Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from India!

As I write to you from my balcony in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu on the almost idyllic tropical morning of January 1st, 2009, I hope this email finds you safe and celebratory on the eve of the New Year in California!

After over 30 hours of travel including a six-hour lay over in Dubai (which also included a series of encounters with intoxicated Japanese businessmen, a Starbucks with drinks in Arabic, and an Irish Pub), “Team CLP Phase III” safely arrived in Tamil Nadu, India last Sunday. Since that time, Shady Grove Oliver, Shirley Del Aguila and I have also effectively spent too much personal income at the sunny beach enclave of Mamallapuram on our way to begin work and planning in Pondicherry, where I write to you today. Since our arrival, we have been accompanied by our mother-daughter duo/NGO-partners, Amala and Vasanthi (“Ma”) as well as Ma’s close friends Krishna (“Uncle”) and his friend, Keke.

We’ve had quite a week since our departure from California last Friday.

On Tuesday, December 30th, we embarked on a two-hour bus ride from Mamallapuram to Kanchipuram for a collaborative and exciting meeting with the Rural Institute for Development Education (RIDE) (www.rideindia.org)—a non-governmental organization (NGO) that works specifically to take children out of labor in the silk and stone industries and into one of their twelve “transition schools” before facilitating their entry into the government system. Considering 80% of this area depends on this industry for a living, their 25-year effort in partnership with state and federal government, NGOs, and interested local and international individuals, has been pivotal to decreasing child labor in the wider Kanchipuram area. According to their research surveys, almost 40,000 children were in child labor in the silk mill industry in 1996—a number, they have argued, that has decreased to less than 1,000 thanks to the collaborative work of the organizations listed above (i.e. government labor department providing free machine looms rather than hand looms, enforced laws on advanced payments curbing the willingness of parents to allow children to work, and active outreach on the part of a network of NGOs).

Our future collaboration with RIDE is incredibly exciting—over a two hour meeting, we discussed their work in education and women’s empowerment as related to labor, as well as our work and our ideals with higher education, social justice, and international dialogue in CLP. Upon a viewing of our newly created 10-minute film about our first leadership camp (thanks to the invaluable work of Eamon Conklin), Mr. Jeyaraj was almost moved to tears (having been selected to attend a similar program when he was in the 10th standard that he said “changed the course of his education”), and his wife and him eagerly proposed that we do something similar with graduates from their Child Labor Bridge Schools.

Upon a tour of their “Training Facilities” set in the more remote, rural area of Kanchipuram and surrounded by community gardens to feed the women and children that attend their meetings, we have agree upon a series of “Leadership Programmes” in the Kanchipuram area for Summer 2009 to serve the 15-20 students now aged 14 to 17-years-old who are graduates of their Bridge Schools and have successfully completed 10 years of government education. Futhermore, Mr. Jeyaraj is eager and excited to send information about our organization to other NGOs in his area, with his hope that our program for international dialogue, creativity, social service, peace, and higher education for underserved communities will expand across the South Indian states of “Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala” and someday “all over India, and all over the world!”

After a three hour bus ride from their facilities to our “home base” in Pondicherry, we have spent December 31 in net cafes, coffee shops, and Amala’s Beauty Parlour working on our Leadership Mela for our “Lights of India” who will be spending time in Pondicherry studying higher education, culture, and leadership from Jan. 5 to Jan.8 of next week.

While Shady and Shirley ran around preparing materials for next week’s curriculum and washing our already desperately dirty clothing, Amala and I spent most of our day on her motorbike going from university to university to seek support from principals for tours and lectures about higher education at their facility. We received a warm welcome from the principal of the government-run Tagore’s Arts College—a series of buildings and winding dirt paths that instantly reminded me of my time at the University of Hyderabad in 2007. Although their students will be on holiday, the principal, Dr. Abraham, connected us to two lecturers and administrators from the nearby Polytechnic Universities to provide lectures of higher education and admission to their schools. We will be meeting with them tomorrow, Friday, to firm these plans.

We are also thankful to a myriad of other people who have come out of the community to help us in our task: this includes a friend of Keke’s who does IAS (Indian Administrative Service) coaching for aspiring IAS officers—a number of which are in our Leadership Class! As well as Amala, who will prepare a short presentation on the history of French and British colonization of Pondicherry, so that we may host a analytical discussion on culture and identity to draw parallels to the experiences of our students in Southern California through Shirley’s curriculum, and the 40 packets made by students at Patriot High School in Jurupa Unified School District (thanks again to Toby Walker for his assistance with that component).

Upon leaving the Arts College, Amala and I travelled to Jipmer Medical University, which includes a fully-functioning hospital to meet the needs of the surrounding community. Her uncle works there as a medical social worker, and we were seeking his support to speak to our students (many of which who are aspiring doctors and nurses) about his social work experience at the medical school and in the medical field.

His office, quite appropriately, sits in the middle of the emergency room ward. Outside the building, people were seated and laid all over the street and sidewalk—some surrounded in families, others alone—but almost all moaning or crying out in pain. As we walked into the ward, human bodies laid in all corners of the large, high-ceilinged room, and injections and small operations were taking place right in the public hall way.

I had not been in an Indian hospital since my contracting “malaria” in November 2007, and the smell of the hospital and wounded bodies sent me into a spin, as everywhere I looked people were lying in pain—all, seemingly, on the near edge of death.We decided to sit outside and wait for her uncle to speak to us. Just as we sat on the steps to ward, a small van pulled up with two women inside—one laying across the back seat, the other standing over her crying.
Amala pointed her out to me—“Look, she has been burned” she said.
“What?” I looked over. Her whole body, naked, was scorched, and she wasn’t moving.
“She was cooking and her dress caught fire.”
“Amala—we both know that she doesn’t get caught on fire by cooking.”
Amala responded quietly, “Yeah... I know.”

Domestic abuse between women and men or women and other families often consists of these cases—men (or their families) throwing acid on their wife, or, as the wife cooks or is in the kitchen, men will throw gasoline on their wives and set them on fire—resulting in a purported “cooking” accident.

Hospital workers rushed down from our doorway with a “Burn Victims Unit” stretcher and pulled the woman from the van, rushing her past us as a crying woman followed, reaching out for the victim’s charred hand.

The security guard caught my shock, and, pointing to me, said, “She will die in a few days.”
Amala followed up, “Yes—even with treatment, she will not survive.” Still horrified, I looked to the security guard.
“How often do you see these cases come through?”
“Maybe… 8…9…10 a day.”

The two men driving the van watched the stretcher pass through the doors of the hospital, then, returning to their car, drove away.

I don’t know who the men were. I don’t know who the women were—if they were wealthy, educated, or poor. I don’t know if she had children or what will happen to them now. But I know that the scene was all too familiar to everyone around me, that the woman’s experience was quickly termed a “cooking incident” even though everyone knew what really happened.

Was that the possible fate of the girls in our program? Can this program provide our girls an opportunity to overcome it? Even more importantly, will our program lead to men with different perceptions of women? What are the unseen results and implications of our program in this sector of society? Will our students feel moved to challenge this problem— like the women and men in California who feel called upon to challenge domestic violence or inequality?

As Amala and I drove out of the hospital, still surrounded in bodies upon bodies of people seeking treatment, and continued our tasks for the Leadership Program, I was reminded of something Mr. Jeyaraj told me, smiling, as we left his office just the day before: “Samantha, Child Leader Project is really Child Activist Project—one question you should think about this week is the great implications of making children feel capable of being activists.”

Mindful of this question, I feel that these are the moments that show us, full force, the implications of our work, the importance of the work, and the worth of the work.

So, from these activists in India to you activists back home—thank you again for your support and help with this project. We hope to “see” you January 5, at the UU Church of Riverside, where the Social Justice Committee and CLP will be hosting an international teleconference with our students from here in Pondicherry. Contact Theresa Gilbertson at theresa@childleaderproject.org for more information on how to get involved.

And, now, let us all work for a more just New Year.

In love and action,

Samantha Wilson
Child Leader Project
www.childleaderproject.org