Life in a slum

Zakhira is one of the poorest slums in which Asha works. Many of the residents lack a basic item required for standard living. There is a high rate of malnutrition among the children here. A lot of them also suffer from slightly cross-eyes, due to zinc deficiency. I have met one man, and one woman aged 60. People here get grey hair and have weathered skin in their late 30s. Life here is a day to day battle. People make some money by collecting ten screws and sealing them with flame into a small plastic bag. Not all of the residents even own the one room houses in which they live with their whole families. Yesterday some older women were complaining to the ASHA worker that the woman we were interviewing had not paid her rent. But she had nowhere to go. The lanes are strewn with animal droppings and piles of garbage. There are flies which constantly land on everyone's faces, hands and legs. Young children wander around naked, scooping out handfuls of yellow mush their mothers hand them in small bowls. Six year olds carry around their baby brothers and sisters, perched on one hip. Babies have their eyes ringed in dark black and white powder to absorb sweat smothered on their heads and necks. The women are dressed in beautifully colored sari's and salway kamiz. They keep their homes in pristine shape. They sweep out all the dirt with short foot long straw brooms. They do laundry with buckets and harsh soap outside their doors. The clotheslines wrap around the village, in another class they would be decorated with festive lights, in this world they are adorned with fading, stretched out shorts and shirts that surely have been passed through five children over the years. It is amazing how carefully the women care for the possesions they have. One woman invited us into her home and spread out plastic like blankets on the floor. The women are often serious but they are proud. They accept the world they are living in, and now with the help of Asha they have learned independence and confidence. The children are stony faced at first but often burst into laughter and games of chase. In some ways I am envious of these young children surrounded by playmates and women who all look out for them like their mothers. I feel that the sense of community is strong and serves to fill in the material gaps of their needs which most Americans try to fill with possessions instead of human bonds. They work diligently and efficiently. It is truly a different world where ones priorities are tipped upside down and rearranged. It is a lifestyle filled with the juxtapositions between old and new, rural and urban, rich and poor. They judge in relation to what they are familiar with. Just as their world is foriegn to many Americans, so too is the first worlds lifestyle so distant from Zakhira, that it is not as sorely missed. I now have set foot in both worlds however, and am faced with the monumental differences between the two worlds. When one of the women passes me her baby and we all coo at her until she smiles, our barriers dissolve in our common humanity of having an innocent and living being who we all want the best for. Suddenly we exchange smiles which surpass the language differences, and we share a moment eye to eye, taking in the other as completely human and somehow unarguably identical to ourselves.