A leap into the past

I love hearing stories. Not only tales but any story, about someone’s life or anything that happened someday to someone, I love hearing it and often people are surprised when I remember things that they told me long back. As a child I used to ask my mum to tell me stories from her childhood. She was born shortly after World War II ended and life was very different then. Her stories always amazed me because life was so much simpler then and so many things felt like another world to me.

As I said, they were stories.. but the first time I came to India in 2006, I often felt like a deja-vu (already seen), or better, a deja-entendu (already heard). Several things seemed to have materialized from my mum’s stories. In fact, some things in India function similarly to Europe 50 years ago. Some examples:

My mum told me that when she was a kid often sellers would pass by in the street, shouting what they were selling, and people would just get out of their houses to buy all sorts of things (in particular, I remember she mentioned buying ice from street vendors). I’ve seen a similar situation here: I drank litchi juice bought from a man walking on the street and I saw women balancing massive baskets on their heads carrying fruit or kitchenware. I recently saw men selling candy floss: they have long sticks to which little bags with colourful candy floss are attached.

Corporal punishment at school would be unthinkable of in Europe now. However, only 50 years ago it was totally accepted. Luckily at the school where I’m volunteering here it is forbidden to use corporal punishment (among the several reasons for this, one is that the students of this school often experience violence at home already). However, I’ve been told that teachers find it difficult to keep discipline in class also because in any other school they would be allowed to carry a stick, with which they hit the naughty student’s hands. To me, this is utterly shocking. However, this used to be normality in my country as well.

India is well known for the trains and buses with people hanging outside or for the auto rickshaws carrying 6 people or again for scooters carrying families of 5 members at once. According to my mum’s stories, it was quite normal for her to travel 6 people on a Fiat 500 (and in the 50s, it was a pretty small car)!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think that everyone should visit India at least once in his/her lifetime. Among the many good reasons for this, one is that you take a leap into the past and you understand where you come from. This makes you re-discover small things that are now given for granted in rich countries, like having food, a roof on your head, a bed. A trip to India made me understand how lucky I am and made me want to deserve the luck I had.

Now the big question is, how will India be in 50 years time?

Women condition

In India the women condition is very different from the European one. I hardly ever see a woman in a public place or walking on the street on her own. The few times I saw one, she was married. Generally, women are either accompanied by a male member of the family, or they walk in groups. Considering that I am white, a girl, and unmarried, I am permanently watched, whenever I go somewhere or have dinner on my own.

Most families here rely completely on the father’s activity. If the father dies or is sick, the family gets very poor. Near the school where I volunteer there is the Social Employment Project (see my previous post “A good heart and strong will” for details), which provides job to needy people. Not surprisingly, most of them are women who, for a reason or another, need to work to live.

Also at the school it’s easy to see that women are treated differently. Girls always wear beautiful clothes that are, however, very impeding when playing games. So girls are mostly sitting while boys can run and jump freely. It was also very sad for me to notice that most students are boys, so I imagine that women education is not yet considered important everywhere.

Finally, every girl is supposed to get married before 30, possibly in her 20s. The thing that most surprises the locals is not my white skin, but the fact that I’m single! I was even urged to marry before 30 (I’m 28…) else.. else I don’t know, I’ll be considered too old and die a spinster!!

A friend told me that until 50 years ago you wouldn’t even see women walking around; they were supposed to just stay at home, cook and take care of the children. Such a different vision to what I am used to! India is a developing country and its economy is increasing vertically. This great and quick improvement in India’s economy will surely lead to big cultural changes. Something will be lost but something will be gained. I am glad to think that in 50 years, women condition will be what it should be: equal opportunities as men and that their independence be seen as a choice and not as a necessity.

Sipping chai

Chai (tea) is an institution in India. Wherever you go, you’ll find shops selling chai and people drinking it at any time of the day. This is not actually too different from people having tea in the UK, but the way of preparing tea is totally different. Tea in Europe is made adding tea leaves to boiling (or just-before-it-boils) water. In India tea powder is added to boiling milk, then a huge amount of sugar is added (India is among the highest consumers of sugar in the world) and what we drink is the filtered product. Very yummie!

Tea is so important here that there is even a profession made for it: the so-called chai boy. At SISP (the school where I’m volunteering) the chai boy makes tea for breakfast and for the afternoon snack. He then brings it to all the staff, either in big teapots or in individual glasses. The glasses are also thought for the tea: they have a wide top, so that it is possible to hold the glass without burning your fingers.

After living in London for 4 years, I became addicted to having a cup of tea at 5 pm. Now I’m drinking at least two (but sometimes the school staff brings me another glass, because chai never hurts) glasses of chai every day.. what will I do when I go back home?! I’ll probably force all my family to have chai twice a day!!

A good heart and strong will

A good heart and strong will can make marvels. More than 18 years ago Paul and Werner from Belgium visited Kerala and were surprised to see many children who could not go to school because they had to work. After they went back to Belgium, the big decision was taken: they sold their guesthouse and used the money to open a school in Kerala, which they named Sebastian Indian School Project (SISP) after their former guesthouse.

How many times do people think of doing similar things, but never have the courage to? I think that selling everything, leaving your relatives and your country to move somewhere completely different to start a totally new activity.. well, that’s not something everyone can do. One thing that still amazes me is how Paul and Werner managed to set up such a big project in a country where the culture is so different from the European one, where yes and no are expressed with an identical shaking of the head and time flows at a different length.

What started as a school for drop-out children is now much more. About 50 children come to school every day from 9 to 4 pm. The school bus picks them up and drops them every day. The children are not only offered standard classes of Malayalam (the local language), Hindi, English, Math, Science and Arts, but also attend Yoga, Computer and Dance classes. Once they are re-admitted to the normal school, they keep coming back to SISP from 4 to 6 pm for tuition classes. The children and all the staff are also given breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack every day.

This is the schedule from Monday to Friday, but to keep the children away from the streets during weekends, a Surf club and a Skate club have been founded. The Kovalam Surf club takes advantage of one of the main attractions of this coast, the waves! The Kovalam Skate club was recently started and the first skate ramp of all Kerala was built for it. Both clubs are a way of teaching the children that anything can be learnt, if done with dedication. Also, the clubs aim to accustom the children to attend on a regular basis. The rule is: No school, no surf/skate!

SISP also includes SEP, Sebastian Employment Projects. This was conceived to give work to people in needy situations. Using recyclable materials like coconut shells and magazines, jewels, recyclable bags and many other objects are made and sold.

Finally, one of the hardest jobs is done by the social workers: they select the families that need financial or medical help, visit them monthly and keep reports. They also help numerous microcredit groups (where generally illiterate women participate) to keep records and deal with the bank.

Managing so many projects is surely tiring and stressful but every morning, when I enter the school, I think that it must be a great satisfaction for Paul and Werner to see their dream not only realized, but even enlarged to have now hundreds of people whose life is greatly improved by SISP.

For any further info please visit www.sisp.in or www.sisp.be.

Angels

My sister and my dad did the Camino de Santiago, an 800 km-long pilgrimage from South of France to North of Spain that finally reaches Santiago de Compostela. Thousands of people walk it every year and none of them comes home without having had a great experience. It is said that during the Camino you meet angels. They can be people who warn you when you mistake the direction, or help you find a shelter when the hostel is full and so on. I believe that angels are around us all the time, but only sometimes we realize that they are there.

Some days ago I found myself in the horrific situation of having little cash and my bankcard wouldn’t work! I was not in Kovalam (the city where I’m volunteering) and my only source of money was that card. I tried calling my bank but it was 5 am there, so I didn’t get any reply. In such a bad situation, I met several angels.

The people of the hotel where I had to check out agreed to take only 2/3 of the money and even lent me enough cash to come back to Kovalam. The founder of the school where I’m volunteering, who I called in total panic, answered the phone at 8am and calmed me down. At the ATM I met an Indian girl who also had issues withdrawing money; so she took me with her to several ATMs. When she finally managed to withdraw money but not me (because it was a problem of my bank) she left me her number and told me to call her should I need anything. I’m sure that if I had needed to sleep somewhere she would have hosted me, a total stranger! Finally my sister, who woke up at 5am to help me, managed to find a map of all the ATMs around me and then solved the problem calling the bank again.

I was so lucky to have so many angels around me! I then asked myself: Would I do the same, if I saw a girl in trouble? To be honest, I don’t know. But, this situation reminded me of something that happened to me last year.

I was living in London, in an area with a high concentration of Jews. There, from Friday’s sunset to Saturday’s sunset most shops and restaurants close because it is the Jewish Sabbath. During Sabbath Jews cannot do any work or any action. They pray and eat food that was prepared the day before. Apparently they cannot even touch the buttons of the elevator.

Well, one Friday evening I was coming back from work and in a secondary street nearby my house, a Jew guy stopped me. He told me that his radiator broke down and was doing an annoying loud noise. He wanted to switch it off but that would have required an action, which he couldn’t do because of his religion, so he asked me if I could go to his house and turn the radiator off for him.

At first I refused, I was a single girl willingly going into the house of a stranger guy, I could already see the newspaper titles “Girl killed in quiet neighbourhood”.. Then the guy assured me that he was married and didn’t intend anything bad. So I decided to go, if I really had to die, at least I would have died thinking of doing something good! Luckily, all there was was a broken radiator and all I had to do was turn a handle down to zero.

When I left, the guy thanked me and said something like “God will give you something good for what you did today”. Maybe 4 angels in India was the answer?! It is really true: what goes around, comes around!