On the road

I have just come back from a mammoth tour of Eastern India, where I was monitoring Tzedek’s projects in the state of Bihar. Driving through the Indian countryside you cannot help but notice the yellowing dying paddies.  We should be right in the middle of the monsoon season, a time of year where local people are busy working in the fields harvesting their crops, but instead the fields are empty and the crops are dying from lack of rain.  Bihar is dry, there has not been rain in months, and the state government has just declared a drought in 28 out of 38 regions of the state.   Erratic weather patterns and failing crops are affecting the poorest people, and these are exactly the people that organisations like Tzedek are trying to help. 

Before I left for India I was working at Forum for the Future, a leading sustainable development charity, that works with both the business and public sectors advising them on how to be more sustainable.  I was growing tired of working in a job where I helped provide strategic advise to businesses but with no idea how or if it really made a difference to people or the environment.  I wanted to do something real, and so upped sticks and moved to Eastern India to work for Tzedek with a hope and perhaps a certain naivety view that I was going to make the elusive ‘difference’ that all NGO workers want to make. 

About four weeks ago as we were on a long trip back from a successful and inspiring project visit to one of Tzedek’s former partners ERDS, we were as ever discussing our favourite subject; development in India.  One of the volunteers commented, ‘what is the point of all these projects if the crops fail and people have to move to the cities’.  He got me thinking, if we do not tackle the very real threat of climate change and incorporate it into our projects then there is a possibility that it may all be in vain.  You only have to read the news and then you realise that despite there being a drought in northern parts of India, there are major floods in Pakistan.  These erratic weather patterns are going to put a further strain on our limited resources and only increase the number of climate refugees requiring the support of the state. 

My time in India is nearing the end and when I return to London I will be on the lookout for another job. Before I set out for India I thought I knew that I wanted to work in development and part of the reason for taking the job with Tzedek was to get that all important on the ground experience. However after spending the last couple of months in India trying to understand my role in creating change, I think that I have come to the conclusion that the way to make real lasting change is to tackle the underlying issues like climate change otherwise as one of the volunteers said ‘what is the point?’.

Thoughts from Hbag

The last couple of weeks have been particularly tough, I have grappled with development, especially development in India and the role that NGO’s like Tzedek can play.  My last blog was perhaps a little pessimistic, giving a view that there is no hope for countries like India, but that is not true.  It is only natural for a foreigner living and working in rural India to question everything that is going on around them, and in some ways it is inevitable that you have days where the task seems to be too big and complex for anyone to achieve anything.  The last couple of months in India have pretty much been a rollercoaster ride of emotions and an intense course in the realities of development work. 

India is such vast country and it is now in so many ways largely a developed country but yet extreme poverty still exists and the government does not provide basic facilities such as health, education, sanitation etc.  In so many ways India is modernising, but is held back by a lack of basic infaurstrucutre and facilities.  NGO’s provide allot of the basic facilities that should be provided by the Government.  One of our volunteers is working at NBJK, one of the largest organisation of its kind in Jharkhand and when I visited the office last week there seemed to be a mob of about 300 people outside, so I was understandably concerned.  It turned out that it was not a mob, but instead an Indian queue for an open mental health surgery.  Every month NBJK opens its offices to those with mental health problems and provides help, advise and drugs for those in need.  They see between 700 – 1000 people in one day and really this is one example amongst many where NGOs are providing basic services that should be done by the government. 

Whenever I visit and organisation the topic of funding is bound to come up.  NGO’s are largely funded by international funding organisations and NGO’s such as Tzedek, it is near impossible to get funding from their own government.  For those of you that have been to India know that India is a country that loves its beaucracy and applying for funding is no different.  The whole funding process for a project can take well over a year, and unless the organisation knows or has a connection to someone in Delhi they are unlikely to be approved. 

David Cameron recently announced that one of his spending cuts would include cutting DFID’s (Department for International Development) £250 million budget to India.  He said that it is India’s responsibility to provide services for its people and of course I agree with him, but he is not here on the ground and although India and its Government is slowly starting to change it will not be quick enough to help the countries poor.  Our new Prime Minister was in fact in India last week, and instead of coming here to discuss development, I hear that he was here to build business ties with India and discuss immigration.

No more weeks, just thoughts

The more time that I spend in India, the more this country mystifies me. Everyday there is something new to learn, or another tradition that I have inadvertently broken and offended someone. If I thought living in India’s third largest city Kolkata was difficult, but it has nothing on the small rural town of Hazaribag in Jharkhand that I am now living in. Jharkhand is perhaps one of the most traditional states in India, women are not allowed out without a chaperone and they are encouraged not to make eye contact with men as it is seen as provocative.

After visiting the big Indian cities or the tourist towns you would be not be wrong to have thought that to some extent India is a developed country, but once you get out into rural India this completely changes. A recent report by the World Bank has identified Jharkhand as one of the most poverty stricken states in India. Poverty in Jharkhand is at 44%, compared to 26% for India as a whole.

I used to think that there was just poverty, but after spending the last 4 months in India I have realised that there are so many different types of poverty. There are the urban poor of the big cities such as Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, where whole families line the streets at night setting up their own temporary homes and trying to protect their young. There are the illegal slums where families try and make a home and a life for themselves whilst being crammed into a small shacks, and yet their homes and communities are routinely destroyed by the government.

There is rural poverty, like in Jharkhand, where you do not find homeless people instead you find people trying desperately to make a life for themselves. Farmers hoping that the rains will come and that their crops will not fail. Pregnant mothers hoping that their new born child will be a boy so that they will not have to pay a huge dowry and go into a debt that they can never pay back when their daughters marry. These families are not able to save money, if one thing goes wrong such as someone getting ill and as there is no medical system to speak of they can lose everything. These are the families that end up lining the streets of Kolkata. They move their entire families to the big cities, hoping to find work and instead their find themselves alone in the big unfriendly cities of India trying to survive.

Week eight

It has certainly been a while since my last blog, allot has happened and there have been some big changes. I left India at the end of May to return to the UK for my friend Graham’s wedding to Liz.  Within less than 24hrs of returning to the UK I found myself in a field full of beautiful festival people wearing crazy clothes, dancing to stomping music and running around free to do or act however we wanted.  Small World festival is, not surprisingly, a small festival and for families and like minded people.  It was such a huge difference to India, but running around in a field for 4 days but I fell straight back into it and felt like I had never left my life in London and my friends. 

The following weekend was the big wedding weekend in Clitheroe set in the beautiful Lancashire countryside. Liz and Graham walked down the aisle surrounded by the smiles and love of their family and friends.  They both looked amazing, Liz in a glamorous off-white dress that hugged in all the right places and Graham in a skinny black suit with his obligatory bright red shoes.  The party was set in a Moroccan themed marquee overlooking the rolling green Lancashire hills.  Folk music played throughout the long sunny afternoon but once the sun went down and the adults disappeared there were dark and dirty techno beats courtesy of a DJ friend.  The party went on well into the afternoon/evening of the next day, culminating with an after party at a friends flat in the city centre.

While my two week trip to the UK was really all about the fun, there was a slight issue with my Indian visa.  For those of you that have travelled to India will know that getting a visa for India is most definitely a major issues, there many forms to fill in and no certainty that it will be accepted. The Indian government change the visa rules all the time and I don’t think they know what the rules are most of the time.  For those of you that are interested I originally went out on a six month multiple entry tourist visa, I made sure that it was multiple entry because I knew that I was going to be returning home for the wedding.  However we were unaware that in February they put in place a new rule that means that you have to wait two months between visits to India, so even if you are within you visa period you need to apply for re-entry.  It kind of makes it pointless to have a multiple entry visa – but I guess that is just my opinion.  When I returned to London I applied to re-enter within the two month and they rejected my application.  What followed was 3 weeks of uncertainty, multiple trip to India House,  many meetings and conversations about what to do next.  In the end it was decided that I should try and apply for a business visa but if I was declined then Tzedek would send someone else out in my place.  I was pretty much redundant that I would not get back to India and such even started planning what I could do over the summer.  I was on my way to the Tzedek offices to begin my handover with my replacement when I got a call from the visa people and I found out my business visa had been accepted.  I had 3 days to get everything ready and I headed back out to India on the 20^th June, about 3.5wks after I returned and only one week later than planned.

Up until a couple of years ago Tzedek had a volunteer programme in Kolkata, but had suspended the India programme in order to focus on the Ghana programme.  My job was to go out to India and meet up with our old volunteer organisations, current project partners and other contacts and discuss the feasibility of having a volunteer programme in India during summer 2010.  We were not sure where we wanted to hold the programme, but we knew that most of our contacts were in the mass urban sprawl that is Kolkata.  So as you know and if you have been reading my blogs, I began my journey in Kolkata in April, where I visited projects, met people and made new contacts.  However I was always on the lookout for another town or village where we could base the volunteer programme.   I found a number of organisations that were happy to host our volunteers in Kolkata this summer, and trust me it would have been easier to do it in Kolkata but instead we have decided to run the programme from Hazaribag which is a small town in the poverty stricken rural state of Jharkhand.  Not very much happens in Jharkhand and if the Lonely Planet is to believed then you can sometimes find yourself as the only white person in the whole state.  We decided to focus on  Hazaribag because we were looking for a town like Hazaribag where Tzedek could focus our work in India and Hazaribag provided the perfect cluster zone.  It is difficult for a small organisation like Tzedek to work in such a big city like Kolkata and we thought there was more chance of us making some change in Hazaribag.

I have now been in Hazaribag for just under a week and it is very different to Kolkata.  It is a small and dusty town where from what I can tell not very much ever goes on, the highlight of the social scene is going to the cafe in the park on a Sunday afternoon.  I have a feeling that when our Tzedek volunteers finally get out here next week they will be the big news around here.  So anyway back to my arrival in Hazaribag,  I arrived on Friday morning after getting the night train from Kolkata and was taken to my accommodation.  I should have guessed something was up when I read an email from the person sorting out my accommodation and she said that she had been trying to get in contact with Sister Rosily to confirm the accommodation, but I shrugged it off and thought no more about it.  I guess I kind of regretted it when I turned up on Friday and realised that I was going to be staying at the Holy Cross convent for the next two months!

Week Seven

I have just returned from a weekend spent visiting an old school friend in Pune. Pune, or perhaps my experiences in Pune, were just so different to my life in Kolkata.  Pune is a cosmopolitan city, home to multi national companies, international call centres and maybe because of its proximity to Mumbai (or Bombay as the locals still call it) the wealthy.  It is a hill station which should have meant that we were in for a cool weekend a break from the oppressive heat of Kolkata, but because of changes in climate it was a pretty stifling weekend.  

We went to trendy bars, clubs and restaurants, many that rival and probably beat the very best in London.  One club was outdoor looking over the river, we listened to pounding trance surrounded by the scantily clad ultra elite of India who were downing shots and dancing crazily.  As the club closed they ran to the car park in order to get their cars back from the valets, and driving home or on to the after party over the influence. 

I may have made it sound like and awful place, but the people that I met this weekend are amongst the friendliest and most welcoming people I have met since arriving in India. Reema and her sister Diya sit on the board of a number of charities, give generously to charity and are passionate about development.  They do not drink alcohol, and get prefer to get high from dance music rather than illegal substances.  On my way back from Pune I bumped into Hrithik Roshan, a Bollywood star who was on a promotional tour for his new film ‘Kites’, and it felt like a fitting end to my weekend.

Week six (about 5wks late)

India is pretty much obsessed with marriage, and I thought that North West London was bad, but Jews have nothing on Indians with marriage.   If it is not strange enough to Indians that I am out here by myself in Kolkata, the fact that I am 27 and not married or even thinking about getting married is even stranger. 

I visited a project that Tzedek funds a couple of weeks ago that was set up by a women’s charity called Stri Shankti.  They give out micro finance loans to women to fund small businesses, making things like reed baskets, bracelets etc. The money that the women pay back to the organisation goes into a fund that pays for 10 young girls a year from the local village to attend school.  In India as children get older the parents have to start paying for education, and if it is a choice between their daughter going to school or their son it is normally the boy who attends.  The fund set up by Stri Shankti pays for the girls education up until they are 18.  Their parents have to sign a contract that says that they will not marry their daughters off or take them out of education, if they do then they have to pay the charity back for their daughters education.  It was a great project, and so inspiring to see these young girls wanting to learn when children in the west would normally do anything to get out of school. 

This will be my last blog for a couple of weeks, as next week I am returning to the UK for my very good friend Grahams wedding to the lovely Liz.  Although they are getting married I cannot imagine the both of them settling down into a traditional marriage anytime soon, and if past parties are anything to go by their wedding is going to be the party to end of parties.  I only hope that after seven weeks of no partying that I can keep up with everyone, but I am sure that it won’t be too difficult to get back into it J

(a rather belated)week five

This week I have become party to the Indian tradition of a strike or as it is known here a ‘bandh’. I was planning on going on a bit of a trip but have managed to get myself stuck in Darjeeling and so will not be able to make it on to Manali as planned.  It is not like a strike at home that signals a day off for everyone and we all adjourn to the pub.  Instead here it is serious, the whole town shuts down, no transport runs, restaurants, cafes and shops are shut, and any establishment seen to be open and break the strike risks being snubbed by the rest of the city. 

Now don’t get me wrong, Darjeeling is probably one of the most beautiful places in the world to be stuck for a couple of days.  I can sit out on the balcony looking out over the mountains.  It feels like you are at the top of the world, the white puffy clouds cover the lush green mountain tops and dotted between the hills you can see picturesque white houses.  Darjeeling is very different to the rest of India, and in particular Kolkata, as a foreigner you can walk down the street without being stared at or hassled to buy something.  And of course it is cool which is a great relief are the boiling city, you actually need to wear a cardigan and use a blanket at night.  So all I can say is that Darjeeling is the perfect place to spend a couple of days relaxing after the hustle and bustle of living in a big city.  I only hope that I am able to leave here at some point as all the train tickets seem to be booked up for the next couple of weeks!

Week Four

It has been a full on week, filled with meetings , project visits and planning and to be honest I am pretty tired.   It is strange to work out here as in some ways I feel like I am travelling because this is all so much fun and sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember that this is my job, and at other times when I am having trouble explaining to partners and other organisations that I am not involved with Tzedek’s funding programme and I cannot help them with their funding proposals, it is a little more difficult!

Tonight is one of those such difficult nights.  I am waiting around Kolkata for my night train to Hazaribag and I am exhausted.  I still have another 4 hours to wait and nothing to do apart from hang around Sudder St waiting until it is time to go to the train station.  We have all been there when you are travelling, you forget that when you travel it is not all beautiful beaches and historic monuments, a large part of the time is spent on transport or waiting for transport.  This is my first night train of the trip; and as such I have had the big discussion about what class should I travel.  In the end I have opted for 2AC (oooh controversial).   Hey I am working out here and I have a meeting early tomorrow morning so I need a good nights sleep – don’t judge me for going 2^nd class (and Dad that especially means you, I know that there was no AC when you were travelling in India in 1979 but we are now in 2010 and India has changed quite a bit!).  Well I suppose I should start making my way to the station now to make my train, I will let you all know how it goes so until next time…..x

Week Three

I have just come back after spending the last three days at the SEED boys home just outside Kolkata.  The boys home is one of SEED’S long term homes for street children, and it truly is a wonderful place.  They made me feel so welcome, almost like one of the family.  I woke up when the boys woke up; at 6am for meditation and yoga with Prabir (who runs the home), then there was an hours study between 6.30 – 7.30 where I attempted to teach some of the younger ones English.  There were 5 four year olds, and although there were incredibly cute they were totally over excitable and would just not keep their bums on the floor or their mouths closed!  They were intent on not listening to a word I was saying but it may have something to do with my limited Bengali and them only knowing how to say ‘howareyouimfinethanksandyou? in English! Then it was on to breakfast and the boys set off for school, the little ones only for a couple of hours and the older one for longer.  The boys slowly return from eleven onwards for lunch and a siesta during the hottest part of the day.  Some then went back to school and others relaxed, played cricket and took part in various programmes. It is a very special place, full of love and life, and I feel privileged to have spent time there. 

Coming back to Kolkata and Sudder Street in particular, after spending three days in the countryside was a strange experience.  Sitting in the cafes that serve traveller staples such as banana pancakes and pizzas was weird.  I happened to eavesdrop on a conversation between an Israeli and an Aussie who were discussing India.  Everyone has an opinion on India, it is just a country that conjures up emotion from almost everyone who visits it.  The conversation was not one of love for the country, maybe that is why they caught my attention.  The Australian was saying that they reason that he decided to come to India was because it was so cheap, he could spend one month in India for the same price as a week in Europe.  It got me thinking, is this the reason why people come to India – for the sun, cheap food and holiday souvenirs?  Do they not want to experience the culture, the smells and the total craziness?  People always talk about how travelling broadens the mind and it is supposed to make us more sympathetic of other people, cultures and religions.  However I don’t think that this was the Israelis experience, he said that he hated India and could not understand people obsession with it’s culture and religion.  Maybe a little hypocritical coming from an Israeli!

Week Two

I am now into my second week in Kolkata and it is time get on with the job that I have come here to do and actually do some work.  I have spent the last week settling in (as much as that will ever be possible) to the city.  I have been pounding the streets, trying to get to know this massive metropolis so that when the volunteers come out here I will not be completely useless and hopefully be able to provide them with useful information and knowledge about the city. 

Walking through the busy streets of Kolkata you will see everyday life unfolding in front of your very eyes.  Everything is on show, from people washing their plates and getting dressed, all the way over to people picking their noses and going to the toilet.  It is almost as though the city is so overcrowded and full of people that there is not enough space for privacy.  People here love a good stare, especially at foreigners.   I suppose that you could say they are the ultimate ‘people watchers’, but instead of from a cafe they do it from the pavement.  I have been trying my best to fit in, and hopefully minimise the staring and the only way that I could do that way succumb and buy myself a shalwar kameez.  And you know what – it turns out that I absolutely love them.  The deep greens, bright pinks and calming yellows are mixed with a dash of sparkles and a hint of tiny glittering mirrors.  Everyone who knows me knows that I love a good dress, but these are even better than my dresses from Monsoon; and they come with matching leggings and a scarf!