G wants me to see the roof that fell in during the last mansoon. Q wants me to see where she is sleeping now. Bags normally used for cement are woven into white plastic bags amd corrugated awning material leaving eight inch gaps in which G has learned to manuever under. It's a shambly mess. There are jagged gaps in the roof large enough for a cat or child to come through. The floor is a muddy mess with a rocky cemented asphalt patch upon which G sleeps. It's criminal. It's no way for a human to live.
Rahim brings us here for we have seen how the wealthy of Kerala and Fort Kochi live. We are living the tourist life of viewing temples, beaches, backwaters, mosques, city life, country life, synagaouges, tea plantations, all available to us for we have money in our pockets and time. He knows we want a full picture and Kerala's picture is not complete without viewing the "Slumdog" as Rahim calls it. So we are here to witness the multistoried government apartments built on government land to house families working for the government or military and the slums across the street. The contrast is disturbing. Large clean pink buildings along the beach face a bank of bushes and trees and weeds partially hiding the 50+ homes all sharing two ramshackled toilets hanging over the polluted stream.
G has lived here for most of her 20 years. She has a job cleaning in the city and returns to this at night, for this is where her mother lives. Her mother, Q, knows this is no way to live, but where to go, how to get there, when, and how leaves this illiterate woman lost. Q is a lively energetic woman who smiles as she shows me the other 3 rooms with mostly solid roof. Over the years she has accumulated a bed, numbers of chairs, etc and the kitchen area she keeps as clean as possible for the rats are huge and she says she is too old to fight them now. This is a pity!
More women come to greet us and share their living situations. None are better. None are worse.
(More photos will be added soon)
The Dutch have built 4 corrugated tin houses for four families. The front doors remain open and we are invited in. This family has built a series of 3/4 walls within the house. A fan whirls in the living area where mom and two kids watch TV on the cement floor. Dad is sleeping on the floor of the next room for it is cooler than the one piece of furnititure in the house, the bed. The kitchen area is a shelf with stacks of pans and plates but the cooking is done out back in a pit. There is a 2 inch gap along the wall and roof line so air can circulate, but in this sweltering tropical heat, it also allows mosquitos to make life hell. The Dutch say they will build four more homes. But these homes do not have toileting areas. Everyone walks through the sludge and rocks to the river or to one of the two plumbed sheds built by a German company. It's a start.
The Dutch hopefully will build more. The Germans will build more tanks and facilities. GVI, a British NGO has a "gap" program for volunteers taking 1-12 months off to work with the children and schools in this area. Foreign expats living in the Fort Kochi area have been speaking about doing something regarding housing and sanitation here for years. All these things are good starts, but it's been decades and G and Q and all the other people we meet today are still living here. The government does nothing. In fact, the government owns the land these slum dwellers live on and the fear of bettering the property and bringing in the governemtn to confiscate the land is mentioned.
Kathryn Boo has written the finest book on slum dwelling. I read it a year ago, but I never thought I would see it, live it, breathe it.
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