...paved with good intentions

A few weeks ago, I met an Israeli couple in a train station. After a few moments of conversation, the guy turned to me and said "You know, I don't think anything in India will shock you."

In some ways, he was right.

After a certain amount of time on the road, I realize I can get used to almost anything.

I can get used to squat toilets and sharing a shower with fifteen people and seventy five cockroaches. I can get used to 50 hour train rides, overnight sleeps in bus stations and on park benches, surviving on dry biscuits and shot glasses of tea for days on end. I can get used to bed bugs and 30 degree heat in cities thick with pollution. I can get used to being stared at all the time, to constantly being treated like I'm either an ATM or a 'free woman' just because of the colour of my skin. I can get used to abject poverty: to people sleeping in the streets and squatting to relieve themselves in the middle of the road, to children running naked through the cities and sharing living spaces with cows and chickens and goats.

I can get used to all of these things, because I sought them out and they are part of what makes travelling an adventure.

And it's true that these things no longer surprise or shock me.

But there are some things that I will NEVER get used to.

Like the defeatist attitude that seems to pervade this part of the world.

I came to Kolkata with the intention to do some development work, much like what I had been doing in Nepal. I came with the naive belief that people would see the benefit of gaining new knowledge and skills, that people would have a desire to improve themselves and the lives of those around them.

However, I have realized that many of the people here, not just those that live on the streets (who you can forgive for being closed-minded, as they never had the opportunity to know anything else) but also the people running charities here, have no long term vision.

It seems as though running a 'charity' (I use the term very loosely) should be enough. Maybe we aren't really improving the quality of life for these children, maybe we are force feeding them and physically and verbally abusing them, but heck, today they've got a bed and food and that's better than what they get on the streets so who are YOU, with your western views and biases, to come in and tell me what I'm doing is wrong.

Who are YOU to suggest ways in which our system might be improved. We are giving these children love, and that should be enough. We 'want to help' (at least that's what we say we want), we are doing something 'good' and that frees us from any responsibility to answer to criticism or attempt to improve our system.

A suggestion like taking ten extra minutes to feed a child so they don't choke or develop pneumonia is scoffed at. The concept of working with a single child to teach them a few words instead of spending a month flitting from child to child playing and carrying them around with no distinct purpose is scorned.

...and I quote: "You could be a doctor or a teacher or a therapist. I don't care. You are here to love all the children, all the same. That is all that you are here for. And I don't want to talk about it any more".

Never mind that this 'love' won't get a handicapped child very far in life. Never mind that a specific skill set is being offered to improve a child's long-term outcomes. Never mind what could be in the future. What matters here is that at this exact moment the child is receiving love and shelter. Why would anyone ever need to think beyond that?

These are not uneducated people saying this. These are not people who have never travelled, never lived in western culture, never had the opportunity to see what can be in this world.

And the fact that these 'educated', 'cultured', 'responsible' people cannot see beyond their own noses, the fact that there is no long term vision and no open-mindedness in their system of functioning...these are things that continue shock and appall me every day.

These are things I will NEVER get used to.


And you might say that this is not my culture, that I shouldn't judge a system that I don't understand, that maybe these children ARE better off in this cramped, overheated room than on the streets.

And since I'm better at quoting others than coming up with my own answers, I'd offer you this response:

"One of the benefits of education is that it teaches us to think for ourselves....If, as sometimes happens, our education leads us to question some of the value systems by which we live, that is not to say that we are destroying tradition. The tradition that refuses to entertain doubt, or remains impervious to new thoughts and ideas, becomes a prison rather than a sustaining life force.

Even the smallest one of us has a social function, but that function is not to follow blindly beliefs that may not be valid" - Marju Kapur

And one more...

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Ghandi





Sorry for the rant folks.
But it can't all be sunshine and flowers all the time, can it?