Changing Their Stars
In 2009, as a board member of the international relief and development agency, CARE, I went with my family to India. We started in Jaipur, headed east to Agra and on to the Bay of Bengal and then north to Calcutta. We finished on the religious day of Holi in New Delhi. The entire trip was centered around visiting the CARE projects underway in those parts of India. Our job was to observe and bear witness that the money we raised to advance the needs of relief and development were being put to good use.
There were many memorable moments from that trip. The hotel we stayed at in Jaipur was an old broken-down palace that was very reminiscent of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It was challenging, but charming, and gave us a perfect jumping off point for all the great attractions around Jaipur. Agra is Agra and therefore all about the Taj Mahal and its surrounding mosques. Pictures don’t do it justice and it must be seen and walked through to fully appreciate. And then it was off to Varanasi, where we caravanned into several local villages to see projects.
We were pulling into a large village of 100,000 which was entirely comprised of a sprawl of mud huts. When we pulled up we were greeted by a local brass band that was playing British marching music. They had welcoming signs and we marched to a small central square where the villagers had put together a small palapa made of sticks wrapped with fresh flowers. We were seated in the shade facing a row of chairs and a makeshift stage. To the side was another array of chairs in rows. This village project was one run by the local women and was what was called Village Savings and Loan. It served two purposes, to get women involved in the commercial life of the village by giving them the opportunity to build a local S&L and to have a source of capital to fund micro-projects built by women. We took our seats as the women, all dressed in their finest matching saris of green, started their presentation. The protocol was that every woman on the dais would speak of their part in the effort. The men all sat to the side of the stage. One young girl was assigned the task of using a small stick to shoo the loose chickens, goats and pigs that roamed the streets of the village away from the stage, where they might distract the festivities.
At one point, while the little girl was chasing off a wayward chicken, a little goat about the size of a football placed onto the stage and made himself the center of attention. Without any warning, one of the men in the front row thought to be helpful and jumped up and grabbed the little goat by the scruff of the neck. With one cock of the arm, he hurled the little goat as far as his muscular arm would afford. The little goat sailed over tens of huts to some unknown location in the village to land in some manner unbeknownst to the audience. The women in the audience collectively gasped while the women of the village continued with their talk without any pause. Goats, chickens and pigs of any size were nothing but fodder for commerce as far as the villagers were concerned.
When the presentation by the village women ended, they asked for questions. The only question I had was about how much capital they had. They opened their bank (a lock box with dual locks) and sorted through the plastic bowls where they kept differing pools of money representing interest, fees and principal. They then declared that their total capital came to the equivalent of $900.
Just then, we noticed the little goat wandering back into the gathering from wherever he had been tossed. That prompted several of us to huddle and check our pockets. Between several of us, we gathered $1,000 and told the managers of the village S&L that we were impressed by their micro-loan efforts and organization and would like to add to their capital base by donating the $1,000. We can debate all day long about the propriety of such a magnanimous bellyflop on this little project, but the fact remained that this would have a meaningful benefit to the life of this earnest village. Maybe it would improve the life of little goats as well.
As we headed off from the village we got back on the main road and once again found ourselves in the crush of Indian life. When I think of India I will always think of the mass of humanity that lives and moves along the roads. Everyone is walking somewhere. The colorful buses and trucks are swerving in and out of traffic in order to continue their forward progress. None of that effects the slow and steady walking of countless souls heading along the road in both directions.
In Varanasi we stayed a particularly nice and modern hotel that seemed almost out of place. It was the kind of place that would be highlighted on TripAdvisor and not at all in keeping with the work-a-day nature of the town. From there we traveled to the Bay of Bengal near Puri. We had arranged to stay at a government installation that was being passed off as a hotel. It was perhaps the crudest form of hotel I have ever stayed at. The room bathrooms were as basic as they come with the toilet, sink and shower all in one small tiled room with a rusty air conditioner up by the ceiling. The dinner in the hotel dining room was equally memorable. The reason we came to this rustic location was to see the amazing tides of the Bay of Bengal. In the morning we looked out and saw the tides coming in from several miles away. It was quite startling, but no less so than our morning attempt at a shower.
We boarded the train into Calcutta, where we visited both the Mother Theresa Mission and a tuberculosis clinic for stage IV patients. Besides the archaic conditions of the hospital, we were surprised to see that none of the workers or guests were provided with face masks for protection. When we asked about it, we were told that stage III is the infectious stage and not to worry. It was scant comfort.
We headed back to New Delhi asking if we had accomplished anything. It had been a fascinating trip, but did it make a difference? In our wrap-up we concluded it had. CARE India was seeking independence from the mother ship. That alone spoke to the success CARE has had in India. Any way you look at it, we had helped them get to a place where they can change their stars.