The Village Across the Street

It is hard to believe November is already here. Diwali has come and gone (picture of lights attached) and the nightly firecrackers have become more rare, making evening more peaceful, now just those damn birds to contend with. I feel the days going by fast and often have to think twice to remember what day it is, mostly because the days are the same. I have a good routine going, and while I certainly miss a lot about DC, things are going well here. Work is good, October was report month, so I worked on numerous reports going to donors, and we also had the annual meeting which took some prep work. There are also an increasing number of visitors coming (a good thing!) but that takes a lot of organization, planning, etc. I now give new comers orientation, get them settled, etc. We just had 4 med students arrive this week, nice to have some new (somewhat older) faces around!

Yesterday I had a big, startling reminder of why I am here. It was motivating and heartbreaking at the same time. I went with two of the new med students to the “village” across the street from our campus. I never forget where I am, thanks to the women passing me with jugs of water on their head, people going to and from the hospital, yellow daal for lunch every day, and men staring at me constantly, I know I'm in India. But the India I'm living in isn't necessarily the country most of the rural population lives in...I have a toilet, running water, and more space than most families have.

This is a neighborhood that really didn’t exist before CRHP and has a pretty diverse mix of people living there. Some staff members, as well as migrants that have settled here, there is a range of fairly well-off (by Indian standards) to very poor. It was great to see the good CRHP does in helping to build houses, especially for their staff. They require staff to save a certain amount of money (what amounts to about $200 US) and then they help build a house and try to get them to put off marriage. We saw one guy’s house who works here and had just gotten married two weeks ago, he was 22 and she was 17. Not so much putting off marriage! I met another staff member’s wife who had just had a baby a few weeks ago, he was bundled up in blankets, which is funny because its still in the 80s here!

CRHP did help put in a water well, but unfortunately a politician in the area took the pipeline for himself, now the women walk over to our campus to get their water.

We passed goats, pigs, cows, dogs, and cats throughout our walk. Women cooking over a fire and chopping vegetables, all outside their one or two room houses. Houses that were only one-room and yet had a tv. Kids with no clothes, but parents with a satellite dish.

We met a family that had 6 children. The mother had died and the father had left to “go work.” They were being raised by the grandfather and the oldest daughter, who is 14 and leaves every morning to go work as a farm hand. They live under a tarp, in an area that equates to a square that could not have been more than 5 x 5 feet. It will take CRHP $4,000 to build their house and it is going to be first priority for our fundraising campaign.

We met a woman and her husband. He used to drink a lot and last year he poured kerosene on her and started a fire. She has burns on her arms, neck, and part of her face. Her husband stopped drinking and was standing right next to her.

The truth is really nothing that can be written or even shown by pictures. A very real reminder of all we have in our country. A nagging question of how can so much of the world have so much, when so much of the world has so little? It was a lot of perspective in a short amount of time. But instead of walking away and wondering what I could do, I knew that at least for this time, I was already doing something.