Today is my last day in Goa; tomorrow I fly home via Mumbai, after another month in this beautiful, heartbreaking, bewitching, chaotic, colourful, frustrating country.
It’s been a busy week, with a mixture of freelance writing, charity work for Educators’ Trust India and, unexpectedly, a sidebar trip to Chennai.
Monday saw me spending the day working on the “Volunteer with Us” section of their website, and hammering out the framework by which ETI can take on around 20 volunteers for the 2011/2012 tourist season. We also identified 20 children who are in need of monthly sponsors and talked about how that model will work … feel free to email me if you’d like more details.
On Tuesday I went back to the slum with the Morning Light project and spent five hours there, washing the children, handing out samosas and being in charge of Operation Underwear. Two Swedish supporters, Jane and Bjorn, donated a large shopping bag full of assorted pairs of differently sized knickers … so we had a system going whereby we washed the kids, treated their hair for nits and they then lined up in order to receive a new pair of pants.
(Over which they then re-dressed themselves in their filthy old clothes.)
Jane also provided each child with a Mickey Mouse toothbrush, so we had an “up and down, side to side, rinse and SPIT” teeth brushing lesson in the open air.
Two children were particularly affectionate this week; brother and sister, they came running over as soon as they saw me and then attached themselves to me for the duration of my visit, each one clinging to a hand. Diego translated for me and I learned that the lady with them, whom I had assumed was their mum, is in fact their nanni – they are the children of her son and she is raising them, as their mother died a few years ago. I was so sad to leave them – lots of hugs all round and they cried when we drove away. I wonder if I’ll ever see them again?
On Wednesday I spent a long, dusty and above all HOT morning at Anjuna market; until this trip, it’s just been the place that I visit to shop and sightsee and take colourful photos, but this time, I spent the morning working with Diego on the ETI fund raising stall. I gave out leaflets, explained what we do (“we run schools for slum children” – how about that for an elevator pitch?) and took donations of clothes, toiletries, books and money. Some very clear national divides emerged between the passersby: Indian tourists walked straight on, Russians stopped to look and then barked “No!” or even, charmingly, “F*ck off!” if you offered them a leaflet; Americans were friendly, interested but usually backpacking, so had very little money to offer but always managed around 100 rupees (c. £1.40) as a donation, with an apology that it couldn’t be more; northern Europeans from places such as Germany and Scandinavia didn’t want to chat but always stuffed a generous donation into my collecting box before walking on.
Most of the money came from the British tourists, who were uniformly friendly, positive, supportive and generous – it gladdened my heart to meet so many lovely people, who gave so freely of their time and their possessions. I only did four hours there and was knackered at the end of it – and there’s poor Diego, doing a 12 hour day week in, week out, every Wednesday. What a star.
Thursday saw a complete gear change for me; I cobbled together a vaguely “smart” outfit from things in my traveller’s wardrobe plus some borrowed shoes and flew to Chennai on the other side of India for a business meeting-cum-interview. After three weeks in the universal melting pot of Goa, it felt strange to be on a plane where I was the only woman aside from the staff and the only westerner – everyone else was a dark skinned business man with a laptop and a bushy moustache. Upon arrival at Chennai airport, I saw a billboard welcoming the England cricket team and a sign saying “hello Thompson mr” and was then whisked away to the Sheraton hotel, courtesy of my hosts.
TV! Hot water! Room service! A vibrating massage chair … what a contrast to the start of my week.
My “Alice down the rabbit hole” feeling continued the next day, when I managed to have an interview, meet the England cricket team (obtaining some autographs for my taxi driver Satish in the process – he is now “Top Man in Goa”, apparently), chat to the Sky Sports camera team and meet my friend Priya from Bangalore for lunch … before flying back to Goa to head up the ETI team in a pub quiz – which we won!
Yesterday I rested, before going to a wedding in the evening. I knew neither bride (Feliciana) or groom (Romeo) but was invited as a guest through my friend Renee; her landlord is the bride’s uncle (or something). So Satish drove us through the twilight to a huge, open air wedding venue, where we joined around 500 other people in celebrating their marriage. Fireworks, confetti, party poppers, spray string, fabulous food, Bollywood dance moves and a free bar …
Today I’m blogging, packing, saying goodbye to my friends (although quite a few people have already left for home; this is the Big Exodus weekend) and then heading out to a concert by the ETI children – they’re performing some dance moves – like this – at a local restaurant and we’re hoping to raise a few more donations from it.
I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again – but I hope it’s soon.
Sangeetha’s story
21 FebSangeetha, it turns out, is 28 years old and a married mother of three. She is very small in stature, probably no taller than 5 foot, very, very slim – she actually looks malnourished, in terms of her eyes and her cheekbones and her whole demeanour. She’s also disabled and she walks with a very pronounced limp. When she moved the folds of her sari to sit down, I saw that she had a withered foot and leg and I later discovered that she’d been born like that.
She speaks limited but reasonably clear English and so we talked freely as long as I spoke slowly. She must have been born into quite a good family, as she stayed in education up to the age of 18. Given that school in Goa is only free until you’re 13, that indicates, I think, some family resources behind her. She was married at 18 and has 3 children, the oldest of whom is 11, a girl; there are also sons of 9 and 5. She came to the attention of Diego and the ETI team when her 5 year old son, Parras (pictured above, in the blue shirt) came to the Leading Light school. She lives in the same village as the school, Canca and her other two children go to another school nearby via bus. As I mentioned before, education here is “free” – in that the actual schooling is free, but then you have to pay for bus fares, uniforms, meals, sometimes textbooks and so on.
Sangeetha is the sole wage earner for a family: herself, her husband and the three children and she works as a cleaner for a local business, where she earns 500 rupees per month.
That’s about £7.
I can’t even begin to imagine how they can survive on that – by way of a contrast, 500 RS is about the budget I give myself for my nightly evening meal.
Another useful comparison figure is that the “room boy” (Indian for “chamber maid”) at my hotel earns c. 3000 RS (£42) per month plus room and food – which makes it sound like quite a good job in comparison to Sangeetha’s role.
The reason that she is the sole wage earner is due to her husband being paralysed. That in itself sounds tragic – but I also learned that her husband was a drug dealer and user and contracted HIV through the use of shared, dirty needles. He subsequently had a paralytic stroke and so he is now at home, all day, paralysed, whilst Sangeetha is forced to do what she can to earn a living. She managed to get Parras into the ETI school and Sangeetha then approached Diego, the charity’s founder and asked if there was any work for her at the school. She pointed out that she’s smart, she’s educated, she went to school until she was 18, she can speak some English and she’s a very fast learner. And she promised that she would work very hard, she would do anything at all that they needed her to do, as long as they could pay her more than 500 RS per month – and would it also be possible for her other children to transfer from their schools and join this school?
Diego, who has a heart as big as the world, asked us if we could chat to Sangeetha – which was where I came in. So, just sitting down with her, this was what I heard – and we tried to find a way that was both possible and dignified for her to come and work here. She’s now paid 1000 RS per month and has started work as a “Classroom Assistant”; she helps in the kitchen, tidies the classroom, helps to organise the children when we take them to the beach and so on. One of the things that she told me was that she’s never been to the beach or seen the sea! She was born and has grown up maybe 10 miles inland from this beautiful coastline and yet neither she nor her children have ever been there – so imagine what it’s going to be like when we take her family to the beach for the first time next week.
So that’s what’s in Sangeetha’s future; what I think is particularly encouraging about her story is that it shows how the charity are starting to work with people from within the Goan community as well as with those who travel here from elsewhere. One of the things that’s a constant in charity work here is the fact that some Goans are suspicious of and tend to have a dislike of NGOs who work with migrant communities. They can think of the migrants that “… these problems are of their own making – if they stayed in their home state, they wouldn’t bring themselves and their problems into our beautiful state of Goa”.
But what we’re seeing now is that the charity has an infrastructure to support those people within Goa who also live in poverty. Diego will never turn away a child in need, especially if that child has parents who want their child to be educated. He’s not going to check where they’re from – he just sees a child in need and wants to help.
So, I think the fact that there will be “local” children in the schools may make a difference to the way in which the more affluent Goans start to perceive the charity. Let’s hope so.
Share this:
Like this:
Tags: charity, Children, Goa, India, women