SOS: DIs melting in Behror Block

1^st month report:

SOS: DIs melting in Behror Block...

Already one month has passed since I arrived here, and yes, it is absolutely true what every single DI writes in the monthly reports: the time passes so fast that you cannot even imagine. If the six months of training period have been fast, here time runs even faster.

What to say? There is so much to say, really so much.

First of all, I had the culture shock, oh yes I did.

Well, the trip from Delhi till Gurgaon (where we stayed for 3 days, in DRH) has been a concentrate of India reality: camels, cows and buffaloes everywhere, streets full of garbage and small children half naked playing in top of them. People walking on the highway, crossing it, hitch hiking and noise noise noise. The horns from the cars are crazy here, everybody is always using them, continuously, without any rest. And hot, 35 degrees at 7 in the morning. After one year of silence, up in Hornjoe, in a cool climate, with perfectly clean roads and everything in order, it was a shock, definitely.

I cannot explain very well the emotions I felt that morning, but it was a mix between excitement and sadness. I was very happy to be here, even if I was not realising completely, but at the same time I was very sad and surprised. I saw the first contradictions from the air plane, big houses, with swimming pool and beautiful gardens, and immediately close to them a slum or very small houses in bad conditions; Children playing on hills of garbage, barefoot and completely dirty, and behind, on the background, brand new palaces with western brands, Nokia, Siemens, Reebok, and so on. Extreme richness on one side and extreme poverty on the other side. I don't know, but I still feel somehow guilty for coming from the “rich”part of the world, rich compared to this place, and I really realised how lucky we are, as people and especially as women, to be born in a relatively free area, where we can have access to education without problems, to health assistance, and where more or less our rights are respected and we have freedom of becoming what we want.

Anyway, back to my story: we spent the first 3 days in the DRH in Gurgaon, ans it has been so nice. The students were very cool, the girls were trying to teach me how to dance (but it's a lost cause, I move like a tree) and I even learnt how to make chapati (fundamental for the DIs that are coming to India, believe me).

After these three relaxing days we arrived finally to Behror, by bus, and of course we have been cheated for the first time. We payed for four seats and we were three people. Why? Because me and Pedro were sitting in a place that had a little bit

more space for the luggages, so that was counted

as an extra sit, can you believe it? But anyway, we arrived safe.

It has been so funny to take the riksha with all our luggages, the drivers were really suffering -With DIs in DRH Gurgaon-

because we were so heavy...

but then finally we reached our house, which is very nice actually.

The day after we started our job at the projects

and I have to say that I have been really impressed

by the amount of activities that are taking place in my project. It is called Community Development Project Alwar, it is the oldest project in India, and inside the project there are 4 different programs, 2 are health programs, sponsored by the World Bank, one is a Child Aid project and the other one is called The Hunger Project, and it works with women to empower them and help them in becoming active leaders and being elected in the local Panchayat Institutions (which are a kind of village committee, but on a bigger scale).

My colleagues are very nice, even if most of them have serious problems with English, but somehow we manage ;)

Most important: how is India? I know that a lot of people are curious to know... how is India? I think I can resume this place in a few words, or at least Rajasthan: dirty, crazy hot (usually around 45°, with peaks of 49°), smelly, dusty... and Behror: ugly. I love this place, I love to be here, I love to work with these people, but the place is really awful, it is terrible. I know it's not what you want to read in a monthly report from a DI probably, but it is the truth. The place is really horrible. Basically it is a giant garbage bin, with all kind of animals wandering around eating garbage (which is the less annoying part actually).

- Behror, in a happy, hot morning -

In the street you see pigs, black wild pigs, camels, hundreds of dogs, cows, buffaloes and even goats, and actually me and Pedro are having fun with that, it's always nice to see a giant pig with her piglets running around happily, it reminds us so much of our beloved friend Brunino, that we miss so much. The smell in the street is like the smell in a toilet which have not been cleaned for years, especially because the hot makes every smell stronger, but it seems perfectly ok for the people here, it seems that they don't even notice it.

Anyway, I am living beautiful moments here and very sad moments.

Happy moments when I go to the villages, with my colleagues, and the women just welcome me with big smiles, and the kids go crazy to see me and all of them they want to be in my pictures. They let me enter their houses, they share the little food that they have with me, they make a lot of questions about me and they always always smile, even if their lives are hard, even if they work from early morning till night, like slaves while their men are playing cards the whole day, even if the live a lot of domestic violences. Still they smile, and they have a dignity and a strength that I saw in a few women before. I am really amazed.

Ok maybe I should explain a little bit why I am so in contact with the Rajasthani women. My project works basically on empowering the women, trying to help them in improving their lives and their situation, from all points of view. We work on income generating activities, with the Self Help Groups; we make training for the groups leaders; we teach them about HIV/AIDS and STI (Sexual Transmitted Diseased), about health and hygiene in general, about women rights and so on. One of the activities is the training of CHMs (Community Health Mobilizers) to mobilize the women in being an active subject in the community. The CHM should mobilize the women and helping them in understanding why hygiene and vaccinations are important. One of our target is to immunize all the children between the age of 0 and 1 year, and giving the necessary prenatal visits to all pregnant women.

These are only a few activities, just to give you an idea.

Is not easy to enter in contact with the women sometimes, because Rajasthan is still a very old fashioned and traditional state, and speaking about these kind of subjects (sex, and sexual diseases and so on) is still very difficult, and often the women cannot leave their houses without the permission of their husband, otherwise they risk to be beaten by them.

So it is very important to build trust with these people and with their husbands, and it seems that we are succeeding and the activities are running very well.

Another important activity that we are doing now is the promotion of the use of filtered water. A filter to purify water is not too much expensive for us, but for most of these people it is still not affordable, so they continue to drink this dirty water and to have problems of diarrhoea and other water born diseases. We are giving a lot of emphasis to this theme, and I hope it will work.

The sad things I saw are basically related to the women and their status in this area.

Here the marriages are still arranged by the families, and the girls cannot say anything about it, they just have to accept. They get married usually when they are 15 or 16 (in some castes they get married even earlier, there is one cast that marries the children when they are between 6 months and 1 year old). Usually they don't know their future husband, they meet him for the first time during the engagement ceremony, and after 15 days they get married. So they meet their husband for the second time on the day of the wedding. For us this is really absurd but for them it is simply normal. It is how it must be. But one thing I can say for sure: they are not happy with this. I say this because I saw with my eyes a wedding, and I felt so much pity for the poor girl. She never smiled, not even one single time, and it looked more like a funeral than like a wedding. She was beautiful, in her wedding dress, perfect, but she had the saddest face I've seen in my whole life. I really felt pity and I felt strange because a wedding should be the happiest day of a girl's life, but not for that one.

The groom arrived dressed like a prince, with Aladin's style shoes, on a beautiful white horse. If it would have been a love marriage, than it would have been like a fairy-tale arrival, but like this, it was just grotesque and I felt it very cruel. Of course the boy was not so sad, for the men getting married is not so bad, it just means that they will have a slave that will cook for them, that will clean and work in the fields while he will just be served as a prince. Indian friends are saying that raping the wives is also a very common behaviour here, because a woman is not supposed to have freedom to chose if she wants have sex or not, she just have to satisfy her husband's desires.

All this makes me feel really angry and sad and sometimes disgusted, because women rights are really an option here, and as a woman I feel very offended and deeply touched by this problem. This is why I think that our work here is very important, because we can really help these women in believing more in themselves, and having a higher self-esteem.

Anyway, as usual I started to speak too much, so for the moment I will finish this “report”, and I promise that my next report will be more serious and more focused on the achievement of my work.

I add some pictures, because the nicest thing here are the faces of the people, the kids are beautiful and the women as well.

 - CHM in Kakarchaja Village -

They give me really a lot of energy and I hope I will use it in the best way.

I miss Norway sometimes, especially when the temperature goes to 49° (quite often) and I almost cannot breath.

Nico

October 2008 team