Randomness

Random Thoughts

Let me first say that I am in a bit of a panic mode. I am a planner. I have been my whole life. For better or worse, I like to have a general idea of what I am doing and where I am going. I am a goal oriented person. So to have only my life somewhat planned till December 17^th is a bit daunting. I really just want to crawl into a whole and not worry about it. I have no place to live in Logan once I get back to school. The place I was going to stay at fell through and I shouldn't be surprised, but I was hoping for the best. Obviously the best did not happen. I will give myself my own advice and say “I'll be strong.”

I should not be complaining. Last week I saw a homeless made take a crap on the side walk because he had nowhere else to go. A group of us toured a massive slum in Mumbai. If you are an illegal immigrant you are not allowed to use public restrooms. You have to pay 2 INR to use the toilet. Most people can't even afford that. So, this makes going to the toilet a problem especially if you're a woman. It is culturally accepted for a man to relieve himself in public. It is not however culturally accepted if a woman were to do so. Most women have to wait till either late at night or rather early in the morning to relieve themselves. As much as I love being in India, I can not accept or wrap my head around the amount of inequality that occurs between the sexes, religions, or even castes.(They say they don't have a caste system, but they still do.)

Let me illustrate. The majority of our local staff uses wood burning stoves as a water heater system. There is a campground on Sangam's property, and the local staff can collect wood to take home. An evening a couple of weeks ago, I noticed Saroj dragging a large potato sack size bag full of wood to take home to her family. Saroj is quite petite and the large sack overwhelmed her small frame. Me being me and not worrying about what is socially acceptable, I quickly ran outside to carry the sack. At first, Saroj said that I could carry the sack to the front gate. I asked her if she was going to wait for the bus or going to her brother's house. When we reached the gate, I told her that I would carry the sack to her brother's house. As we walked together down the alley to her brother's house, I was shocked at the stares that I received. See her world views her as my servant, and it's highly unlikely that her employer would carry a large sack of wood for her. In my world, I view her as my friend and equal. I know that she is up at 4:30 am to put the buckets out so that her family will have enough water for bathing, cleaning, cooking, drinking etc. (If she does not do this, there is no water for her or her family.) She then prepares breakfast and gets her three children off to school. After that, she takes a 30 min. bus ride to Sangam to report for work. She does all of this by 8 am. She works till 6pm. If we have an event, she doesn't get done with work till after 8pm. Immediately she goes home and cooks dinner for her family, does the laundry, and clean the house. This is a typical day in the life of one of our female local staff members. So, when I saw her extremely worn out dragging the sack of wood behind her, I could not do anything but help her. Someone in our group yelled at a child, as we toured the slum in Mumbai, that “if you work really hard, you'll be able to make lots and lots of money.” That may be true where she is from, but here that logic is the exception not the rule.

So, I will not worry about not having a place to live in 5 weeks. My life can always be much worse than that.