Walking mind

I am from the country; I’ve lived in (well ordered) cities where cars and people obey a very prescribed set of rules and expectations. There are, I’m sure, a clear set of rules here in Mumbai for pedestrian and vehicular traffic; however, to a newcomer, it seems like full on chaos. We walked most of the day through the city from our hotel to the bay (we are staying in the southern part of the city near the water). I’m not sure if I can fully describe the experience of walking through the city. First, there is the aural onslaught; beyond the noise of various sizes and vintages of internal combustion engines in whatever state of repair, there is a constant chorus of horns (constant—in that all the vehicles are constantly honking. When the light turns to green for instance, all vehicles following the front rank honk in case the leaders forget to link the concept of ‘green’ with going onward). Secondly, there is a hazy idea of what would ostensibly be termed ‘lanes’; as the road is shared by taxis, rickshaws, mopeds, busses, and cement trucks, each finds it’s own space no matter what kind of line would seem appropriate for forward travel. Third, when one crosses the street, there is none of this ‘wait for the green man to illuminate and then, when all traffic has ceased, cross the street in the marked pedestrian lane’ nonsense. Instead, one just goes into moving traffic and squeezes into the (narrow) spaces between the vehicles hurling toward you honking their horns (in case you’ve forgotten the concept of self preservation and the physics of the intersection of a human body and a steel box). And lastly there is the inevitable pollution from so many old vehicles running in the confined space of a city.
From the above, it would seem much more sensible to stay off the street altogether and simply walk on the sidewalk; however, the sidewalk is reserved for commerce (street stalls and hawkers) as well as living space. Everywhere there are people literally living by the side of the street; one walks by a family group cooking over a brazier and just going about their domestic business. So it’s often easier to gingerly make one’s way along right on the side of traffic in the street itself. It’s a wonderful mix of dynamic life all laid out in the open.

I’ve started an online gallery to post images from the trip; most of these will be general street shots as the images I’m making in the shelters we are visiting can’t be published openly as we need to be sensitive to identity protection. Click here for the gallery.

Second day in India

(...and still pretty jet-lagged; I slept for about four hours last night but woke up around midnight and was just awake till morning. Very frustrating when one ‘tries’ very hard to fall asleep but just cannot. I think I’ll break down and drug myself up tonight or I’m going to get all out of whack. Thankfully, the food borne illness from Germany seems to have…passed.)
We met yesterday and today with folk from Jyoti Kalash. They work mainly with prostituted women and their children in Kamathipura the red light district in Mumbai (which is also Asia’s largest red light district). We walked around the district yesterday (I had not slept for over thirty hours; this, combined with the full on onslaught of that is India, made the experience doubly intense—or perhaps numbing). There are perhaps 30,000 sex workers in the district and 100,000 in Mumbai as a whole. The common situation is that a woman will rent a bed in a collective house; this is her whole world where she works, eats, sleeps. Some are basically lockable cubicles but oftentimes it’s just a bed with dividing curtains. The beds are set up on blocks and the woman’s children live in the space beneath. We went into one working home where five or six women live and work in the space of about 12×20 feet.

The children of these women are at risk from a number of established factors (about 50% have TB according to a paediatrician we spoke with at a local hospital). We went today to an outlying suburb of the city to see a home Jyoti Kalash has established for girls who are children of sex workers. This provides a safe place for one but they also provide tutoring for school and such basic secondary services as they would not receive living in a brothel (the girls, by the way are exceptionally bright and articulate. They all speak three languages and we had some very witty conversations in English). Dr. Welch, who I am travelling with, is attempting to asses what they health needs of the children are (or more specifically, how her organisation might come alongside Jyoti Kalash and similar NGOs here and asses what these needs are; the health situation of prostituted women and their children here is a bit nebulous). Surprisingly, when I looked at their textbooks, they were vaguely familiar; they are from the same publisher my High School used.

There is a whole lot more to write which I will parse out over the incoming days (not going to write as much now as I’ve mentally hazy and need some rest to be a bit more articulate). However, in a place where just attempting to walk along the street requires all my mental and physical agility, it’s going to take some doing to tell the story! We already ridden in their ubiquitous taxis, second class on the regional train and an auto-rickshaw. The interactions with people are interesting to observe as well (haven’t seen many westerners); especially on the train back today the men were staring Katherine down—not in a super creepy way, but more like “what is this strange creature” (nobody seemed to notice me but I don’t have bright gold hair).

Not the best start

Though not the worst either; I flew into Frankfurt yesterday from the mess of snowstorms that are playing havoc with travel in the States right now. My flight made it without incident; however, somehow my baggage did not make it here with me. Lufthansa didn’t have it in their system that it was handed off from United to Lufthansa…so, they had to track it down. The service people at Lufthansa are great; they are just very…German. The woman at the service counter handed me an overnight bag with toiletries €100 in cash for the trouble (this is why I fly Lufthansa). The bag magically materialised here at my hotel this afternoon.
I woke around midnight and went straight to the toilet to hurl up most of what I had consumed the previous afternoon and evening. I find it bewildering that I can go years without catching cold; however, I pick up food poisoning at the drop of a hat. More bewildering is the fact that I never get it in dodgy places; it’s always in someplace like Scotland (thank you Gerri and Stephen for taking care of me in the bothy) or the Czech Republic (thank you Andrea for taking care of me—several times). I was supposed to fly on to Mumbai today; however the last time I had food poisoning and ‘felt better’ the morning before a flight, I became even more ill on the plane and had paramedics waiting on the ground when we landed. I thought it would be prudent to delay a day rather than risking a trip to the hospital in Mumbai. So I’m booked for tomorrow’s flight (thank you Travelex Travel insurance for…well nobody was here to take care of me, but they will take care of fees and such later).

Have spent most of the day resting and re-hydrating; also watching the Olympics in German. I just came back from the airport (I’m in an airport hotel); had a leisurely dinner there and watched people go to and fro to all places far and near. I Looked in the pricey shops (was thinking about buying a pair of jeans but they are €100! Though I suppose I could have used the €100 from Lufthansa).

Hopefully the lost baggage and food borne illness gremlins are worked out for this trip and all will go smoothly hereon (knocking on the Holiday Inn Express plywood with veneer table).

Going to India

I’ve, quite suddenly, the opportunity to travel across India in February-March with Dr. Katherine Welch to document an informal survey trip to meet with NGOs who might partner with her organisation, Global Health Promise. GHP is dedicated to protecting mothers and their children from the impact of trafficking, prostitution, and sexual exploitation. Katherine will determine what GHP can offer concerning health issues faced by trafficked people, prostitutes and, particularly, the children of women who are in these situations.
Following that I’ll go to Mysore for a couple weeks to document the work of Sarah Jane Whitehouse, a Glasgow based artist I know from my past life in Scotland. Sarah will do art therapy with girls who were trafficked and now trying to re-enter society. Her therapy will focus on issues of identity, self-worth and trust.

This is sort of a proof-of-concept trip for me; I’m working on several connected projects right now that seem like they will probably coalesce into one at some point (with people I’ve had contact with concerning trafficking over the past few years and with BuildaBridge, the non-profit I’m associated with in Philadelphia). We attempt to place art therapists, via a program we have going at BuildaBridge, with partner organisations that work with children in some of the world’s toughest situations. As follow-up to that, we want to do ‘personal history’ projects and bring their stories out for awareness, support, and hopefully as a way to help people feel validated as human beings. On this trip I’ll take along a small kit of digital cameras and an audio recorder to produce several pieces such as these: MediaStorm (in the incoming weeks I’ll post more specifics on the type of work I’m aiming to do here. It’s a fine balance of sensitivity to keep when working with people who have already been exploited).

I’ve the promise of some preliminary funding for travel expenses; however, we would like to raise some further funding to cover equipment and supplies. BuildaBridge will act as my fiduciary agent for this trip so any donations you might like to make are tax-deductible. I’m hoping to put together some solid media from this trip to show what it is we are hoping to do and then I’ll seek further grant funding (we have already submitted one related grant and have further proposals in the works). Please contact me at euassociate@buildabridge.org if you would either like to make a donation or are interested in the project as a whole (I’ll also publish more detailed proposals in the incoming month concerning the project as it relates to BuildaBridge and, separately, the potential for telling the life stories of trafficked people worldwide. I’m working on a curriculum for training our artists to gather these stories in the field and, of course, empowering people to relate their own).

This has been my back-burner project for several years now; it seems it may come to the forefront soon. Again, this initial trip is an informal survey where I’ll be thinking through how to do the larger project. Much more to come…

Update: There is now a secure donation page for this; click here and then select “storytelling project” from the drop-down menu (be sure to do this as we have several programs on here and the donation needs to be designated towards a particular one).

Also, here is a description on the BuildaBridge site of what we hope to develop this into.

Success in failed underpants

The last week’s news sounds like the plot of Mel Brook’s The Producers; in the musical/movie the main characters discover that, by producing a musical that will certainly become a flop, they will paradoxically bring in more money. I wonder if there is a terrorist group channelling the ideas of Mel Brooks (and not sure if that would be hilarious or horrifying).

Had the gentleman of the exploding shorts succeeded in his attempt, we would probably never have known what brought the plane down nor possibly where the man was from, etc. (though these groups are usually quick to shout out what they’ve ‘accomplished’). However, what if the set goal was to fail outright? What if they never intended to destroy the plane?

If a plane is brought down it represents a certain financial loss and obviously a loss of life; though these groups seem intent to bring about the most loss of life possible, I would imagine their goals are more nuanced than that. We are essentially talking about a conflict of worldview; it’s more practical to disrupt the norms of living than to kill large numbers of people (the former requires only a bit of leverage in the right place; the latter usually involves a great deal of effort and risk of exposure).

A few years ago, a man attempted to hide a bomb in his shoe and now, all around the world, travellers must remove footwear for inspection. This man succeeded far more in failure; the disruption he’s caused is global rather than just one flight. Now because of the Underbomber, we are now told to arrive four hours early for flights rather than the accustomed two. How much economic and social disruption do these extra two hours represent? How much stress for people who are already stressed (and how much more surly will the already overworked TSA screeners become)?

I think we risk becoming completely subject to the failures of ideologues; but I suppose that is nothing new.

Mouth Water

This week, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the Copenhagen Summit said (on the failure of heads of state to come to a worthwhile consensus), “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. We’ve brought 192 horses to water.”
I suppose it won’t matter soon; the water will rise to their mouths and there will be no more leading.