Re-entry shock.
It's a well-known post-travel-stress syndrome, one which we all dread as we board the plane back to the world we call home.
As I boarded the plane to Geneva, to friends and comfort and family's arms, apprehension set in.
Was this going to be amazing?
Traumatic?
Empty?
After the chaos of 20 million souls in an oven of dust and poverty, how would Swiss impeccability feel?
One afternoon we went out for lunch. Driving through the countryside, lush green fields shimmering in the crisp autumn air, the yellows and oranges shining against a backdrop of grey and blue, I settled against the leather interior and listened to the music crooning from the speaker at my side.
Comfort.
Enjoying a delicious meal and sipping chilled white wine, I wondered that these pleasures brought me no guilt. Shouldn't this feel more wrong somehow?
At one point a young mother and her 3 month old baby came into the restaurant, the proud new grandmother in tow. Sitting at the table next to ours, dressed in Gucci sweaters, gold and pearls glistening, they quietly ate their foie gras and sipped their wine, riches and oppulence oozing from all sides.
This did not bother me.
It didn´t bother me, because for once that wealth seemed to be about something more. Those riches meant education, and health and above all opportunity.
As I watched the young family heaping love and affection, nutrition and intelligence and time on the small boy in his mothers arms I couldn't feel angry or guilty.
In the face of all the disadvantaged children I've encountered in recent months, here finally was a child with a chance.
More than a chance.
That child, at birth, had all the endless possibilities of the world layed at his feet. After so many months of impossibilities and hopelessness, here, in front of me, sat hope.
Beautiful, clean, diamond-encrusted hope.
In the face of that, all the seemingly empty lives of the ´West melted away. With every opportunity that boy was given, I could forgive all the mindless daily rituals of the comfortable masses.
And when Grandpa Prosperity arrived with his perfectly groomed pooch, complaining about his fifth lost cellphone of the year, it didn't ´need to bother me.
That someone with the means to save a village was crying over proverbial spilt milk didn't make my blood boil or tears flow. Because that wealth was being used for something good right here at home.
Because all that gleaming wealth, empty or not, was giving one child all the chances in the world.
Is that enough?
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
Friday, November 20, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Final Countdown
One of the benefits of working within an organization is that they sometime propose experiences that you would never have access to alone.
Like the weekly bathing of street children in a center on the outskirts of Kolkata.
It all began with a bus ride through the streets, slums and every changing scenery of this place; past crowds of men performing their morning ablutions in the murky brown water of a public water pump, children squatting naked in the streets as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes with grimy fists, and cows grazing on piles of refuse, until our arrival at the center for the dying and the destitute.
Only every Sunday, that place is transformed from a place of death to one of life.
A hundred street kids dressed in rags stood waiting for us at the entrance gates, dressed in rags, holding hands and smiling.
'Auntie auntie!'
They descended on us with screams and shouts. The ritual of hope had begun.
Myself and five other women (can I call myself a woman at this point?) spent an hour and a half
pouring buckets of almost fresh water over these bundles of joy and tragedy. Scrubbing a week's accumulated grim from their skin and bones, laughing and exchanging a moment of love with these girls, I experienced a mix of euphoria and total devastation.
Cleaning a starving child. But a happy starving child. How is that supposed to make you feel?
Of course, as with so many of the adventures I've had in this city of joy, it was not the planned experience that will remain with me. Instead, a moment in that day will be anchored in my mind forever.
As I scrubbed my fiftieth body of the day, a girl around five years old came up to me, holding the hand of her little sister/daughter/friend. Relationships on the streets are complex. You become an adult by the age of 4, responsible for the fate of those younger than you.
"Auntie, mal." she said, her mouth set in a grim line, as she pointed to her younger charge's foot.
I looked down to see a foot covered in yellow, pussing cuts. Closer inspection revealed scars from similar injuries all over this little one's legs.
I don't know what those scars were from. At that point, it didn't matter.
Taking the scared little girl's hand, I gently removed her clothes and washed her frail body as she stood with her head bowed and eyes shut tightly.
After her shower, I helped her back into the dirty rags she wears each day (for laundry service is unfortunately not included in this program), and at last she looked up into my eyes.
Big brown saucers stared up at me, as this little Indian princess lifted her arms in the universally recognized plea to be held.
I picked her up. She must have wieghed about 10 pounds. I walked with her to the mobile dispensary, where a man was having his thumb sown back on with no ansethetic.
Trying to sheild the little bundle in my arms from a sight that was traumtizing even to me, I quietly sang into her ear
"The sun will come out, tomorrow"....
Her eyes never left the impromptu surgery being performed before us. Eyes that have seen far too much of the world in far too few years. Eyes that take in everything before them, eyes that have witnessed poverty and abuse and blood and tragedy since they were first opened. Eyes that are more open than mine ever could be.
Holding that little girl for ten minutes as we waited for her turn to get her wounds cleaned and wrapped up, I fought back the tears.
But tears don't have a place here. Tears don't make sense in this world - they're simply a manifestation of my own guilt. Tears don't belong in this 10 lb bundle's life. Tears don't help.
What helps is that at noon that Sunday, this little girl whose name I will never know sat down to a hot meal, along with 99 other children from the sidewalks of Kolkata. Clean skin shining in the mid-day sun, a crisp white bandage wrapped around her foot, she scooped handfuls of dal and rice from a tin plate into her mouth.
And an hour later, she joined the troop of hardened street children as they walked out the gates and back to their homes, a banana tucked into their pockets, hand in hand with their sisters and brothers, smiling from ear to ear.
That was my last day in Kolkata. My last chance to explore and experience, to be challenged and hyperstimulated and confused. That was one of my final memories of a world that I have slowly fallen in love with.
And as I head to the airport, to the skies, to the comforts of European cuisine, clean sheets, a bath and family, I don't know how to say goodbye to that world.
So I guess I"ll have to come back....
Like the weekly bathing of street children in a center on the outskirts of Kolkata.
It all began with a bus ride through the streets, slums and every changing scenery of this place; past crowds of men performing their morning ablutions in the murky brown water of a public water pump, children squatting naked in the streets as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes with grimy fists, and cows grazing on piles of refuse, until our arrival at the center for the dying and the destitute.
Only every Sunday, that place is transformed from a place of death to one of life.
A hundred street kids dressed in rags stood waiting for us at the entrance gates, dressed in rags, holding hands and smiling.
'Auntie auntie!'
They descended on us with screams and shouts. The ritual of hope had begun.
Myself and five other women (can I call myself a woman at this point?) spent an hour and a half
pouring buckets of almost fresh water over these bundles of joy and tragedy. Scrubbing a week's accumulated grim from their skin and bones, laughing and exchanging a moment of love with these girls, I experienced a mix of euphoria and total devastation.
Cleaning a starving child. But a happy starving child. How is that supposed to make you feel?
Of course, as with so many of the adventures I've had in this city of joy, it was not the planned experience that will remain with me. Instead, a moment in that day will be anchored in my mind forever.
As I scrubbed my fiftieth body of the day, a girl around five years old came up to me, holding the hand of her little sister/daughter/friend. Relationships on the streets are complex. You become an adult by the age of 4, responsible for the fate of those younger than you.
"Auntie, mal." she said, her mouth set in a grim line, as she pointed to her younger charge's foot.
I looked down to see a foot covered in yellow, pussing cuts. Closer inspection revealed scars from similar injuries all over this little one's legs.
I don't know what those scars were from. At that point, it didn't matter.
Taking the scared little girl's hand, I gently removed her clothes and washed her frail body as she stood with her head bowed and eyes shut tightly.
After her shower, I helped her back into the dirty rags she wears each day (for laundry service is unfortunately not included in this program), and at last she looked up into my eyes.
Big brown saucers stared up at me, as this little Indian princess lifted her arms in the universally recognized plea to be held.
I picked her up. She must have wieghed about 10 pounds. I walked with her to the mobile dispensary, where a man was having his thumb sown back on with no ansethetic.
Trying to sheild the little bundle in my arms from a sight that was traumtizing even to me, I quietly sang into her ear
"The sun will come out, tomorrow"....
Her eyes never left the impromptu surgery being performed before us. Eyes that have seen far too much of the world in far too few years. Eyes that take in everything before them, eyes that have witnessed poverty and abuse and blood and tragedy since they were first opened. Eyes that are more open than mine ever could be.
Holding that little girl for ten minutes as we waited for her turn to get her wounds cleaned and wrapped up, I fought back the tears.
But tears don't have a place here. Tears don't make sense in this world - they're simply a manifestation of my own guilt. Tears don't belong in this 10 lb bundle's life. Tears don't help.
What helps is that at noon that Sunday, this little girl whose name I will never know sat down to a hot meal, along with 99 other children from the sidewalks of Kolkata. Clean skin shining in the mid-day sun, a crisp white bandage wrapped around her foot, she scooped handfuls of dal and rice from a tin plate into her mouth.
And an hour later, she joined the troop of hardened street children as they walked out the gates and back to their homes, a banana tucked into their pockets, hand in hand with their sisters and brothers, smiling from ear to ear.
That was my last day in Kolkata. My last chance to explore and experience, to be challenged and hyperstimulated and confused. That was one of my final memories of a world that I have slowly fallen in love with.
And as I head to the airport, to the skies, to the comforts of European cuisine, clean sheets, a bath and family, I don't know how to say goodbye to that world.
So I guess I"ll have to come back....
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Stories of success
Sometimes the universe really does its thing well.
As you may or may not have been able to tell from recent rants, things in the development sector out here haven't been the easiest the last little while. Although Deepa continues to improve (she's started copying words more consistently, the little trooper), it somehow always seems so futile.
How many kids actually get out of this place? What's the point in teaching a little blind girl how to talk when she's never going to have a chance to go to school or have a job?
Because that's the norm for disabled people here: An institution. The street. Those are the options.
So what's the point?
And then, two days ago, something happened to shift my perspective...
...again
As I was climbing the stairs to work on Tuesday morning, I passed a young couple sitting in the hallway.
"Bonjour" the young girl said with a smile.
Surprised to hear French from the mouth of someone so clearly Indian, I smiled and returned the greeting, continuing on my way up the stairs to the crashes, clangs and screams of forty little bundles of joy.
A few moments later, as I sat saying hello to the kids, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the same girl.
"Excuse me, do you speak French?" she asked shyly.
Sometimes being bilingual realllllly comes in handy. The girl quickly explained to me that she was afraid something had been lost in translation.
"I think they think I want to adopt a child. But that's not it at all. I was adopted from this place when I was 8 years old. This is my first time back in India. I just arrived and I'm hoping the people here can help me find the village of my birth. I don't know anything about my childhood. Can you tell them that?"
Please remember that this is all happening at 8 in the morning on a Tuesday. That's a serious start to the week.
Turns out this beautiful young woman had literally JUST landed in India. She and her fiancee had flown from Switzerland, where she grew up, and landed in Kolkata an hour before I met them.
I suddenly found myself following this young couple through the orphanage, and bearing witness to an incredibly emotional experience.
"I remember the bars on the cribs were painted green, not yellow." quietly, as we walked through the dormitory lined with dozens of beds.
"Did there used to be a park here? I remember my friend and I used to play on the swings together. We loved the park." tentatively, as we sat in the courtyard and listened to sounds of children playing beside us.
As memories came flooding back, I tentatively translated the girls words from French to English, and the sister's responses from English to French.
Slowly, as we toured the rooms of her childhood, her story came out.
It wasn't a nice one.
As a child, a train accident stole her sister's life and one of her own legs, leaving her an invalid in rural India. Not a good start.
Later, her mother committed suicide.
This left the little girl to survive in a small village with no one for company but her abusive, alcoholic father. Alone and afraid she fled.
"I remember taking the train for a really long time. And I remember a train station. And a sister.
The sister took care of me. She brought me here to Kolkata. Later, I remember a plane ride. I met my adoptive mother for the first time when I landed in Switzerland. I was 8 1/2 years old".
Snippets of memories, with no names, no dates, no faces to attach to any of them. Imagine, an entire childhood unknown. Growing up in a world just like yours and mine, where birthdays and hometowns and childhood friends and family picnics are so important. Imagine living in that when you don't know your real date of birth. You don't know where you born. Everything before the age of 9 is a haze, and there's nobody who can make the image any clearer.
Sadly, the girl's file, thin and faded with time, brought us no answers. The only name in the file was the girl's own. The only date of birth was the one she had always used, one which had been chosen for her when she was rescued from the streets. The village listed as her birthplace was the village where she was found not born.
Saddened by her inability to shed light on the past, the Sister turned to me.
"please tell her I'm so sorry we cannot help more"
the translation was met with a smile.
"There's nothing to apologize for. Without these people, I never would have had the life I did. I owe them everything" the girl said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.
No past. But a future. Some would say that's a fair trade.
I don't know why that girl said hello to me in the stairwell. I don't know why I responded. But I do know that I needed this experience.
I needed to be reminded that good things do happen here. That there are success stories and fresh starts amidst the dirt and the noise and the chaos.
That amidst all the impossibilities of Kolkata, some things are still possible.
As you may or may not have been able to tell from recent rants, things in the development sector out here haven't been the easiest the last little while. Although Deepa continues to improve (she's started copying words more consistently, the little trooper), it somehow always seems so futile.
How many kids actually get out of this place? What's the point in teaching a little blind girl how to talk when she's never going to have a chance to go to school or have a job?
Because that's the norm for disabled people here: An institution. The street. Those are the options.
So what's the point?
And then, two days ago, something happened to shift my perspective...
...again
As I was climbing the stairs to work on Tuesday morning, I passed a young couple sitting in the hallway.
"Bonjour" the young girl said with a smile.
Surprised to hear French from the mouth of someone so clearly Indian, I smiled and returned the greeting, continuing on my way up the stairs to the crashes, clangs and screams of forty little bundles of joy.
A few moments later, as I sat saying hello to the kids, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the same girl.
"Excuse me, do you speak French?" she asked shyly.
Sometimes being bilingual realllllly comes in handy. The girl quickly explained to me that she was afraid something had been lost in translation.
"I think they think I want to adopt a child. But that's not it at all. I was adopted from this place when I was 8 years old. This is my first time back in India. I just arrived and I'm hoping the people here can help me find the village of my birth. I don't know anything about my childhood. Can you tell them that?"
Please remember that this is all happening at 8 in the morning on a Tuesday. That's a serious start to the week.
Turns out this beautiful young woman had literally JUST landed in India. She and her fiancee had flown from Switzerland, where she grew up, and landed in Kolkata an hour before I met them.
I suddenly found myself following this young couple through the orphanage, and bearing witness to an incredibly emotional experience.
"I remember the bars on the cribs were painted green, not yellow." quietly, as we walked through the dormitory lined with dozens of beds.
"Did there used to be a park here? I remember my friend and I used to play on the swings together. We loved the park." tentatively, as we sat in the courtyard and listened to sounds of children playing beside us.
As memories came flooding back, I tentatively translated the girls words from French to English, and the sister's responses from English to French.
Slowly, as we toured the rooms of her childhood, her story came out.
It wasn't a nice one.
As a child, a train accident stole her sister's life and one of her own legs, leaving her an invalid in rural India. Not a good start.
Later, her mother committed suicide.
This left the little girl to survive in a small village with no one for company but her abusive, alcoholic father. Alone and afraid she fled.
"I remember taking the train for a really long time. And I remember a train station. And a sister.
The sister took care of me. She brought me here to Kolkata. Later, I remember a plane ride. I met my adoptive mother for the first time when I landed in Switzerland. I was 8 1/2 years old".
Snippets of memories, with no names, no dates, no faces to attach to any of them. Imagine, an entire childhood unknown. Growing up in a world just like yours and mine, where birthdays and hometowns and childhood friends and family picnics are so important. Imagine living in that when you don't know your real date of birth. You don't know where you born. Everything before the age of 9 is a haze, and there's nobody who can make the image any clearer.
Sadly, the girl's file, thin and faded with time, brought us no answers. The only name in the file was the girl's own. The only date of birth was the one she had always used, one which had been chosen for her when she was rescued from the streets. The village listed as her birthplace was the village where she was found not born.
Saddened by her inability to shed light on the past, the Sister turned to me.
"please tell her I'm so sorry we cannot help more"
the translation was met with a smile.
"There's nothing to apologize for. Without these people, I never would have had the life I did. I owe them everything" the girl said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.
No past. But a future. Some would say that's a fair trade.
I don't know why that girl said hello to me in the stairwell. I don't know why I responded. But I do know that I needed this experience.
I needed to be reminded that good things do happen here. That there are success stories and fresh starts amidst the dirt and the noise and the chaos.
That amidst all the impossibilities of Kolkata, some things are still possible.
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