About a month ago Beate and Andrea from Germany, came to India to join the Servants team and learn what it means to live in an Indian slum. For the first 2 weeks they lived with a family of 4 in a room of 8 or 9 square meters. Here they share their impressions of the first month.
The entrance to the room can be only reached by a ladder. Here we brought up all the water that is needed for daily use, such as taking showers, washing dishes and laundry, cleaning, cooking…
The pump-water wasn’t good enough for drinking.
Every morning a tanker truck came to deliver drinking water and crowds of people ran to the tank with all kinds of buckets, containers, plastic bags… to have them filled.
We also took the containers of our family and tried to have them filled – which was not very easy.
There seemed to be a rule for lining up, but only children and some of the women would follow the rule, while most of the people ignored the two queues and tried to take the short-cut by pushing everyone aside.
It seems, in this context it is quite acceptable to use elbows, specially for those who have some kind of authority. Well, we two(stupid) German girls lined up and some people that already knew us offered to help us out with their elbows.
We didn’t like that and continued to stay in line and some people really let us know that we are indeed stupid.
We talked about what has to happen to bring about changes in this kind of culture. Would it make a difference if we were to live here and line up for 5 years, would people start thinking and changing their behaviour?
We came to the point that it would probably need a miracle and a touch from God if anything could be changed here. So we started praying. One of the main fighters for the water (and not only here) was an elderly lady just living underneath “our” room.
Next day, while Beate was alone in the line, that lady fought for her water as usual. What was unusual was, that Beate, standing in line, got her water quicker than this lady…
One day later both of us went again to the water tank, ready for another experience of fighting people and being pushed to the side when suddenly this elderly lady came and lined up behind us. We were speechless. Then she pointed us to move her containers forward according to the progression of the line, while she went to the front and watched out, that only those being in line would get their water.
Since she has some authority there, others helped her and only few people continued to take the short-cut. She still fought with her elbows, but this time for justice, not only for her own sake. God can bring about changes, everywhere! That is encouraging, but in a place like this it needs so much more of this.
[Beate and Andrea (names changed for security reasons) are new members of the Servants India team]
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