Tourists gather in a small hotel lobby where wifi is available to connect with their lives. Even though one can physically be thousands of miles away from the strifes of modern life, one's mind, for better or for worse, does not stray more than a click away. Pondicherry, India
As the sun decends below the horizon and twilight turns to night only the most enthusiastic and skilled continue to fly their kites. The rest of us, on the roof terraces of Ahmedabad, pack up our kites and carefully wind up our kite strings. But before we even had a chance to reflect on the amazing day of kite flying and battling, another more spectacular image appears over the walled city of Ahmedabad: Chinese light lanterns fill the skies in their thousands, pin pricking the dark canvas background with light. Our eyes get to feast upon this never ending peaceful formation of light, steadily rising and disappearing off into the distance. Fireworks and crackers intersperse the calm display with powerful shows of light and sound and the whole scene, a 360 degree theatre, leaves us in awe, unrivalled by anything we have seen in the world.
I am at a bit of a loss writing about india. She is everything that I know, but also a complete stranger, bewildering me into a confused silence. I am stuck, my pen stationary on the page. Defeated I can only begin by trying to explain my confusion. I am a third generation Indian, my grandparents emigrated to Kenya where both my parents were born who in turn emigrated to the UK where my siblings and I were born. Although, we were brought up in the UK, we grew up in a predominantly Indian culture. Centering around food as cultures typically do, ours was an Indian diet, so much so that I had no idea how a knife and fork worked until after the age of ten. We identified ourselves culturally more to India than to the UK even though we were two generations from having lived there.
This image and cultural identification changed and morphed as we grew into adults and we integrated and assimilated into the western society around us but India and her culture were still there, deep inside, our roots, who we were.
But it’s not. Unconsciously our culture has changed and adapted to our Western hosts’ to create a hybrid culture, not Indian, nor English but a mixture of the two with a splash of East Africa.
Thus to an Indian I don’t look Indian. My hair is different, my clothes are strange and my body shape is telltale. I don’t feel at home on the noisy, busy streets, with the in-your-face poverty, the noise and pollution, the dirt, the smell and the spitting. I long for the quietness of European countryside, the order of her cities, the cleanliness of her streets. India is a stranger.
Yet, the woman struggling with the heavy shopping bags could be my auntie, the little boy begging for money could be my cousin and the guy spitting an entire disgusting mouthful of red saliva onto the street, centimetres away from my feet could be me.
Unlike other countries and continents, where praise and critiscm comes easy as an outsider, criticizing India feels like I am betraying her, like stabbing a friend in the back straight after meeting her after a thirty year exile.
Confusion, bewilderment and silence.
The basis of volunteer work is to do work that requires to be done for the benefit of society or the environment without any financial recompense. It is a socialist concept and one that isn’t tremendously popular in our predominantly capitalist society. Whilst living in north-eastern France for the last three and a half years, I discovered that the concept of volunteering is at the heart of their society. I too participated and was a member of a particular group that organised music festivals and cultural events in the local area. There was no financial reward and if you were to break it completely down we were typically out of pocket due to travel expenses and such. But the sense of achievement and fun we had typically made up for losing our weekends and evenings to long hard days of cooking food, pulling beer and being on our feet for 15 hours at a time. But this article isn’t about the wonders of volunteering in France but what we were astounded by when we went to Southern Africa this year. My girlfriend and I have just returned from a three-month trip in Southern Africa. We hitch-hiked from Namibia to Zimbabwe and continued through Zambia into Malawi. Our journey covered thousands of kilometres, meeting hundreds of people along the way. The cultures and languages within countries and across borders are fascinating and vary to a greater extent than those between neighbouring European states.
What we found in southern Africa was that ‘volunteering’ is a massive industry. But the definition of volunteering is different. What we discovered was that the premise of most ‘volunteer’ projects is that the locals are incapable of developing themselves because they are inherently incapable or culturally inept in making the necessary changes. This premise has to be true in order to justify, say, an eighteen year old, with no previous experience of development work nor knowledge of African culture or history to start telling communities what to do in teaching or health or construction or whatever projects he might be involved in. It is quite simply absurd to think that untrained westerners have a better idea of how people from a different continent, culture, lifestyle, climate should live their lives than they do, or what is best for them in terms of development. Even the experts are continually getting it wrong.
I have seen ‘volunteer’ projects advertised for teaching assistants, sport teachers, medical projects, helping to build a school/hospital or helping to look after animals. Expertise required to join these projects? None. The volunteer does not have to be an expert in his field. The teachers do not have to have any previous teaching experience, the medical helpers no medical or nursing experience and the one helping to look after animals, no zoo-keeping experience or zoology knowledge.
These projects are funded by the volunteer who makes a payment of between hundreds to thousands of pounds to attend a project of duration of typically two weeks to two months. I find that a simple way of determining who is the real beneficiary is by following the money. Whoever is paying is the ultimate beneficiary.
The volunteer benefits from learning about a new culture, experiencing a different lifestyle or close interaction with children or animals. In comparison, the communities that the volunteer has come to help in put up with the westerners with bemusement and with the infinite politeness that is common in these parts.
One day, we inadvertently overheard a conversation between a volunteer agency and leaders of the local community. The volunteer agency stated that they had X number of volunteers arriving soon who want to be involved in teaching sports. They asked the local community leaders whether they could accommodate this. It seems that the ‘need’ for volunteers has not come from the community but rather it is suggested to them from savvy volunteer tour agencies. The link between supply and demand has been lost somewhere in the world of business.
I believe it is important to think about what sort of volunteers are required for a particular need. Wouldn’t, for example, asking a group of professional teachers to lead a course to train local teachers who will stay in the community their whole lives be more beneficial for the long-term development of a school?
Nevertheless I must finish by saying that most of the volunteering programmes are not inherently bad. From my point of view they are tourism trips and should be labelled as such. They are rewarding to the participant and if managed properly the projects may benefit the local community. However they can be detrimental to development when communities stop doing things for themselves: We came across one village chief who mistook us for volunteers. After greeting us he declared that it is good that we are there and that he is relying on us to develop their country for them.
The sachet, as it is popularly known, is a small transparent plastic packet containing about 60ml of cheap, hard liquor. They are available in all the popular brands of alcohol common in these parts as well as other sachet only varieties with fancy names and colourful packaging. They cost as little as 15 kwachas (five pence) each and are typically bought in packs of five or ten. It has become the drink of choice for the poor, young, uneducated or vulnerable. Such is their negative effect on society that Zambia has recently created a country-wide ban on the sachet industry. Just three months after the ban came into force, when we passed through Zambia we didn’t come across their existence. However when we passed across the border into Malawi, the sachet culture slapped us in the face. We first come across the discarded empty sachets littering the dirt road and countryside. They are everywhere and littering the towns, countryside, beaches and forests. The litter problem, typically a Western defined problem (Malawians don’t share the same values on litter) is not the main problem of the sachet-culture, the effect on certain social groups is debilitating. More than once we were harassed by men, madly drunk, incoherent and dangerous.
The affordability and availability of this cheap and potent alcohol means that life even in the most idyllic and rural settlements is being severely affected. Men, who are typically the main consumers, are drunk before midday. Teachers and parents are complaining of the effect on teenage boys who are dropping out of schools to drink sachets. Even children under the age of ten are known to be drinking the substance. Others complain of a rise in domestic and sexual violence. The sachet culture also affects those not directly connected; the transport system based around private mini-buses are becoming increasingly more dangerous as drivers keep themselves awake with the use of sachets.
For a country with a high unemployment rate, such an increase in unproductiveness of the population paralyses development.
Malawi has tried banning the product but a labyrinth of free business, vested interests and long legal processes means that the government required great political will to pass a ban. They do not (yet) have the will. A small success has been had from the Malawian government as they have increased the taxes on alcohol to 250% in the latest budget with the idea to price out school children from the market and make it uneconomical for others. Sadly it still remains too cheap and the sachet problem will not be solved until a total ban is enforced.
Further articles: http://www.nyasatimes.com/malawi/2012/11/04/malawis-chanco-student-dies-after-consuming-alcohol-sachets/
http://www.nyasatimes.com/malawi/2012/07/01/chiefs-back-ban-of-alcohol-sachet/
http://mwnation.com/opinion-and-analysis/weekend-investigates/6767-should-malawi-ban-sachets
http://www.faceofmalawi.com/2012/09/zambia-bans-liquor-sachets/
