08.26.11
I can hardly believe it’s been already a week, as I sit here in my barely-mattressed bed listening to the monsoon rains and a high-pitched older woman singing in what I assume to be Hindi on the radio. This is the place I am calling home…for right now.
I have to admit that this practicum has been more of a challenge than I originally imagined. It has been rewarding, without question – but every day I face a new personal demon, as I am so lovingly calling them (::insert sarcastic smile::)
This is the first place in my entire India journey that I have been faced with homesickness. Now take one dose of that and mix it with the unjust reality of tribal life in India and you have a recipe for really complicated emotions. The girls at this school are amazing and this facility and the services it provides are truly life-changing. But the hardships that these girls have faced and will face break my heart every day. This is why it’s been so hard to type a reflection for you – and for the poor souls that keep asking me “don’t you just love India,” now is not the time.
Sure I could paint for you the picture of the ethereal lush green landscape that surrounds the school, the sweet sweet smiles of the girls, the taste of the greatest chai I’ve ever had, or the feeling of serenity that flows in with the afternoon breeze. But that would only be one side of the story – one side that I feel like I am suppose to tell.
The other side of the story is cruel. These girls come from families who, more often then not, did not want them. In India, especially rural India, boys are valued more than girls. Therefore, when a parent has to make a decision on which of their children will receive education, the boy wins by default. The same is true even with meals – gender predetermines who will eat first in the household and who will be left with the table scrapes.
These girls that are at the Kedi School arrive here severely anemic, malnourished, sick, and horrified of anything that is not their “norm.” The daily diet of the tribal population in Gujarat, the state I am in in India, is very very very basic: rice and dhal (pureed lentils). When mangoes are in season apparently they are consumed with gusto, but that season is pretty short and to my great despair has already passed.
Aparna Kadikar, the woman who started this school and my new personal hero, sat with Rashi and I the other day to talk about what reality these tribal girls are really facing here in India. And it’s a mortifyingly unfair world. I heard story after story of neglected, beaten, raped, and even killed girls in the local tribal community that the Kedi School is trying to impact. Aparna told us of one student, who is one of my favorites and definitely stands out as one of the brightest, who has suffered from extensive “familiar rape,” a sickeningly common abuse in tribal communities. This young girl, barely 15 (the tinniest 15 year old you’ve ever seen), use to be sexually abused by her brother-in-law. She has no parents and was being raised by her sister. Even if she told her sister about it, what could her sister do? In a rural community where the women are uneducated and unemployed, they depend on their husbands for food and shelter. From what I have gathered, I doubt this little girl’s sister would stand up against her husband, let alone fight for her. When you’re fighting for survival, it seems you’re able to endure more than humanly possible.
Aparna told us of another girl who use to work for her, before the school was started (it’s one been about 5 years running), who can an insatiable sweet tooth. I know we love to joke about our monstrous sweet cravings back stateside, but it becomes a whole other beast when you’re also facing severe malnourishment. Apparently this girl could not stop her cravings, she was always consuming sweets. Aparna knew that the girl had become diabetic from her sweets addiction and saw that her eyes were starting to turn yellow, a sign of kidney failure. No matter how much she pleaded with the girl and offered medicine/hospital/doctor support, the girl refused Aparna’s help. That’s the thing that I am learning: there are a lot of misconceptions regarding health and health services in the tribal community. A reason that government-issued iron and vitamin A supplementation is not incredibly successful in tribal communities is because of myths and misconceptions – someone started a rumor that the supplements were actual birth control and that the government was trying to sterilize the tribal populations. You cannot wipe that rumor completely clean no matter how hard you try, so now severely anemic girls are not taking lifesaving supplements because of false information. It makes me ill. The same goes for the tribal girl with the sweet tooth, who was raised to be hesitant of modern medicine and because of such misconceptions, refused any services. She, unfortunately, passed away due to kidney failure at the age of 25. That’s my age; that hits home.
Here’s one more story to paint the true picture of hardships for these tribal girls. Two years ago one of the Kedi School girls started getting really sick and became bed-ridden. Aparna came to discover that the girl had been suffering from cancer for the last year and a half. Aparna, the passionately loving woman she is, went to the girl’s father and implored why he hadn’t sought treatment for the girl. He claimed money was the issue. Then Aparna offered to pay for all the medical services, all the treatments and facility costs as long as the father agreed to send his daughter and one of his other children to keep watch over her in the hospital. The father’s sobering response was, “Ma’am, I have 10 children. If one of them dies, it’s no real difference to me.” The young girl passed away, she was 15. I asked Aparna if the young girl had been male, would things have been different in her father’s eyes. She said, “Without a doubt. He would have invested everything to take care of a boy.”
I feel like I have just been bitch-slapped by reality, to be so blunt. Here I come traipsing into Valsad, India thinking this is going to be some sweet and easy practicum experience where I will get to know these girls, love the school, love life, and be able to walk away with a big grin and a sense of satisfaction. However, this experience has and is still continuing to change me. I know I will not be the same after this experience, but I am struggling to figure out how I have changed; what has changed?
And I am struggling to process it all, all the information around me, all the faces, all their realities, all their struggles, all the unjust cruelty they face because they were born female. It almost seems mocking all of my words to them about taking pride in their femininity and to strive to be strong, educated, independent women. Those words barely have value here. I mean the justification for even developing the Kedi School stems from the realization that girls were being ignored in the tribal communities. In India, there is a right to education act that requires all children of all genders to receive free schooling until grade 8, after which the costs for further schooling is the parents’ responsibility. Well, the families were sending their sons to school, of course. But what about the girls? It was and still remains very common for girls to be married off after their required schooling is complete because they are seen as one more mouth to feed, one serious financial burden to bear.
Yes, these girls are married off at ages 14 and up.
Despite all of these heartaches and struggles, these girls still manage to smile; all the time. It astounds me the resilience of a child. We had talked about this in my child development class fall 2010 – in regards to abused and neglected children – but I don’t think it fully resonated till I came here. How can these girls who have suffered so much still find so much joy in their life? It makes my problems and heartaches seem so miniscule. Moot.
I am not trying to have some profound Oprah moment here, saying our problems are zilch in comparison. I am just trying to offer some perspective, mostly perspective for myself. This has been a challenging trip to make, overall. Yes, India still continues to amaze me and leave me in awe. But I would be lying if I didn’t say it’s also been a serious trial as well. Year 25 started very rough for me. Debilitating rough. But I was always surrounded by friends and family whose love and support kept me afloat, helped me to survive, and are now helping me to thrive. It is a bittersweet realization of the strength that loved ones can offer because as I sit here on this cool concrete floor (I’ve now moved into the common area of the school), I realize these girls most likely do not have that same familiar support. They really only have each other. And thus resounds for me the importance of such a school.
These girls are being given a second chance, a chance to rise above the statistics, to not just be another number in the percentage of the malnourished, too-early married, uneducated girls that make up the tribal populations in India. All I can do right now is dawn a smile through the tears my heart floods for their life – pleading that fate will be kind to them and let them finish their schooling before they get married and are restricted to the house. I have asked the girls to pinky-swear with me that they will work hard in school and go on to college. I keep stressing the importance of an education for girls and how that education can change their lives. “Look at Rashi and I, for example. We are able to come here and be with you and teach you because we worked hard in school and went to college. Think about going to college and coming back and helping out girls just like yourself. We have to help each other, have to take care of each other.” I keep repeating these words again and again, praying that something sticks with them. I am afraid for them, I am afraid that this gift of education will be in vain.
But that’s when Aparna reminds me that even if after school they get married and have children, they will be educated mothers and wives and so will begin a new change for the community – the goal is generational change. Maybe they will see the value in education and be willing to make such investments in their own daughters, pushing them through school and maybe on to college. Change takes time, more time than my stomach can bear.
But this is the reality of the work I want to do – public health. Our professors keep stressing that behavioral change takes time, a lot of time. Of course in the sheltered, classroom setting this makes absolutely no sense to us students. When we devise interventions for course work, we just assume all the information we share will make sense, all the behavioral changes we are advocating for will stick immediately, that we will make a difference within a matter of a few meetings. After all, we all want to change the world so of course we’d imagine our work would have such an impact. But what we don’t realize in our controlled classroom environment is that behavior change is hard and in the field you have to face misconceptions, misinformation, distrust, and general apathy.
No, they don’t really prepare you for that in graduate school. You have to learn that on your own, see it through your own eyes, make connections with people who you only seek to service while they continually reject your services. Like the struggles that the Kedi School is having with implementing iron and vitamin A supplement tablets. The girls just aren’t taking them, no matter how much the teachers stress the importance of these nutrients for their health. Ha! – health. A word that is only a word for these girls, nothing more.
This is such a challenge. This is not as easy as I imagined. What a learning experience.
How is it possible to find so much joy and sorrow in the same work?
Class just got out for the girls, so I’m going to go grab my plate and enjoy some rice and dhal with them. Every day I am learning something new, whether it be about their lives, about myself, or about public health in the field. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity. I think with more time and reflection I will be able to process all that is happening right in front of my own two eyes.
For now I just need to keep smiling and hugging these girls, letting them know, through our difficult language barrier, that they ARE loved, by someone.
Photos of my life:
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