Bringing the blog back to life...

After probably entirely too long of not posting (life seemed to get in the way for awhile... oops), I'm bringing Tales from the Voyage back to life.

I'm in Kampala, Uganda now, and will be here until July 2008. As I do my PhD research here, and settle into this new place, I hope to be able to share some of what I witness, and the stories and pieces I find from others along the way....

Cheers,
Sarah

India: Difference, and the Ties That Bind

On the front terrace of the low-rising visiting professors residence, six women sat calmly in a semi-circle. They held their notes and purses, muttering to one another in Tamil, eyeing the six Canadian women as we approached. As we introduce ourselves, flickers of recognition pass across their faces. In the nervousness of the moment of first introduction, glancing at the warm faces opposite us, hesitation fades and we welcome the embrace of these new friends .

These women are our counterparts. Six Canadian women from the University of Guelph were paired up with six women from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University for one month to study intercultural communication and international extension. The Canadian students were doing the courses for credit back in Guelph, while the students from Tamil Nadu were taking time away from their thesis work to participate. Perhaps this was our first moment of understanding – cross-cultural communication through a mutual understanding of thesis anxiety…

There are more reasons why my counterpart, Subbu, and I should have been at odds than friends. We are tremendously different people. Even my use of the word "tremendous" would probably entertain her: as with many of her peers, she uses understated English – none of the exuberant overstatements that pepper my speech. If I consider the geographic, cultural, linguistic and religious differences, I am quite taken aback by the friendship. But, such is the nature of relationships: we came together to demonstrate the flexibility and malleability of boundaries that would seem to be firm and intransigent.

While we were supposed to be studying intercultural effectiveness, there is a leap between reading a book and actually being effective. This was, in many ways, the point of the exchange: learn to communicate and get the job done, regardless of your circumstances. Subbu and I, ensconced in my mosquito net, bags of spicy snacks strewn about the bed, read the theory and chuckled. We understood its importance, but within the sphere of our relatively relaxed friendship, we had to laugh. What our texts were trying to describe, in a relatively clinical way, was what we were experiencing. What our readings didn't describe was the process of fumbling along, getting used to one another, and eventually the shift from stranger to counterpart to friend to sister that happened along the way.

There was one element of our relationship, one quirk we shared, that struck us both as being essential to our relationship: a shared curiosity about difference. The most obvious example for us surrounded arranged marriage. I think it speaks to our North American ethic that arranged marriage was of some fascination to the majority of the Canadian students. Subbu took it with a sense of humour.

"Sarah," she tells me, "my parents know what they want for me. I told them what I want. I'm sure we'll find someone that suits us all."
"But Subbu, you aren't concerned about choosing?"
"I'm sure that my parents will make sure he's a good man. As long as we can be friends, that's all that’s really important to me."
"And love?"
"How does love form anyway? Which marriages last longer – the ones based on romance, which can disappear, or marriages from friendship?"
"I'm not quite sure."
"Well, I have better things to do than look for love. I want to finish my studies, find some work experience. I'll let my parents worry about my marriage."

She chuckles, shaking her head at me. Indeed she does have plans – Subbu wants her own NGO to work with farmers in Tamil Nadu, improving crop varieties and increasing their livelihoods through agriculture.

"Sarah, do your parents get to have any choice when you marry?"
"Well, if they hate the person, I'm likely to reconsider."
"Do you like dating?"
"Sometimes."
"When?"
"When it's going well", I laugh. "But, I do get tired of it."
"Then why don't you arrange a marriage?"
"You never know, I might just do that." I grin.
Subbu laughs and swats my shoulder.

Did we gloss it over? Perhaps. More honestly, I think we recognised that there was no consensus to be reached on the issue: she would have an arranged marriage, and she was fine with it; I would choose whom to marry, if at all. The friction in between the two sides of the debate was the space where we could learn: What is love – the romance? The long-term friendship? The presence of someone for so long that you don't know what would happen if they suddenly disappeared? Is it unfair, that Subbu didn't have a choice? Was I really getting the better end of the deal, being able to figure it out as I went along? The questions, regardless of the answers, were what was important – the site of learning.

In anti-racism training, some educators talk about the importance of "different" versus "different from". When we compare – "different from" – we naturally assume that one side is good and the other bad. "Different" recognises the humanity and uniqueness of the individual. Subbu and I were simply Sarah and Subbu. Neither of us assumed that we were better and "more" correct than the other.

Not to pretend this was an easy task: this was difficult. Part of me wanted to shake Subbu and say, "Wake up. Don't you see that you deserve a choice in the matter? Don't you see that this takes away your power?" But I stop. I think about Subbu. Perhaps she's ready to shake me and say, "Sarah, wake up. Don't you see that there are more important things in life? Don't you see that your parents know better than you do?" Neither of us is shaking the other. Rather, we come to the point where the conflict makes us think, and gives us new perspectives to consider.

This is at times painful. We visit with a woman living with HIV/AIDS. I have spent the last ten years involved with HIV/AIDS education and advocacy in one form or another. It is a very human illness for me, tied to faces of friends, and the stigma I know they face. For Subbu, this is the first time she's been in contact with someone living with the illness. We are challenged, and come out on opposite sides of an argument. I am fuelled by what I have seen, by relationships that have helped guide my opinions; she is fuelled by what she believes, by experiences that have guided her opinions. After the short group discussion we have with all the Canadians and all the Indian students, Subbu and I don't discuss it again.

She told me, "I understand what you're saying, Sarah. But, it is difficult for me here. I think it is very different in India."
I struggled. "I know that it is different in India, Subbu. Remember, I'm talking about my friends. I'm talking about what I've seen."

The conversation finishes. We are friends, yet friends with vastly different lives. In the course of trying to communicate and be effective, we must not forget that we are different. The quality I appreciate about Subbu is that she remembers this and respects it. Perhaps in our stubborn effort to minimise critical judgement, we missed an opportunity to change one another's minds. Perhaps we were fooling ourselves – were we really minimising judgement, or just not acknowledging it?

Conclusion

On our last day in Coimbatore, before I fly back to Delhi, we share parting gifts and sign autograph books. Subbu gives me a tiny porcelain ballerina tucked into a seashell. "It's a miniature Sarah," she tells me. It's so dainty and fragile – quite unlike how I see myself – that I almost chuckle. But I look closer, and I see the curly brown hair and the rosy cheeks – I see it from Subbu's perspective.

Sitting in the airport, on slippery, squishy chairs, we wait for our flights. I bring a box of sweets for us to share, and Subbu and I watch Tamil music videos.

"He's a good singer," I mutter
Subbu grins and laughs.
"Everybody else thinks he's too short and wild, but he's my favourite," she confesses.
She laughs again.

Our flight is called, and as I turn to go through security, she says to me,
"It was fantastic to spend these days with you."
Chuckling, reply, "It was good to meet you too".

India: A Place for Foreigners

India has an uncanny attraction for the foreign traveler: it is a land of mysticism and mystery; it escaped from the clutches of the “Great Colonial British”; the cosmopolitan and modern are intertwined with "traditional" culture and challenging poverty. It is a country of contrasts – poverty and wealth, desert heat and glacial cold, brilliant scholars and illiterate peasants. There is a bond of common humanity while the East versus West differences as times feel like an immense chasm.

India is both accessible and untouchable for the traveler: the plane ticket may be expensive, but money goes a long, long way. Luxury is affordable, and for the impoverished backpacker seeking to "see the world" in six months or less, India is a boon.

At ten o’clock at night on a rusty metal catwalk above teeming platforms in the chaotic Old Delhi railway station, I meet a Belgian woman named Anna. Carting our rucksacks out of the sweep of traffic, she tells me, "I left India three months ago. I couldn't take it back in Europe. I sold my stuff and borrowed from friends to come back. I have $100 US a month, and I want to stay six months". In India, all is within the realm of the possible.

Anna is heading for Dharamsala and McLeodGanj. Dharamsala is the home of the Dalai Lama in exile, and houses the Tibetan Refugee Children's Schools and the Tibetan Secretariat. For those less Buddhistly inclined, McLeodGanj is a budget traveler's mecca. For fifty Rupees a night, a soul can hire a room up a winding trail in Bhagsu or Dharamkot. Originally a British hill station, in McLeodGanj foreigners in grungy "India chic" wander the muddy streets, past chai stands, internet cafes and shop after shop selling the same staple clothes and jewelry. Wandering in their midst are locals – monks and nuns in traditional garb, saffron robes and shaved heads, shop keepers sharing chai and watching the throngs, children scurrying between the legs of travelers and murky mudpuddles in the main chowk, women keeping watch over the mayhem of the bus stand from high residential roads. In the middle of town stand a row of prayer wheels, colorfully painted, spun by children, the prayerful, and curious tourists. Guidebooks speak of pleasant guesthouses where you can have a "chance to brush up on your Hebrew with stoned Israeli guests".

I arrive in McLeodGanj, oblivious to its reputation, after a traitorous eight-hour bus ride. Even in the pouring rain, the streets are lined with shaggy, barefoot men and women in spaghetti-strap tank tops and Punjabi-style Salwaars. I make friends with a shop owner, who is philosophical about the mayhem: "It may be a pain in the ass, but what can you do?" After a dreadful attempt at a Tibetan massage from one of the throng of masseurs lining the main street, I wonder, what is this all about? The scenery is spectacular, yet the masses recede as I hike out of town. In relative solitude on a mountain path, I find it hard to believe that they come for the mountain vistas. What is it, then, that lures a woman to beg and borrow money from friends for a six month India hit. And why here?

Gita Mehta's book Karma Kola, a staple of the backpacker reading list, speaks of the Westernization of the East. In McLeodGanj, there is ample evidence on posters strewn about town: yoga courses, meditation retreats, ayurvedic medicine, massage, spiritual guidance.

Mehta writes,

Since East and West increasingly meet under such unlikely circumstances, it might be wise to remember two myths – one Eastern, one Western – which provide a caution to the human race. The Indian myth maintains we are living in the age of Kalyug, which presages the end of the world. Kalyug is characterized by speed. Speed, being the enemy of reflection, will spread fantasy with such velocity that humans, in their pursuit of escape, will ultimately destroy themselves. The Western myth, as expressed in Goethe's Faust, introduces the devil as a poodle, welcomed as something harmless and amusing until it turns into the implacable force that exacts damnation as the price of greed.

Who can deny that this is indeed the age of speed if the psychedelic escapisms, the mindless pursuit of chemical and religious narcosis, the greed for supernatural powers, which entered our experience with all the playfulness of a poodle only three decades ago, have turned into a Faustian nightmare in which fundamentalist priests become bounty hunters, drug barons hold whole nations to ransom, and saffron-robed holy men now deal in arms? …


Mehta's book is a collage of stories of the Western foreigner meeting the East. The tales are testaments to the complexity, chaos and deception possible in the search for spiritual peace and enlightenment. Characters from her book wander the streets of India each day, in McLeodGanj and elsewhere.

A fellow I encountered in Delhi told me, "There are two main types of traveler in India: the spiritual tourist and the budget tourist". I'm not sure if this was an indictment of the folly of the West, but there certainly seemed to be evidence of the truth of his statement. As Mehta’s book evidences, the search for spiritual truth conjures up everyone from yoga practitioners to spiritual gurus. The budget possibilities are rampant in remote hotels that change American travelers cheques and a dearth of guides to traveling on the cheap for sale in crowded markets. Foreigners in shorts and t-shirts worn for two months straight haggle over chai while shoppers buy dozens of pillow covers and beaded jewel boxes at obscenely low prices to sell back home (to pay for the next plane ticket, perhaps). But, does every foreigner fall into these broad categories? Is curiosity about the ebb and flow of religion and faith in day-to-day life, a different flavor from what we are likely to encounter in the West, necessarily deserving of mockery? I doubt it. And yet, with all the caricatures and stereotypes embodied on the streets and in the collective imagination, I struggle: where does the foreigner actually fit?

In a café in Darjeeling, I meet two men travelling together to Sikkim. One is expounding upon the joys of Varanasi. "In Varanasi," he tells me, "people line the Ganges to cremate their dead. There are funeral ghats, and people bathe in the waters to cleanse themselves. People go to die in Varanasi to achieve moksha, spiritual release". The cluster of backpackers around our table is in thrall. He pronounces, "This is the Real Indian Experience".

The next day, I meet an affable and chatty foreigner who declares, "I would love to just set up my easel and paint in a family's backyard. I'm so tired of this backpacking and wandering”. In the back of a pickup truck, jostling along with six Nepali tea pickers, she recounts the last three months of wandering throughout Northern India. "But you know," she tells me, sotto voce, "I really am getting tired of all the Indians. This is a beautiful country, stunning. But the Indians are beginning to piss me off".

In town, I plead fatigue and escape to my hotel room. I wonder, in a bit of a panic: Is this me? Is this how I am seen here? Is this the "backpacker does India" mentality?

On my train back to Delhi, I find myself in a compartment with three other foreigners. I groan internally, thinking of the café and Emma. As we settle in, one fellow pulls out three Indian newsmagazines and tosses them on our communal table. On trains, I have discovered, reading material is shared among whomever is within reaching distance. These magazines were his contribution to the public pot. One woman pulls out a packet of biscuits, offers them about, and curls up to read a Hindi book about Tibetan culture in Leh. The fellow strikes up a discussion about Bihari politics with a gregarious Rajsthani fellow sitting in the neighboring berth. The other woman and I play games with a bored girl who has wandered into our compartment. We lapse from silence to conversation to sleep. Each has been in India for quite awhile. Each carries a large rucksack. The women are wearing Salwaar Kameez, and a distaste for the scantily-clad female foreigner. There are no conversations about "those Indians" or the "real Indian experience". There are no outlandish stories that make us “qualified” backpackers or “experienced” budget travelers.

So where is the space to be foreign in India? I am conscious of the clash between my values and those around me – frustrated at the Eve-teasing and stares of men in Delhi. Cautious about what I am seen doing in public and where (I dared not drink in public in the South). It is a constant process of negotiation, and a challenging one. There is a richness I found only after looking beyond generalizations and expectations.

How is the foreigner to not fall prey to the Western commodification of Eastern culture? I wish at times that there were an easier answer. Each time I step aboard a plane, I must be conscious – what is the baggage that I bring with me? I can really only handle the commodification question from a personal level. While I have theories about the “search for a soul” or a search for history that we engage with in the West, it would be general speculation. My remedy was letting go of my assumptions and admitting my curiosity, of seeking to eschew the folly and insult of travel-as-consumption towards something else, something more engaging.

India: Living with HIV/AIDS

It is midmorning in Dindigul, a town in Tamil Nadu, India. There are eight of us with cups of tea, perched on fold-up chairs, crowded around a green metal desk in a sunny room in a cement office building. Outside, cows meander through the yard, prodded by sari-clad women with wispy sticks and strong voices. A battered, angry German Shepard yelps and growls aimlessly as he tugs at his chain. Goats poke nosily into piles of drying chilies, while men doze on charpoys in the yard.

Over three thousand miles away, in Delhi, state ministers and federal government officials are in long, intense meetings. They have come from across the country, sitting with experts and NGO representatives in the muggy, murky air of India's capital city.

At the end of this hot July day, we will all have come to some greater understanding of one of the more significant issues facing India today, one many are loathe to recognize: HIV/AIDS. The minister's meeting in New Delhi is significant because it is one of the first times that the government has officially recognized exactly how significant a problem HIV/AIDS poses to India. According to Nicholas Eberstadt, in 1987, New Delhi announced a National AIDS Control Programme. However, follow-through was uneven, and the government spent more time arguing that outside agencies were overestimating the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the country. The federal government has granted significant leeway to individual states in dealing with HIV/AIDS, which has resulted in varying levels of interest and ability to deal with the challenge. The severity of the illness, and governmental response, is hardly a revelation to the people around the table with me in Dindrigal. Nor is it likely to shock the many people and agencies across the country who have been involved with HIV/AIDS education and advocacy. In Tamil Nadu, national recognition of the severity of HIV/AIDS, and increased funding to boot, has resulted in a state-level commitment to action.

Since its emergence in the mid-1980s, HIV/AIDS has been a political hot potato. In the US, people who were living with HIV/AIDS were initially stigmatized as the "3 Hs" – homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. Over time, stigmas have shifted, labels have been rearranged, but the illness remains bogged down in stigma and misunderstanding, and people living with HIV/AIDS are still more often referred to as "AIDS people" or "AIDS sufferers" than individuals living with a disease.

In India, scientific assessments of the incidence, distribution and control of the disease are limited. Estimates of actual infection rate vary from four million positive Indians to eight million, depending on the source. What we do know, and what my colleagues in Dindrigal say is the case for their clients, are several general trends in transmission. Perhaps most significantly, people across the country are reluctant to discuss the behavior that leads to transmission. As one friend put it, "I won't find out about sex until I'm married. How would I know about transmission for AIDS?".

The association between HIV and homosexuality is no less significant a stigma in India than in North America. As the New Internationalist reported in 2000, police have arrested local HIV/AIDS education and outreach workers in Lucknow who worked with men who have sex with men, accusing them of running "sex dens" while the media spouted the view that "homosexuality is 'alien' to India". The first gay pride celebration in Kolkatta this past August would indicate quite the opposite, but the association is still there: HIV/AIDS is foreign, undesirable, and a punishment for one’s transgressions.

Most transmission in India today appears to be through heterosexual contact, largely through contact with sex workers and commercial truckers. In Dindrigal they add industrial workers and agricultural laborers to their list of high risk groups. This leads to many monogamous women being infected by husbands who have extra-marital sex. Illiteracy and social taboos around discussing sexuality with women leaves them at significant risk for infection, and hard to access by those who would seek to equip them with appropriate information.

In Dindrigal, HIV/AIDS becomes less an "issue" and more a reality as field workers describe what they have witnessed – and continue to witness – in their travels through clients' villages. In one area, a family of four, whose members were all positive, was locked in a cow shed by their extended family. They were found dead several weeks later. While this is a more severe incident, negative stigma associated with an HIV positive status does lead to social neglect, isolation, and occasionally abuse. Some individuals experience self-stigma, or fear of disclosing their status to family, and commit suicide. Marriages can break down and relationships disintegrate if one person is positive and the other isn't. Some run from their community for the sake of survival.

HIV/AIDS also highlights the already difficult circumstances faced by women, particularly in small rural communities. Within the family, if the woman is positive, regardless of who infected whom, she is automatically to blame. When her husband dies, she is often forced from the extended family by her in-laws, often followed by significant property disputes. Her children face discrimination at school, where teachers reject her children for fear they will infect other students through casual contact. Health care institutions won't touch her. When she dies, her children may be left to the streets or orphanages, as the community and family members are often unwilling to adopt them.

Aanganamal lives near Dindrigal, and has been living with AIDS for over seven years. She is supported by my friends in Dindrigal now, but in the past has been reliant solely on her parents. With time and effort, her community has gradually begun to support her, treating her not as untouchable, but one among them. Donations are collected from community members and divided amongst the people living with HIV/AIDS in her area. Aanganamal works in her village at the community toilets, collecting 50 paise per woman, a little income to feed herself and her family.

None of this means she's treated well. "Nobody treats me like a sister," she declares. "Nobody treats me well". Her circumstances present a challenging story. She has three children who are all infected, and no husband. Forced into marriage at a young age, Aanganamal fled from her husband and his family. Marked by the stigma of refusing to live with her husband, she has worked as a prostitute over the years – "I have many illegal connections". She chuckles, shaking the bangles on her skinny arms, "I was infected by the policeman and the doctor in my town. They all know I'm infected, but they still ask to sleep with me. I still get a lot of trouble from the men." That said, she comments, "sometimes, if men come to me and want to be with me, they won't give me money. I have gold chains and rings, I'll give them away to the men if they come with me."

Aanganmal's story isn't easy to handle, nor is she a simple woman: her life has been marked by breaking rigid gender roles, social isolation, economic hardship, and severe health problems. She is sick again, and needs money. She doesn't hesitate to point out my relative wealth, and ask me for help each time we cross paths.

It would be easy to demonize Aanganmal. I must admit, she was not an easy person to meet. The face of HIV/AIDS is not an easy one, as Aanganmal demonstrates. And yet, the impulse towards judgement and moral high-handedness has significantly contributed to the impact of the disease. As Stephen Lewis, UN AIDS Ambassador, cries about AIDS orphans in Africa and the need for cheap anti-retroviral treatments, I think of Aanganmal. For her, and the other clients of my colleagues in Dindrigal, anti-retrovirals are still a long way off. The fight now is for basic care – nutrition, access to basic health care, community support, some source of economic income. And while the image of innocent children in Africa wasting away from a disease for which they carry no blame may draw international attention, I can't help but think this misses the point.

HIV/AIDS affects the individual, but it does not summarize them. Just as cancer doesn't define the essence of the person who is undergoing treatment, HIV/AIDS does not define the infected person. Still, the stigma is significant, and the challenges tremendous. AIDS prevention is continually stymied by gender discrimination, homophobia, cultural barriers and rigid social roles. Discussing fault of the individual removes responsibility from a system – in India and around the world – that has refused to acknowledge the reality of this illness until it reached overwhelming proportions.

Eberstadt, in Foreign Policy magazine, argues that while HIV/AIDS in Africa has reached critical mass now, India, China and Russia are next. While AIDS in Africa has been able to cartwheel out of control while the rest of the world has paid little attention, this will not be the case for Eurasia. "Circumstances”, he writes, “are rather different in the world's other area of rapidly spreading HIV infection. Eurasia is home to the great majority of the world's population; five out of every eight people on the planet live there. It has substantial economic weight – its combined GNP in 2000 of $15 trillion exceeded that of either the United States or Europe. Militarily, it is home to four out of seven declared nuclear states. This, unlike in sub-Saharan Africa, unexpected shocks (in Eurasia) will have major worldwide repercussion".

While the specter of the worldwide impact looms, and the ghosts of those we have forgotten or ignored peek over our shoulder, I think of the crew gathered around the green metal desk in Dindrigul. In the face of an illness that is challenging and perplexing, they maintain hope. They focus on one thing at a time: the first step, though, is recognizing the humanity – the human-ness – of it all.

India: The Secret Lives of Women

A woman, young and grinning, stands poised mid-way up a flight of stairs in a florescent-lit restaurant in Darjeeling. She glides through French doors onto the balcony, mustard-coloured kurta whispering in its own breeze, shawl across her front, arms crossed at the elbows. She is fluid, economical in her movements, and warm in her expression.

Three women sit alone, sharing cake, coke and chai. One is in a lime-green salwaar kameez, matching bindi punctuating her forehead. She laughs riotously, the napkin across her mouth barely concealing her glee. The others are in Western dress – jeans and sweaters. They huddle intently, pealing gusts of laughter. Their joy and warmth break the chill of the evening air and the pall of the ever-present male gaze. I want to call it the tom-cat howling and crotch sniffing of the men outdoors with territorial gazes, but I wonder – is that too harsh? Men stroll in the centre of the public square outside, chuckling and talking. Women are on the periphery – in small clumps with their families, or in twos and threes, sheltered by the awnings of closed shops or clusters of trees.

There are many worlds here that overlap and interweave – family, men, women, children, home, work…In public, I notice the absence of women and presence of men… In shops, in restaurants… In private, the opposite becomes true. Where is the space for the women?

As I watch the men that the misty evening in Darjeeling, I consider the strength of the women I have met: Auntiji, my friends, their mothers, Deedee… I remember a male Kashmiri friend's comment, "the world would be far better if it were run by woman. No person who carries a human life for nine months would be willing to go out later and kill it”.

In the presence of women, both foreign and Indian, I am far more aware of men and their insinuations: the professor whose jokes have a diminishing edge; the mousy man who insists that women are perfectly equal in rural India; male members of our entourage who interrupt our conversations to point out something they deem important (which one of our female companions has often already explained). Visiting a nature-park, I watch the young men frolic under a waterfall, while I am warned, "the water is too dangerous for you". Resigning myself to sitting on rocks, longing to splash about, I try in vain to shoo the gallivanting men out of the frame of my camera.

While on the outside it would seem that women are socialized into passivity and men are culprits, I must nuance the discussion. Before I can come to any overly simplistic conclusion about the “Tragedy of the Female in India”, I consider the women who have entered into my life.

My counterpart is completing her Master of Science in Rural Extension and has already secured a much sought-after post at an NGO in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. She misses her family, but tells me, "I need to see what is happening in the field to really understand my country. I will get married, but not right now. One day, I will have my own NGO to help farmers in rural India".

At Auntiji's in the North, the house is governed by women. A widow for more than a decade, Auntiji rules her quarters – she is the host and the authority, regardless of the gender or position of the visitor. After a long afternoon of shopping and praying at her gurudwara, Auntiji, Deedee, her mother and I retire to the living room, where we fall asleep wound together in a pile on a vast bed. I fall into the comfort and security of a languid snooze in the afternoon heat in a jumble of women.

When I crack open my book for Hindi lessons, female visitors help me master pronunciations, debating among themselves as much as with me about the proper techniques. While their husbands debate politics – with me and others – they quiz me on my lessons, and chastise if I don’t make enough progress.

In the evening, I join Auntiji and her best friend for a stroll through a nearby park. As night settles firmly on the city, we stop by the shops for samosa, pakora, golub jamun and jalebi. In the waning light of dusk, we stroll about with ease. We aren’t ushered anywhere, and nods of respect – the tilt of the head in passing – greet us as we continue our promenade.

Despite my relationships with women who are strong, women who have learned to express and assert their voice in their own lives, the more general situation for Indian women would appear somewhat bleaker.

The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu's Girl Child Protection Scheme targets female literacy, preventing illegal activities towards women (such as female infanticide) and family planning. The program's schemes include endeavors such as widow marriage funds, scholarships for low-caste girls wishing to attend school, universal basic education, orphan marriage schemes, and service/training homes for destitute women and widows. The variety of the programs is impressive. Their existence proves to be a stark contrast to the women lolling about for an afternoon nap, under a ceiling fan to cut the day's heat.

Indeed, in Dindrigul, my colleagues at a local NGO enumerate the issues facing women in their rural setting: female infanticide, child marriage, family planning, literacy and dowry abuse.

One field worker tells us, "The average age of girls to be married off is within three months of reaching maturity. India on average sees girls married at 21. In these villages, the girls aren't mentally ready. They aren't mature enough to handle children. They will be twelve years old, and their husbands 35. Many will marry within the family – like an uncle – to keep property within the extended family".

Dowry torture is an ongoing problem, despite the technical illegality of dowry in India. Field workers note one particular case where the girl is being tortured by her mother-in-law in an attempt to secure more dowry payments from her parents. They are asking for pounds of gold, fine furniture and cash. The demands – and the abuse – has been continuing for the last eight years. Dowry, my colleagues say, is a problem at all levels of society – from the agricultural laborer to the highly educated woman. Across class and income lines, newlywed women have to worry about whether their new mother-in-law will be content with her dowry, or will begin years of torture.

Perhaps it is evident, but the NGO and the child and family welfare workers I meet situate the problem in women not understanding their rights. Government programs aim to improve women's position through schemes, training, and enabling them to care for themselves – married or not. They recognize that the greatest security for women, in Tamil Nadu, is within the institution of marriage. So, they plan dowry schemes for poor women, encourage widow remarriage, and are promoting inter-caste marriage to achieve social change. For groups such as the NGO, through integrated programs of micro-credit, health education, family management, skills training, linkage to government mobilization schemes, and empowerment initiatives, women can be empowered to assert the rights they have by law.

*****************

Back in Delhi, after a late-evening meal, I am riding in a bicycle rickshaw with a friend. As we stop at a corner, a man on a scooter darts up next to us. As we pull away, he pulls my arm back and gives my breast a firm squeeze. Under his breathe, my friend cusses. I am stunned and suddenly very conscious of my vulnerability as a woman.

"It's Eve-teasing," he says. I shake my head in frustration and anger. He goes on, "this happens to Indian women too. They often have legal power, but no social power".

India: Intoxicated by Technology

A dozen women in brightly hued salwaar kameez and saris crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in a compact room in the small rural community center. A beaming extension worker in a pressed dhoti ceremoniously lifts the white lace veil covering a table in the corner. A computer glances out from the shadows. The extension worker and his cadre look thrilled; the women seem generally unimpressed.

"We offer the community members training in word processing, book keeping and the Internet", the extension worker explains. "It is better for their businesses".

We have entered an era in which computers and internet communications are hailed as technologies to bridge borders, eliminating geographical boundaries, and promote world-wide communication. From wired homes and offices, we can log on and read newspapers from every continent. I can check my email, and find messages from friends in India, Pakistan, China, Haiti, Africa and Vietnam. We are joining hands in technological globalization.

In community development, the intoxication with technology is no less significant. While technology holds tremendous potential as a tool in community development, we must be careful to consider the context in which it is used. What is the value of the technology? That is – for these women in rural India, what value does the technology hold? Is it empowering them? Is it facilitating an improvement in their lives, or simply serving as a line on a project evaluation as a “benchmark success”?

Alfonso Gomacio-Dragun writes, there is a dangerous belief that if we "place computers and connectivity at the reach of the poor and they will magically defeat poverty. Some international consultants feel good when they arrive to the most isolated villages of Mali or Bolivia with a laptop under their arm, just to show the magic screen in action, the same way the Spaniards used shiny mirrors to subdue the Incas or the Aztecs during the Conquest of America". Gomacio-Dragun goes on to note that, "ICTs are no magic solution for anything, even less in the globalized world we are being dragged into". Not to misrepresent Gomacio-Dragun as a foe of information and communication technology (ICT), he makes the important point that instead of visioning ICTs as the magic panacea to development, "it is urgent that a social vision that puts the Internet at the service of development be strengthened". The challenge is to figure out when the Internet can contribute to development, and when it can impede important processes of community development and social change.

As developed countries fall under the spell of computer technologies, it is important to remember that in developing countries, the predominant communication technology remains the radio, with television slowly gaining momentum. In Tamil Nadu, the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University uses a weekly radio program to disseminate agricultural technologies to farmers across the state. At the university's television and radio production unit, over 147 programs have been produced to educate farmers about innovations in agricultural practices, new seeds, or improved technologies. As farm radio networks across Africa can attest, this is not an unusual phenomenon: radio is one of the most popular tools in communication for social change. It can reach people in remote areas, in local languages, and connect them with information otherwise unavailable to them.

And yet, with the cult of the computer, even with effective and accessible tools available, Gomacio-Dragun notes that, "for digital wars – as for the real wars – small countries spend more than they can afford to buy modern technology (or weapons) from industrialized countries interested in keeping the wars going forever. It's good for the economy (theirs, of course)".

So, where is the middle ground? At the risk of grossly oversimplifying the discussion, we can state it simply: on one hand are ICTs with tremendous potential and on the other are small community centers with dusty computers few know how to use. That is to say, we have potentially beneficial technology that is being applied in community development simply for the sake of saying, "See how advanced we are. We have community centers with computers and Internet access".

This doesn't always need to be the case. When issues such as local ownership, local content, appropriate technology, language and cultural pertinence, convergence, and networking are taken into account, computers and connectivity can be potent tools. In Chennai, Tamil Nadu, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation provides connectivity, but also develops local content in Village Knowledge Centers that enable users to access information that matches their needs. In Sri Lanka, the Kothmale Community Radio uses the Internet to provide information over the radio. Listeners can call into the station to request information, and the station will search the Internet, store information relevant to local audiences, and broadcast the search results to listeners in local languages. If the goal is effective use of computer technology, co-operation and convergence with NGOs and existing communications technologies is vital.

We must also learn to consider context: computers, connectivity, communications… each of these will look different in different regions of the world. Is this such a tragedy? Each country is unique, with a particular set of needs in a particular set of circumstances. Rather than try to fit their needs into a cookie-cutter image of one use of technology, why not let the technology fit their needs?

It may seem overly simplistic, but the dusty community centre in the rural community centre should remind us that buying a technological package can be an exercise in waste. The ideology of computers and connectivity has been created by the developed North: there are more Internet accounts in London, England than in the whole of Africa. Africa and the Middle East together account for only 1% of global Internet users. 90% of Internet users are in industrialized countries. If we want computers and connectivity to be useful tools of communication outside of the North, we must change our vision of their applications, utility, and possibilities. We must reorient ourselves from technology-driven development to socially-driven technology.

Steve Cisler describes this vision as "citizen networks": "What are citizen networks? Internet technology projects that benefit people as citizens rather than as consumers; projects that help marginalized groups have more control over their existence, and even give them a stronger sense of identity. Citizen networks are about inclusion and how the technology can be used for democratic goals and for economic development."


For more information about communication and development, refer to:

www.devmedia.org
www.comminit.com
Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change at: www.rockfound.org/display.asp?context=1&Collection=3&DocID=423&Preview=0&ARCurrent=1
Take Five: a handful of essentials for ICTs and development by Alfonso Gumucio-Dragun:
www.geocities.com/agumucio/ArtTakeFive.html

India: Arrivals

So concludes the series from Haiti. If you're interested in finding out more about Haiti, including blogs from others currently in the country, I highly recommend checking out the Blog on the Community and Friends section of this page called PAWÒL APRANTI-SAJ.

The next series is from one I wrote for Blueear.com. The pieces are snapshots and themes that emerged throughout my first few months in India.

***
Arrivals

Delhi in June is brutally hot. I step off the plane at 11:00 at night to temperatures in the high forties. A dust storm in Rajasthan leaves the city coated with an extra layer of dust, in addition to the smog and pollution that comes with having a population of fourteen million. A train-station joke-book declares that in Delhi, if you want a breath of fresh air, have a couple of cigarettes. It's not so far from the truth.

I must admit, when I stepped off the plane, I was already thinking, "What the hell have I gotten myself into?" I had no plans, except that I was to arrive in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu in a month and a half. The jarring shift from academia, with all the regimental routine it entails, to a month and a half without much of a plan left me in a state of anxiety and mild shock.

I was a Canadian travelling in the wake of SARS, arriving via Toronto, no less. A friend had already been denied a visa to complete thesis work in Russia. Clutching my bright pink SARS survey, travel insurance policy, and passport, I made my way into a seemingly interminable cue. One could, if clever enough, write a travelogue based simply on the experience of waiting in a cue in India. For the impatient, they are agony. For those of us with social tendencies, they can be, as Vikram Seth’s character Mrs. Rupa Mehra (from A Suitable Boyˆ) puts it, “opportunities for expanding one’s social circle”.

With little more than a flick of the eye, I was waved through into the madness: the luggage carousel; taxi touts; throngs pressed against metal barriers – men with Hindi scripts, English signs with company logos and job titles printed in bold lettering, aunties clutching their purses. Irrational visions of political calamities floated through my head as I scanned the crowd for the friend who was to meet me: was the road closed on his way back from his hometown, Srinigar? Could he have been hit by stray bullets along the line of control? While I would later realize the foolishness of my panic, in the musty heat and waves of a language so foreign to my ears, I clutched my luggage cart with all the jet-lagged ferociousness I could muster.

"Sarah", he calls out, ensconcing me in a desperately needed hug. "Welcome to my home. Welcome to India."


My Rough Guide to India states:

India is the product of a complex and tumultuous past. It's climate and fertile soil, which have supported settled agriculture for at least 9000 years, have also given rise to countless regional dynasties, perennially covetous of their neighbors' land and wealth. For as long as written histories of India have existed, this same fecundity has also lured invaders across the deserts, oceans and mountains that border the subcontinent. Successive waves of armed colonists, from the Aryan tribes to the British, have poured down the peninsula, assimilating indigenous traditions and implanting their own. Scholars of history, archaeology, and religion are still trying to make sense of the extraordinary wealth of historical monuments they left behind.

For the months before I left, I waded through history books, articles and novels, trying to make intellectual sense of it all. The more I tried, the more any definitive statement eluded me: Where a Canadian government briefing report stressed the significance of the Kashmir conflict, another book emphasized Hindu-Muslim tensions as defining the "Indian Ethos". Is there such a thing? I think of my own country, Canada, and consider: I would consider it foolish for blanket statements to be made about the entire population based solely on our Northern geography. So, why should I expect the same to be true of any other country?

In my hostel room in Delhi, the months of reading and intellectual haranguing slip away. To gain my bearings, I focus on what's around me:

I walk wide streets in Delhi, near Connaught Place, where the shops are pricier than back home. Roads are filled with green-headed, yellow-fronted auto rickshaws, horns blaring and piercing through the mid-day air. Dust settles over the skins of everyone in sight, a sheen insulating us from the thick, dry heat that frizzes my hair and keeps those who can find shelter out of the street until late afternoon. Cows – scrawny and massive, with sagging jowls and wispy tails – lazily chew their cud and watch the traffic and madness of the street around them. They huddle under trees, away from construction workers with hand-trowels who dig ditches and labor to expand the ever-crowded streets.

In a filmi magazine, a Bollywood starlet comments, "Delhi is so much cleaner than Mumbai. There are so many trees – it's almost lush." In the afternoon, the abundant trees lining the ring roads are covered with a thin sheen of dust. Perhaps it will settle tonight – it began to rain, sweet, cool drops weighing down the heavy gashes of dust and sand that coat my ears and clog my nose.

Women in Sarees and Salwar Kameez are bright splashes of color among men in dark trousers and western-style clothes standing in clumps along the streets. They are waiting in masses for the "clean" buses that travel about the city.

Delhi has an ever present aroma of the Sandalwood incense that burns in shops with altars set up – shrines for Hindu gods, gurus, playing-card sized images or framed photographs bedecked with garlands of jasmine and chrysanthemums.


I am in India, officially, to spend a month at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University studying intercultural communication and international extension with eleven other students as part of my Master's work at the University of Guelph, in Canada.

I arrived early, to explore a country that has been hovering in my mind for the last twelve years. I have a friend in Delhi, a friend's mother in Chandigarh, classes in Coimbatore, and three months on my hands. I have Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy for company.

Over the course of this series, I will present snapshots: situations I encountered and themes that emerged from three months in a country that continues to hold me in thrall.