The Expected and the Unexpected

As I mentioned in my last blog, the daily happenings here in India are often unpredictable.  Today we were unable to visit the schools due to a national political strike.  The day, though, was still quite productive.  This morning we all met in the Prasad’s apartment for some tea and cookies and reflected on the past few weeks.  This DukeEngage experience has permeated into many aspects of our lives: some expected and some not.  I think many of us have experienced at least some form of culture shock.  For me, the disturbing prevalence of dire poverty and need has had an expectedly profound effect on my life.  For others, surely the driving, heat, or dense population has had an effect.  What none of us expected, however, was just where our engagement would lead us and what it would involve.

This last week we came across many disturbing insights into the lives of the Nirmal Nagar children.  We learned from the principal that the school grounds are often abused at night by drunkards who stain the walls of the school with their red-colored tobacco spit and leave their empty alcohol containers for the children to dispose of.  The school children are also severely underfed at lunch- a meal supposedly guaranteed by the government for all public school children.  We’re trying to understand why this is happening and are uncovering a network of issues, most to do with economics and local politics.

While the solutions to these problems may seem trivial at first, upon any attempt to fix them one learns that the problems are firmly rooted and pervade into unexpected areas.  For example, we discovered that a significant contributor to the drunkards is the proximity of an illegal belt shop that sells a certain type of liquor known for its potency.  Apparently the profits on this liquor are so high that the government has found little incentive to shut them down.  To try to address this problem, we have contracted someone to increase the height of the school walls.  We are also planning to paint the whole school in an attempt to give the school a brighter ambiance.  In order to fund the project we need to raise 50,000 rupees- we spent a great deal of our reflection session today brainstorming ways to raise these funds and ultimately decided to collect used clothing that could then be sold at a discount to the families of the locality.  The idea behind this is to try to get the local community involved in improving their school rather than just having a bunch of foreigners come in and try to fix the problem on their own. In any case, problems are best solved through partnerships.  By involving the community in our own efforts and understanding the efforts they may already be making, solutions are likely to be much more sustainable and long lasting.  Justina and Anamika designed an impressive flyer to be distributed to all of the residents in our apartment complex asking for donations of used clothes. Sir Speedy India (Jubilee Hills) very generously printed them in color for us for free–collective action! Other donors have also begun to pitch in with cash contributions…..wish us luck!

We have not yet found a solution for the school lunch, but we are not alone in feeling that this is a problem that cannot be allowed to continue.  The mandal (county) school administration  is itself trying to fix the problem from within. We’re ready to pitch in!