India

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I'm going to India! I wanted to write a blog about all my preparations prior to my journey. I have done tons of research on India and specifcially Mumbai where I will be staying. I wanted to know what India was like before I arrive and know what I will be expecting when I get there. I will be living there for eight weeks this summer and I am so excited. I will be working with an organization named Aseeema. Aseema is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children receieve an education who do not have the opportunity. You may be thinking: India has free education for all citizens why is a non-profit organization needed to ensure education for children? Yes though it is true that the India government has worked hard to provide free education for children, some kids still can't afford it. The people who started the non-profit Aseema realized that the legal provisions made for children was actually different than the reality. They noticed children on the streets of Bandra (located in Mumbai) begging at traffic signals, rag picking and working at tea stalls or garages. Most of these children had never been to school. They started spending two hours each day at the Education Center teaching the children. The Aseema organization's webpage talks about the difficulty they had when first trying to teach the children in a classroom setting. But eventually the kids loved to learn and the organization has expanded from the 18 children it began teaching to 1500 children. On their webpage Aseema outlines their mission "Aseema's mission is to proide underpriviledged children with a nurturing and stimulating educational environment that helps them recognize their limitless potential."

After I read this I was sold to the entire cause and ready to make a committment to Mumbai India. To me, education IS the MOST important thing any child needs to make a difference. You could give them money, but money runs out. You could give them a place to live and food to eat, but those run out. If a child receives an education it can and it will change their life. I learned this lesson during the three weeks I spent in Uganda in the Summer of 2012. I volunteered through a non-profit organization called Yofafo (Youth Focus Africa Foundation). This organization was started by a man named Valence. Valence grew up in a small village named Kitoola located an hour outside of the capital city of Kampala. Valence lost both of his parents at a very young age, but was fortunate enough to have his education sponsered by a westerner. For him, this was all he needed. Valence became the first child from Kitoola to graduate college. Valence considered his opportunity as a privilege and was determined to give back and help his village. This was when he started the Yofafo organization. He and many financial support and volunteers rebuilt the school in Kitoola village so that the children could go to school. During my time in Kitoola the small chldren classroom was outside under a patio. Myself and ten other volunteers built an additional building that would allow this baby class to move into a building with walls and a roof and come equipped with their own chalkboard and desks to sit in. I learned then and there that education can make a difference in a child's life. This is why I want to go to India and work with Aseema.

Children in India are facing similar problems as those children living in Kitoola as well as any child living in poverty in any part of the world. Though the education is free in India there are hidden costs to receiving an education. Parents are forced to spend money on uniforms, textbooks, transportation and meals. I read online that Indian parents spend Rs (rupees) 366 per year on these things. So even though the actual education is free for all, if parents don't have this money the child cannot receive this free education. I also speculate that in India another problem is that children in a family are needed to work to help the family have enough money to survive. I don't know this as a fact, but I would like to see if any of my students are required to drop out because they are needed at home to work.

Overall, I am excited to take this journey, but if you ask me tomorrow when I leave for the airport excited wont be my first adjective. I'm honestly terrfied. This will be my first journey alone as well as my first journey to India. Both of these combined is terrifying. If your anything like me, knowing as muc as you can about a place helps ease some nerves. Here are some things I have learned about India:





The language spoken in India is called Hindi (a language I am trying to learn but successfully failing at). But many businesses and most of the people speak English as well. The main religion in India is Hindu with 80%!o(MISSING)f the population practicing the Hindu religion. I didn’t know this before but India has the third largest Muslim population in the world. Some people are Christian and Sikh.

India is such an ancient country that I needed the history lesson from the internet. India began as a very culturally diverse country and was divided into regional kingdoms. Eventually Muslim nomads entered the country and took over. They started a unified country under the Islamic religion. The East India Company again took over India in 1820 and maintained this control until 1947 when India gained its independence. When the British left the entire region became the countries of India, Pakistan and Bangledesh.

Now that I knew India from a historical perspective I also needed to know what I would be experiencing in present day India.I was surprised to read that India is the world’s largest democracy. It’s economy is made of up agriculture, textiles and telecommunications. I knew from social media that it is a big outsourcing destination but other than that I was pretty foreign to India’s economy.

These are the reasons why I want to go to India. I'm so happy to learn about all the information that already fascinated me with India. The culture is amazing and I love how diverse it is. But there still seems like there is so much I don't know and can't figure out from the internet.

To prepare for my journey I have been watching movies like Slumdog Millionaire, watched youtube videos and bothered Appalachian State University librarians to help me find any and every book written by somebody who has gone to India. Overall I am happy with what I have learned this far. I think India is so fascinating and I really can't wait to see it. But I also think that of India as such a vast contry that there is so much to learn. I have given up on trying to research some topics that I know it is just going to take some first hand experience to grasp. Mainly in this category is the caste system. I have learned a little about the caste system from my reading. But mostly what I know is that there is a caste that is entirely made up of people who wash clothes! Basically, I think it is nearly impossible to learn all that I want to know about India simply from researching movies, books and videos. There is something to be said for traveling to a country just to learn. I hope I haven't spoiled this aspect for myself (I'm pretty sure I couldn't if I tried) because I want to learn so much. I think the knowledge I have obtained will simply help me not to look like a dumb tourist who doesn't have a clue about the country I am in. I do still have a lot of questions about India that haven't been answered. These questions have mostly come from snippets of information I have come across. The types of things I am wondering about are:

I wonder if the Muslim and Hindu populations are peaceful. I have not found anything online disussing conflict amongst the two groups, but I did read a book by a news reporter that implied such conflicts do exist. In the prolouge of her book Behind Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo describes a young boy named Abdul who is running and trying to hid from the cops who are looking for him in the slums of Annawadi where he lives. "His home sat midway down a row of hand-built spatchcrock dwellings; the lopsided shed where he stowed his trash was just next door. Some people in his slum wished his family ill because of the old Hindu-Muslim resentments. Others resented his family for the modern reasons, ecoomic envy" (page x prolouge). These few sentences stand out to me so vividly. I can easily visualize this child Abdul hiding from these cops (the rest of the prolouge describes it in great detail it is hard to not paint a mental image of a child hiding on trash heaps next to his hut). But I can't forget the potential tension Boo subtly points out about the "old Hindu-Muslim resentments" and why Adbul's family is discriminated against. Abdul's family is Muslim and according to the book they are one family of just a few that are Muslim. Are Muslim's discriminated against throughout India? Or does it change depding on the region? Or does it depend on the distribution of the majority of the population. I am curious to learn more about these tensions and see if they are just social tensions, political, or as a society do these tensions separate the two relgious groups?

Another thing about India that fascinates yet confuses me is the poverty. My only experiences with extreme poverty are in the countries of Slovakia and Uganda. I went to Slovakia for a week in my tenth grade of high school to build a playground for a school. I didn't realize it until I got to Slovakia, but the school my group was assigned was in the poorest town in the city. These kids didn't have much, but really I was so young it was hard for me to notice poverty. But I know this playground made them happy and looking back it was probably life changing for some of the kids (you have a play ground to play in, it may keep you out of trouble). My other experience was while I was in Uganda. It was so hard seeing so many children without shoes (an amenity I tend to complain about having too many of) and it was even harder to see these children running around, going to the bathroom, and simply walking home without a pair of shoes on their feet. This was rural Uganda where the land provided the food so in some ways these shoeless beautiful children were lucky because they also came to school with mangos and avocados that were grown on the same land they live on. I spent a few days in the capital of Uganda Kampala. This is a different type of poverty all together. In Kampala children come up to your car with their hands held out whispering Lugandan phrases with pleading looks in their eyes. You see beggers on the streets and trash everywhere. This was a different type of poverty but just as hard to see. From my research on India both types of poverty exist. 70%!o(MISSING)f India's population lives in rural areas. Health care is scarce in the rural parts of India which causes many problems for rural Indians like many rural populations worldwide.

Though rural India interests me, sine I will be staying in Mumbai I needed to learn about urban India. I have no past experiences working in an urban setting I'm not even quite sure that I have ever lived in an urban area my entire life. Urban poverty is much different than rural poverty. I think the thing that fascinates, saddens and confuses me the most about urban poverty is the slums. I read the book It Happened on the Way to War by Rye Barcott and that pretty much sums up my only experience learning about urban poor. Rye Barcott travels to Nairobi, Kenya and lives in the slum of Kibera. Throughout the book Rye Barcott describes the Kibera slums. He describes the houses, the lack of sewage, the bathrooms and the smells of Kibera. This was enough to captivate my interest in slum life for my entire life. So when I chose to go on this journey to India I knew I had to work in the slums. I find it fascinating that an entire population can live in one area that had never been planned out. There was never any intention to have that many people live in that one space so basic things like sewage was never considered. I also want to know why people live there. Do they travel to the slums for the potential at a better life since it is closer to the city than rural areas would be? Or are the slums a place people are stuck in and wish to get out of?

With this fascination of slum life I again did tons of research. 60%!o(MISSING)f Mumbai's population lives in slums. This means that there is 60%!o(MISSING)f the population of Mumbai living on only 6%!o(MISSING)f the land. I watched numerous youtube videos on the slums of Mumbai and I noticed things like tilted houses facing each other with sewage running down the middle. Entire fields piled high with trash. People walking through these fileds on large pipes. I even saw slum houses built on top of each other. One video showed three or four stories of slum houses built standing on top of one another. In the book Wanderlust and Lipstick by Beth Whitman she states that slums were formed around mills and housed industrial workers. This information is consistent with the book mentioned earlier Behind Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. Katherine Boo wrote her book about Annawadi which is located right outside the Sahar airport road. Annawadi is a slum I am particularly interested in and most of my research has involved reading about this slum.

It is located near the Sahar aiport just outside Mumbai. Three thousand people live in Annawadi in 335 huts. The majority of people living there are India-Hindus from all castes and subcastes. That main way people of Annawadi make money is from trash. The slum is located near the airport. The airport area has five extravagent hotels. There is a quote from the book I can't resist putting in here. The quote is of Abdul's brother Mirchi, "Everything around us is roses and were the shit in between." Boo goes on to describe the slum in proximity to the vast wealth of the aiport area.

"In the new century as India's economy grew faster than any other but China's, pink condos and glass office towers had shot up near the international airport. One corporate office was named simply "More". More cranes for making more buildings, the tallest of which interfered with the landing of more and more planes: It was a smogged-out, prosperity-driven obstacle course up there in the overcity from which wads of possibility had tumbled down to the slums" (page xii prolouge).

This quote stands out to me because of the contradictions that seem to exist in India. I watched one youtube video on Mumbai that began by saying that Mumbai is one big contradiction. One one hand India is the world's largest democracy. It has a great industry in telecommunications and outsourcing. Bollywood alone brings tons of money into the Indian economy. On the other hand you have slums like Annawadi where people make their money scavenging through the trash of nearby luxurious hotels. These people collect the trash of these richer people and trek all the way back to their slum to go to sleep in a hut they share with too many family members. This saddens and confuses me. If a country is doing well and making money then shouldn't all of it's people benefit from this financial success? I read on Global Road Warrior, "India has become a country exhibiting some of the widest wealth gaps in the world." On the Lonely Planet I read, "Glistening skyscrapers and malls mushroom amid slums and grinding poverty, and Mumbai slowly marches towards a brave new (air-conditioned) world. But not everyone made the guest list: more than half of the population lives in slums, and religious-based social unrest tugs at the skirt of Mumbai's financial exess." Not only does that paint a vivid and contradictory picture but it also answers my previous question of religious tension: apparently it exists!

Now I don't mean to sound like a knight in shinning armour intending to go to India on my white horse and save a country because they are incapable of saving themselves. And I'm not critical of India's wealth gaps either. I would love to see statistics on America's wealth distrubtion or those of any other "developed" country. And I do believe that given enough time and enough financial success India will be able to help their poor and solve the problems that their own poor face. Just like I hope one day America will be able to do the same. But these things require changes in laws and time spent building new housing to replace the slums and lots of other things. All I want to do while I am in India is teach children. This is something proactive I can do. And maybe one of the beautiful and bright children who receive and education whether it is through public school or Aseema itself will grow up and make changes in their country. I hope I can make that kind of impact on a child who can make that kind of impact on their country. India is a beautiful country with its own unique ways of living and its own unique problems. I am so excited to go there and learn more see the beauty India has to offer and help fix one problem.

I can't go to India and not be a tourist even though I despise tourism. I do just tell myself it improves a country's economy (that's what I say about my shopping habits in foreign countries as well). But while I was researching the dynamics of India, I also searched things to do while I am there. I wanted to stay close to Mumbai because Ieb know I will be living there and I want to see and learn as much as I can about Mumbai instead of traveling around India and gaining a small understanding of such a large country. Make it my intention to be a "Mumbai expert" but in case you are wanting to travel to India as well here are some of the places I read about and hope to see during my journey (the website the Lonely Planet gives better overviews of these places than I do so these exerts are directly from their website):

The one you can't miss even if you tried:

The bold basalt Gateway of India arch faces out to Mumbai Harbour at the tip of Apollo Bunder. Derived from the Islamic styles of 16th-century Gujarat, it was built to commemorate the 1911 royal visit of King George V. It was completed in 1924: ironically, the gateway's British architects used it just 24 years later to parade off their last British regiment, as India marched towards independence.

These days, the gateway is a favourite gathering spot for locals and a top spot for people-watching. Giant-balloon sellers, photographers, beggars and touts rub shoulders with Indian and foreign tourists, creating all the hubbub of a bazaar. Boats depart from the gateway's wharfs for Elephanta Island and Mandwa.

You can ride in a Victoria - one of the horse-drawn gilded carriages that ply their trade along Apollo Bunder. Get them to go around the Oval Maidan at night so you can admire the illuminated buildings - it should cost around Rs300 if you bargain. Hard.

Elephanta Island:

In the middle of Mumbai Harbour, 9km northeast of the Gateway of India, the rock-cut temples on Elephanta Island are a Unesco World Heritage Site and worth crossing the waters for. Home to a labyrinth of cave-temples carved into the basalt rock of the island, the artwork represents some of the most impressive temple carving in all of India. The main Shiva-dedicated temple is an intriguing latticework of courtyards, halls, pillars and shrines, with the magnum opus a 6m-tall statue of Sadhashiva – depicting a three-faced Shiva as the destroyer, creator and preserver of the universe. The enormous central bust of Shiva, its eyes closed in eternal contemplation, may be the most serene sight you witness in India.

Sanjay Ghandi National Park located INSIDE Mumbai:

It’s hard to believe that within 90 minutes of the teeming metropolis you can be surrounded by this 104-sq-km protected tropical forest. Here, bright flora, birds, butterflies and elusive wild leopards replace pollution and crowds, all surrounded by forested hills on the city’s northern edge. Urban development and shantytowns try to muscle in on the edges of this wild region, but its status as a national park has allowed it to stay green and calm.
And the last place that is a must see is the Jaipur Elephant Festival. I love elephants so I definitely have to see this. Jaipur is at least located on West side of India also so it may be a good weekend destination.

Overall I am excited and nerovous for my trip to India. But if any of my previous trips are an indication I'm sure I will be leaving a part of my heart behind in Mumbai and I will be dying to return to the city I know I will fall in love with.

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