Week three is over, but nothing has slowed down. I'm very busy this summer, between classes, working with the NGO, and trying to see all my friends.
Classes are going well, but I don't feel like I'm improving noticeably. I guess that's what happens when you get up into higher levels, the progress is more gradual. But I am really enjoying the classes, as ever.
Working with Tiljala SHED continues to provide me with new experiences and new views of Kolkata. I went earlier in the week to Topsia, a rather run-down part of the city. First I went to visit one of the schools, which is in a slum along a canal. The houses in the slum were some of the worst conditions I've seen in Kolkata, at least up close. It makes the slums I worked in Khardah seem clean and cozy by comparison. There were flies everywhere. the houses themselves were made mostly of plastic and scraps of different materials, rather than the that and concrete that abounds in Park Circus, for instance. Anyways, the school itself was very sweet. There was a class going on when I got there. The children were drawing pictures. They had all come after their regular public government school.
One second grade boy had stopped attending the public school the month before. His mom apparently doesn't see the point in sending her children to school. He told me his brother went until 4th grade, so I told him he should go until at least then also. He was really embarrassed to talk to me about it, but he said he would go the next day. I wonder if he did.
After visiting the school, we stopped by the go-down that TSHED owns. Go downs are these enormous shacks (usually built on a slope down to a canal, which I assume is how they got their names, though I'm not sure) that hold trash. People sit among bags and bags of trash, which they have actually bought from private and public places like malls and office buildings (yes, they buy the trash.) The people sit there and sort the trash first into plastic, paper and one other category (I forget, woops). And then they sort again. And again. And again. I don't know how many categories they sort into, but once they've done that, they sell the sorted trash to other people/companies, who specialize in recycling that specific kind of trash. When one first comes to India, it seems bad that there aren't recycling facilities and that bottles and things instead just get thrown away (if they aren't kept for storing water in private homes, which is very common). But unlike in the US, in the trash does not mean in the landfill. The whole process is actually really impressive and admirable.
...Until you see how it works on the ground. The people sorting the trash do not have any kind of protective gear whatsoever, not even gloves. TSHED tried to introduce gloves before, the workers didn't want to wear them because they're too hot. I have to admit that big rubber gloves are one of the last things I'd want to wear in this heat. But then bags and bags of trash are the last thing I'd want to touch. But such is the life of many of the people living in this area.
If the sorting is bad, some of the recycling techniques are worse. We drove by a go down where some kind of trash was being bured for recycling. I don't know what they were burning, but the air was so toxic I wanted to gag. Once again, not much in the way of protection for the people working and breathing in the fumes. It is truly grueling work.
All of this is tucked out of sight, just behind Science City, an amusement park and big attraction for middle class children. I never would have known any of it was there if I weren't working with the NGO.
In completely unrelated news, we went on a class trip to Shantiniketan over the weekend. It's the birthplace of Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Bengali poet. Later in his life he started a university there that saw such students as Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen. The whole town is really wonderful, and very peaceful, as is fitting for it's name, which translates to Abode of Peace. We spent the first day touring the town, the university, and the nearby sights on bicycles. One of the students cant' ride bikes, so we hired a bicycle rickshaw for her. I tried pulling her in it for awhile on a dirt road outside of town. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but then again she is very small and I wasn't going very fast. It is a good workout for sure. I actually had a lot of fun pulling her, and the ricksha-wallah got a good laugh out of it too. But the best part was the looks of confusion, shock, and amazement from the villagers we passed on the road. Seeing a young white girl pedaling a rickshaw is truly an unusual sight.
The next day we toured around some of the more distant sights by car. It was a very enjoyable trip.
I am attaching some photos from Shantiniketan, but I don't have any from Topsia.
Below see Ben with a calf outside of a small temple, a statue of the highly revered Rabindranath Tagore, a village barber, and a goat that somehow found it's way into a window of a village house.
~m
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