Vanakam from Tamil Nadu!

At 3:40 am on December 29, fifty students arrived in the southern city of Chennai. Draped with flower leis in the traditional Indian celebration of welcome, we squeezed into vans covered in bright orange paint, hand painted dolphins and flowers on the windows, and attempted to navigate through the dark highways to St. Patrick's in Villupuram. None of us could believe that we were truly in India, but then again, none of us could see anything through the humid mist of the early morning. Constantly honking and pulling around any trucks going slower than at least 60 mph, our driver made it known to us that, in India, there is no such thing as traffic regulation and designated "lanes", as in other parts of the world.

The next day, we began our work with the Early Detection and Prevention System program (EDPS) in the Ariyalure village of the Villupuram District in Tamil Nadu. Equipped with a translator, a local high school student, and a nursing student from the St. Mary's Health Center, we began entering different houses to collect health information from the villagers. Initially, we believed that this is would be simple, but, we soon found the lanugage barrier to be an inpenetrable blockade barring us from connecting with both the villagers and our fellow surveyers, which is, of course, not uncommon with anyone visiting a foreign country. While we greatly appreciated the efforts the translators and nurses put into helping us understand what was being said, we realized that many of us rarely help foreigners in America in the same fashion. At each home we visited, we were met with tremendous hospitality and welcoming from people with virtually nothing. Offering us a straw mat or the family's only chair to sit on, or snacks and tea to enjoy while conducting the interview, the villagers gave us anything they could offer to make their appreciation known. We were also curious to find that some families, even if they lacked a gas stove or an indoor bathroom, still managed to have either a radio or television, showing them Western culture that they have never experienced themselves. Oftentimes, adults would ask us to adopt their children and take them to the United States, and it was difficult to find a way to tell them we could not.

Throughout our pre-departure meetings, we mentally prepared ourselves to see the abject poverty we were bound to witness, but many of these preconceptions were quickly dissproven. The people were, for the most part, not moping around or lying in the streets moaning about their impoverished conditions, but were happy with their lives. We witnessed this happiness mainly in the children who followed us around and played hand games in the church courtyard. In addition, we witnessed the existence of community in the village; every child, regardless of biological linkage, seemed to belong to every adult in the village. In more developed parts of the world, the human condition tends to be individualized, creating much isolation among people, but in these communities, it seems, the villagers cannot survive without each other. Seeing people living in such conditions, we all realized how truly lucky we are that we can escape what we see, while they unfortunately cannot.

Last night, we were able to gain a deeper understanding of the caste system in India during the panel discussion on "Women, Caste and Development" between Father Raj, Father Felix and Miss Pauline, the principal of St. Patrick's school, through a slide show explaining the history of the caste system, what the distinctions are between the four major castes, and how Dalits are not even included in the caste. We learned that the Dalits are believed to come from dust, not even from one of Brahma's body parts like the other castes, and are so impoverished that they don't even qualify for federal income taxes (unlike in America). The children of St. Pat's also performed a "street play" about the realities of the caste system as they have experienced it in Southern India, from which we drew parallels between caste discrimination here and class tension in America, specifically between the Dalit Rights Movement and the American civil rights movement. We were reminded of skits we ourselves used to perform in elementary school about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. to educate and entertain the audience about the importance of civil rights. These parallels were again seen between the reservation system in India, explained by Father Raj, through which spots in certain industries, schools and areas of government are reserved for lower caste members and Dalits, and the American system of affirmative action, through which minorities are given preference over others in both private work sectors and the university application process.

- Maggie Herman and Sam Kramer (and the rest of the India trip!)