Beauty from ashes

This morning our two little medical teams went to hold clinics in one of the city's slums. 40,000 people living side by side in one sq.km, all Dalit. I don't know what I had expected, probably something out of Slumdog Millionaire with no proper walkways or anything. This slum has semi paved roads and most of the homes appear to be made out of concrete, although they consist of only one room for often a large family. When we arrived it seemed as if the slum was just waking up, with people having their breakfast and women brushing their teeth and doing their hair. Everything seems to be happening outside, in the street, as if that is just another room in their home.  Today was water day (it is delivered a few days a week by lorry) so many women and young girls were busy carrying water to their homes as well as doing their laundry. The lady in the house across from the clinic spent the whole 4 1/2 hours we were there washing her clothes in front of her house, slapping them against the ground in typical Indian fashion.

We had the privilege of working out of the Good Shepherd Clinic, which is the only free clinic in the slum and is normally open 3 days a week. It is staffed by an Indian lady doctor who has worked there as a volunteer for something like 10 years, and two nurses. A very organised and impressive little set up, working faithfully and skilfully within its constraints. With our doctor/nurse teams there were 3 clinics on the go today. People also came to us from another nearby slum and we were kept extremely busy until we simply had to turn people away and leave, at 4pm. The health problems here are on a different scale to what we would see at home, for example the 40 year old man with tuberculosis who looked like 70. He weighed 35kg. His wife died 5 years ago and two of his five children had also died. He was clearly dying too.  I coped better than I thought emotionally with being in the slum, but hearing some of the individual stories broke my heart. Most of the problems these people suffer are directly related to their extreme poverty - living conditions, hard labour and  inability to afford the simplest medical care. In the West most of their health problems could be dealt with quickly and easily.  And again it struck me even more than yesterday how the women suffer physically from their hard manual work.  They age long before their time    - - In spite of the difficult aspects I loved working in the slum and can't wait to go back on Saturday!

I asked our interpreter how much the average family would live on per day. He said the average daily wage for a labourer is 50-60 rupees - that is just under £1. Sometimes both father and mother go out to work, which will bring the income up a little. People can buy staples cheaply as there are monthly ration deliveries from the government. In saying that, this is clearly not adequate and there is a lot of evidence of malnutrition in both children and adults. I think for me this is particularly hard to come to terms with here in India, because there IS so much wealth here and the nation has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

If the morning was an experience of poverty and 'ashes', the evening was an unforgettabele display of God's power to transform, and of beauty:

We attended the first anniversary of the women's centre, which also included the graduation of 103 students. These women, from humble, poor and traumatic backgrounds, had completed courses in spoken English, tailoring and computing. The staff had gone to great lengths and made it into an incredibly elaborate occasion with hundreds of guests, dancing, multiple guest speakers and a meal afterwards.  The pride and pleasure on the women's faces was such a joy to see and moved me to tears, as did some of the speeches by prominent human rights campaigners who were there to support the work of the centre. These women have now been empowered to go and make a living to support themselves and their families, with a much lower risk of falling into the hands of traffickers. And so there is also hope for their children's future, and for the generation of dalits after them...

I will finish with the  first and last words of the pledge made by the graduates tonight, as they each held a burning candle:

"We make a pledge to keep the flame of hope alive, not only in our own lives but in the lives of others...
It is better to light a candle that to curse the darkness. We will light up the world around us one flame at a time."