Cast of Thousands

I realize how negative that last post might have sounded. Which is OK, because I've been having a pretty tough time and feeling pretty negative for the last month and change. But in a sincere effort to allow my readers to approach the "truth" of my situation here, I'll make a deliberate effort in these next few posts to write about some of the positive aspects of my experience rather than just crapping on India and myself.

Even though, as mentioned in my last post and evidenced in the last 26 years of my life, I am an intensely private, independent person and it has always been a challenge for me to open myself to other people, there are a number of people who have deeply impacted my experiences in India so far and I, taking a cue from Cat, who is much better at this whole blogging thing than I, would like to introduce some of them to you here.

Thomas John Achen and Betty Kochamma-- the yin and yang of the South India YAV program. Achen is the head and voice of the program, Kochamma, the hands and heart. Together they are as wonderful a surrogate family as anyone could ask for. As busy as they are, they are always willing to feed, listen to, give advice to, and be a sanctuary for us.

Phillip Koshy-- One of the residents of Chacko Homes, Phillip is totally off his rocker and I love him for it. I can always count on him for an unintended dose of perspective. Phillip is the king of the world he has built in his head-- at least once a day he is offered the presidency or kingship of some country or the other, and, as of the latest tally, he has been given the Nobel Prize 8 times since September. He often talks about his wife and daughter who are living in the States (don't tell Dick Cheney, but Phillip's wife is actually the vice-President of the US). And I often wonder if they're real at all. How much of his life is real and how much is entirely in his head? But how much of any of our lives is "real," and how much of it do we construct in our imaginations to create relevance and meaning for ourselves? Phillip may never know it but he has probably been my most valuable interlocutor in this ontological quest for understanding... or for the knowledge that I don't understand jack squat. But the most valuable thing I get from Phillip is that, real or not, he is really happy in the world he inhabits.

Johnappa and Gopalan-- affectionately dubbed (by me) Those Two Crazy Guys at UC College, Johnappa and Gopalan are research fellows working under the auspices of the English Department, and are probably the most interesting people at the college. When I first met them, they were researching the ancient yogic practice of alchemy in the creation of medicinal herbs and the practices of yogis who still live alone in caves up in the mountains which apparently allow them to live, if not eternally, then well beyond the normal span of days. Recent visits to their shared office have yielded discussions about ancient temples and lost treasure in the jungles of Kerala, pygmy elephants, yogic meditation, hydrogeology, lost tribes in the Andaman Islands that have never had contact with modern society, and Benny Hinn. Whenever life gets mundane, I know I can visit Johnappa and Gopalan and hear about something that will renew my sense of wonder. As of right now, we are tentatively planning to spend the end of March or the beginning of April tramping through the jungle in order to document the aforementioned lost temple. I also have plans to spend a week with Gopalan's guru in a cave up in the mountains, learning yoga and meditation. I get the feeling that some of the best stories about my year in India are going to come from rolling with these guys.

Dr. Prabu Ramachandran-- a new resident of Chacko Homes, Prabu is a proper early-20th-century English gentleman painted brown and dropped into 21st Century India. Given an entirely English education in pre-Independence India, he feels completely out of step with his countrymen and is almost as uncomfortable with Malayalam as I am. As gregarious and outgoing as anyone can be, Prabu is always ready with a witty anecdote or bawdy joke, and his old-fashioned Anglophilia is like a trip back to a time and place I never knew.

Pradeep Joseph-- I have to laugh at Pradeep because I see a lot of myself in his Quixotic efforts to do EVERYTHING. And in his efforts to do everything, he accomplishes almost nothing. I can really relate. I first got to know Pradeep in his position as Secretary of the Student Christian Fellowship. As one of the student leaders of the group, he shared my enthusiasm for mission and outreach and agreed that the SCF should be leading the College in meaningful engagement with social issues. As seems typical of India though, that enthusiasm has yet to translate into any sort of action. In the meantime, though, he has published his memoirs. Why? I don't know. But I got an autographed copy. He is now planning to make a "campus film," a fictitious documentary about the loss of open space in the campus and the decline of student debate and discussion due to the lack of a physical forum. Additionally he is writing a dissertation on the status of widows in harijan (dalit) communities. As he is currently conducting interviews in the nearby dalit colonies, I have invited myself to go around with him as a way of finally being able to interact with and gather stories from the dalit people. (I intend to do a post just on what it means to be a dalit soon, so that this word i keep using will have some meaning for you all).

There are plenty of others, but these are just a few of the folks who jump readily to mind, that have been making my experiences in India so far meaningful and memorable.

Half-Year Reflections

February 14th (yes, I realize that was almost 2 weeks ago at this point... I was out of the country; give me a break) marked the halfway point of my year of service in India. This year has challenged me and my expectations at just about every turn so far, and this halfway point seems as good a time as any to look at the experiences I've had so far and the things that I've learned.

About a year ago when I was applying for this program, at the placement event in April when I found out I would be coming to India, at our orientation in August, and even for the first few weeks here, I had a pretty clear idea of what International Mission Service meant, and how I was particularly equipped to engage in it. My year, I imagined, would be spent cross-legged on the dirt floors of the homes of the marginalized in Indian society. I would listen to their stories (told, of course, in intelligible, if quaintly idiomatic, English. Either that or I would have a good enough working knowledge of Malayalam to understand their stories in their own tongue). I would create a blog to share the stories of these voiceless people, and write songs addressing the overarching social issues that perpetuate poverty and caste stratification and deprivation. My work at UC College would be a point of entry to engage these issues and to engage young Christians (and Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists) in discussion about responses and responsibilities to these issues; to cultivate awareness and a desire and feeling of responsibility to change oppressive, unjust structures of oppression, violence, and deprivation.

Thus far I have done precisely none of these things.

Before I came here, my mom's cousin asked what I was expecting this year to be like. I gave what I thought was the "correct" answer and said that I was trying not to have any expectations. I only wanted to stay open, receptive, and responsive to the reality of my situation and to the experiences I would have and the lessons I would learn in and from India. Once I settled into life here, however, I realized just how many expectations I had been secretly harbouring. Mostly I recognized this by how many of them were utterly dashed. I'm living in a retirement home for rich old folks, and working at a College whose population is ostentationsly upper-middle class with no interest in social justice. Rather than engaging the students in discourse addressing social issues, the college has made use of me teaching English, helping to publish its newsletter, and researching and writing a history of the institution. The teaching has been cool. I like teaching, am good at it, and have become reasonably sure that it is the vocation I am being called to. Sadly, however, I have not been used in this capacity nearly as much as I would have liked. Aside from mid-November to mid-December when I was teaching an average of two classes a day, I've only been teaching two or three classes a week. And since the end of December, when exams began, I've been doing even less than that.

I spend most of the workday at the computer in the library uploading pictures, composing intermittent blog posts, and writing e-mails to friends and family. I also take tea approximately 8 times a day. After my "work" at the college is finished, I run, read, and meditate until bed. I've barely done any work on the history of the college and the Journalism Club, with whom I would create a quarterly newsletter, has yet to materialize.

I have attempted to insinuate myself into life here in various ways, but never successfully. I used to spend time with the Student Christian Fellowship. All that means is that I used to attend their meetings. Once in a while I would teach a song, and occasionally I would deliver a message stressing the idea that to be a Christian means to emulate the life of Christ and to confront the injustice that we see in the world. I spend time on Saturdays with Share Light, a group of college students who work with local dalit children, helping them with homework, playing with them, and providing a forum for them to share their talents. The kids only speak Malayalam. I don't. I can't help them in any way, and the college students want me to be a resource for Western methods of teaching and education. I share my thoughts with them, but I don't think apeing Western education will solve the problems they are trying to address. The kids like it when I bring my camera and take pictures of them, and they like the movements to the Fishy Song ("Have you ever seen a fishy on a hot summer day?"). So I guess that's something. I will sometimes spend an afternoon visiting homes in the nearby dalit colony, but there's no real relationship there. Again, language is the biggest barrier as few of the people there speak any English, and my Malayalam does not go much beyond "What is your name? My name is Andrew. How are you?". Mostly I drink a lot of tea and smile and nod a lot.

As you can probably tell, I'm pretty disappointed with myself. I've been told that the blame lies both with me and with the college. Yes, it would be nice if I was more outgoing and more willing and able to form informal friendly relationships. But acknowledging that I'm not, the college should take measures to facilitate my entry into life here. They haven't, and they won't. Yes, I should try to be a presence in the poor community outside the college, but understanding the language barrier and my own social dysfunctions, the college should have a formal outreach structure that would involve students as well as me. They don't, and they're not going to.

Anytime it seems that I'm being extremely pessimistic or self-denigrating, bear in mind that that's never all I'm doing. When things piss me off or when I'm doubting myself or struggling with something, I always see it as an opportunity for self-reflection and growth. And that is mostly what I think I've gotten out of this year so far.

I've had to completely let go of my ideas about what it means to be a missionary; what it means to serve God and to trust that he knows what he's doing, even when we don't. We don't get much control over the situations that we find ourselves in. All we can do is the best we can with what we're given. Of course we can change our circumstances up to a point. But there are always things we can't control and situations, no matter how carefully laid out, will never be exactly the way we've planned. To live a Christian life is not to serve God the way we want to or the way we think we ought to. It is to allow God to work through us in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. So I'm not able to minister directly to the poor and marginalized. So I'm not able to form close relationships with people from an entirely different culture (hell, it's hard enough for me to form relationships with people in my hometown...). This doesn't mean that I'm a failure or that my year is a waste of time and money. The good that I intend to do never gets done. But I'm sure I'm doing plenty of good I never meant to. And that's the best kind of good.

While I may not be able to say what good I'm doing for people here or at home, I know that I'm growing significantly as a result of the challenges, doubts, and frustrations I face. Like I said, anything that irritates or frustrates me is an opportunity for growth and there is always a lesson that can be learned from these things. I've written about some of these lessons at length before, so I won't reiterate them here. My self-reliance and independence are taking a very inconvenient shape here and are significantly hindering my entrance into meaningful relationships. I would never have to examine these traits in the US where they are considered the ideal. As it is, though, I have to dig at these characteristics and try to lay bare their roots so that I can get past them and open myself to others. It is unlikely that this will be done in another 5 months, but this is an important work of self-examination that would never have been started otherwise.

I've begun (and have found that I really enjoy) reading the Bible. The Old Testament is full of great stories and fascinating anthropology and ethnology. The Gospels lay out the kind of life we're called to lead, and the Acts show how humans struggle to lead this life. The Psalms cover the entire spectrum of human emotion, and the Epistles are full of great advice, from one person to another.

The time that I take for myself, running and meditating, are probably the most valuable times and my favourite times of the day. They allow me to be alone and silent and still and to "just be." The idea behind our Ministry of Presence here is that we are supposed to "just be" with the community. But I think it's just as important to just be with ourselves as well, and this is often overlooked.

And probably the most important part of my year so far: I eat Arrowroot (son of Arrowshirt) biscuits. That's a little esoteric Bored of the Rings humour that only my dad, brother, and, by osmosis, mom will get.

Dispassionate Analysis

OK, I've vented about my discomfort with our travels through Andhra, so now I'll try to be a bit more objective and talk about what we learned.

Yes, there is definitely valuable, important, and worthwhile work going on in the villages we visited, and that's the important thing.

In a village where handloom weaving is the major economic activity, lack of a market and falling prices where there is one, are driving people to unemployment and poverty. The Indian marketplace is flooded by high quality, cheap fabrics from overseas. No one in India wants to buy the coarse handloomed Indian fabric anymore. People here totally buy into the idea that anything produced outside India is better than that which is produced indigenously. In order to encourage production and consumption of handloomed fabric, the government has subsidized thread for producers and offers hefty discounts to consumers. But the subsidies only reach a handful of producers, and the discounts translate to lower profits. Furthermore, producers do not have direct access to the market-- they have to go through intermediaries and retailers who take most of the money from the sales. So for a sari that costs the consumer Rs 500/-, the producer will get less than half of that. And because handloom weaving is all that people in these villages have done for time out of mind, it's not like they have any other skills to fall back on to find other means of income generation. Chethana has been working in these villages to help acquire cheap materials and have also been helping the producers in these villages reach a market for their goods as well as providing education and training in other marketable skills.

We also visited several tribal villages to learn about the issues they face and what is being done to help. Land and water issues and education were the recurrent themes here. Land is often granted to tribal peoples by the government, but they never own this land and are thus often forcibly removed from it when the government decides to use it for industry or commerce. And even if they get land, there is no housing initiative. So many people in these villages do not have adequate or permanent housing. These villages are often without an effective drainage system, so during the rainy season the entire village is often flooded and the people have to relocate elsewhere, to even more temporary housing. Also, due to the flooding, illness is rampant during the rainy months and there is no accessible hospital. Farming is the najor economic activity in these villages, but because of the dry climate and lack of rain this activity is not a reliable source of income (last year, most farmers worked fewer than 90 days). Bereft of their only source of income and completely uneducated, the men will either move to the cities to take demeaning jobs (tribals are severely looked down upon by "civilized" society) or will become tenant farmers where the majority of crops and money they raise go to the landlord. Similarly to the handloom weavers, most of the people in these villages are totally uneducated and there are no nearby schools. In these areas, BIRDS has been doing a lot of great work. Mainly, they focus on empowering the people-- educating them about their rights and teaching them how to stand up and approach the government to claim these rights. Also, in a huuuuge compound central to several small, isolated villages, BIRDS has set up a hospital with a full-time doctor and an ambulance to provide medical care to those who would otherwise have no access to it. They also have what they call an orphanage (although it doesn't really sound like an orphanage the way we understand it) where kids stay during the school year and get bussed to and from the nearest school. They also conduct training programmes and provide education for women from the villages and educate farmers in alternative, sustainable farming practices. Additionally, all the workers in the compound are hired from these villages.

That's some of what is going on. Hope it helps.

January Retreat-- Andhra Pradesh

Well I'm finally back in Alwaye, for better or worse. I spent the last two weeks traveling Andhra Pradesh with the other volunteers and visiting Alicia in Bangalore.

Pretty much the entire month of January was really tough-- I was feeling lonely, alienated, frustrated, and overly critical of myself. It's hard being completely alone; being constantly on display in a place where everyone wants to get to know you but no one can possibly understand you. It's exhausting trying to live up to so many different sets of expectations that are all at odds with one another-- Achen has one set of expectations for me, the college has another, and I have completely different ones. And disappointing people by failing to live up to these expectations invariably causes me to judge myself very harshly. Not a good scene.

So it's always extremely comforting when I get on a train with the other YAVs and hear them talking about their own struggles which so closely mirror my own. It's a nice reminder that I'm not alone. I'm not the only one going through this shit. And it means that there's not something wrong with me. Our retreats are a very valuable time for all of us. I think we would all have whacked out months ago if not for the monthly opportunity to spend time with people who very intimately understand what we're going through and can relate to our feelings and struggles.

But our retreats are never "retreats" in the sense of fleeing from the field of battle. They are calculated exposure programmes that are designed to bring us into closer contact and educate us about the social issues facing different parts of India (since none of us get that at our placements). So from the 24th-31st of January, we traveled all around the state of Andhra Pradesh with a group from the Sacramento Presbytery who are part of the Presbyterian Hunger Program's Joining Hands Against Hunger program. They were pretty cool people, and it was nice to be around other Americans. It was also funny to be around them and to get to have some template against which to see how "Indian" we've become. It was also nice to travel with them because it was obvious that they were being wooed by Chethana for more money, and thus we were being put up in some extremely luxurious hotels with air conditioning, TV, hot showers, swimming pools (never mind that they weren't filled), and room service, and being treated to gorgeous meals with complimentary wine and beer.

But this was also the cause of some discomfort for me. The whole thing smacked of a Chethana (and more specifically, a BIRDS) sales pitch. Chethana, the South Indian branch of Joining Hands Against Hunger, is a blanket organization that provides funding and support for the 19 organizations that fall under it. Achen is one of Chethana's chairpersons, along with Paul Rajarao and a dude named Jacob. Paul and Jacob are also the heads of BIRDS (Bharati Integrated Rural Development Society), one of the organizations in Chethana. So there's a bit of vested interest there. And it was they who were leading this programme and treating us to all these lavish luxuries.

During the day, we would visit different villages learning about the evil MNC's and corrupt governments depriving these noble poor people of land and livelihoods and then we'd hear about the heroic efforts of BIRDS to restore their dignity and teach them to fight for their rights. And then we'd get back in ou air conditioned SUV's and go back to our air conditioned hotels and eat until we couldn't see anymore, take a hot shower, and go to sleep in our big, soft beds.

Maybe I'm just feeling antagonistic, but something about the whole thing didn't, and still doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it's the fact that the struggles of the poor and oppressed are being put on display and being strategically deployed to raise money for these organizations. But when I think about it, is there really anything wrong with that? Chethana and BIRDS are doing some really great work, and surely they deserve support to keep that work going. And so what if Paul seems like a fast talking, charming salesman-- the kind of guy who would be selling you a used Chevy in another life? If those are the gifts he's been given, what's wrong with him using them to do this good work?

Maybe I'm just overly critical of others because I'm again at a point where I'm doubting the value of my work and presence here. Maybe it's that I think we should keep our left hand from knowing what our right is doing when we are serving and this all seemed a little ostentatious and self-aggrandizing to me. Maybe I'm just a crank who needs to find fault with everything. I don't know.

Regardless, something about our travels in AP just didn't sit right with me. I'm grateful for all the things we learned and for the opportunity to interact with people who are working to address the systemic inequalities and injustices endemic here. I just feel like there could have been a more... I don't know, genuine... way to do it.