Work Progress

My favorite part about interviewing the women is that no one seems to know how old they are. It’s usually about the second or third question on the list and sometimes takes the longest to answer. The women will first tell us a number that is obviously too young and then a lengthy discussion begins between the crowd that has gathered, with the women giggling among themselves, lovelingly slapping each other and after a few minutes come to a conclusion on the particular women’s age, and still there are dissenters in the crowd who are not satisfied with the final answer. Since I cannot speak Hindi, I spend my time holding the children and smiling at the women who are continually laughing at me and patting me on the back. They have gradually accepted me, and despite my lack of language skills we actually have conversations, which always end in laughter and utter confusion, but the translator tells me they appreciate my smile and say “Stef always laughs no matter what”.
They would probably be shocked to hear my frustrations and complaints of India. How tired I feel and overwhelmed by the poverty that surrounds every move I make. In India, like nowhere else I’ve lived before (or maybe I have just ignored it) the poverty chills your skin like a bucket of ice water every time you pull out your wallet or chump down a samosa from a street vendor. Either it’s a tattered beggar child with their tiny outstretched hand and green eyes gazing up at you, while they touch your hand or motion their hand to their mouth, whispering “kana” softly (meaning food), or it’s a stick thin bicycle rickshaw driver, blackened by the sun and emaciated from pulling plump tourists like myself, who shamelessly barter for a cheap price. The guilt of bartering weighs on me as I simultaneously put my own weight in the carriage, and now I try to avoid the eyes of these skinny men whose jobs are laterally on par with that of an animal. In fact the cows in India are treated better than these men! People give their left over food to the cows and all traffic gives way to a cow wandering the street, which is everywhere you look, but I’ve never seen anyone offer left-overs to a cycle-rickshaw driver!
After sometime it is too taxing to think about the poverty. I can walk by hungry children, a man with no legs, stacks of garbage, men urinating on the street, limping dogs, and beady stares from tired workers without blinking an eye. It’s too exhausting for me to think about how fortunate I am and how poor these people I pass everyday are, so instead I try to put it out of my mind, and usually end up complaining how different life is here in India, how hard the beds are or how loud the dogs were last night so I couldn’t sleep.
I came to India to volunteer, to make a difference, and experience a different culture but those thoughts now seem absurd. Sometimes I don’t know whether to give up and simply admit life is unfair. In my mind I want to justify the poverty I see, to think that what I am doing is actually making a difference, or that the situation is slowly getting better and it will just take a very long time. Occasionally I even want to blame their culture. (If they didn’t have so many holidays or show up to work late we could get something accomplished, or can people here learn what customer service is, the other day I waited an hour with my friends to get a simple cup of coffee! All these I realize are just reflections of a different style of life, different priorities, and who’s to say one is better than the other? Is it better that you can get a latte in two minutes in the U.S. or that in India you chat with your neighbor more frequently and share meals rather than feeling the need to “go out” for coffee or dinner?) It becomes so easy to judge as an outsider in another country, and I think some of the judgments are necessary and simply interesting. Certainly, an Indian citizen visiting the U.S. would make judgments and find certain customs in the U.S. interesting, entertaining, enjoyable, or repulsive. As an individual living in a foreign place, not as a tourist, but with goals, expectations, and different priorities than relaxing, I have found there is another level of frustration and judgments that I am constantly struggling to overcome. I feel I deserve breaks at the one air conditioned, western style coffee shop in town, but why? I came to sit with impoverished women and hold their naked children, yet at the end of the day, this work has made me utterly exhausted, and I want nothing more than to complain to someone, listen to music on my iPod, go to a gym, or sip a latte. My emotions are on a roller-coaster, ranging from tears of compassion, believing I could sit in the slum area with these poor little girls and their ratty-hair all day and night, allowing everyone and their neighbor to touch my cheeks, hands, and clothes, and then when I am back with my host family, my body on their couch eating chapata with my hands while my mind is still in the slum area thinking about the women and children I sat with earlier in the day, I realize how little I am contributing. I try to wrestle with my mind with ways that I could help in the future. I ponder what would be the most valuable degree, the best career path that would actually make a difference or bring some equality to the world. I suppose this is a question to wrestle with the rest of my life. As I have come to the conclusion before in life, the answers are usually never simple, and if you think you found the definite answer you will probably realize you are ‘wrong’ in a couple years. Life truly is about the process (as I learned through my years as a tennis player and student of Jody Rush), about living consciously in the present and not worrying about the final destination. You will end up missing everything along the way if you only focus on the end. Perhaps all this is to console myself, and the reason I struggle with these thoughts is because I am seeking the easy and comfortable solution. For the time being I am attempting to struggle in the present rather than come to any rash conclusion on how to “cure” poverty or shape my life. These are my thoughts for the moment but perhaps they will change tomorrow, so I don’t want to bore my readers any longer!