Another 3am wake up call from the body. This can't be a good sign! However, it does give me time to update this blog. At 3pm today however, I know I will not be able to see this same silver lining.
Yesterday, we were in the classroom setting. We spent the morning talking about Poverty in India and the afternoon talking about Domestic Violence. Learning from Indian professors is a cultural experience in itself. For the most part, I am able weed through the language/ accent barrier, but the thing that I struggle with most is as westerners we are deemed untrustworthy to receive this information and not judge it or misuse it. The even harder piece, for me, is I acknowledge this is a valid concern, from the perspective of an Indian professor! Yet, it saddens me when a teacher comes into the room and begins the lecture with, I had to figure out how to present this information to you because I didn't want to provide more information for your negative ideation of India. The teacher spoke further on the matter and said he had to tell himself we were peers in the field and information is good to have if given people who are like minded. I began to ponder this deeply. In America, we hide our shame. The things we don't want the world to see, we spin with a positive tone to allow us to feel better about the situation. Yet, we have issue of great shame that have molded who we are as nation and in truth it is probably this same shame that keeps us from growing into a more loving and honorable nation. This is a problem, a BIG problem. Big enough that a professor sat in front of a group of US social work students and basically said....I wish I knew for sure you would bring new light to the way India is seen in your country. So to honor his message, I hope to shed new light on old ways of thinking.
The reason I say all this is because I am to give you some information that you may not understand or even agree with. Yet, I ask you to remember one cannot assume it is something is wrong because they do not understand it or wouldn't participate in it. Just as we cannot assume things are easily fixed. Instead I challenge you to take the information and compare it what you know in hopes of gathering a deeper understanding and acknowledge much of this happens in our country every day.
When we were listening to the lecture on poverty, I kept thinking about how we tell children, finish your food there are starving people in India (or Africa). That statement is true, there are many people who are hungry or living on the streets. In fact, one of the professors said yesterday 77% of the country lives on less than $2 dollars a day in India. That seems unfathomable, how could anyone live on $2 a day? To put in in perspective we went out for dessert and I spent .30. India also has 400 million poor people living within its boarders, which also sounds astonishing. It runs 2nd internationally, next to China, on largest number of people. So with more people comes bigger problem and the problems are extreme just due to numbers of people affected by the issues. This does not the dismiss the need in India, as when I am face to face with starving children it is hard for me to comprehend how any human could ever go hungry. However, I debate this same issue when face with starving people on the streets of the United States, yet we do not say....finish your food because there are starving people in America.
As the teacher continued to talk he mentioned that the issue was not a lack of food, but instead the problem was distribution and policy implementation at the government level. Which again is the same in America. The issue of poverty in India is very complex and honestly overwhelming when I thought about it. Yet, for me many of the issues brought to the table were issues I have discussed or seen in our systems as well. I saw India as a kindred country yesterday. I understood the inability to fight issues with poverty, because of political agenda, lack of community support, or lack of funds to provide resources. The idea that we can look at the extreme impoverished in India and judge the situation (which if I am honest I did before I came) is one I will no longer be able to understand. I was changed by the conversation yesterday and I hope a part of you will be now too.
The lecture on Domestic Violence stemmed mostly around gender equality and poverty in India. The complexity of this issue is still being worked out in my own mind, so I hope to shed more light on this in future days. The biggest note I will share here is shaming is never a way to engage in this topic or any human interaction! For example (not necessarily domestic violence associated): arranged marriage in our country is hard to understand, but does that make it wrong or just hard to understand? Saying, "how can they do that" feels like shaming to me. In India, marriage looks and feels different, but in America marriage is far from perfect and families are broken! In India, family is essential to how one thrives culturally. The thing that stood out most to me about families is when two people are married the families are then married. In our world, this piece is lacking and to some unthinkable. The stuff I am having a hard time putting into words deals with gender equality in India and we will be discussing it more in future days so I hope to be able to touch on it then.
Overall, the learning experience is well worth the trip. I am beginning to think the key to human understanding and acceptance is traveling with an open heart and mind. I have loved being reminded that in this world we are more alike than different and we are all interconnected. We even share a love of pugs! Yesterday, after a long day of deep and hard topics we ran into a Simba the pug on a walk. He didn't question who I was and neither did his owner, instead he was ready to show some love and she was ready to share my love of pugs. It was a good end to a day full of bringing shame into the light.
No comments:
Post a Comment