K Foundation Australia. As a Young Australian Citizen of the Year (Kiama) I was sent over with a group of young people from all different backgrounds. Brenda grew up in conflict torn Lebanon, Donna from Macedonia, Jay-Hee from Korea, Tim from England… all different but with one common goal: to make a difference.

 

 My experience in India was nothing short of incredible, and I could write for days about it. About living with no electricity, no water, squat toilets, riding in the back of banana trucks, playing cricket with the kids from the slums, but iv decided to highlight the 3 main lessons that India taught me and what had the biggest impact on me....

Now anyone who’s been to India will tell you the first thing that hits you when you walk out of the airport is not the colour, the noise, or even the heat. It’s the smell. And there is no way to possibly describe it other than it really is a smell that is distinctly indian. It’s a combination of exhaust fumes from the millions of rickshaws,spices, dogs, urine, burning rubbish, incense... everything!
Some people get very off-put with India because it is 'dirty' and they have rubbish in the streets. Whilst you do have to dodge piles of rubbish on every footpath, as well as being a great obstacle couse it also serves a very important purpose....

They don’t throw their food and rubbish on the streets because they are dirty, they do it because they hope that someone can use their waste. This is one of those purely amazing incidences where what we deem an ‘underdeveloped country’ has achieved what the world’s most developed nations can’t: an effective recycling system. India is the truest example of the saying ‘One mans trash, is another man’s treasure’ Because NOTHING gets wasted in India. The reality is, if India actually had a functioning waste collection and disposal system it would destroy the country. Millions of people would die. The millions of people who live off the streets in the slums, the 'rag pickers', the animals who live off the rotting food on the sidewalk, they would all die without this primitive form of recycling. ‘fixing’ a problem like introducing waste disposal it seems would actually do more harm then good. I learn't pretty quickly that going into these countries with our 1^st world solutions for their 3^rd world problems is not the way to fix things. The way to help these people is not to give them a hand-out, but rather a hand-up, empower them with the skills so they can help themselves. 

The thing that is overwhelming about India is the poverty. And it was on a level i had never imagined... It has been over 2 months since i returned from India yet i realised that since iv been back i have not bought a single piece of new clothing. It's because i no longer look in my wardrobe and think 'i have nothing to wear'. Having no shoes and one dress, which happens to be your government issue school dress, is having nothing to wear. But what was most overwhelming was the kindness and generosity of these people who i thought had nothing to give.

You always here people say 'Oh they have so little yet they are so happy'...but that's a load of crap. Spend even one night with these people in a hut with no electricity, no water, the kids are hungry and the men are drunk, and you realise these people are NOT happy. But what they are is resilient. They are the strongest and resourceful people iv ever met. They are far from happy, but they are accepting of what they have. And despite their poverty, they still manage to be so overwhelmingly kind and generous. To be walking along the road to the village with the kids and to be invited into a home was one of the moset humbling experiences iv ever had. Their entire ‘home’ was smaller than my bedroom with the sole contents being 2 pots and a kerosene lamp. Nothing else. A family of 4 live here. I was offered tea, using precious drinking water Chavita and her mother probably walked no less than 2hrs to get. Then I was offered a meal. I knew very well that the contents on my plate were probably the familys ration of food for that night, and every bone in my body ached to want to say no, but I knew what saying no would mean... One thing the Indian’s value more than their food is their pride, and if id refused that meal it would be like me saying that what they have is not good enough for me, that I think they are inferior to me. And as much as considered that this meal, cooked with questionable meat, could make me violently ill for 3 days, I could see how proud Chavita’s mother was that she could offer me a meal, I decided that me being bedridden for a few days was a small sacrifice I was willing to take in order to show these people how much I respected and appreciated their generosity.

The amazing thing is that this same story was not at all exclusive. Walking home from a class the kids would lead me to their shantys to meet their parents where I would always be greeted with tea and a smile. Kids would come to school with a single sweet in their pocket and they would force it into my reluctant hand. They just wanted to feel like they could give ME something, and it nearly made me cry everytime. For the record, I didn’t get sick after eating Chavita’s meal, and biriani rice never tasted so good, and I have 4 tiny uneaten sweets that sit on my dresser to remind me that generosity is a gift that is not exclusive to those who own material possesions. Just like the ugly pinch pot your mum keeps all these years, just cause you made it and so proudly gave it to her, generosity is not about what is given, but the action of giving itself and its value is dependent on the purely on the value the giver places on it.

Education, and in particular girls education, has always been a passion of mine. It was the main reason for my agreeing to this adventure. You see, investment in girls' education may well be the highest return investment available in the developing world...The question is not whether countries can afford this investment, but whether countries cn afford not to educate more girls. Education is the only capital that does not experience diminishing returns. That is, you can not unlearn knowledge. And by increasing the education of girls an entire country can boost its economy hugely. But educating girls has many barriers; religion, family, location, and men. I had a class of 12 girls every friday, and one day one little girl, Mahalmshi, fainted right into my arms as she had not eaten all day. It shattered my heart, and I just wanted to run and go back to my little bubble where these things don’t happen. But in India I saw a lot of things, things I never want to see again… women getting beaten by their husands, children fainting, a 5 yr old girl lying in the gutter on the edge of a slum…but the truth is as much as I did’t want to see these things, we need to see them, because all this stuff is real, its happening right now, and we need to do something about it.

In class when asked what super power they wanted one little girl, 8yrs old, replied 'I want to be a doctor, because everybody likes doctor, and they help people everywhere'. My heart was in my throat and right there and then I nearly burst into tears. These girls don’t lack dreams or ambition, what they lack is opportunity, and it broke me heart to think that all this little girl wants is to be respected, to be needed, to help people, but she will more than likely never be afforded the opportunity because of her 'cast' (India's stringent social heirachy). Education provides an empowerment more than any law or legislation can. Education empowers people so they can change their own lives. And somedays I felt insignificantly small in my contribution with these kids but they didn’t care if I taught them maths or how to play cricket, all they cared was that I was there. That I cared. And that made me realise change isn't about 'changing the world' all at once, its about helping people, one at a time.

Sometimes people say you cant change the world, and maybe they are right, but by helping one person you can change their world, and sometimes, that’s enough.

When in India, along with my daily work in the 40K class rooms, i was tasked with a challenge to see if me and another young girl (a nursing student) could figure out a way to help the people of the Bangalore quarries in India. These people work 12hrs a day, 6 days a week, breaking granite rock by hand with just a primitive hammer and some chisels... and they earn $1.50 a day... I went and lived in the quarries for 3 days, sleeping on the cow-dung floor of a hut and picking mangos off trees as the main source of food. Whilst there, i realised that there was a largely underused resource within the village, the women. The women work in the quarries too, but they only break small rocks, and the older and much younger women can not do the back breaking work, yet all women expressed their desire to contribute to their family's income. After i spent hours sitting in a quarry playing with granite we came up with an idea. When they mine granite they cut large blocks which are used as bricks, the smaller rocks then get crushed for use as road base, and whats left is a fine granite powder which is swept up off the quarry floor every week and trucked off to be dumped by a river as waste. We thought, what if we could use this 'waste' to create a product that could be made by the women, providing them with economic empowerment and personal pride.

We came up with Roka. A social enterprise where the 'waste' granite dust is mixed to make a clay which is coloured, using natural Indian powders, then made into beads and pendants which are then used to make jewellery and items to be sold. The only problem with this enterprise was that the profits that would be made would be too much to give to the women! They could earn in 3hrs work what their husbands earn in a week, and in rural India this is not a good thing! Inequality against women is present all over the world, but no country does it with such inpunity as India. Being a firm believer in the power of education, we came up with the solution to Roka's excess profits... We decided to partner Roka with the 40K Foundation who were already establishing education centres in villages all through Bangalore to provide quality education to underpriveliged kids (read more about Roka and its conception here). The women were now not only earning an income to help provide for their families, gainign respect and personal pride, but they are also subsidising their childrens education by providing a PLUS education centre.

'women aren't the problem, but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity'.

Everyday when I have a fraction of time just to sit and think, I always wonder what my kids in India are doing. What the women in the quarry are doing, if Rani, who is my age, has managed to escape the wrath of her drunk husbands beatings, and if Amma is still hobbling in pain every night after back breaking work in the quarries. Roka is going to happen, because im determined to help these amazing women. But its the kids i miss the most. The realisation I had that I will probably never see these kids again, that I will never know what they grow to be, if they achieve their dreams, breaks my heart. I wonder if Mahalamshi had enough to eat today, and if she ever wonders if I think about her. I wonder if Chavita is still smiling that incredible smile everyday when she goes to class. But more selfishly I often just wonder if they ever think of me. Because whilst I went there to change their lives, I never imagined that they would change mine...