Field visits

sorry for the delay, readers! I've been working on this one on and off for about a week or so. trying to keep up the momentum on writing!  

Last week I spent nearly the entire week traveling out in the field, leaving early from the office, returning home after dark – having missed the entire day’s routine of my office, and of my city, too. I traveled with some other staff from the office, one of whom usually was able to translate for me. We travel in big white jeeps, the only vehicles which can successfully travel the roads and non-roads of the Kutch district. Often, the car rides are my favorite part of field visits. We listen to Bollywood music  - my favorite songs are the ones from the older, black and white classical Bollywood films, where men sing to women about  love and express all kinds of cliché sentiments, but in the loveliest of tunes. You’d never think of Hindi as a language of love, but when you hear it in one of these songs, you’ll imagine a love that is so genuine and innocent, it makes your tummy flutter.

We drive through the Kutchi countryside, which is mostly desert – low sitting and sparse plants spot the otherwise sandy and rocky landscape with a line of heavy mountains standing nobly in the distance. They always seem to look entirely unreachable from wherever you are. We stop often – for chai, for mouth fresheners, for little fried snacks, anything. We find little stands by the side of the road and it’s typically a young boy, of only 13 or so years, who comes and pours chai into saucers (not mugs). Carefully, I sip out of the saucer, pretending to be a real Indian. A fly drops straight into Teresa’s saucer and a man from the office shouts, “suicide!” in a thick Indian accent. Everyone laughs, and from then on, every time we stop for chai, we fan the flies away (while simultaneously managing the task of sipping from a saucer) and warn each other about potential fly-suicides.

Upon reaching our destination, we again drink more chai, accept more snacks, and orient ourselves. This past week, I visited one of the animal service stations, a Setu information center (essentially a small branch of our organization, which oversees village facilitation with government programs and other NGO-led projects) and attended two village meetings where we introduced a program we are piloting.

At the animal service center, I learned about the community which depends on animal husbandry for livelihood. We walked around some of the villages and I met the handsome beneficiaries of the center itself. Big Banni buffalo live harmoniously with the people, and seemed to be at the center of village living. (Banni is the name of the grassland in the Kutch district…I think maybe the 2^nd largest grassland…in india? In the world? Will get back to you on that) The buffalo roam freely, grazing during the day, and return at night. They travel in a group, led by one fine buffalo lady who wears a large bell around her neck. The ringing bell moves the group forward rhythmically and the group stays together. All throughout the village,  you can hear the music of the buffalo. The others who are not grazing, swim lavishly in a swamp that’s been dug just for them. They are so big and good-natured, and surround our car as we leave the village.  We wait for them to pass, one by one, each following the next trotting beyond us.

I visit two more villages for the meetings we have arranged. We arrive at four in the afternoon and the sun bathes everything in its most romantic light, wooing me into loving the quiet life of the country. The women gather first and I sit among them. The older women touch my arm, smiling with their wide toothless, fleshy grins. The younger women stare at me, they look serious, but when I smile at them, their hard stare usually breaks, and reveals a warmth that I swear only exists between women. All of these Kutchi women have tattoos on their arms, legs, feet, and necks – as if the traditional art of block printing was so much a part of their lives, of their culture, that they were born with it covering their skin. I touch the old woman’s tattoos – her skin is soft and deep brown. A lot of the Kutchi women have very distinct faces, wide and broad-featured, with dark expansive eyebrows, beautiful. 

We introduce our program to them and the villagers discuss among themselves and ask questions of the staff. They ask about government programs that should be implemented, but are not. They express concern over being able to afford clean water, about support for children who are mentally disabled, about not getting electricity. Someone from my NGO explains that our project, which will train elected government heads how to use more up-to-date technology to collaborate and social network, empower the local government to implement programs that it should have access to.  We explain GIS mapping techniques that will show clearly the households which are receiving government services. It all seems great. But sometimes I wonder if the villagers really will ever see the impact of this project. I look at them watching us, as we roll up in our giant SUV, climb out dressed neatly, pull out a computer and projector, and project fancy GIS maps onto the wall of the children’s school.  I wonder, then, about grassroots development, if there is such a thing, or if ultimately – no matter how “local” the organization is, there will always be those who have the information and those who do not. There will always be a few who are teaching those without the knowledge, without the information, without the skill. And I wonder, as I watch some women stand up and leave with their babies in tow (time to cook, time to clean, time to do all the things women do), if we are somehow exacerbating that distinction, and how – if at all – it can be bridged.

On another day, we drive all the way out to the seaside, where we visit the temporary camps set up by fishing families. They live by the sea 8 months out of the year, during the fishing season and return to their villages only during the monsoon season, when fishing isn’t possible. Coincidentally, I have visited these communities before. Last time I was there, I had such a deep reaction to seeing how the people there lived - that I cried after leaving, a release of all that I had absorbed of their lives. I thought this time I might have a different reaction, a reaction that would be more suitable, more appropriate, more knowledgeable about the conditions and less emotional. But I didn’t. Still it was intense.

The people who live by the sea live in the worst conditions I can imagine. They live in the muddy seashore, where the tide and its salt has left pools of mud. They also undertake the activity of drying fish  - which hang from bamboo poles and leave a thick air of rotting stench that attracts flies. Tons of flies, everywhere. The men in the village are mostly out on boats so the women are responsible for packing loads of fish into carts pulled by mules which carry the fish from the shore to the sorting area. There, women and children sit on their haunches all day, sorting the dead fish into heaping piles which also attract lots of flies. The sun is hot and the smell is overwhelming as I walk through, observing. I feel guilty that I will leave there in less than an hour, then angry with myself for feeling pity, then overwhelmed and all the while trying not to judge their lifestyle. Trying to somehow justify – well, they’ve always lived like this and how nice it is to live with the rhythm of the sea, and this is what makes them happy, there lives are not worse, just different from my own. I try, but none of it makes sense, none of it feels right or fair and I question the organization I work for – wondering why we are working so hard to preserve this kind of “traditional livelihood,” and thinking about all the ways I’ve seen the organization spend money – on the fancy trainers who fly in from Banglore and stay in the nicest hotels, dining on the most expensive meals one can find in this small city – and I wish there was some better way to just give up some expenses and devote some serious cash to helping these communities. But, there’s a lot I still don’t understand, and little I can do, as a volunteer, to question and potentially advocate for financial reform within my organization.

…and that’s not all. The worst part about this whole situation is that the state of Gujarat, the district of Kutch has promoted a fast-paced, intensive industrialization of the region – particularly the coastal area which is used as a port by countries from all over this part of the world.  The corporations which are invading the coastal areas are not only doing horrendous damage to the environment (they are cutting down mangrove areas, which regulate the flow of the sea, and provide habitats for all kinds of nesting creatures), they are also damaging the fishing community’s ability to fish and to sustain a livelihood. They have all kinds of techniques which include taking water out of the ocean, using it to heat whatever it is that requires heat, and then dispel it back out into the ocean, hot and steaming – killing all the fish.

After our visit to the coastal villages, we drive around the complex owned by one of India’s biggest corporations – Adani. It is huge and starring out into the distance, as far as the eye can see, there are machines doing construction, there are thickly paved roads, giant containers for oil, and everything is owned by the company. Private highways for transportation, a private airstrip, a private railway…I’ve never seen so much land, so much space, owned by one company. They control so much and have their hand in nearly every single industrial activity. They are connected with many countries that send their coal for refining, their oil for storing, their goods for transporting. Importing, exporting, processing, storing, shipping, refining – everything.

I take a deep breath in, I am overwhelmed by the vastness of it all. How will these communities survive in the face of something so giant?

** The fisherfolk community of Bhadreshwar has formed a state level trade union to maintain a better price for the fish they sell. Their union is called MASS and they have actually been somewhat successful making their voice heard and in calling government agencies to question the policies of the up and coming corporate entities in their area. They have their own blog, which you can read here.

This is Gujarat after all, which prides itself in having only 6% of the Indian population, but does nearly 20% of the countries exporting, there are tax breaks and all kinds of incentives to encourage this development – India is on the rise, how can we discourage a developing country from finally finding its place on the world stage? It’s a discussion I’ve had with people here, and the complexity of the issue leaves me perplexed and almost numb with the juxtaposition of the realities I had seen that day.

One of my co-workers has a brother who works for Adani, and before we leave we visit him for an hour or so, to celebrate his birthday. He lives in a gated community that’s been made for all Adani employees. It’s beautiful inside – the streets are quiet and clean, there are parks and children on swings and slides. I see four or five women sweeping the same street and parking garages for “four-wheelers.” There’s a tennis court and library, a club house and a gym. But it’s all private, it’s all Adani, We bring him cake and sit together eating. I eat the cake, but my mind, my stomach, everything is unsettled. I can always eat chocolate, but at a time like this it feels like I am committing an act of grave injustice.

My mind is still stuck in this one detail: I think about the baby I saw in the fishing village. The 4^th child of a 28-year-old woman, she was sleeping in a little cradle when we arrived. She awoke as I approached the family’s little hut, startled by her older sister’s shriek. The older sister, a 3-year-old, began crying as I came closer, a terrified look on her face. I asked the man I was there with what had happened, “su taiyu?” and he said the girl was scared because she thought I was a health-worker, there to give her an injection…that’s what she associates with outsiders. I looked at the baby, probably one about 1 or 2 months old, who was delivered there – by the seashore, and watched her open her eyes. I thought about that act of her eyes opening, her little baby brain beginning to absorb the reality around her. Opening her eyes to piles of fish, to flies, and huts made out of canvas sacks, to her hard working mother who somehow manages it all. And how she will learn and live this life only. Will she learn anything else? Will she live anything else? Will her reality become worse than it already is as she grows older? The question nagged at me the rest of the day, and still I wonder. 


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