Judy's Journey through India - Part 2

I have already written about the first two days of my ‘field trip’ with Opportunity International and the abject poverty witnessed in the slums of Delhi. But you don’t have to travel far in Delhi to witness poverty – it’s just a case of rating poverty on a scale, and of course, that can be subjective. As soon as we drove out of our very securely guarded hotel every day, the scale of the poverty in this Northern part of India was evident. It was everywhere around me but I also knew that wherever the car was taking me, we were headed for the unthinkable in terms of any human being having to live everyday with their children in these conditions.

Having been delayed by 8 hours out of Delhi, we were now behind schedule. To make up for the Partner visit we had missed that afternoon, that evening we dined with three of the management team from Opportunity International partner, Cashpor. Cashpor has been operating in the microfinance field since the late 1990’s and they only work with the poorest of the poor, the forgotten poor whom no-one recognises and no organisation reaches out to. The next morning I would learn a new meaning of the word poverty and understand the importance of the work Cashpor is doing.

Rising very early to head out for the day, we drove about an hour and a half out of Varanasi on narrow, very crowded gravel roads full of potholes. It was dusty and bumpy but that level of discomfort was nothing compared to the discomfort for the hundreds of thousands of people we passed by that day, living in ‘shanties’ by the side of the road. There is no electricity, no water, no housing, no public transport except for the broken down old buses carrying double the number of passengers they were built to carry, and these aren’t the poor?

We arrived at a tiny village located in the middle of wheat and rice fields and very isolated from anywhere. I had been on the streets of Delhi and I had been to the slums but I remain perplexed that in this village in 2012 people are still living in mud huts and sleeping on straw. There is nothing here except these huts, nothing. We were very warmly, and perhaps curiously, welcomed by the village. It is a very small community. We got straight down to business. The women were gathered for their weekly meeting, a meeting only for the women who have taken loans with Cashpor. Part of the model for both Cashpor and Shikhar (the Delhi Microfinance partner we visited with) is that the women must form a group. The group size with Shikhar is a minimum of 5 but here in the rural villages the size of the group ranges from 15 – 25. By being part of the group, these women agree to help, support and mentor each other. They also more importantly agree to cover each other’s repayment if someone is struggling and for some reason can’t make the repayment that month. This shared responsibility works very effectively and builds community.

These meetings begin with a pledge and the pledge differs from partner to partner. Then the repayments are paid to the field officer from the Microfinance partner. Significantly, each woman in the group as part of her induction training must learn to sign her name. This helps in creating her own identity and validation but also more importantly, I think, gives her a sense of dignity and pride.

    

 

We were able to ask the women many questions about their daily life, what life was like for them before their loans and what the next steps are for them. Perhaps because I was the only woman in the group these women communicated with me so passionately about their lives as if I could understand every word they were saying and in a very strange way, I felt I could. They were looking me in the eye and sharing their world with me. They wanted to show me their house. They proudly showed me their ‘kitchen’ and very much wanted me to eat their food (of course, there was a chorus of ‘no Judy’ echoing behind me!)They were amused by my earlobes – I wasn’t wearing any jewellery, which of course is their custom. But this was no ordinary house. It was made of mud and straw. The ‘rooms’ were so very small that only a few people could fit at any one time. The kitchen was an alcove with an open fire with one pot and they use cow dung as fuel. The ‘bedroom’ was about 2m x 1m and it consisted of the mud floor and straw. My first thought was Bethlehem.

Having visited one house, the other women were very keen to show me their houses too, unfortunately we had to keep moving but I won’t forget the pride of these women. They were optimistic, focused and moving forward. They were on their third and fourth loan cycles. They had purchased cows and rice and were growing wheat. They were educating their children and employing their sons and paying for their daughters’ weddings. They don’t have big dreams, in these communities, dreams are a luxury. Here, life demands a more practical focus and the question – ‘what next?’ and it will probably be another cow or another bag of seed but with each purchase another child will go to school and with that child there is a chance for a better life.