नमस्ते दीदी!

(Namaste Didi!)

So this past week has been filled with so many new things, it feels like I have already done a month’s worth of living! First off: funny story. I arrive in Delhi airport, and I am looking around for what was described to me as a “tall handsome young man named Ravindra” to pick me up. Okay, so there were basically just many short older men with long beards, many with some type of turban, and let’s just say instinct told me none of these were Ravindra. So, I went to the payphone and called Vatsalya’s office, which to my luck was still open. The CEO of Vatsalya, Dr. Hitesh Gupta answered and he did not seem to have any idea that there was a volunteer named Vicki that was supposed to arrive. He then instructed me to call his wife, Jaimala (the one with the original brilliant vision of Vatsalya). I did just that, and upon hearing her sincere and welcoming voice full of panic, I knew I would eventually be in warm and good hands. Apparently, Jaimala marked the wrong date on her calendar, but I reassured her I wasn’t worried and that I was flexible. There are mistakes people make because they are heartless and careless, and there are mistakes people make because they are so warm they say yes to everyone and simply mark the wrong date. By the way, I make the same kind of mistakes all the time. Anyways, she immediately arranged a taxi to pick me up, and about 6 hours later, after about 22ish hrs of traveling, I arrived at Udayan (meaning to rise above) Children’s village outside Jaipur.

Udayan is kind of set up like a shrunken college campus, but it is run similarly to a summer camp. Although, I only use those two for a basis of comparison, because in reality, Udayan is unique in its fundamentals, and therefore, nothing else to which it can compare exists. Udayan is a rehabilitation center, an educational facility, a place of athleticism and creativity, and most importantly a home and a place where family exists for over fifty orphaned street children from Jaipur. They come from some of the most horrific and abusive circumstances, yet upon arriving here and observing for one day, one might never know that these children had once been viewed as nothing but potential rag-pickers. At Udayan, they have a voice, they are allowed to dream, and more importantly, they are encouraged to reach those dreams as well.
Other volunteers here are Elma and Charlotte, from Denmark and “Opa Ji,” an old wise man from Antwerp, Belgium. On Sunday we went to Jaimala’s house for a special lunch and endless chai. First impressions of the food were excellent! First of all, it’s so nice to have some well prepared vegetarian food! Although, it did take a few days to get used to the art of eating with only my pure right hand and possibly a spoon.

Tuesday I went back to the office in Jaipur to meet with both Jaimala and Hitesh about the fundamentals and inner workings of Vatsalya. Vatsalya is the mother NGO that umbrellas many brilliant projects. The projects are basically divided into three branches: the first for education of street children which is usually headed by Jaimala, the second being for health promotion which is usually led by Hitesh, and the third branch which focuses on women's empowerment. The third branch actually differentiates itself into a separate organization called Anoothi. However, because education, health and women's issues so often criss-cross each other, there are also many criss-crossing projects, and the structure of Vatsalya is definitely fluid enough to operate them. Vatsalya attempts to fulfill the gap between the government and the laws they pass for the people and the actual people. For instance, the Juvenile Justice Act (otherwise known as the JJ act) certainly is a wonderful proposition for the street children of India, however, the standards the government officials are held to are pathetic, and there is absolutely no accountability within the system. Jaimala has envisioned a place like Udayan her entire life. However, she has also witnessed gaps between the government and the people in many aspects, so in each instance there is a gap, Vatsalya is attempting a way to fill it.

After learning about all of the inner workings of this brilliant NGO, I went sightseeing with Renu, one of the office staff, in Jaipur. So, Renu is great and ever so friendly; however, our communication was not going too well. Example: on the bicycle rickshaw ride to the restaurant (more like an Indian deli/bakery), she asks if I prefer heavy food or light food. I prefer light food. So, we arrive and she ordered for us. On the plate under a flooded bath of sour cream are 4 doughy dense ‘biscuits’ (for lack of a better word). Of course, in India, it is also rude and highly insulting if one does not finish their plate, which in this case would have required scooping up mounds of soupy sour cream. Pathetic as it sounds, I wanted to cry as I knew my barely lactose tolerant stomach was as well wincing at the plate.

After lunch, Renu says, “Heavy lunch, no?”
REALLY?!

Another frustration I have learned to deal with: It does not matter if I am telling someone that I have absolute proof that the apocalypse is coming tomorrow because if their cell phone rings, they will answer. Or, if someone comes in during a meeting to have a separate conversation entirely, no big deal…I will just be waiting on the edge of my seat. Jaimala explained that because everything is so informal, it is perfectly okay to interrupt, and since I am a volunteer, it is like I am a part of the Vatsalya family, so there is no need for formality. So, if I come back to the states constantly interrupting you, let it be known I only think of you as family.

Tuesday and Wednesday I stayed overnight at the guesthouse in Jaipur. Each morning I went to a different park to do some breathing exercises (yoga) and meditation. Hitesh took me to the second park which is absolutely stunning. There are tons of side paths you can take and hills to climb. You could explore the park for a whole day and still not get to everything. It was a dream come true! We went around 7am and all around were people meditating or exercising. It is such a peaceful way to start the day. Jaimala described meditation to me this way. You go to medical school to study medicine, law school to study law, or read literature to develop language, but where do you go to study yourself, or what textbook do you read? That’s where meditation comes in. During so, you study yourself and your “inner god”. Another thing I really appreciate about yoga is that during meditation, you exercise your mind, yet through concentration of breathing, you exercise your lungs and other organs. Simultaneously, you can exercise your muscles with exercises that western yoga is known for. Since everything is connected in the body, it really only makes sense.

Later Thursday, I visited the Kavach project which is where I will be working starting the 3rd. Kavach is the HIV/AIDS prevention education project that targets truckers in Jaipur. Interestingly, India was one of the last countries to be affected by the virus, yet it spread faster here than any other country. I am basically working in an office near a trucker rest stop with about 8-10 guys. 1-2 are physicians, some do direct outreach and education, and some are in charge of bringing back truckers from the rest stop to the office for a check-up with the doctor if the person believes he has a medical issue. So far, I only have a slight overview of the project, but I have gathered so far that the staff is very friendly and eager to hear all about a 23 year old unmarried white girl from the USA trying to be a doctor. Although communication isn’t 100% accurate, I have been made well aware of the fact that I am working with all grown men (which tends to be something I’m good at). I have also been made aware that while talking about HIV prevention with this population, I’m basically just teaching sex ed., and with that, the more crude and blunt, the more effective. At least that is what I have observed after I have seen their interesting hand drawn anatomical figures showing all of the fluids and doors, and, yes, positions, that HIV is often transmitted. I can’t wait to get started!

Friday I had the honor of visiting one of the rural homes of a woman who is part of the Anoothi women’s empowerment project. On the way there, I saw some homes made of what seemed like mud or clay and many sinking roofs. Her home, however was very tranquil and pleasant. One thing I have noticed about poor families and poor people here is that they still manage happiness despite their obstacles. They don’t tend to place blame on anyone or devote their energy to negativity. On the contrary, they keep moving forward and find joy in what they do have: which is food, family and other loved ones. The people in both the slums and the rural villages that I have seen are not in extreme poverty struggling for survival although they are poor. Therefore, I think a great lesson can be learned from them being as fortunate as myself. When you have the means to survive and even have the means to save a small amount, you have stepped on the first rung on the ladder of economic development (currently I’m reading The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs…so far he may be a genius). When this happens, you have the ability to look forward and to be joyful in the present. It’s interesting and even sad how many far up on the economic ladder struggle to find joy in the present and in what they do have.

Anyways, while at her home, another cultural difference between eating habits was thrown at me. About 5 women prepared breakfast/lunch for Ravindra and I, and of course it was their finest food. And although everything was absolutely delicious, I felt quite odd eating while all of those women plus about five more family members made a half-circle around the two of us and stared while captivated at us eating. Seriously…it freaked me out. And of course, after you finish one chapatti, someone immediately fetches a plate of 5 more chapattis, and while I am gracious for their hospitality, it definitely felt a bizarre, if not a little creepy. They stared at every bite I took, and they were not even eating anything. It was weird. But, I do know that from their point of view, it was a great opportunity if not honor to host me, and in turn it felt an honor to be treated so well.

Saturday, the volunteers and I headed to the Upaarjan/Samvedna project. This project is directed toward the uneducated slum youth. Basically the project has two branches. Part of Upaarjan is directed at bringing in youths between the ages 18-35 to give them a crash 3-month course in some sort of vocation and then help them find a job. Many of these youths did not receive a childhood education and spent much of their time on the streets sometimes only learning to pick-pocket or sell odd things they find in order to make a living. This project aims to give them a prospective career in the hotel/restaurant business or tailoring, carpentry, etc. Each course also has a supplementary English course where they can learn the basics as well as jargon for their business. Once the three months has almost ended, the staff returns to the slums to find more youth to enter the program. The Samvedna branch of the program advocates health/hygiene and some sort of education to the slum children. These children have homes to go to and are not orphans; however, often the children do not go to school and resort to spending their leisure time on the streets. This aspect of the project delivers one day workshops or camps to these children regarding health/hygiene and sometimes simply gives them a day of fun. Friday was health camp/fun day in a slum about 3 blocks away from the Upaarjan office site. Also note, there was absolutely no advertising necessary because when 4 white girls are walking around in a slum with cameras, people, especially children, flock. The first thing we did was hand out fliers about the upcoming 3 month course for youths. During this time, after seeing our cameras, many children congregated around us and insisted we give them a photo shoot. After passing out fliers, we had a truck equipped with a giant hose come by, and we proceeded to give about fifty kids a bath. After much improvisation, we came up with some kind of assembly line as we had two people lathering up soap, one person drying (me), one person putting oil in the hair, and the final person clipping nails and trimming hair.

Afterwards, we had about fifty clean kids joined by 25 or so who came to see what the commotion was about follow us to a park where we gave them coloring materials. That part was absolutely INSANE! Because most of these children have never had a consistent formal education, their lack of discipline was tremendously overwhelming. My simple task of handing out crayons turned out to be a nightmare, and if presented with the same opportunity again, I would definitely have handled it differently. As I went to the first group of 4-5 children with some crayons, 90% of the children (even the older ones) came rushing at me, and pleaded with me to give them crayons. And, even after they received some, they would come back for more until the point where I was sitting down with a pile of crayons in a mob of children. Seriously, they did not even have the discipline to wait until I came around. There were plenty of crayons to go around! It was absolutely nuts! What worries me is thinking about what will happen to these children when they’re older. How can one find a job when one cannot even follow a simple instruction or have 2 minutes of patience? What I also had to learn to deal with was that we were providing one day of temporary fun and entertainment to the children who otherwise may not have had a bath or any sort of productive fun that day. Although it was in fact a good deed, the hardest part was to walk away, especially when they began following us and asking for money, reminding us of their grim circumstances. I have learned to understand that sometimes giving only a few hours of happiness is possible, but it still makes an impact no matter how small it feels. India is currently taking many steps to make the quality of life better for its people, and in the meantime, I think all children deserve at least a small outlet to experience joy, no matter how chaotic it might be to get through that outlet. Dr. Gupta told me it is much better to develop by going from chaos to organization than organization to chaos. After considering that, I definitely agree and only hope to be able to deliver just a small amount of happiness to children more often. Saturday night concluded my volunteer introduction with a traditional Hindi welcome party by the children at Udayan. Picture this: elementary school sock-hop with some interesting Indian techno dance music, equally interesting dance moves, and a 70 year old Belgian man joining in the fun. It was definitely a great end to a full day.

Sunday, I had the privilege to see the results of Jaimala’s initial vision of Udayan come to life. It was science day at Udayan! (Health/Hygiene Saturday… science Sunday…I am so blessed!!!) Essentially, the children prepared a science fair and about ten children gave an eloquent presentation with visual aids and demonstrations about their experiments. They included a light refraction demonstration through both water and glass to produce a rainbow, a pH demonstration to differentiate acidity and alkalinity, a thorough description of the human digestion system (with a beautiful hand-drawn diagram), magnet demonstrations, homemade cellular slides and it goes on. Listening to each presentation and also listening to their answers of Dr. Gupta’s probing questions was so moving. They clearly had mastered the material, and it just proves that all children, given the support, have unimaginable potential.

Sunday night kicked off Holi! Holi is a Hindi festival of colors celebrated in Rajasthan and other parts of northern India. In order to truly participate in the event, us white volunteers were decorated with some Henna (compliments of the talented 18 yr old Manju at Udayan) and some traditional Indian clothes. The children all said we looked beautiful. I honestly looked like a huge bottle of Pepto Bismal in light pink balloon looking pants and a matching shirt-dress. To kick off the holiday, we had a bonfire at dusk. The beautiful thing about this event was that all of the children thought about the abuse and exploitation they had suffered and physically threw it in the fire (via some sort of stick) and watched it go up in flames. It was very touching to see how resilient children truly are.

HOLI COW! The Holi festival began full force after breakfast on Monday. Okay, if anyone remembers the Glenbrook North hazing incident of 2003 (if not refer to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9xbP18_0B4), picture that. That is virtually Holi. Okay, no, not really, because in Holi, there is no one with the upper hand. Everyone is at risk for getting slaughtered in mud (or if you’re honored, cow dung) but most importantly, COLOR! It starts out innocent enough…everyone running around with bags of powdered brilliant colors and smacking handfuls of it on each other. Then, once you are colored head to toe in pink, red, purple, blue, green, and yellow, someone drags you to a “bath” (either to a where a hose has been placed and created some kind of mud pit or if you’re lucky, into a “cleaned out” cow trough). Then, shoooot…all “clean”? More color, sand, and mud to come! As the day progressed, everyone was completely unrecognizable as they had been dragged through mud and had color stuffed in their faces. Not to mention, all of the boys’ clothes had been ripped off and the girls’ at least had gigantic holes. Everyone’s hair was either filled of different colors, or in my case, all of the color, mud and sand had kind of fused together to form some sort of glob on the top of my head. The Holi colors represent energy, life and joy, and the festival was actually exhilarating to be a part of especially regarding the circumstances at Udayan. After shedding and burning the abuse the night before, everyone smacked each other with joy and energy the following day. The afternoon came to a close with music and everyone dancing in the playground of Udayan to Indian party music in our filth. It was kind of tribal, kind of liberating, kind of beautiful…mostly gross though. Following the celebration, I took a nice long bucket shower and shampooed my hair about three times. I do not think my travel size soaps prepared me for Holi.

So today is really just a transition day. I have arrived back at the guesthouse in Jaipur where I am staying the rest of the month. I have basically just been doing some logistical things and preparing for my work at the Kavach site. In doing so, I have decided to make a checklist for any foreigner attempting to purchase an Indian SIM card as doing so today proved to be the biggest hassle of my life.

Things you will definitely need (if you apply today)
1.) Copy of passport (signed)
2.) Copy of Indian VISA (signed)
3.) Copy of Driver’s license or some other proof of permanent address (US passports do not have your permanent address on them) (also signed)
4.) Passport size photograph (signed)….no….scratch that…instead, an official passport photograph is actually not accepted as it looks like one may have cut it out of a larger picture (REALLY?!)…instead proceed to a professional photographer to obtain a smaller photograph with a red backdrop and white border (the border is essential as it PROVES you did not cut the picture yourself…SERIOUSLY?!)
5.) Signed certificate of some sort from your local residence with contact information
5a.) Actually, also bring the Indian citizen who signed the certificate with you as to make the vendor absolutely certain there is no forgery (along with his or her ID obviously)
6.) Completed application

Things I anticipate one needing in the future
1.) Finger prints
2.) Consent to a full background check (although that may already be taking place without consent)
3.) Also, if you have any unpaid parking violations in your home country, I also anticipate your application to be either delayed in processing or denied altogether.