St. Brigid Roman Catholic Church
Journal Entry - December 18, 2006 - A walk through the slums....
Greetings to all! Hope you all are well! The last week or so has been such a moving experience for me, so I wanted to write to you all about it, while the my feelings and thoughts about all that I am experiencing are still "fresh"!
I just completed a 4 day training on "Situational Assessment on Children at Risk", here in Guwahati, India. The training was quite intense, extremely interesting, and very informative! We learned alot of different data collection techniques and methodologies for interacting with children from all different walks of life-those living in the streets, the slums, the railroad stations etc. I am currently serving as part of a team that has been asked to carry out an indepth quantitative and qualitative primary data collection study to obtain information from, and about children at risk here in Guwahati.
The study aims to gain an understanding of the problems and issues faced by the children, the factors and people influencing the children, and the perceptions of the children themselves, in regards to their current life circumstances. In addition the study will evaluate existing service agencies and organizations (including Snehalaya, the organization that I work for) and determine the strengths and weaknesses of those organizations, in the hopes of improving services for the children.
The last 3-4 days I have been walking through some of the worst slums in the area with two other team members. We are now carrying out the 8 day "field work" part of the training. Everyday we find 2-3 groups of children to talk to, who are living in the slums, engage them in play activities, interview them individually, and conduct some group participatory excercises with them.
This morning we did a group excercise where we asked the children to talk about and draw what their "ideal family" would be. They all drew their parents and brothers and sisters living together in one house. The houses they drew had several rooms in them. The children drew large beds in some of the rooms, and tables with lots of fruit on them. One 10 year old boy drew an enormous glass of water outside of his house (the glass was almost as big as one of the rooms he drew) and a 7 year old girl drew a big refrigerator with lots of fruit, vegetables, and sweets in it. A bed, a bedroom, a house...fruit, vegetables, water..these are the things these kids are dreaming of having....
The second activity we did with a different group of kids involved drawing a chart to document the earnings and expenditure patterns of the children. All 4 of the boys we interviewed were self declared "ragpickers". They spend their time picking through heaps of trash all day, in the hopes of finding some small pieces of tin, iron, plastic, glass, etc. which they can sell to the local "scrap dealer". Their daily income ranges between about 25 cents and a dollar, and most, if not all of their $ is spent on food or given to their parents.
We probably interacted with at least 50 kids today, all of whom are living in the slum area. Most of them were covered in atleast one layer of dust/dirt and were wearing torn and soiled clothing. Many of the young girls were carrying small babies (their younger brother or sister) with them. The kids were playful and friendly, and were easy to interact with. They were quick to take our hands and walk with us down the railway tracks.
There are no toilet/bathroom facilities in the slum, so walking around, you have to be careful not to step in piles of human feces. Most of the people sleep on a piece of cardboard which they lay over a dirt floor, with just a sheet of plastic or a jute sack hanging between them and the outside world. Bamboo or wooden sticks hold the plastic sheets in place.
At night, apparently alot of drinking, prostitution, and gambling goes on. In the daytime, many of the kids walk down the tracks to the local railroad station to beg for food or money. They learn to steal to survive and they get severely beaten by the local police, even when they are not stealing.
The lives of these kids...are so different from the life that I had as a kid. I found myself sitting in the chapel tonight with tears streaming down my face, just thinking about each child that I interacted with today. In so many ways these children are just like children that you would meet anywhere...they love to dance, to sing, to play, to tease each other, to fight and call each other names...but the environment and circumstances in which they live, are so very different from those in a large majority of the world. I found myself asking God how to reconcile the difference....and I am still waiting for the answer....
Blessings to all of you! Thanks for letting me share this. Its been a pretty intense week. We still have 4 more days of fieldwork to do. I am learning so much. The work is rigorous and intense, but I am feeling blessed at the end of each day to be having this experience! I'll write again after we are finished! Peace, love, and prayers, Tiff
