This Glamorous Life

I live a prettty glamorous life. Zip around the world at the flip of a hat. Decide on Christmas Eve to make a trip to India, and hop on a plane two days after New Years. Land some 28 hours later in Bangalore, find my name on a sign at the airport for pick-up, and a four-page itinerary in hand of my schedule for the next few days.  Pretty high-flying glam.

Even more so when I am roll up to a village to red-carpet fanfare. Better than red carpets, actually. More like, ornate hand-strung garlands of flowers around my neck (I think I collected about 10 of them when all was said and done), handfuls of fresh flower petals being showered on me with each step, women and children grabbing me by the hand and leading me through their village, come and see!!, a score of drummers enthusiastically banging out !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WELCOME TO OUR HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in [roaring, thunderous] rhythm. 

And while a whole village looks on, I am handed scissors to cut the ribbon of newly constructed homes...

... and a coconut to smash on the front step, as is tradition, before everyone erupts in cheers and celebration again. 

And then we shuffle next door, throng in tow, and do it all over again.

And again, in countless more villages.

This is my life (?!)... and I am amazed.

This is my life. I live this celebration every day.  Every day at my computer that I cry (internally) over mounds of reports are always so inescapably messy and disorganized, and then (actually) because I read about stories of lives being transformed and it is overwhelmingly beautiful... or awful, as tragedies and death befall our beneficiaries, as they do - too often - in their vulnerable contexts. 

But, for better or for worse, I walk alongside. 

I do feel like I’m living some kind of high-flying celebrity life sometimes, zipping in and out of remote villages around the world. It’s hardly the first time I’ve had such extravagance of welcome. But even if a swarm of paparazzi's followed me around with their cameras, the best of photos would hardly do justice.

I had a half-written blog I never finished titled The Secret, that I had started writing in the Dominican Republic last year, when my lovely stranger-turned-family of ten volunteers got to experience and really be "in" on 'the secret' of how amazing is HOPE's work coming alongside families and communities, as we shared life for 3 weeks together in a small village -- and the joy of that for me. In some moments in India, I lamented, this so amazing, and no one is here to see it!! I wished ALL my friends could Come and See (title of another never-finished blog, from last year’s Cambodia trip) with me, each moment in all its awe and glory. But actually, I realized... I'm not sure anyone in a glimpse, even with me, would really quite catch the subtleties that truly gave each moment its beauty. 

But I will try.

I was only in India for a week. I met with dozens of women and their families in only a few days.

One of many meetings with "Self-Help Groups" -- community groups of women, young and old, that support one another, learn new skills, manage savings, rotate in taking loans, creating new livelihoods.

My encounters with each person I met were pretty brief. But in some ways, the time with each person didn’t need to be long, to know that we are in it together, declaring their worth, celebrating their dignity. To know that, with tears, fears, and the sweat of both our brows together, we’ve been moving together out of destitution, poverty, and binding debt, into something more beautiful and flourishing. They were not strangers. I’ve been working “with” them, each of them, for the last four years, advocating on their behalf, receiving their photos and stories of progress, packaging them into appeals and updates for supporters, transferring support to new families as others reach self-sufficiency. Meanwhile they've been doing the real work: stepping out into risk and vulnerability into the unknown; joining community “self-help” support groups; tearing down the only homes they have ever known, and with their own hands and labour, building new, sturdy ones in their place; taking small loans, learning new skills, and creating new, sustaining livelihoods for themselves.

I sat down at the weaving loom of one lady who, in the last year, built the loom in her home to weave footmats, a popular household item in the local community. (her new home also built last year!). Having never gone to school, but having newly received training in weaving and basic numeracy and financial management, she is now making mats, selling them, and repaying the interest-free loan she took to construct the loom and purchase raw materials. I asked her to show me how it works, and she demonstrated with swift hands, a colourful new rug quickly taking form.

Then I asked if she could teach me, and so I sat down beside her. She guided my hands through the loom, and she laughed and laughed. At me, and the absurdity of my interest and fumbly hands caught between the threads, but I think really, also at the gift of having something to offer, having recently been ‘nothing’, cast aside (caste-d aside, actually, in India), of little value perceived by others (and I would guess, also herself). Nothing of value than the daily labour she could proffer to someone who might hire her for the day. When we stopped laughing, we smiled, and shared in the specialness of the unspoken secret we knew.

And in just a teeny shared moment, each family's story on paper jumps off the page, into arms of embrace and friendship and celebration. 

That’s what the pomp and fanfare was all about - friendship and commitment to sharing life. And in those secret moments... no one else needed to be there. "Just between us" was enough. 

And as I walk away, I don’t. Together, we look forward to the journey ahead and know that yet more good things are in store for each family (specifically recommending to staff to work on plastic water bottle-irrigation rooftop vegetable gardens this year for landless families with now-big-open-sunny-rooftops! The full project proposal for the first 100 families just in my inbox this morning! :)) ... and I will, over the next few years, journey with each of these families in seeking the resources to help that happen, following & sharing their progress with those committed to walking alongside.  

Sometimes, I wish I had a ‘normal’ job. A normal 9-5, go home, have summer vacations, job. And a normal level of heart commitment to go with it. A normal level that doesn’t involve me welling up with tears when I receive and read project reports. A normal level that doesn’t spend most of my waking hours restless (and rest-less) on behalf of the poor. A normal level that doesn’t spend a full 14 hour flight to India scribbling thoughts about life, work, and vocation, and then finally take a “break”... by watching a documentary on human trafficking. A normal level that does not involve panic when my roommate suggests picking out a Christmas tree together, because I find them wasteful, that breathes relief only when I find a local charity that uses 100% of proceeds to help foster children, at-risk youth, and young mothers. A normal level that doesn’t put my heart on the line every day.

But somewhere between the dry desert crags and jungle mountaintops of India; between messes of yearly reports and daily fights with our office printer; between runs for clean water in Guatemala and film nights for kids in Ethiopia; [and between brief stints in the hospital when I don’t know when to stop].... I am glad enough to live -- and share -- this out-of-the-box life. My life.

In all its glamour that is more beautiful than anyone should be privileged to know.

:)

I'm in India!

 ... in Bangalore, in South India. Kind of a last-minute, but long-overdue visit. I'm visiting a few projects here that I manage donor updates for, that help rural families living in destitute poverty build a secure home, improve their subsistence agriculture, start income-generating activities, and build community initiatives in their villages like irrigation, farmer cooperatives, health programs, etc. Since HOPE started working in India some 30 years ago, supporters in Canada have helped more than 1000 families in dozens of villages have secured strong livelihoods and have made their way out of poverty. I'll be visiting some of the communities and families to hear about the changes in their lives through these initiatives. It's a visit I've been meaning to make since 2010 so it's finally time to do it!

Today was just a visit at the head office in Bangalore.

Hopefully after going through the project plans and the many, messy family reports together, our staff & I have things sorted out a bit better and we will all pull our hair out a bit less each year when it's time to prepare the yearly updates for supporters in Canada. :)  I'll also maybe be able to get more supporters for more families, which really is part of what I'm supposed to be doing as part of my work... to say that I've "failed" to get more supporters for families in India over these last four years would inaccurate, because that would imply that I'd tried...  :S

So, here's to I'm-not-sure-what but maybe new dreams of new things for families in India. Tomorrow I'll be heading about 3 hours northeast early tomorrow morning to a region called Kadiri to actually meet with the communities and families, then back to Bangalore and about 6 hours southwest from here to another region called Talavadi.

Lunch with two of our local staff. (Thank goodness for lassi's (yogurt drinks) cuz my mouth is on fire with every meal :) ) It's been nice to put some faces to names that I've been emailing for the last 4 years. Funny how you imagine what someone will look like after all this time, and it's totally different. One of our field staff in Talavadi has always addressed me as Mr. Rainbow Choi in emails, and I never corrected him until last week, I had to make a note to sign off on my email as (Ms.) Rainbow Choi.

I'm not sure which families I'll meet. I started supporting a family in 2010 but with the always-hecticness of preparing the reports, I never even made my own! But here's a family from Talavadi, that started receiving support in 2011. What a difference a few years & a little help makes!

2011

2012

2013

But enough paper work. :) Let's see what this looks like in real life. :) I wish I could have taken some of you with me. It's always so amazing to see how lives are changing and so woefully inadequate in conveying the stories when I get back. But I will try. I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have over the next few days with travel. I'll hopefully maybe check in at the end of the week, or maybe on the plane back, which is where most of my blogs these days seem to be written!

More here  -- Building Family Ties India -- if you are interested :)

Namaste,

Rainbow