Slumdog in Kerala, part 2

T is a thin stately gentlemen living in one of the wooden shacks towards the rear and further away from the creek's toilet.  He says this area has been here for 48 years. The government leaves them alone and they leave the government alone now. 

He is hoping for foreign help, for "Kerala builds only for the navy." He points to the row of pink apartments and then to a barbed wire strung low to the ground. "Government owns."  

Rashid has been here many times. He keeps a canister on his TV and everyday he adds a 10 or 20 rupie note. "I don't have much, but I give."  Rashid, T, everyone is looking for an answer.  T tells me of Rebecca who is honchoing more toilets, Sarah who is working with the Germans, Lydia from GVI. The issues are many from funding, to taking on responsibility, to follow through, to getting the land perked and septic tanks built, and working with the government without dealing with the politics or bribes or confiscation issues.  This is a horrendous situation.  And it is our first glimpse into what we will probably witness time and again during the next few months.  

(Additional photos will be added soon)

But it's not just in India.  While we sit here overlooking a tree lined mountain near the tea plantations in Munnar, we speak of the slums in LA, SF, Mexico DF, Oaxaca, Rio, Nairobi, Quito.  It's a worldwide situation. People left the countryside and farming and smaller community tribes decades ago looking for a better way of life, and milllions haven't found it.  We go to these slums not to punish ourselves but to remember the human condition upfront. Unobstructive responsibility  and follow through are in the back of our minds. Personally, it's been over a year now since we have been part of a wide thinking community.  It's time.

Slumdog photo

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.  

Kerala's Backwater Country

Kodamthuruth is about as far away from the big city life of Fort Kochi as you can get. It's a small water town paddeled by punt canoe. We're here for only a few days living with Manu and his family. Hundreds of palm trees, a slight wind blowing at times, ducks quacking, various types of herons and egets and eagles fly overhead.  One partially paved road. Hundreds of miles of waterways with people living on canals instead of streets.

Sugu is our boatman with a PhD in water. He paddles or poles us for hours and hours in the evenings through the smallest canals leading to the rice paddies that do double duty, with the assist of pump houses, as tiger prawn beds. In the early morning hours he paddles us to the newer canals of homes and fishermen who are collecting last nights bounties or early morning fish from the Chinese Fishing nets

People are people wherever we go. While we look into the metal containers to see what kind and how many, fishermen are ready to pose for a photo but first they straighten their shirt or take off their turban or reach in to grab two of the bigger fish to be in the photo.  Women on the shore, just a few feet from us, smile and wave inbetween doing the laundry or watching the kids. Canoes passing us have a word for Sugu and do the Indian head jiggle to us to give consent to a photo. 

This is tranquility times ten. Reflections of the palm trees on the water are only slightly rippling. The 24/7 chanting from the mosque's loudspeaders, hammering from across the lagoon, birds coo cooing, and children's voices are the distant background nosie. And then the phone rings.  In the middle of a canal with eagles soaring and colorfully thick kingfishers posing, the mobile phone rings. We can only guess what's happening since our communication witht Sugu is in single word sentences, so we assume it's his wife asking him to pick up dinner. 

This is not a happy place - Dhoby Khana in Fort Kochi

It's difficult to enjoy an exciting outing when it's +95 degrees and so humid that dripping sweat with a slight breeze supplied from C lips doesn't help.  Not even Rahim's whispers of "harijan are a very low caste, very low" at the Dhoby Khana's Vannar Sangham  perks my interest.  That is until I enter the actual wash house. Long stalls of individual cemented washbasins are handled by men and women standing on 6 inch platforms bent over and scrubbing uniforms, thwacking sheets, or ironing shirts using 16 pound old fashioned irons with live coconut shells burning inside so as to keep the iron hot and the shorts, sheets and uniforms crisp.  

These are the Harijans who launder by hand for todays hotels, restaurants, the navy and local households.  The harijan caste were subjugated to do laundry in the 1500's when the Portuguese military, who were now the ruling class took over in southern Kerala, India.  Six hundred years later, harijan families are still doing laundry by hand.  Yes, there are schools so many of the newly educated will have more opportunities.  But there are still thousands of harijans forced into this industry.  Rahim says, "look around.  mostly old."  This is not a happy place. It is still slave labor for there are no other options "for they are harijans."  So I wonder if the next educated generation will purchase washing machines, dry cleaning business, be accountants for the business, or will they go another route.   

Anise and Henry in the Kerala Jungle

Anise is watchful. She knows one wrong move and it's over. But the tempatation is killing her.  She's been working on her stance for months now.  Put the chin up, the back straight, keep those black coal eyes half shut. He'll come around.  

Henry, on the other hand, is a pouncer. He knows what he wants and he likes to go after it when he can. When he was smaller, he had to be careful. He'd cautiously approach one step at a time. Sometimes he pace was too slow, but not now. 

In the twilight hours of the open air bathroom, the same play re-enacts daily.  We wait and see who will succeed. Will it be Anise the lizard or Henry the giant spider?

A leaf in my eye...Kodamthuruth

I never know what to expect.  A leaf just blew in my eye as I sat on the commode.  It's an indoor toilet with a 3/4 wall and roof open to the palms and plantains, so a breeze, an ant, or a butterfly drifts in. It's ideal.

Kodamthuruth Is about 40 km south of Fort Kochi, the big city. We had some concerns as to how to reach this place since it's not on a bus route and most folks travel by canoe or motorcycle on rutted roads.  But our next best friend, Rajeem said, "Susan and Charles, I will drive you. No problem. Good for me. Good for you."  Rajeem  wears a crisply ironed shirt and his autorickshaw mirrors his style. For an hour, we travel through villages too small to be on a map, down roads that have been paved and repaved to accommodate monsoons, and when we cross a bridge or canal, he points out our island far in the distance.  And our island is far into the back country.  

Manu, the young owner along with his family, understand the comforts needed by travelors and have built 4 individual cottages along a lake overlooking egrets, ducks, herons, etc.  Each day Sugu, the boatman, gives 2-4 hour tours on a shaded houseboat to the deeper parts of the backwaters to see how families live.  Antoney, Manu's 90+ father, is the gardner attending to coconut based orchids tied onto trees, and his aunt and cousin provide rice and a variety of curries for lunch (fish from the lake, peppers marinated in a curry base, dal, crungy fried papardom).  His business is doing so well by advertizing on airbnb, tripadvisor, expediu, that he has hired and is training two cousins in hoteliering.  

Us?  Well our part is to take walks in the neighborhood, row a small canoe across the lake, sit on the porch and read books and type in our journals, watch birds, count butterflies, and smile.  We can do this!