Anna Nagar

Today we were taken to Anna Nagar slum - where we will be working - and introduced to some of the people.

Asha have been working in Anna Nagar for a number of years and as a result conditions have improved significantly. The first thing I noticed (others also commented on this) when we entered the slum was that it felt very peaceful.

[By comparison, the slum we walked through briefly the day before had been manic. There just seemed to be people everywhere and we were followed by swarms of children who all wanted their pictures taken. It had all been very overwhelming although very friendly, but I did discover afterwards I'd been the butt of a few "jokes" - the children like to shake your hand but some will offer the left hand to see if they can catch out an ignorant westerner - the left hand is considered dirty for reasons I won't go into but you can probably work it out!]

By contrast however, the slum we went to today seemed very peaceful. Still lots of people and they still showed an interest in us and were very friendly but most of them were happy to carry on going about their business. They made us feel very welcome without making us feel overwhelmed.

We were welcomed into the resource centre and once again draped with marigold garlands! This time we met the Mahila Mandal (the women's group - we were told there were 2 in this slum) and also the Bal Mandal - the children's group who also have responsibility in the slum for maintaining standards of cleanliness and looking out for the needs of other slum dwellers. The Mahila Mandal and the Bal Mandal are organised on a democratic system, with an elected president, secretary and treasurer and have various responsibilities. The Mahila Mandal seems to be mostly made up of Lane Volunteers - each volunteer is responsible for her lane in the slum, which usually consists of about 25 dwellings, which as far as I can tell generally equates to about 150 people. The Mahila Mandal also includes a Community Health Volunteer, who is trained and provided with free basic medical supplies by Asha. She is allowed to charge 2 rupees per patient - about 2.4 pence - which she is allowed to keep for herself as a salary. This is capped at 125 rupees - or about one pound fifty - but I'm not sure over what time period. The Bal Mandal have similar responsibilities to the women, e.g. looking after lanes, making sure standards of cleanliness are maintained and looking out for anyone in the community who is particularly struggling to take care of themselves. We will hopefully learn a bit more about their activities in the next few days. The children go to a government school in the mornings then come back to the slum and carry out their duties as well as receiving some supplementary education from Asha as they are only able to go the poorest and least well equipped schools.

One of the most powerful impressions so far has been how happy everyone seems to be! Although still living in squalor by normal western standards, their situation has improved drastically through the work of Asha. More importantly though, these people have developed a sense of self esteem that they didn't have before and have learnt to live and work together in very tight-knit community! There was such a strong sense of love and compassion between all the women and children we met. They all seemed to look out for each other and seemed very pleased to see us. They all seemed extremely positive and proud of their achievements and I didn't see any bickering between any of the children.

After we'd been introduced, we set to work painting 3 of the rooms we will be working on. None of us are trained decorators but we did the best we could and several of the children were allowed to join in which they seemed to enjoy! Juni, a 13 year old lad (although he looks younger), took it on himself to try and teach some of us Hindi. He had enough English to make himself pretty well understood and would repeat a phrase to us in English and in Hindi and get us to repeat it back to him. I was rubbish! I could remember a phrase for a couple of minutes and then it would just disappear out of my head! I had nothing else to relate it to and I couldn't see it written down - to me it was just a collection of sounds and I found it extroardinarily difficult to hang on to! The heat and still being quite tired also probably didn't help!

After lunch we split into 2 groups - one group stayed to do some activities with the children and the other group - my group - was given a tour of a small part of the slum, during which some of the Mahila Mandal invited us into their houses. Anna Nagar is unusual in that with the help of Asha the residents have been successful in gaining land rights for themselves, which means that unlike in many of the slums, they can't be kicked off the land at a moment's notice. Because of this they've been able to build more permanent dwellings for themselves, using brick and plaster, mostly rooved with a mixture of corrugated iron and plastic. The layout of the slum is very ad hoc - the "lanes" twist and turn all over the place and it's not obvious where one starts and another ends. The lanes are very narrow and the rooves low. There are low-hanging (insulated - at least the ones I noticed) electricity cables everywhere. It's not an easy place for a tall clumsy person such as myself to negotiate! The "houses" tend to be basically square or rectangular, but are also pretty ad-hoc. The first house we visited - and this is fairly typical, had one bed in it and maybe enough floor space for 2 or 3 more. 6 people lived there! - a woman, her husband and 4 children including 2 late teenage daughters. High birth rate is a big problem in most of the slums in Delhi, but Asha have found that when people are given access to proper medical facilities, and as their circumstances and their self esteem improves, the birth rate tends to fall quite sharply. In Anna Nagar now, most new families stop at 2 or 3 children at most.

The women take very good care of their houses - everywhere we visited was very clean and tidy. When you're living in such a small space you have to organise it well to make the most of it! Everyone was very welcoming and enthusiastically told us their stories about their role in the slum and the difference that Asha has made to them and to the community. It felt like such a privilege to be there - in a place that is so poor economically and yet seems so rich in terms of human warmth and compassion!