The internet is out AGAIN in our flat! It seems like every other week we are calling the tech people down to fix it, ask us why we keep unplugging the router (which we don’t), and leave us for another week of struggling to get connection until it craps out. I realize having to walk 10 minutes to the computer lab is such a 1st world, privileged thing to complain about, but it’s happening. The complaining has actually gone down since I’ve been feeling better.
The typhoid seems under control now. I was put on a special diet for 3 weeks of boiled vegetables, fruits, white rice, yogurt, and hard-boiled eggs. It’s not too bad considering I love fruits and veggies, but going to the tiny, crowded store after a day at work is definitely not high on my list of happy things. Also, I’ve now started actually dreaming about steak and chicken fried steak. I think I’m having some sort of meat withdrawals. Sometimes I literally daydream about preparing, cooking, and eating a ham – all the steps, up until I’m laying on the couch in a meat coma. How sick is that?
Work is amazing as always. I know I haven’t said much about it, but that’s because there is so much to say. The agency is tiny, 7 full-time social workers and 12 paid volunteers, but serves over 15,000 (if not over 20,000) people. Isn’t that insane? If you had told me that before I came here, I would not have believed it, but it’s true. The work is so much different than in the states – it’s all preventative instead of intervention based, the social workers are never in the office, and the programs are all created with huge input from members of the community. They were the first agency in all of India to offer adoption and foster care services, and even now they have such an innovative and exhaustive list of services they offer their clients. It really is inspiring to be here. My favorite program is called the Women’s Self-Help Group, which I thought would be some sort of counseling, but is actually a group where the women lend each other money to avoid the high interest rates of the banks. Each woman pitches in 20 rupees (less than $.50) a week to a common fund that they can then lend money from with a small interest rate. Each month the women in the group pick one woman to loan money to, it doesn’t matter for what, and that woman then starts paying the loan back the next month. The group has been meeting for over a year now and has accumulated more money than they can keep track of, so my agency opened bank accounts for all of them, and now one woman every month is given 500 rupees for her account. They are even lending money to their husbands! Can you believe that? This small group of fisher women, who make around $100 a month, are now so self-reliant that they are supporting their husbands. It’s incredible. It makes me so happy when I get to meet with them, speak in very broken hindi (then end up getting everything translated anyways), laugh with them (usually at my crappy hindi), and see how empowered they’ve become because of this program. Moments like these are why I feel so fortunate to have come here, to learn about social work in a country that has so many grave problems you would think the slum people would just give up on life. It’s really, really inspiring. In total I would say there are about 25+ programs offered, some really small (an activity group for children) and some spanning continents (international adoption). Like I said, there is so much to share with you, so I’ll have to do it in bits.
For now, here is a neat picture I took of a monkey on campus, and one of my train stations (it was in Slumdog Millionaire!):
Outside CST Station at 5pm
Trying to get to my train
This guy is comtemplating life and love and bananas.
Hope you all are well!
xoxo Katie
