I just got back from my first day in India and it was all so amazing. I want to write about it now while the details are completely fresh in my memory.
I am working on my South Africa blog and my Mauritius blog...
Today I woke up in Chennai, India to heavy, polluted air that had filled my cabin earlier in the morning. At first I was confused as to why the air was like this and then I realized where we were. I do not have a window in my cabin so it is easy to become disoriented about the time of day and where I am. The fact is that breathing the air in India is the equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
For the past couple of days I have been sending e-mails to non-profits, orphanages, and womens organizations in hopes of finding a place that I could go volunteer for my first day in India (today). I had not heard back from any of them and that’s when my friend Alyssa came to me and said that she was in contact with an organization called Madura Micro Finance. Alyssa and I have come to be good friends because we have been working on a sustainable service project towards empowering women in Vietnam (more to come). She and I share the same passion towards empowering women. So anyway, Madura Micro Finance is a company that gives women loans to help build businesses, perfect right! David Appasamy the executive director had invited Alyssa plus two friends to come and tour their corporate office and then go to the field sites and meet their clients. I was thrilled about this opportunity. My friend Slim was the third to sign on. He is finance major, interested in micro finance so this was ideal for him as well.
At 10:00 we got the go ahead to leave the ship so the three of us set out to find the Madura offices. Right off the ship there are always taxi drivers waiting but before you jump in with a taxi driver you have to negotiate a price. In most of these countries meters do not exist. We had been told that we should not pay more than 30-50 Indian Rupees for a drive within Chennai. Well all the taxi drivers were asking us to pay 300 rupees each!! At first we said “no way” but then the clock started to tick and we were worried about being late for our 11:00 appointment so we said “to hell with it, 300 rupees is only 6.00 US dollars”. The cab ride was about 20 minutes long and when we paid our cab driver he could not stop smiling, we had clearly been robbed but we also clearly made his day.
The driving in India has been by far had the most near accidents, hold your breath type of rides I have taken in any country yet. They drive on opposite sides of the car as well as opposite sides of the road, which doesn’t really throw me off anymore. That’s how it was in South Africa as well as Mauritius. What does throw me a little is when pedestrians, motorbikes, bicyclists, rickshaws, buses, trains, and cabs are all merging together with no order to it. I must say they are quick processors around here. Any scary moment I would just close my eyes, take a good breath, putting light all around us.
By the end of the day I loved the wild streets of India. This may be foreign to me but this is how the natives have driven their entire lives, they know whats up.
When we arrived at Madura we were greeted by Mr. Appasamy, the Executive Director and he talked with Slim, Alyssa, and I for an hour about the company, India, and life. He used to work for a big finance company, spending a lot of time in the US and then took this job a year ago because he wanted to help the native women, living in rural areas overcome oppression. Women in India typically have an arranged marriage between 18-20 years old. In rural areas old world ways are still very much enforced. Education for women holds little to no value. The men tend to hold wealth for themselves. The women care more about providing the best future for their children.
India has 1.3 billion people living in it! Six hundred million people are living in rural communities that do not have access to education. There are 27 states within the country so there are dozens and dozens of different languages spoken, making communication difficult. The cities in India are more progressive because all of the people are affected by the good that comes out of public policy. However six hundred million individuals are not affected by public policy because none of it relates to their living environment therefore they do not reap any of the benefits.
The Maduras mission statement says, “for the people that need progress in life by creating awareness and letting them know whats possible enable them to be self employed and enable the families to grow through financial health, and capitalizing special-economic growth”. This company is completely focused on the people. They have five hundred thousand clients and have been rapidly expanding since they opened fifteen years ago. A women looking for a loan comes to Madura and proposes a business idea, like selling milk, weaving baskets, or making saris (the traditional dress). There are women leaders within each village that hold two meetings during the month. The first meeting of the month is to collect money from each client that they owe Madura for the loans and the second meeting is to check in with eachother. Madura believes in the women creating a support system with eachother and these meeting nurture that concept.
The meeting ended and all of us needed an ATM. So while we were waiting for our cab to come get us we all took a little ride on the back of motorcycles to the ATM. It was so wild, my hair blowing in the wind, people honking, swerving in and out of traffic. I felt so apart of the locals in that moment, it was a thrill.
After the meeting one of Davids employees took Slim, Alyssa, and I to this delicious authentic lunch. You eat everything with your right hand in India because your left is for washing yourself after you go to the bathroom. First they served us soup and then quickly after the waiter brought each of us a huge plate with ten different sauces with one soft shell and one hard shell tortilla. The sauces were soooo good. The spices and unique flavors were very strong. Most of the food is extremely spicy in India so I had to learn to handle my heat stat. When the tortillas were gone a man came around and loaded our plates with rice. I LOVE rice. You then put your sauces on top of the rice and eat it all with your hands. You could have as much rice as you wanted. They eat extremely quickly in India. For dessert they served us Indian bananas, which are about half the size of the ones we have in the U.S. AKA the perfect size.
After lunch, Slim had to leave to catch a flight to Delhi so we all hugged goodbye and he was off. Alyssa and I went onto meet some of the clients in a nearby village. The man who took us around for the day translated for us. We learned that their husbands were much more supportive than they expected them to be. Each woman had between one and three children. The new norm in India is to have one child. Most of the women in this village were literate because the village was not in a very rural place so a lot more progressive. I gave out silly bands and livestrong bracelets to all the women and children. Alyssa gave out stickers, everyone was so excited! I took a picture with all the women and I realized how much smaller they all were than me. A lot shorter but just so much more thin. We heard stories of clients you have now built businesses that bring in enough profit that they can save money. Some of the clients have sent their children to the states in order to study. Such success stories! It was an incredibly moving experience to say the least. I felt inspired by the concept of micro finance. David wanted us to share all that we had learned today with our peers in the states. He offered us internships so if any of you reading this are interested in an internship for a month in India let me know and I will give you his e-mail.
Tomorrow morning I am leaving for Delhi to see the Taj Mahal and then to Varanasi, the most holy land of the Hindus. During our pre-port meeting about India we had a lecturer that said, “Most people have a love/hate relationship with India”, I wonder if this will be true for me. I have a feeling that India will change my life.
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