Day 10 in India: Wow. Double digits. I have a week left. We’ve done so much already, it’s hard to think about. I’m glad I’ve been doing these photo journals each evening. I wouldn’t remember it otherwise. Here’s a short summary for today.
We had a great last session in Mysore led by three grass roots activists. They touched on several examples of initiatives and helped explain a lot of context that surrounds why some of the problems
Aren’t easily resolved.
Aren’t easily resolved.
Apparently, there’s a lot of corruption at the individual, cultural and institutional level, combined with a lack of accountability that creates a web of obstacles. But they have had some successes and have not lost their determination by the sounds of what was shared with us today. It was a great session. Here’s your interest facts for the day:
As we’ve heard time and time again, water is a precious commodity. There are many issues with the water in India. As I’ve mentioned before there’s the contamination issues, but there’s also distribution issues. Water access is not guaranteed. Many have to go to public supply areas to fill containers to have on hand. There is more demand for water than there is supply. There’s also the issue that approximately 30%of this valuable resource is lost through leakages. Water is not available 24-7. Sometimes it’s not available at all for 2-3 days and one of the speakers said he remembers a time (granted not currently) that it was 30 days with out water. So the short of this is...appreciate your clean water readily available throughout your homes and don’t forget to see it as a valuable resource, because it is.
Another topic was food distribution and the difficulty many farmers are having. In fact they reported that every day 2-3 farmers commit suicide because of the hardships and despair their situation often brings. Farmers here have much much smaller land to farm (usually 2.5 acres or less). Rural areas have high malnourishment rates as well. Speaking of which..
There is a system of aid in theory to help those who are impoverished. There are ration cards which can provide some basic food staples, but there’s even corruption here. Another mistake to learn from related to their story is about how some places went to a biometrics system for determining recipient identity, but because so many of the poor here are laborers who use their hands so much so they’ve developed calluses and work injuries and their prints weren’t being recognized so they were denied their food.
So that’s just a few examples of some of what we’ve been learning. Like I said, it was a great session to end on. After which, we strolled down the street (we could do that because we were now in a more affluent neighborhood so the traffic was more tame and organized) in order to tour a museum of a famous author who lived nearby. His name was R K Narayan and he was likened to Faulkner.
Before leaving town we had another lovely lunch. Every meal we’ve had, especially at hotels includes a dessert buffet that far exceeds choice options in the states. It’s insane! And as I’ve said, I’m sure I’m coming home 15 pounds heavier! Of course it doesn’t help that we’re sitting alot too. Like today. We sat for the morning session, then spent 5.5 hours on the bus traveling to Bangalore. The roads have a lot of traffic, congestion from other road users (bikes, carts, cows, etc) and then there’s the frequent speed bumps. Uff da!
One of our participants ended up getting sick which made his trip even more miserable. Dehydration set in, then cramps, then physical pains. He ended being brought in to the hospital. The doctor thinks it was food poisoning and he’s staying overnight. The good news is the early reports are coming back that he’s already doing better so we’re thankful for that, but some additional positive thoughts his direction I’m sure would be appreciated greatly.
The rest of us are now checked into our new home for the next two nights—don’t think that’s even worth unpacking for, but need to relieve the pressure off the zippers. Ah, the pitfalls of shopping. There’s some interesting stories there too. But that’s going to have to wait until another post. Thanks again for following along on my journey. Namaste! (That’s a common greeting that I believe means “the light within me recognizes the light that is within you”).
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