I find working with Asha a real privilege and these last few weeks have been very enlightening. I have begun to understand just how valuable and life-changing the charity has been to the slum-dwellers in Delhi and have heard first hand testimony of it. I was very unsure about what my work with Asha would involve before coming here and I think this was because my job has such a wide scope of possible activities that it is hard for even Asha to define. I am on the promotions team which has 3 other key figures: Paul Frey and Felix Jajo, who are Indian (more or less!) and Holly who is Australian (more or less!). The main aim of this team is to raise funds and awareness about Asha through writing proposals and news letters, updating the website and fielding emails from volunteers and supporters but my own work thus far has been slightly more textured than this. Among the odd jobs I have been asked to do recently, I have written a final exam paper for the computer literacy program and, as of the beginning of last week, I am now an English teacher! I teach a single class lasting an hour each afternoon in the slums nearest the head-office which is very rewarding – my students are amazing, they are so bright! Despite lesson plans causing a bit of a headache, I thoroughly enjoy this part of the job and it is really challenging me to learn Hindi (a slow process but I am studying in earnest – I have been watching a lot of Bollywood!).
I have also spent a few of the days so far travelling all around the city to the different slum projects, talking to the women from the slum who are Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) and becoming acquainted with what Asha is doing and has achieved. It is a process of orientation so that I can have the understanding to write about Asha from my own experiences and it has been not only very interesting and enlightening, but also a great deal of fun! When first visiting a slum last year, I remember it being a fairly disturbing experience yet on reflection I think this was mostly the result of culture-shock rather than the poverty itself. You do not usually see the swollen bellies of malnourished children or find lepers at the end of every lane. I know that these things exist (and certainly malnourishment is a common problem in slums) but it is not always evident; particularly in the slums that Asha are working in. With televisions, air-coolers and fans in some of the slum huts, it is easy to start believing that these people are well off! It is only because of Asha however that people benefit from such relatively high standards of living. The sanitation problems are obvious though, even in Asha slums which have substantial improvements in infrastructure and the communities awareness about hygiene.
The more that I understand the nature of slum communities in general the more terrible their situation appears. It is not merely a financial poverty that many of them trapped in; it is actually a poverty of mind. Slum mentality is hard to comprehend. People are ignorant of basic hygiene, uneducated, desperately ignorant of the outside world and have such low expectations of life. Domestic violence and sexual abuse is common and goes on almost entirely unnoticed because people don't know what their own, basic human rights are. They get no help from the government, because no help is asked for and it wouldn't even occur to them to ask since they don't know that they are allowed to. Slum-lords are elected as heads of the communities in a similar way to that of a simple village government that is common in rural India (where the majority of slum-dwellers originate). When someone has a problem they go to the Slum-lord, who is usually a slightly better educated member of the community and it is he who approaches the relevant government authorities. The problem is, Slum-lords are generally corrupt and so are the authorities so the people, ignorant and vulnerable, are simply exploited.
I have had the great pleasure of interviewing 30 young people from the slums who have very recently begun their studies at various colleges in Delhi University with the help of Asha. We are interviewing them in order to make an appeal for help with the funding of their education. Asha has never attempted this before and it is very exciting to see the unimaginable changes that are going on in many of their lives – hopefully changes for the better. Their stories are a great illustration of slum mentality. It is a huge step up for these students and it would have been an impossible one without the help of Asha. With Asha they have benefited from career counselling sessions to ensuring that they choose their courses carefully and simply to facilitate them with the means to make an application. Few people in the slums are actually capable of filling in an application form let alone have an understanding of how College entrance is administered. Asha has also helped them with admission fees and more significantly has bought each of the students a new set of clothes, a bag, new shoes etc. to help them feel confident in the new environment. They need these things because the majority of their fellow students are from a dramatically higher social and economic background. Can you imagine what it must be like? In the interviews I have taken, many of them describe their experience so far as a broadening and expanding of their mind. They are having to begin to think like people who are not from the slums think. It is unsurprising that some of them are suffering from an inferiority complex.
Mahesh is one of the the most remarkable people I have interviewed and his story is amazing. He is not at college yet but has done so well in his 10th standard exams (equivalent to GCSE's) that Asha has helped him to go to a fee-paying school to study up to his 12th standard exams (equivalent to A levels) because his previous school (like many that are local to the slums) does not teach any scientific subjects beyond 10th standard. He is quietly spoken, and sat in the general office during the interview with his shoulders hunched and with what seemed like an expression of saddness on his face. It was heartbreaking when I asked him about his school. I asked if he was enjoying himself, and he just said no. He said that he thought all of the other students were cleverer than he was. This isn't true! I tried my best to assure him so. I can't tell you his whole background with enough accuracy to do it justice (my notes are not with me) but he has no parents and a number of siblings living together with him in the slum, so he has had to bear responsibility for the rest of his family for some time. Despite all of this, he has managed to achieve dazzling results in his exams. He is one of the most brilliant people in his class and he doesn't even know it. I think that is so sad. I have arranged to do some Maths tutoring to help him with his work during the next few weeks. I hope he can start to realise his potential.
I don't want to set a precedent for long journal entries so I am going to end this one here even though I have written quite a lot more than this! Sunday is the day I have free to do most of the writing but I may update the journal in chunks during the week.
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