“There is beauty yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours. Hidden, fierce, immense. Beauty that is uniquely ours and beauty that we have received with grace from others, enhanced, reinvented, made our own. We have to seek it out, nurture it, love it. Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether or not we use them. Bombs will destroy us either way.” The End of Imagination, 1998, Arundhati Roy


--

This morning I want my words to cry, my sadness to run down these pages, scrolling through an intense, disillusioning, consuming despair. I want the reflection of this monitor to show my vapid eyes, an overcome expression. I want this unfeeling machine to implode from the intensity of the emotions bleeding through my tapping, typing, fingertips. We woke this morning or we went to sleep this evening in a murderous world, a world of hate, killing. Assassination.

Pictures of her coffin. Ensuing riots. Outrage. Chaos. Speculation about what went wrong, how this was allowed to happen, what will happen now in an already tumultuous political climate. Graphic designers walk us through her final steps. Elections on January 8th. Nuclear security. Photos of her life. Terrorism. Extremists. Condolences and apologies, promises for investigation, public condemnations, vows of vengeance, blame.
If there are ever, I do not know, but today there surely are no sufficient words of consolation. Interrogations might find out who planned this attack, but they can’t tell us how much bad there is in the world. We know. We’ve just witnessed.

No energy for this. Exhausted. A moment that makes you believe in nothing.

Alex asked me about things in Pakistan. I hadn’t checked the news. I told him it was just politics as usual, thinking she were still alive and that he was referring to the approaching elections, political posturing, power hungry dictator. I checked the newspaper and was uppercut by a heavyweight headline.

Dead.

My knees wobbling, already in the 8th round of a title bout against Holiday Time Homesickness, I smashed against the canvas, not out for the count, but infected with a feeling that will take a day to pass. This hit landed before the bell, below the belt.
I never met Benazir Bhutto. I am not from Pakistan. People are murdered all the time. In large numbers people die tragic deaths. Yet something about watching that web page load screamed into my soul of a world so sick, so wrong, so polluted that today I want to disengage, to refuse this world, to fold my hand, to be 7, to be lied to and told that everything will be ok.

That groups -- groups made of human beings -- are competing to take claim for killing her. That most of my colleagues flip past this news to the “year in films lookback, the 25 most influential Bollywood films of the year” (can there be 25 most influential films in a year?). What is going on in the world when people compete for credit of an assassination? What is really going on in the world when this doesn’t phase people? That that man stood in the crowd with explosives strapped to his body and a sense of duty or right-doing planted in his mind, the goal of killing her and as many others as possible, maybe in the name of god, that somehow this action was justifiable, or right, that he pulled the trigger.

Today I want my words to cry.

Child Labor on the 18th Green

“I work outside for nine months a year as a construction laborer and survive on daily wages. Going to vote means loss of three days of wages and an expenditure of Rs. 350. How can I afford that when I am not sure where my next meal will come from?” Varsinbhai, a worker quoted in The Indian Express, December 16, 2007, when asked if he was going to vote in the state-wide elections

--

This was the last place I expected to play golf. India, the land of 1.2 billion, the Mahatma, Taj Mahal, non alignment, the third highest number of HIV/AIDS affected persons in the world, spices, Bengal tigers, countless languages, yoga, caste, the hundreds of millions of rural poor, weddings, saris, the Kama Sutra. Going to Scotland, the home of golf, it made sense. Here, it just wasn’t in my mind; the first -- and second -- set of associations of India, its culture, tourist destinations, non tourist destinations, likely don’t involve golf and for most people here life and golf rarely meet. What’s golf? Few know and fewer play. But, this morning I saw the face of the 7, 8, 9, 10 percent growth rate investors in the West fawn over, of the relatively small but growing (in number and in wealth) urban upper class, of ‘development’ and its dumbfounding complexity.

It is winter in Ahmedabad and it’s cold. Before and after the sun, shawls make nocturnal appearances, caps come out and this is not the kind of weather that makes you want to wake up. Momma pajama doesn’t jump out of bed, let alone at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. It was more like a roll, stirring only at the second alarm and even then wondering if it wasn’t too late to make the call – I am just too tired, sorry. No shower, quick transition from pajamas to pants, switch the shirts, glasses no contacts, jacket and into the elevator.

My fault for being on time; I wait. Rahul pulls up half an hour late. Since arriving, he has been the most gracious of hosts in his city, welcoming me warmly, inviting me to family events, giving me shirts, always asking if there is anything I need or that he can do. He is going to lend me a blanket. Twenty four, he and his older brother work at the textile company started by their father. In time, it will be theirs. They own 4 cars; conspicuously on the dashboard are his Burberry sunglasses. Golf clubs on the back seat. Digging in his pocket, he takes out and answers his iPhone. Their company survived the decline of the textile industry in Ahmedabad and they are surviving well.

Ahmedabad is growing and it is growing fast. It is growing out, not up, without a plan, in concentric circles of mega malls, cinemas, office parks and 10-story apartment compounds. Residents who grew up here no longer know when the city starts and when it ends, the landmarks they once referenced gone, parks for an ice cream on a Sunday subsumed in the belly of the beast, remodeled, renovated, now a hotel or a parking lot. Two-year-old malls, with only half of the shops rented, cower in the shadow of the newer, bigger, brighter mall going up immediately next door.

Behind both those malls and every construction project in the city are the shanty towns where the men, women and children who do the work live. Following the construction like the harvest, they live where there is work, unskilled, cheap to hire and easy to fire. They don’t shop at these malls and they don’t play golf. On their backs buildings and profit-margins are built. Developers want their projects up as fast as possible, money is the end goal. The demand for developments is high, the demand for labor is high and cheap labor is the best kind. Respect, fair pay, the legal working day are absent. Labor laws exist and NGOs scramble to keep up, but the pace of growth is too fast.

“Do you like Ace of Base?” Rahul asks. Sure. I don’t see any signs, but the roads are smooth, two lanes going in each direction, divided by a concrete wall, street lamps every 30 feet. Long haul trucks zoom by, delivering the concrete that will build the malls. For these truck drivers, the roads are good. The roads are good for the person they are rushing to meet. For the worker who is following the cement delivery, the roads are good. Easier on the hooves than a rocky, dusty, potholed, uneven road, the camels and elephants also appreciate this road. It is faster and easier to ride a bike, push a lorry and drive a car, motorbike, rickshaw, or donkey on a smooth road. Potholes help no one. Roads that do what roads are meant to do are really helpful.

Without that road it would have taken us two hours to get to the golf club. Instead, it takes 40 minutes. We take a left turn into the gate and are greeted by two men in uniforms and crisp salutes. They look like toy soldiers. This is not Westminster. They are not actually soldiers, they are cold. But, the boss obviously told them every car that comes and goes must be met by a crisp salute. He probably holds an MBA and this is the business culture he is going to create in his club, how he is going to increase brand equity and establish a strong reputation, the guard is the first and last thing members will see, what they will remember.

Construction is still going. When it is ready, Rahul tells me, this will be the most happening, exclusive club in the city. The driving range, club shop, Tee Off Café are complete; the course, clubhouse, pool, two restaurants, tennis courts, track and gym are still being built. Some of the landscaping is done, some fixtures have light bulbs, some merchandise is stocked.

Immediately upon parking – we are going to build our reputation on service -- two boys open the car doors. In t-shirts made in Mexico during the mid 90s, sold in the US, used for a year, donated to the Salvation Army and barged to India, they’ve been cast as Bellhop 1 and Bellhop 2. No starch, no uniform, no khakis. This Sunday is not their day off from school – they don’t go to school; mom is sweeping the steps and dad is climbing the scaffolding of the clubhouse. They are good boys and do their best to play the part. One of them awkwardly removes the golf bag from the back seat and slings it on his right shoulder, walking to the driving range on his tip toes. The bag is taller than he is. The other boy stares at me, blinded by the light.

Rahul drops his membership number nonchalantly and we saunter in, shoulders back, head high, looking around a little, stopping in the shop never with the intention to buy. He’s got the walk down. At the club.

His golf game is not as good as his walk. In fact, he can’t hit the ball. Visibly embarrassed, he takes his time in between swings. He is a beginner with really nice equipment. His clubs are from the US, a friend of his from school working in Chicago brought them home from his last business trip. Swooping to the rescue, the golf pro comes over. Now Rahul just looks like he is having a lesson, working on his game. Saved. His shirt is from Ralph Lauren, new, not the Salvation Army, but he too is playing his part.

In between swings, a woman reaches with a broom to wipe cobwebs from the rafters. Some of the staff stop working and stare. Snapped at the waist, their knees locked, women pick weeds from the landscaping. Off to the right the clubhouse is being built, ensconced in bamboo scaffolding and catwalking workers, a poured concrete skeleton, a Frankenstein of exclusivity that will soon be finished with oak panels and big egos, handshakes, bets, and gentlemen’s agreements.

Fifty balls later, we walk the walk and have breakfast at the café. Rahul’s phone rings, he answers, and two minutes later we are joined by a man with a pointed, scrupulously waxed moustache. It is his trademark and the trademark of many others from military homes. His father is a hot shot in the Army, a man with a moustache and public appearance of starched uniform, shadowed, glassy eyes, and expression of Spartan duty. Privately, behind the walls of the Army club -- a club only high ranking officials are allowed to join -- he is a different kind of man, a whiskey drinking, gambling man looking after his own interests. The one constant, public and private, are the orders he gives. Rahul belongs to this golf club and the mustached man belongs to his father’s. They want what the other has.

We finish eating and bullshit our way to the practice bunker, strolling, making sure the trees see us, our hands in our pockets. It is supposed to be sand. It’s not. It is a mud pit. Two young men are working on their short game, their crisp, new, white Nike sneakers muddy, no longer as white as their crisp, new, white Nike golf caps. Tots in the sandbox, they just hack away, mud going farther than the ball. “Hey yaar, you can’t touch the sand before your shot,” one tells the other in impeccable boarding school English. His friend doesn’t like being coached, contemplates the advice for half a second, shrugs his shoulders, and goes right back to punishing his clubs.

Short phrases, whispers, pats on the back, discretion, favors, the charade of importance.

Off to the side, leaning casually on a pitching wedge, moustache man walks Rahul through the policy of ‘introduction’ at the Army club.

See, even though I am not in the army, I gain my father’s membership. No one, absolutely no one who is not from a military family can get membership to this club. Wishing he were Bond, he takes a long, dramatic drag on this imaginary cigar. Unless, of course, I introduce you and my father makes a phone call.

A break in the action for a couple of swings. You have these two introductions, now it is just a matter of formality, paperwork, etc. Don’t worry.

Hundreds of thousands of rupees will change hands.

Ready with his touché, Rahul politely thanks him for all the trouble, adequately patting the moustache’s ego, then begins. I’ve been talking to my friend here and he is going to give me the membership forms this week. When I get them I will give them to you. He’s agreed to the discount.

Rahul’s father is one of the most esteemed members at a different club in Ahmedabad. The man who owns that club is opening this golf club and agreed to give the waxed moustache a Rs. 50,000 discount as a favor to Rahul’s family.

Go right here, then left, and just before that roundabout near the Reliance Supermarket take another left – our office is the pink building on the right. It’s easy to find.

There are no street signs. This is normal. Giving directions is not easy and things are not easy to find.

If you get lost or need directions just call. Great. Call you next week.

Still in the mud pit, the two young men continue to hit balls out of the bunker. When they are finished, they chip them back into the bunker, and then do it all over again. The man with the moustache joins them. In between shots he talks to me about his friends in Jackson Heights. We trade formalities. I am working for an NGO here that does sewage worker organizing. Great; I did my schooling in social work, specializing in rural and urban development but now I run a security company. He bashes a ball. It flies out of the bunker and onto the putting green, barely missing the man and his son practicing there. They are standing in the direct line of where he is hitting and he is not holding back, again and again bashing the balls like grapefruits and cantaloupes, vengeful, punishing, rapid fire right at this man and his son. They putt on.

He tells me he just wasn’t cut out for it. You don’t say.

Rahul and I head out. No one is at the driving range at the moment. Two boys scamper around collecting balls.

--

Growth is not inevitable; growth and ‘development’ are the results of policies, of business, currency, markets, speculation, government, investment, intentions good and bad, selfish and selfless, nationalistic and humanitarian, tariffs, trade agreements, acquisitions, loans. Capitalism demands growth but it doesn’t demand how that growth happens, it is guided, steered, and controlled by the decisions of real people, real people with hearts, children, families, reputations, ambitions, careers, hobbies, dreams, boards, stock packages, interests. The influential are influenced by human concerns the same way we all are None of this is inevitable.Their decisions affect real people.

This golf course is proof of the very difficult task of counting in the billions and trillions and not loosing people, at any level, to the system. It shoes that we have far to go in how we think about and do ‘development,’ that India’s growth rates are helping few, failing most, and lacking nuance. India’s growth is not considering the people or how it grows, it is focusing on the easy part of building buildings and roads with temperate success, ignoring the hard part and failing.

India is playing the game without the etiquette.

Technocratic schemes are easy to cook up on paper but they don’t work unless they consider the reality of the ground, the people they will most impact and it is by these people that these programs ought to be judged. Building private golf clubs and shopping malls is not ‘advancement’ (ever?) when they are built by displaced, homeless, illiterate, tribal laborers. Child labor on the putting green is not a success.

Human indicators are the ones that matter most and by these metrics India is failing.

The importation of Western values on exactly this topic is creating a critical mass of affluence that cares about nothing but indicators of their own wealth. Actors playing a part. Men who act as they think they should, as their Western business colleagues do, but have no idea what they are doing. The influential easily influenced, in power but not in control of the values they are driving their country towards, a dangerous materialism and inequity implanted in their minds as a just end goal. A proliferation of MBAs who want to build brand equity while employing illiterate middle age men as security guards. Business deals on the golf course. At the club on a Sunday. Desires to be Western, iPhones, but still way behind, Ace of Base blaring. Mud pits. Men who have studied the problems, are aware of them, but have been coached into a preferred lifestyle, not cut out for it.

There is no effective coordination at any level, no sense of equity, a variety of different actors playing towards the same hole but unconcerned with the other actors on the course, swinging away in their interest. Maybe the economic indicators are improving, for a few, but the social ones are not. Some of the roads are getting better, some jobs are being created, but the upper class urban elite, comfortable behind their gates, in their clubs and A/C cars, the face of the booming India the West adores, doesn’t care about the people they’ve left in the wake of capitalism’s growth, become more ‘developed’ than.

Be Exceptional

“You decide to venture from the sanctity of your tropical compound. You see natives. You marvel at the things they can do with their hair. The things they fashion out of cheap twine or ordinary cloth. Squatting on the side of the road. Hanging out with all the time in the world. You might look at them and think: “They’re so relaxed, so laid-back, they’re never in a hurry.

Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives – most natives in the world- cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the realities of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go – so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.” -- Jamaica Kincaid, “A Small Place”

--

Sunday concluded a three-day impact assessment. I am glad that it is over, I don’t like working on Saturdays and I definitely don’t like working on Sundays. Tiring, this trip let me taste something, see the term ‘sewage worker’ with my nose, understand the work we are doing in a lived way.

For three days we sat and talked about our work, went to the field to see it, to talk with the stakeholders, the people to whom the funding is supposed to go, the communities on the ground, the marginalized communities, low-caste. In a proposal, “empowerment” is a prerequisite – it must be mentioned. It can be linked to women or community or the veritable individual (women’s empowerment, community empowerment, individual empowerment), but regardless of who it is that is empowered, someone is going to get empowered. Saturday was not a proposal; I saw it. Empowerment is taking place here.

She stood up, her shoulders back, her head held high and when she spoke, people listened. Her sari was worn thin, cotton, not the warmer silk that would be worn for this colder weather. From where I sat her hair looked like a brand new record, the sun shinning in a round reflection that hugged the shape of her skull, her perfect part the first track of many songs of fine, jet black hair. With motions to rival even the most over exaggerated Italian stereotype, she spoke, conducting her discordant symphony. Nothing in her words was rehearsed, nothing about her was reserved, this was not a speech but a testament, a dictated autobiography, the cadence of her speech mesmerizing. Her body supported her, not sad, but a verification, the wrinkles in her face telling of the long days, the scars on her ankles, callous hands, tough feet.

She is pissed. She doesn’t cry, there is no sorrow, just anger. She lives what development literature tries, and constantly fails, to communicate.

Crescendo. She concludes with an ending that wins filmmakers awards and writers acclaim. Except this is real. Slowly, the reality of her words and the power with which they were spoken sinking in, she turns to the NGO assessor who is listening intently, with a mask of grave concern, sympathetic. “What do I do? Tell me what do to?” Using the most polite Hindi conjugation: “Boliye (please tell me).”

Overmatched, the NGO woman does her best, regurgitating what she would say; “You’ve started, you are empowered, you are thinking differently, here today, fighting for what’s yours, your rights.”

In that instant, this is an impressively impotent response, a pale of water to extinguish a forest fire.

For that woman to stand up and demand her rights is exceptional – it is not the norm. Why would she stand up? What is in it for her? Her liberation? Maybe. In the short term, to do so is likely not in her interest. The system is slow to change. Empowered women look good in the glossy pages of NGO brochures but often times they are not well received by husbands and bosses and there is a probability that some sort of violence will be committed against her.

With everything stacked against her, she refuses to relent for some reason beyond the improbable wage increase of 40 rupees a day to 70 rupees a day - $1 to $1.75. Maybe she believes in the world, in people, a better future for her children. No longer will she swallow her words. It is not easy, but she stands up for her rights.

Friends, family, people I know care for me very deeply and write only out of love, tell me to take it easy, that I am being too hard on myself.

I am not that woman, but she asks a very important and hard to answer question: What would it take for me to do something exceptional? For you to do something exceptional?

We often hear or read stories like this in the national media, color features recounting the work of individuals with remarkable personal constitutions and commitment to change despite the ubiquity of destitution in their lives. Women’s groups. Micro credit schemes. Former child soldiers. Community based organizations. Survivors of genocide. Peace activists. Surviving orphans. A clinic. Sewage workers. This woman.

Sitting in the living room with a full stomach, the heat working, the kids home from college, cars in the garage, Muppet curled up by the fire, it is easy to hear stories like this and feel overwhelmed, outmatched by such courage, that nothing we do in our sterile world can be as gutsy as that woman, as exceptional as these amazing stories in the national media, as people who choose to believe in something when everything in their world tells them not to.

But, we are not that lady, we don’t carry shit on our heads for a living. We have it much easier. We don’t need her courage to make change. We need our courage.

It is not enough for us only to think differently or to be empowered. We are thinking differently, we’ve taken the classes, read the articles, been to the lectures, studied this inside and out – for us, it is about how we act. Think of what America and its citizens communicate with their bodies, cars, policies, consumer choices, think of what it means to be not-exceptional. Think of the excuses you make for not acting. The messages are spurious. We are aware of the dangers of climate change, of the racism endemic to our country, crumbling inner cities and impoverished rural areas, murderous foreign policy, global poverty, unjust wealth distribution, a deplorable public school system, ills that have settled into normalcy as a result of political apathy, a delinquent White House, and cutthroat capitalism. For us, it is time to move beyond thinking and to act differently

That we don’t carry shit on our heads is a good thing - it is not something to feel embarrassed about and the good fortune of our global positioning should not diminish your contribution. From that living room, with the fire still warm, we have the power to make great change – at a different level but part of the same solution – and we face the fewest risks.

But, don’t offer a pale to this forest fire - it must be exceptional action. It is time to look at the norms and rise above them, to take offense at the polluting, apathetic course that is expected of you and surpass the expectation that you will continue living in a world of violence, hate, a world where billions of people live on less than $2 a day, where 40,000 people die each day of preventable diseases, where 2 million Americans are incarcerated, children die of diarrhea, where we have enough food to feed the world and greed handcuffs us. The negative examples abound. You need to be a positive one.

This might sound preachy, but so too do those emails. Look around. Don’t tell me that I am being too hard on myself. Are you being hard enough?

Give money, ride your bike, change your lifestyle, think of the jobs you take and consider more than money, understand where and with whom you hang out, write a letter, volunteer, defy the norms in actions small and large but in actions all the time. Be exceptional by doing exactly what is not expected of you, doing what the world needs. Think of this woman and think of the questions she asks you in your life.
What will it mean to be exceptional? If she can stand up, surely so can we.

“The problem with a rat race is that even if you win you are still a rat.” -Lily Tomlin

I don’t know. A bad stand up comedian returning to his punch line again and again: I don’t know. I don’t. Crickets. Sometimes you are going to bomb, and right now it feels like the bottom’s fallen out. Nothing’s clear, no answers, just uncertainty. Questions that beget questions that lead only to the surrender of shrugged shoulders, dejection, and feelings of total confusion; I don’t know. At the bottom of the year-abroad curve, I look forward often.

My boogers are black. People offer me cigarettes and I tell them: “No thank you, I’ve already been outside today.” Ahmedabad is home to the most polluted air out of all cities in India – illustrious company. Foods are starting to taste the same. Traffic is mad; my fits of bike rage returned. Gujarat is a dry state, doubly dry when you consider the prospects of meeting women, triply dry when you recall the weather. The task of communication is grinding, I still pantomime and over enunciate my way through simple conversations. Cars, bikes, buses, trucks, motorbikes, and rickshaws honk and honk and honk. I wonder why I feel so homesick, why I feel that I’ve been away for so long. This is the only question I can answer for sure: because I have. I left NYC on August 11 and it feels like it.

There is a partner on this seesaw. Bright colors and delicious tea. Wonderful smiles, strong families, gracious hospitality, foods that are delicious and don’t taste the same, yoga, an exhilarating history of legend and lore alive in the streets and buildings, fresh fruit, old men in the park, ice cream, monkeys, week-long weddings, my new room, Bollywood films, a state holiday kite festival, and dozens of other details that sit at the other end of the plank, pushing down to pick me up, and sometimes disappearing in plain sight, Purloined Letters, watching me fall.

But shitty air and beautiful women are symptoms, they are not what really troubles me, telltales that something deeper is awry. Kiwis, working in translation, and papayas reflect a confounded moral compass that is under attack, emaciated by a lack of familiar nourishment, perplexed by questions from a new world, disorienting weaponry that destroys reference points and leaves me in need of recalibration. Small events probe and burrow, adding up to big questions that I do and do not understand, questions that, when explored, leave no sure answer. I stare in the mirror at uncertainty. I don’t know.

My mind is numb, underwhelmed with work, this city, the people, the monotony. This is a massive change, something I hate, and try all the time to remedy but it takes a lot of energy to meet new people, to initiate, be the new guy – especially when you don’t understand anything – that I sometimes concede defeat, sit and read. I do know people, I have friends, there is cool work going on in Ahmedabad, but not in my office. Most of my time is spent in a chair at a desk looking at a computer. There are some projects that I am cooking up, but there is no buzz among the staff, no pep, no scrambling, over-committed excitement, no energetic frenzy that excites, no team that you want to be a part of. Could be that I don’t understand these things when they are expressed, I don’t understand all the time, but it is not a working environment I like, am used to, or allow myself to grow comfortable in.

All the time I feel misunderstood; friends and co workers don’t really understand how to get my mind firing, and when it is firing they offer little oxygen. I am never at full speed, never totally loose, always speak slowly, rarely curse, sedate. Never before have I been in a more different place and never before have I felt so medicated; some sort of charade is constantly maintained. When I do hang out with someone who I think might get me I end up going overboard, overwhelming him/her with what’s been pent up.

I miss friends and family who know me, who are smart in my language, who push back, spar, offer something new and different, tell me to stop being an idiot, tell me that I’ve guessed right, that I can work with, that have something to contribute. I miss my comfort zone, bike rides, salad, NYC, my brother, BC, stupid nights, stupid jokes, flirting, sweaters, dancing, dark beer, the possibility of meeting new, engaging, exciting people, pasta, UNC, not having to work, basketball. I look forward.

To what?

What do I want to do next? What is important to me? Why am I here? How do I want to live my life? What makes me happy? How do I want to be in the world?

Each time I think I have an answer to any of these questions I stop myself before I can finish my thought, interrupted in my mind by the counterpoint that springs up and sounds equally right. Counterpoint after counterpoint, I don’t know.

Supposedly I came to India to work at the grassroots level, at the forefront of human rights advocacy, to partner with an NGO serving as the interface between the most marginalized communities and the services, laws, and rights that they are entitled to. Lila Watson’s quote [“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.”]
tells me that I am not here to help. Somehow, wearing my white skin, a foot taller than everyone and without language skills my presence is to supposed to defy the power dynamics of North/South, Rich/Poor, 3rd/1st and be ‘fair.’ This program hopes that I work and talk with, not at, the flow of information is supposed to go both ways, honest communication, mutual learning, skills transfer, thoughts of sustainability, capacity building. In training we talked about cultural sensitivity, American attitudes, socio political climates, histories that set the tone today, values, morals, sympathy, empathy, body language, norms, conscientious consumerism, the importance of patience, understandings of time, control, ownership, dress, nonverbal messages.

We ran the gamut of development practitioner basics to create young adults with the skills, knowledge, and awareness to operate in this mutually benefiting space that ‘good’ models suggest.

Right now, this all feels like total bullshit. From where I sit, any and all ideas of development are a fantastic fairy tale. Talk of advocacy, organizing, rallying for Dalit rights has been happening in India for over a hundred years. It is India and it isn’t. Substitute any issue – AIDS, poverty, domestic violence, malnutrition, sex trafficking, potable water, aboriginal rights, indigenous rights, ethnic tensions, peace and reconciliation, disaster relief, race relations, displaced persons, genetically modified crops, asthma, obesity, starvation, heart disease, health care, TB, malaria, illiteracy, child slavery, civil war, malnourishment, housing -- at any level – community, city, state, national, international, global - and the same gap between lip service and results exists. Admitted: these issues persist because they are so complex and hard to solve. There are no easy solutions or quick fixes. But, at any level, the impacts pale in comparison to the money, time, attention spent trying to remedy whatever the stated need is. The resultant rat race is a system, a beast, created by best intentions that is as unfair, unresponsive, political, and inefficient as the unfair, bureaucratic, inefficient system it was created to fix.

People still carry shit on their head. Pick an issue, fill in the blank, the need is there and the system sucks.

Human history has never known more material wealth. Billions of people live on less than $2 a day. Each day tens of thousands of people die of preventable diseases. Disparity, by any indicator, between rich and poor has never been as great. How do we know this? Some NGO did years of research, paying exorbitant bribes and salaries, to find out the problems. Using their figures another NGO did research on how best to reduce these problems. Then another NGO wrote a proposal, vetted by an NGO consulting NGO, for funding for community work to reduce said problem. Another NGO attacked them for a wrong model. A different NGO did work on the harm caused by the original intervention. Another NGO was hired to conduct an assessment of their work. More research on the changed, emerging new face of the same problem. People still carry shit on their head.

Looking out from the eye of the storm, this development beast looks like a downright stupid proliferation of NGOs, NGOs that help NGOs, NGO’s that really are governmental bodies (organizations that have become exactly what they hope to reverse), consultants, models, papers, academics, competition for funding, conferences, workshops, trainings, meetings, summits, World Days, awards, honors, fellowships, grants, support, photo essays, empowering projects, films, documentaries, photographs.

The big houses drive around in Land Rovers, A/C blasting. Small NGOs sprout up like flowers in the April, each organization is staffed by people who care, will be that much closer to the frontline, better, more local, more fair, more participatory in its development model, more focused on involving women, locally staffed and better able to address the needs of the people by the people. Everyone you meet is working with an NGO on these same, vague issues of community development with the most marginalized, the most downtrodden, the lowest. It doesn’t count unless they are really marginalized.

Awards scramble to keep up with these social entrepreneurs, global citizens, people of the year, leaders of the future. First the Nobel Prize to award outstanding accomplishment. Now, the X Prize, Rolex, Ashoka, Macarthur, Echoing Green… universities and corporations affiliate their names.

Let’s be honest for a second: my liberation is not bound up in yours. I don’t carry shit on my head. The thought of a common humanity that unites the world, stops our destruction of the Earth, feeds, clothes, shelters, provides medical treatment and safety to each and every person in the world is a powerful, right idea. NGOs don’t work with me. I am not the member of a marginalized community. I am liberated. My life is far more impacting on the Earth than it should be, but according to most of the key socio-economic indicators, I am where billions of people want to be. Equitable change will take sacrifice from my global bracket and we are connected, but that is a tangential connection. If my liberation is bound up in yours we are talking about a very different kind of liberation. Do we quote Lila Watson because we agree with her or because it makes us feel good? How do our actions answer this question?

Most people do as much as they need to feel good and as little as they can to be helpful. Paul Farmer calls these people White Liberals. Photos holding starving children. International volunteer trips. Volunteer cores. Me. Mission trips. Sighs of sympathy. They mean well. But, good-intentionsare not enough. Watson’s words are all over dorm rooms and profiles, t shirts and posters. Millions of people have read Mountains Beyond Mountains. These are the same people who work at NGOs. They are good people, they mean well, they have good intentions. But, so what? What does that poster on the wall mean to the person who’s liberation hangs in the balance.

I don’t know. Yet, I am here. I am not taking pot shots from afar, for reasons that are stronger that my disdain for the nonsense of the NGO world I am here, trying to answer these questions. Looking around makes me wonder if this was a good decision. Thinking of the world and just how fucked things sometimes seem, the wholly inadequate responses we well-intentioned actors muster, the stupidity of non governmental posturing, I am skeptical. So too is there so much beauty, love, support, hope, and success. Still I wonder: is the urge to help helpful? Is the desire to ‘help’ entirely self indulgent and disconnected from the sacrifice required to maybe make a difference. A coached impulse that quells some inner discomfort, some perceived injustice, a wrong. Where does this come from? How does one make a difference, how do you know? Can you change the world or can you change the people you meet, control what you can control, be in the world how you want to be.

Next year I am going to move to New York City, be near my family, interesting people I can speak with, bike rides and adventures, friends, comfort. I want to do what makes me happy. The world is fucked, let’s admit it. The problems are not going anywhere. I know I need a job but I don’t need a career. Each morning I want to wake up excited for the day, my work, my play, them being the same thing, my partner, my location. My liberation is bound up in my liberation. You are only young once and now is the time to do what you love. Maybe.

Do I have the courage to take my own advice? I give it quite often, to friends deliberating between grad school and something cooler and less orthodox. Do what you love, now is your time I tell them. What will I do?

That stupid impulse to help, work with – whatever we are going to call it.

Do I want to sit in an office and write grants, review proposals, assess things that I am far far away from and don’t understand, quote Lila Watson on my facebook profile and work for an NGO? If I learned anything from Kenya it is that smell is the only sense that allows you to understand the absence of proper sewer systems – not a movie, a report, not a photo. They help, but you don’t get it. To understand you’ve got the be there, not in an office in NYC with really bright white lights.

That sounds boring, but it might be the best way for me to ‘help’ If helping is a good idea, something I want to do, what can I contribute and from where. Why am I in India? A blonde hair, blue eyed American who can’t speak Hindi or Gujarati, I stand out, I am a foot taller than most people - I am not doing grassroots development, I am writing documents that non-english speakers can’t write. Good thing I flew all this way. Let’s talk about carbon footprints. I ride my bike here but took a jet around the world first. How do I want to be in the world?

These are the questions that trouble me right now. People still carry shit on their heads. I don’t know.