By Mary Kennedy
Published in the Sunday Independent on 10th October 2004
The heavens opened and the monsoon poured down as we arrived in
the port area of Calcutta. We were forced to abandon the jeep and
wade through the tacky grey sludge to get to the embankment marking
the entrance to the waterlogged settlement of illegal migrants,
who come from the neighbouring province of Bihar.
I turned around and saw our Indian camera crew wading through the
muck, cradling the camera and the sound equipment in their arms
like babies. We didn’t know it at the time but we were about
to enter the nearest thing to hell on earth. I was shocked by what
I saw and surprisingly, the crew were too. Although they live in
Calcutta, they didn’t realise the extent of the squalor, poverty
and misery that exists in this slum and others just like it.
I wasn’t sure how the residents would receive us. It is impossible
to hide the abject poverty and squalor there or to try to put a
face on it, as we say here in Ireland. I was afraid they might be
embarrassed or think we were being voyeuristic, but this wasn’t
the case. The women and children that we approached were shy at
first, but soon they
were welcoming us with smiles. These are traits typical of everyone
we met in Calcutta, warm, friendly and pleased to see us.
We were in this particular slum to see the Right Track project,
run by a local man called Ashraf and funded by GOAL. The project
organises classes for young children, giving them the basics in
schooling in an informal setting, preparing them to take their places
in the state schools. It works. A lot of the children we met that
day will start school next year, which is very heartening.
However, the walk to the huts where the classes are held was disheartening
in the extreme and we slowly picked our way through absolute filth.
Mud huts, canvas shelters and lean-tos covered in plastic sheeting
lined these muddy, narrow passageways where 2,000 people live.
The assault on the senses is extreme and the stench nauseating.
There is no sanitation in this slum of two thousand souls. I could
feel the smoke from the fires burning in oil drums sticking to my
clothes and as I pulled my feet out of the sludge and mud I could
see the rats scurrying into the sides of the alleyways. Rats and
wild black pigs with their piglets snouting around in the dirt are
the order of the day here. At one point, the rain was falling like
stair rods and I was soaked to the skin. I was quite literally stuck
in the mud to mid calf and a rat ran in front of me. I stood there
and a feeling of utter helplessness swept over me. I felt like crying.
There is also an assault on another sense, the sense of justice
and fair play. How can people live like this in the 21st century
in a country that can afford nuclear weapons, has the fastest growing
information technology industry in the world and has huge food reserves
- we’d passed fully stocked grain stores at the entrance to
the port when we arrived in the slum.
The Indian government will have nothing to do with these migrants
because they’re illegal. Not that they do much to alleviate
the poverty of the people who were born and bred in Calcutta either.
They have this very useful religious philosophy which insists that
the poor lived bad former lives and this is their way of cleaning
the slate for their future lives. How handy to believe that! There
is no will in officialdom to help these people. It is just as well
then that there are organisations like GOAL.
We finally made it to the Right Track premises, a tiny low-roofed
shed with plastic sacking on the floor for the children to sit on.
There, sorrow turned to joy. You couldn’t but be moved by
the whoops of delight from the children when we arrived. Wearing
their brightly coloured GOAL t-shirts, they clapped, they waved,
they sang, they danced and they laughed. They also presented us
with paper sunflowers and lanterns that they had made in class.
The children are so proud of their school and their learning that
there is no doubt that education is the key to rising above the
cesspool of poverty. Nor could there be any doubt about the benefits
of donating to GOAL. Every penny is put to good use.
It costs €80 to build and install a latrine, which looks like
a phone booth and gives people the dignity of sanitation. GOAL has
built lots of them in the Sunderbans Delta, a collection of 8 villages
about 120 kilometres south of Calcutta. Likewise, tube wells, which
bring water to pumps like the old cow’s tail ones we had in
this country, have been installed by GOAL, at the cost of €1,300
each. They provide clean water to families who quite simply didn’t
have a supply before.
GOAL finances the building of schools here at the cost of €10,000.
The idea behind this project, which is run by local people, is to
provide children and teenagers with a quality of life that their
parents did not have, enabling them to remain in this rural area,
thus preventing the mass migration to Calcutta where the villagers
are forced to join the millions who live destitute lives on the
streets.
The idea is such a simple one and one that anyone who has spent
time in the city can understand the sense of - The Sunderbans project
is the way to go. Despite the best efforts of GOAL, there is still
massive poverty and a lack of resources in the area. In spite of
this, we met happy, healthy children living, if not with their own
family, then in an environment that is very close to it. We were
warmly welcomed by women and children who placed garlands of fresh
flowers around our necks and gave us coconut juice to drink. There
was a positive, party atmosphere in the place. We joined the local
Women’s Council meeting, attended by representatives from
the eight villages in the community. It seemed a million miles from
the slums by the port and a million miles from the overwhelmingly
depressing situation in the city of Calcutta.
I found it hard to get my head around the fact that Calcutta is
only a little bit bigger than Dublin and has a population of 18
million people, 5 million of whom live on the streets, many of them
children. A drive through the streets day or night will leave you
absolutely stunned. People sleep everywhere, under bridges, on the
pavement, or on cardboard. Outside our hotel one evening, I saw
three young boys, aged about 14, huddled together asleep without
any cover, much less shelter, against the monsoon rains. My heart
was breaking. I have a 14-year-old son and these boys are some mothers’
sons.
My heart went out to the women and children with bags over their
shoulders, crouched over the rubbish dumps, looking for scraps of
food or for anything they might be able to sell. I felt so sorry
for the groups of men gathered around water troughs at 5 am, with
their little plastic soap dishes containing a bar of soap and a
toothbrush. Grown men standing in the teeming streets, lathering
their bodies, before throwing a bucket of cold water from the same
trough over themselves to rinse away the soap. Women filling billy
cans with water that is poured into the gutters in the early morning
to wash away the previous day’s filth. They then boil this
water over gas stoves to make tea.
Yes, it’s overwhelming. Yes it’s depressing. These
people are “the poorest of the poor”, as Mother Teresa
referred to them. She also said, “Never worry about numbers.
Help one person at a time”.
That is what John O'Shea did way back in 1977 when he met a local
paediatrician, Dr. Samir Chaudhuri, and vowed to get him the money
to build a training centre for women, where they could learn about
nutrition and childcare to improve the life expectancy and the quality
of life for future generations.
I believe it was Aung San Suu Kyi who said that “the education
and empowerment of women cannot fail to result in a more caring,
tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.” The Child In Need
Institute (CINI) opened its doors in 1978 and has been providing
that education and empowerment to Indian women ever since. We visited
it during our trip to Calcutta and met Dr Chaudhuri, who is still
head of the centre and was about to begin a week long residential
course for female health workers from the neighbouring provinces.
The place is truly inspirational. The original building is now
used as dormitories as the Noel Carroll building was opened last
October. The building, which is dedicated to the memory of one of
Ireland’s heroes, former chairman of GOAL and great friend
and constant supporter of John O’Shea, provides a state-of-the-art
education centre on three floors, with classrooms, library, computer
room, and conference centre. GOAL built the centre at a cost of
€300,000. As I said, all donations go a long way in Calcutta
and they are put to very good use.
We visited other projects funded by GOAL, including the half-way
houses for boys and girls who are rescued from the streets where
they have been abandoned and living alone or in gangs. These children
are delightful. They eat, sleep, play and learn in these very basic
but secure buildings. They have a locker each, of which they are
very proud. They’re happy and rightly so because they are
the lucky ones. GOAL will send them to school when they’re
ready for it. Their cycle of poverty is finally broken and now they
have hope and a future to look forward to.
We visited a GOAL-funded orthopaedic hospital for children with
physical disabilities. The hospital has an average of 100 children
at any time, at various stages of preparation and recuperation.
The dedicated staff performs about eight operations a week on children
with conditions ranging from club feet to polio, including disease-induced
deformities.
One little boy came out to meet us on his knees because his lower
legs had formed backwards. He had been rescued from the railway
station. The hospital’s director told us he was reluctant
to have the operation to correct this because he was afraid he would
get less money from begging if his legs were straight and he could
walk. The children are also given some vocational training so that
when they’re eventually discharged they will have a skill
which will allow them to earn money. They run a little shop in the
hospital selling their produce, batiks, pottery, rope bags and embroidered
hankies and they’re justifiably proud of their work.
India has the second highest incidence in the world of HIV/AIDS.
We visited the red light district one evening to see the clubs funded
by GOAL so that the children of prostitutes can have somewhere to
go while their mothers are working. Otherwise, the children are
in the room with their mothers as there is only one room in Calcutta’s
hovels.
We met one young boy who, unlike the other children, seemed very
unruly and perhaps a bit hyperactive. The house mother in the club
explained that he had only recently come to the night shelter and
he had spent the first four years of his life lying quietly under
his mother’s bed while she was working. The mind boggles,
and not just at the thought of this young child lying silently while
his mother was with a client. Violence is very often a feature of
those sexual encounters. As we walked through the streets a young
girl propositioned me. I was surprised until it was explained to
me that the money’s the same and there’s less chance
of violence with a woman.
Walking through the streets of Calcutta’s red light district
is like walking through a guard of honour. The women line both sides
of the street. They stand shoulder to shoulder because there are
hundreds of them. Some are as young as 13 years of age. This cycle
desperately needs to be broken. Oshran, the local man who runs the
children’s club and night shelter, is working hard in the
hope of achieving that. He was left a house in the country when
his father died and he has set up a residential camp there for 10
to 12-year-old daughters of street workers. The girls stay there
for eight months at a time and then come back to the city and go
to school.
I am in awe of each of these local people who have devoted themselves
to improving the lives of their fellow men and women. I wonder how
they cope. What is it that keeps the young man in his mid-twenties
living in the drop in centre behind the railway station day and
night so that street children can have somewhere to go when the
depravity of the railway platforms gets too much for them? This
man is there 24 hours a day. The centre is two concrete rooms, with
no furniture and only one shower. The street children and this young
man sleep on the bare floor. For the children, it is a sanctuary
and this man stays with them, keeping them safe.
What is it that brings women out of their own homes to look after
the young children of prostitutes in the homework clubs and night
shelters we visited? Are they not overwhelmed by the enormity of
the poverty and deprivation? Do they not feel helpless in the face
of the misery and squalor? My visit showed me that this is obviously
not the case. I’m reminded of the words of Mahatma Gandhi
in this regard: “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
I ran the gamut of emotions in Calcutta, from sadness and heartbreak
to sorrow and anger to hope love and joy. It’s a place of
desperate poverty and misery and filth. It’s a place full
of people who have nothing and who deserve so much because they
are quietly dignified, warm, friendly and welcoming. There’s
a saying in Calcutta that you can see God more easily here than
anywhere else. Maybe that’s true.
There’s no doubt in my mind that these people deserve everything
we can do for them. Where we live on this earth is an accident of
birth and we in the affluent parts have an obligation to look to
the needs of those who are less well off. People like John O’Shea
and GOAL do just that and our donations make it possible.
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