Saints

India (2003-2004)

*This is the first of a series of memoirs from my years as a humanitarian worker. Slightly different from my previous posts that had an essay format, now I share stories describing my life from a decade or two ago. I hope that my voice contributes to a more realistic narrative around a romanticised profession that requires more critical thinking.

Young and white, most of us came from Spain. We were a little group of diverse people doing volunteer work in India. Although now that I think about it, it was diverse as “we come from different parts of Spain” but not truly diverse in any other aspect. 

We lived in a bubble, physically delimited by the wall of the compound, but a greater barrier with the Indian world was cultural and linguistic, as most of us understood nothing about the people who  lived in the nearby city or who worked at the compound. We had fun walking around temples and going to restaurants. We interacted the way you would interact volunteering cleaning a beach in Spain: we performed a mating dance, had beers, listened to music, sang... No Internet though, this was before the digital era. 

I was twenty five years old when I arrived in India. I had a degree in economics, but no work experience and no clue of what to do with my life. Female, heterosexual and single, all in all, I personified the average Spaniard in her mid twenties not ready to take up responsibilities. I felt that I bore the burden of finding out what to do with my life, but, in honesty, I remained a privileged girl with a European passport.

I ended up in India because I felt lost, and I believed that helping others would give me meaning. In the early 2000s, bombarded with images on television of children living in extreme poverty, I wanted to help the most destitute. According to newspapers, it was either India or Africa — who knew Africa was a continent, not a country? Inside an airline magazine on a domestic flight, I came across an article about a former Spanish missionary who had established an NGO in India. So, without giving it much thought, I volunteered to teach Spanish: I would teach translators working for the NGO translating children’s letters to their Spanish sponsors.  

I sorted out visas and flight tickets, but I was jumping into the unknown. I had no idea what I was getting into. I landed in South India with a Catalan friend, who had joined my adventure last minute. How did we book hotels overseas before the internet existed? I hardly remember. But I remember the fear that the reserved hotel would be fake or that the taxi driver would try to kidnap us, which wasn’t unheard of but extremely unlikely to happen. We arrived at a cheap dirty hotel late at night, we slept in a run down room feeling nervous and thirsty, but unscathed. The following day, we took a four hour taxi drive to the countryside. Arriving at the walled compound felt like being back home, safe.

The NGO worked beautifully, serving Dalit caste people, the lowest stratum caste in India, traditionally characterised as “untouchable”. The agricultural programs provided wells and built irrigation systems together with the farmers. The health section had three hospitals, AIDS projects, a family planning centre and rural clinics. It had built over 1,500 schools, implemented programs for women’s empowerment and integrated people with disabilities employing women and girls in workshops. The crafts made were sold in Europe and some directly at the nearby markets. They served the poorest people with efficiency. It was a parallel welfare system that actually worked. 

Managers were all Indians, meanwhile volunteers (all foreigners) mainly took part in non-essential activities. An exception was the bracelet workshop, a visitor’s room turned into a workshop, where twelve women made bracelets and necklaces with strings and crystal beads. A passing-through volunteer had hired them a few years earlier to make jewellery to sell in artisanal markets in Spain. She returned every year and, when she wasn’t around, a random foreign volunteer supervised the workshop and sold crafts to the visitors.

We saw the work the NGO did during our first days. Tours were frequent and well organised because the organisation often received visitors. We went to the family planning centre, where women gave birth. The highlight was the babies' washing, a task performed often by the grandmothers. The sight was heart-warming; in a patio a row of women sat at ground level, with their legs stretched in parallel in front of them and a drainage strip under their calves. The women would put the newborns between their shins, either facing down like a frog or facing up, and splash water from buckets while stroking and massaging the skin of the babies. The little ones looked like featherless chickens in what seemed a rough handling. Not a single one cried and, once clean and dry, they looked happy and relaxed. The place seemed a secluded world, full of mothers, grandmothers and babies with no men around. The premises were clean and full of light: in a big room, filled with rows of beds, women slept and hammocks hung from the front leg to the back leg of each bed for the baby. It seemed a place of joy; me, and the rest of the visitors, were delighted. It never occurred to me, until writing these lines almost twenty years later, how our presence could be unwelcome or feel intrusive for those mothers who didn’t have a say on us, basically tourists, prying around.

A less idyllic contrast with the NGO’s premises were the streets. I had seen extreme poverty on television and I was expecting it. I faced its crudity for the first time when I went out of the compound to the city. I was with another volunteer when a group of six or seven kids dressed in dirty ragged clothes ran towards us. They ranged from four to eight years old, the oldest with a toddler in her arms. They reached their hands towards our faces shouting "rupee, rupee!" and pulled insistently at my shirt sleeves while doing so. I wonder whether today the streets of India remain the same: children with terrible health conditions and girls carrying baby siblings while begging. The worst, for me, was not their frightening insistence, but my helplessness.

Then there was Andrés, of course, founder and undisputed soul of the place. He was over eighty years old. The story of his life, how he arrived in India and fought for the poor, of how he had built everything from scratch thanks to his unyielding faith, was admired and often talked about. Adorned with anecdotes that hinted a religious serendipity, the history of the NGO appeared almost magical and suited Indian mysticism. He had lived a fateful life guided by God, therefore Andrés’s presence was venerated as a deity. People rushed at his feet for his blessing and flowers decorated his portraits in every building of the compound, together with colourful and tacky paintings of Hindu Gods, Indian gurus and Jesus. He gave spiritual and philosophical lectures about poverty and his house, as he lived in the compound, had open doors to anyone who had enquiries. Nowadays he was more of a guiding figure than the director of the organisation, but he still held a lot of power. When Andrés spoke to me, I felt important — I believe we all did. He calmly strolled around the compound and had such a presence that one would always expect him to say something profound and life-changing.

One night, on my way back from a stroll in the village, I noticed a sick man on the side of the road that connected the compound with the city. Half paved and without lighting, the road was big enough for cars to drive, but mainly rickshaws went both directions beeping and stopping along the way to pick up passengers. You would pay five rupees as you hopped in and sat squeezing among women and children, avoiding squeezing together with unknown people of the opposite sex. I loved how you would pass the money around to the driver, a little social interaction with regular people that I cherished. That day, I was walking back with another volunteer, instead of using the public transport, and I was worried because it was late and getting dark. Somehow, I noticed a lump on the side of the road, a bulk on the dusty ground near some bushes. I think it was the smell that caught my attention. I discerned the figure of a man laying down but awake. He smelled bad, of rotting flesh, and, even though I couldn’t see well, I could make out that his leg was in bad shape. I thought it might be gangrene because of the putrid smell, and he had glazed eyes and a shiny sweaty skin, seeming feverish.

I wanted to do something, although I didn’t know what so I walked to the compound and went to Andrés’s house. Once there I felt really stupid: it was late, way after working hours and I felt like I should be minding my business. Andrés praised me, the fact that I was moved to do something. It was arranged to send an ambulance for the man. I felt confused and self-conscious because I had disrupted regular activities late in the evening. The next day I was told that the man indeed had gangrene, but had decided to leave the hospital. He prefered to return to his homelessness on the streets because drinking alcohol in the hospital ward wasn’t allowed — he was an alcoholic. I became aware of how little I knew of the culture. Had I served this man’s needs or my own need to help? A part of me thought that I made a wrong judgement because of the linguistic barrier, clearly this man had no will to go to a hospital. Another part of me thought that I would have made the same mistake in Spain, probably with the same result. I had always been a meddler with good intentions.

My parents came to visit for two weeks, instead of visiting the surroundings they volunteered in the hospitals of the organisation. My father, a surgeon, helped by my mother, a nurse, performed hundreds of minor surgeries. A drop in the sea, but certainly a useful one. The other volunteers adopted my parents. One of them sat at my dad’s side when he smoked his cigars, she said the smell reminded her of her grandfather. 

In mid December, after three months in India, Christmas approached and a great atmosphere floated among the volunteers. I had a crush on an unattainable guy who led me on, but never crossed the friendship line — he said I drove him insane – and I had close friends, all Spanish. The organisation discouraged friendship with people who did not belong to the NGO or interactions outside our volunteering activities. Sadly, we had little access to regular Indian people around us because there existed this unspoken rule not to visit workers in their houses. We had a poor behaviour towards the local customs: we drank alcohol, had sex before marriage and broke the dress code. We were definitely out of place in rural India. In this part of the world, it was scandalous to marry for love and not by family arrangement and, in the past, male volunteers had dishonoured girls who had fallen for the charms of a white European with no intentions of marrying.

I suppose restricting contact made sense, but it made the experience a sort of summer camp inside the walls of an enclosure in India. The complex could  have been anywhere else in the world, it would have made little difference. 

Even so, India proved to be a magical place where I felt serendipitous and made great friends. Thanks to Roger —pronounced Roo-zher— I managed to better understand the culture and the people. As a nerd type, smart and gifted, who never quite fit in the male European stereotype, Roger felt accepted for the first time in his life when he arrived in India. He had been at the NGO for almost two years working as an IT expert volunteer and had a keen interest in spirituality despite his mathematician background. He had a robotic body language, the warmest smile, and the kindest heart. We laughed a lot together and he showed me corners of wonders while blending with people in the streets moving around by bike, the most common means of transport. Roger took me to eat idlis, a steamed rice bun wrapped in large tree leaves with the hottest sauce I've ever tasted, so spicy that it made me cry. I learned to appreciate Southern Indian food, and overcame my cultural resistance to eat spicy rice for breakfast, enjoying eating with my hands like everyone else did. I also learnt not to touch people with my left hand, considered dirty, and Roger showed me small temples while talking to me about Hinduism and Buddhism, all new to me. Little by little I peered into some reality, broadening my experience from the mere touristy one. 

All kinds of visitors came and went. Andrés interviewed passersby who asked to stay to volunteer. Sometimes he would agree, sometimes he would send them away with a phrase such as: “How can you help if you are the one in need?” I wanted to respect his decisions when it came to not allowing someone to stay, and thought “his house, his rules”, but it seemed erratic and capricious. I was suspicious when Esther, a volunteer who had arrived roughly at the same time as me and worked in Andrés’s office, left without saying goodbye. I taught Spanish, nothing glamorous, and it seemed that being in the office was a major privilege. When she took off suddenly, without any explanation and looking grim, I found it odd. Later, I got a hint of what might have happened. I went to Andrés’s office on an errand and he talked to me, standing by my side. He placed his hand on my collarbone and fondled my exposed skin, lowering the fabric towards my breasts. His completely inappropriate touch made me extremely uneasy, his face too close to mine, and I left the office feeling queasy. He had the thin skin of an old man, a soft hand and a pale face in which I could see blue veins. I wondered, “Is this why you left, Esther?” A grey cloud of doubt arose in me about Andrés’s behaviour with women. 

I wondered for over a decade if this man was a saint, or a pervert. When I finally reached out to friends who had been volunteers with me in India, one believed that he was a predator and everyone knew it, and another knew he groped volunteer girls but waved away his known lecherous behaviour by seeing him as a harmless old goat. I could not laugh at the unwelcome touching I received. I couldn’t justify this behaviour under the decay of age and view him as an inoffensive dirty old man. It destroyed my image of him, his values and the values of everyone around him. I guess in India I put the incident aside in my head. What else could I do? The main change for me at the time was that his talks about God, that I had found inspiring, became bullshit to my ears. Also, I never felt safe around Andrés again. 

At the time this incident did not make me quit. I found teaching boring, but I appreciated the amazing work of the organisation and wished for some other kind of involvement. When I inherited the management of the bracelet workshop I rejoiced. Leading the only workshop managed by a foreigner, suited my skills better. I began to tidy up the workshop, tracking the materials purchased and the stock of items on sale. Some of the volunteers sat and braided bracelets together with the women who worked in it. I didn't have braiding skills, so I didn’t bond with the workers in that way but I trained one of the girls, Devi, in bookkeeping and inventory. Everyday the women came and made bracelets and I ran the little shop selling jewellery to visitors. Eventually I stopped teaching Spanish.

The woman who had started the workshop returned from her travelling around the country to stay for a few weeks before heading back to Spain. We clashed quite badly, because the only thing that we had in common was a strong will that pulled in different directions. A chainsmoker in her forties with a hippy lifestyle, she liked to see herself as an equal braiding with the women. She disliked my capitalistic style, my lack of crafting skills and my taste for order. Just before her departure, through contact with a Spanish volunteer, came a large purchase order of forty thousand bracelets and necklaces for a Spanish company. We hired seventeen more women and we stopped quarrelling as we were both busy. She trained the new women and went back to Spain. From then on, a total of twenty-five women worked in the workshop, with me in charge.

Once back on my own, I supervised the quality of the jewellery, timed the speed of the bracelet making process and calculated the quantity of rope and beads needed for each model. With a short deadline, a happy-go lucky style wouldn’t do. My control led to several discoveries: material was stolen, false receipts for material bought locally had been made and some women were intimidating the new hires forcing them to slow down the braiding rhythm. To be clear, this was no sweatshop. The women sat on the porch, braiding in the shade while chatting and sipping tea at their own pace. 

In the light of these circumstances, I decided to dismiss one woman who openly challenged me, which produced an unexpected aftermath. She talked to a manager of the NGO exposing the women, including Devi, my “protegé”. The twelve women who had been working the longest were laid off. I didn’t feel proud of this, but I didn’t know how to do better. The remaining seventeen women continued to work for the weeks left before the deadline. They finished the forty thousand bracelets and necklaces without difficulty despite being now half the number of women. Closing the workshop for good became a possibility. Andrés  asked my opinion on what to do with the workshop. I pointed out that, unlike the other projects that targeted vulnerable people, this one lacked a purpose, it had appeared as a by-product of the presence of volunteers. He listened to me without saying much. I don’t know who made the decision but the bracelet workshop closed.

I left India after a seven-month period. The closure of the workshop and the uncovering of a small network of corruption came up to be the major “achievement” of my stay. Initially, I blamed the Indian culture as the assumption that Indians were corrupt was common among volunteers. But the truth is that the corruption of the workshop was a result of the poor management of volunteers, not the locals. Later on, while working in other countries, I heard often that one cannot and should not trust the local staff, which is why you send expatriates.  Over time I knew better, corruption occurred regardless of people’s colour or citizenship and it took place when organisations failed to have a proper accountability system. White people —or privileged people of colour in power— also steal, and when they do, I tell you, they don’t steal a few bracelets.

*Little did I know, as a young and naive European woman, that this would be the first of a series of adventures profoundly linked to my whiteness and the privileges it entailed. In my quest to help others, I would enter a world in which helping wasn’t done from a stand of equality. In fact, I would meet mainly humanitarians full of prejudices against those we aimed to serve; perpetuating, rather than fighting, the colonialist system in which international aid was embedded… (See more posts to come)