Heaven on Earth?

The final day was full of farewell speeches and presents, as is the custom – but once the wonderful farewell lunch as over, the group went shopping for presents, me and H realised we just wanted to chill.  So we spent the last afternoon in the Lakshya projects office with the staff whom I had become so close, so quickly. I had been lucky enough to shadow one of them this week, and see her work close up.

They went about their work, and in between times, we listened to music, chatted and my arm was painted in beautiful Mendhi.

I then got the overwhelming sensation of this office, and the whole YMCA in fact, being a very very special place.

Here was a place where those whom society shunned: Gay people, HIV positive people & their families could just come and be. In the confines of these walls they could be who they really were and be comfortable and proud.   

As people and staff came and went I could not help but be struck by the power of this community and the feeling that the workers had created a haven for people, a wonderful loving, expressive environment for people considered outcasts by the communities round them. A place to be, to be cared for and a place to draw on each others strengths and shared problems. It was as if the place was glowing with warmth and love.

Those of you who know me know I have a very unpindownable faith, but I could not help reflecting on faith and religion as I sat in this wonderful place. Christian dogma has a lot to answer for in the way it has treated gay people and those living with HIV. Yet I believe this dogma sits as a blatant contradiction to the reality of Jesus’s life and words. Jesus spent his life with outcasts and sinners, never judging, but loving and nurturing those whom society at the time ostracised and condemned. I was genuinely moved, as I realised, that here in this office, the YMCA seemed to me to be truly living the way Jesus wanted people to.

If only all Christian and religious organisations could view people in such a way, we may go someway towards creating a much sought after heaven on earth.

(This video is a selection of pictures from our time in Nagpur. It includes pictures of the fantastic, wonderful, inspiring and fab staff at work at the Lakshya project and the truckers project that works with truck drivers and the related community at the truck stop on national Highway 7.)

Male Grooming

There seems to be a recurring theme this visit: Male grooming! I had a fantastic time at the barbers in Kanyakumari when I arrived, and since then have had two more experiences of Indian grooming.

The next time was when I returned to Mutom village, one of the re-built Tsunami villages I visited last year. Then I had spent an hour or so chatting to Mr Ravi and his wife.

On my return this year, I was overjoyed to see Ravi had set himself up as the village barber! He had been a fisherman, but lost his trade in the Tsunami and he is still too traumatised to return to the sea. With support from the Y, has has now set himself up.

After a nice chat he ushered me into his shop in his house and offered me a shave a cut. I naturally said yes and sat down happily. As he began the shave, it was revealed to me he had only actually been a barber for 4 days! Now had I known this would I have let him loose with a cutthroat on my neck??!!

Whilst he got to the jugular I slightly paniced, and as it turned out justifiably. He cut me!

Now…we then spent the next few minutes (for the sake of his pride) ignoring the steadily flowing line of blood that was now half way down my chest! Once it reached my trousers I though it best to mention it. He was actually distraught at his slip and tried to patch me up and stem the flow of blood! When all was said and done it was a good shave, and hopefully next year I can get a shave from a more experienced Mr Ravi!

Then, when in Nagpur and feeling particularly ill and exhausted, my friend Pranj lifted me from my slumber and insisted I got on the back of his bike and went to his barbers. It started in a traditionally ‘butch’ way with a shave.

Now I wonder how the following would have gone down in a British barbers.
No one batted an eyelid and many were indulging in the same. Its worth remembering that his was just a bog-standard street barber off the main road, the equivalent of your £8 a go places in London.

He proceeded to apply exfoliating creams and give me a thorough face massage. After exfoliation, he then toned and moisturised, before starting a full head, face and back massage, with aruyeydic oils! Afterwards, I literally felt 10 years younger and probably looked so!

Men here take a genuine and refreshing pride in their appearance. Brilliant!

Finally, I have also ended up with a full half-sleeve of mendhi on my arm. Mitalli spent 3 days slowly building it up on my arm, doing it bit by bit, when she was able to pin me down in her office to do it. Though I have to say it was great to just sit with her and have it done. The result? A fanatically beautiful design covering my hand and arm.

Now I am not sure of the custom of men wearing Mendhi, though the guys at the Sarathi trust do and took an excited interest in my developing design! So when in Rome…

Not sure how it will go down in London, but it will only last a few weeks.

Dealers

This just made me giggle. In South-East London, this would have a very different connotation.

I had visions of what a ‘dealers’ conference in Peckham would involve!

Empowerment and all that crap

I hate the word empowerment – its is so over used in NGO talk and in the youth work world – and very often by me!

 

In many ways it implies that power is their to be given by others, and those with it are simply gracious enough to pass it onto those without. Power is not something to be given by those with it, but something we all have in us, but some people simply need the support to bring it out. Mark Smith writes very well about how it is in fact a very outdated concept 

 

Yet I genuinely saw it today – well, I saw what I believe genuine empowerment is.I have spent the day shadowing a workers from the Lakshya project at Nagpur YMCA – a new project that supports positive people to live a full life, providing them with counselling, medical care and advice and long term support through home visits and support groups. It then trains them to become peer educators in their own community, educating people about HIV, in an attempt, not only to raise awareness of the virus and prevention methods, but also to de-mystify the reality of HIV in India and break down steroeptypes and stigma. It is based on a model that is being pioneered in South Africa, and the YMCA is one of the few places in India to replicate it. (I had had the pleasure the day before of making Rangoli with the staff)

 

We went to visit one of the new peer educators in her home. She became angry as she recounted the level of stigma and discrimination positive people face – and how she had been kicked out of her husbands home and blamed for his AIDS related death, and is now ostracised from a blossoming career, having got a Msc in Social Sciences. She was now living in a room in her parents house with her positive daughter.

 

She said to me that she had always seen herself as the victim or as part of the ‘problem’. In the UK, her story is a classic one that would invoke sympathy and most predictable pity, a classic ‘western sterortype’ of positive people in the developing world.

 

Yet she is now a trained peer educator in HIV awareness and runs a support group for HIV positive women. She delivers one-to-one and group session with people in her local community about the facts of HIV and how to protect yourself. She proudly told me she was not someone to be pitied or felt sorry for, but someone who was now genuinely empowered to make a difference. She was no longer the victim…she was now part of the solution.

 

Thats empowerment…… 

 

Kanyakumari pictures

I made this picture video for our group – it is of their time in Kanyaumari. The pictures show us in discussion groups at the YMCA, at a Tsunami Boys home, a vocational computer training centre, Mutom village, a village rebuilt after the Tsunami and a Womens empowerment group (SHG) meeting.

Rangoli

Another nice side to being ill (other than being able to write loads) was that while the group were out and about today, I decided to wander downstairs, to break the boredom of resting in my room. I was so glad I did. One of the HIV and AIDS projects has its office under our rooms, so as I walked past I as instantly asked in for tea and after the initial concerned questions abut my health, we spent a short while just chatting.

This specific project works with young, HIV positive people, supporting them to live a full and healthy life and also training them to be peers educators, using the arts and drama to educate other young people about HIV. They are such a brilliant bunch of people to be around.

They were about to practice making a rangoli, which is a wonderfully colourful piece of art, using sandpainting. It is usually seen outside peoples homes during religious festivals or festivities.

They were going to design one related to HIV and use it in their outreach work – another example of how creative they are in using so many techniques to get the message across. So they set about practising their design on the floor outside the office.

It was so transfixing watching them at work, their artistry enchanting, as they sprinkled the coloured powders through their fingers, and seamlessly landing every time in exactly the perfect place.

How they were able to do this and still keep looking up to chat to me I do not know. They were silly enough to let me try too – and I tried my best – but managed to fumble the paint everywhere!

Still, they got it finished in the end – and beautiful and powerful it was too.

Waiting times….

One advantage of currently being ill was I got to walk around the local hospital – and with the signs in Hindi, naturally got rather lost and wandered along what seemed like every single corridor trying to find the blood lab.

Still, it meant I wondered past the A & E and saw a rather amusing sign about waiting times.

The doctors in my family often talk about the new NHS 4-hour maximum waiting time, and how its is causing all sorts of problems and an example of Blairite target chasing gone totally barmy.

I wonder what they would have made of this.It had the waiting times stated thus;

• Emergency -10 minutes
• Urgent – 20 minutes
• Standard – 60 minutes.

There was then a final category, which made me really laugh. It was:

• ‘Dead, or so severely injured not expected to survive’.

Next to this column it simply said ‘0 minutes’

Clearly there was no waiting time for them, or targets for the staff to meet.

Maybe one for the NHS managers to ponder on…..

The only way to arrive…

…after a 14 hour train journey to Nagpur whilst battling with an amoeba, is to get on the back of JPs motorbike through the streets of Nagpur to the YMCA. Brilliant

The problem with English

I read this on a friends blog and it rung so many bells – being here in India

http://battutabahrain.blogspot.com/2008/01/problem-with-english.html

Bint Battuta is a fab blog to read anyway

Born to be a star

Arrived in Nagpur today for the 2nd part of our programme. As I wrote last year, the HIV and AIDS works here is so amazing, as is there work to support sexual minority groups in he community. So, I found it no surprise (though I think the rest of the group were rather taken aback!) to arrive and find the staff taking tea with Laxmi, an extremely well known transgender and Hijras activist who travels the world advocating for her communities rights. I was so great to meet her and have some fascinating, though at time rather outrageous chat. She was here as guest of honour of The Sarthi Trust, supported by the YMCA here, who were celebrating 2 years as an NGO.

She was featured in a film recently entitled Between the lines: The Third gender of India . The sad thing is, whilst showed widely across the European independent film circuit, it has never been granted a release in India.

See an interview she did recently here

Her T-shirt read ‘Born to be a star’. She was an amazingly inspiring person to meet, someone prepared to do all it takes to support her community and fight for their equal rights. She really is living out Ghandis famous challenge to become the change that you want to see in the world

Salute to the sun

When you work with a group, as me and H are at the moment in India, time to yourself is at a premium to say the least and it can be very easy to get very stressed, very quickly. Our hosts offered to take the group down to the beach to watch the sunrise and lead us in some yoga one day.

Now, we make a tactical, but rather naughty decision, to keep this bit of the programme quiet, so at 5.30am when Bernard turned up to drive the group to the beach, he found only me and H there.

Naughty, I know, but it meant me & H had an hour and half of unadulterated ‘us’ time, to unwind and relax and Bernard also thought it was great as he too, had become worried by our stress levels.

So we watched the sun rise over the Indian Ocean and were led in a ‘salute to the sun’, a yoga move specifically designed for the sunrise. Once the sun was up, we swam, did some more yoga, and wondered in a totally chilled daze back the car to begin another day of hard work.

There has to be no better way to start a day. When your day normally begins with a quick shower, a cup of tea and maybe some bran flakes, whilst being constantly mindful of having to leave to catch the train on the time, this was some change. I will ponder how possibly to make my mornings a more fullfilling time of day

My Virlity

I spent the morning with one of the Womens self help groups, set up in the new Tsunami villages, I met last year. Last year the projects were a year old and the women were making real progress, developing small micro-finance schemes and supporting each other in their new villages. Many had not been allowed out of their homes before.A year later things had really moved on. I take it as a sign of the groups success that a year later they felt comfortable enough to question my virility and fertility for over half an hour, after I’d told them that at 29 I did not have any children.

We also had much deeper discussions about love vs arranged marriages and the alcoholism that seems so endemic amongst their husbands.

Lizzie – Is she a rival for Roland?

I seem to attract animals to my room.

In Mumabi in 2005, it was a family of pigeons who nested on top of our air conditioning unit (never thought through the health implications at the time, those were in the days before bridflu!) and in Sierra Leone recently, it was my old friend Roland, the rat, who kept me company.

I now have Lizzie the lizard and her 3 children Eddie, Scuttle and Scamp living in my bathroom (Thanks for naming them LG ;-) Though to be honest, they’ve been pretty bad at lizzarding.  I assumed they would be nice and sort out the ants who are also in my room, but apparently they don’t like ants! Lizzie does seem to be a world champion at catching moths and butterflies. I am beginging to pity them , as they fly in mnildessly flying to the light in my room, only to never reach nirvana as they are plucked with great skill from the air and promptly eaten.

Though today they do now seem to be spending more time in H’s room next door – obviously my hospitatlity is not quite up to hers!

 I shall try and post piccies later! As you can see i;ve been working (probably far too) hard since the group came yesterday and these are the sorts of distractions that can keep a man sane in the snatched moments of breaks when away working!

Something for the Pongol holiday sir?

Last year I had had an amazing experience involving Henna die, an overly friendly massage, and a haircut in a Nagpur barbers, so yesterday I set off in Kanyakumari to find a barber, to try and re-create the experience. I was sent off by our colleagues here to the local shop, with stories of what happened the last time a foreigner ventured their ringing in my ears – Still, I only wanted my hair trimmed – not much could go wrong. I found the place and realised it was just a mirrored room, a chair and my barber who had one pair of scissors and two combs, an empty brandy bottle but a big smile and welcoming laugh!

Language was a major issue here, my Tamil stretches to hello and thank you, sadly not ‘can you trim the sides and back and cut into and thin out the top’. His English stretched to ‘hello’ and ‘I am a Christian’ (!) which he said several times over, seeming to think this would reassure me of his skills with the blade.

Yet it was a great atmosphere…and for a while I felt like I was in the Tamil version of ‘Desmonds’, as people popped in, sat and joked with the barber, and gazed intriguingly at the slightly anxious white guy. All we needed was a Matthew character. If only I knew the Tamil for ‘There is an old Indian proverb….’

It also seemed to be like a kind of male local styling salon, with guys coming in, borrowing his comb, giving their hair a good brush and touch up in front of the mirror. The young men take a great deal of pride in their appearance here, an element of what we might term metrosexuality seems the norm. Once they’ve had a good old stare and pose and decided they were looking their best, they left with a smile and nod. This is obviously part of the service, that you can return as many times as you like to give your barnet a brush and keep looking your best.

I shall certainly be back.

Happy Pongol! Do we still plough the fields?

Happy Pongol – today in Tamil Nadu is the Pongol festival – Harvest. It last 3 days, and today is the day for celebrating people. Tomorrow they celebrate the cow, and thank it for its role in growing crops. It is a very big holiday in Tamil Nadu. Everywhere people come together with their family for festivities, eating the traditional ‘Pongol’ (a mix of spices, and ground rice and lentils). Every home has beautiful chalk drawing on the ground outside their gate – drawn by the women of he home before the sun rose this morning.

We start work properly tomorrow, as the group arrive, and are both still pretty jetlagged and grotty, so I did not expect to spend my first proper morning in India, standing in the middle of 250 camp fires at 5.30 in the morning!

Yet there I was this morning, outside a huge wonderfully decorated temple, where 250 families would celebrate, by each cooking pongol in a clay pot together, as an act of community, as the sun rose. Row upon row of clay pots, set atop a small fire of banana leaves, whilst music was played and songs sung. It was an amazing sight before they were all lit! But then when they all started to light them, it was something I will never forget. Groups of women in stunningly colourful saris sat around each fire, feeding it with banana leaves to keep it going, and watching that the pongol didn’t overflow. It is moments like this when I so love the opportunities I get with my job – and moments like this when I realise how useless cameras are sometimes too – you could never capture the sight properly.

Our presence though did not go unnoticed. Its a bit hard to blend in at events like this!! News stations were there to cover the Pongol celebrations, and me and H were duly photographed and filmed around the burning stoves and then interviewed about how we had enjoyed it. The question that stumped us both was ‘So do you celebrate a similar thing in the UK’ we both thought long and hard. I guess we do – Harvest Festival – but my sole memories of this is being made to sing ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ (which by the way is now stuck in my head, which is a surreal experience whilst in the middle of rural India) and giving the headmaster tins of tinned tomatoes, peaches and spam that he assured us would go the local old peoples home. Yet was it a bigger thing in the past? Is this just me, as a self-confessed urbanite, or have I forgotten recently to pause and say thanks for the food we take so much for granted. Is this because we are too un-avowedly urban, secular or maybe both?

Maybe it goes even further back – bizarrely – I was drawn back to Billy Braggs song “The world turned upside down’ about the socialist Diggers movement in the 17th century, crushed by society for their communalist beliefs, summed up in his song thus: “This earth divided, We will make whole, So it will be, A common treasury for all”. It’s a perspective we’ve defiantly lost, but one certainly on show at the festivities today.

The interview went down OK tough and it was only afterwards were told we are to be on 3 main news channels, one of which is not only shown across India, but Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand too! We’ve colleagues working in Thailand at the moment, they may well get a shock if they switch on the news this evening!