Finding a Voice

by Sarah Owen



The first meeting with the young women of Kandi defied all our expectations. Downcast eyes, closed faces, silence that we didn’t know how to read. As young women there seemed so little that we shared. We recognised the need to dismantle our own preconceptions about the basics of communication.
Fast-forward to the final week of our project and the progress made was immense. The gathering of 25 weeping women as we embarked on our last bus ride was testament to the bonds forged over 10 week process together.

As 4 young British women, we were given the opportunity to volunteer in a mountainside community of Himachel Pradesh in Northern India. Funded by DFID, and working in conjunction with Indian NGO IDEX, Platform2 provides young people with volunteering experiences overseas which promote social development and cultural exchange.

The Women’s Group was established only 3 weeks prior to our arrival. We were given free reign to deliver the course content, aiming to educate, empower, enhance skills and build self confidence. Admittedly we were daunted – our lack of formal teaching experience, the language barrier, the setting – a small room in a villager’s house and 2 old, donated PC’s, all seemed major hurdles to overcome.

The women were aged 11 to 21, and we were exited about the prospect of learning about, and sharing, aspects of their lives. We soon found however, that Indian education seemed to do little to encourage creativity and individual thought. Value appeared to be placed instead on copying, parroting. This was a tough barrier to breach, and highlighted the huge difference between our own backgrounds where freedom of expression and encouragement to use our initiative had been the normality. The transition for each woman to formulate a unique and personal response was not an easy one. The concept that there was no ‘right’ answer to our questions about their lives, thoughts and feelings seemed alien to them.

In hindsight I think that the realisation of how hard it can be to obtain information from an individual or group from a culture different to my own became one of the biggest lessons I learnt while in India.

It was a privileged and poignant experience to build bridges with the girls. Each individual was beautiful and gradually transformed from downcast gazes and unreadable expressions into blossoms of Lata, Reyka, Rashma, Keiran… With every day the portrait of each life grew more vivid; more colourful. Doubtless our desire to fill our classes with discussion, debate, creative writing was frustrated by the language barrier. Yet by introducing the building blocks of grammar and vocabulary, we began to explore.

During one session we used an old English folk song as a template for writing. Each line of the song began ‘I wish I were…’ and used nature as its inspiration. The girls found it difficult to take this leap into the abstract, especially in English, yet they achieved it. One girl wrote ‘I wish I were a tree so that I could live and be evergreen’ another wrote ‘I wish I were river so that people would drink from my water.’ This was a good introduction into our next project, ‘Mother Nature’ where we used photography to document life in the village and subsequently a movie in Window Movie Maker. It was fascinating to see the women frame the images of their lives.

Working on the computers was just one part of a jigsaw; my own background in leading singing groups was another. As I taught English songs, the women started to teach us their own traditional songs - Gaddi tribal songs infused with tales of love and separation. Singing brought smiles, mutual interest, bonds; the shared knowledge that singing together as a group creates something bigger than the sum of its parts.

Another focus was to raise levels of health awareness in the villages. According to the local Doctor, half of the health problems in the area are due to poor personal hygiene. And indeed, I spent my mornings in a government school without any toilet facilities and running water, where each child and teacher would have to relieve themselves around the side of the building. Coming from a culture where hygiene is so deeply ingrained it is easy to believe that good personal hygiene is intuitive; yet the harsh reality was that these things are by no means innate. How can children learn hygienic toileting habits when toilets and running water do not exist?

During our final month we explored several different health issues; HIV and AIDS, healthy eating, personal hygiene, and menstruation. We were concerned about the cultural differences. Would we cross unacceptable social boundaries? Would we offend people? We wanted desperately to be sensitive, but when you are initiating discussion on a taboo subject in a county that is not your own, you never know where the potholes may lie. However we were assured and encouraged by our IDEX staff members to go ahead.

During our HIV and AIDS sessions, we explored concepts such as stigma and discrimination. We took the girls on a bus ride to our house, over the huge rocky ravine that had isolated the community for so long before the recent building of a bridge. Here they could use the internet to do their own research; their first time online.

One of our most striking moments was our discussion of menstruation. The previous night we had made several posters detailing the female reproductive system and stages of the menstrual cycle. We had labeled them in English, and we planned to add Hindi the next day. However, in the following session we discovered that none of the women, even the two IDEX staff members, had ever been given access to this information. They had no vocabulary for these parts of their body, and had no idea how to describe them in their own language. They told us of the depth of the feelings of secrecy and shame surrounding periods, along with the scant information they had received from older sisters and friends. It struck us how keen both of the staff members were to seek information about sanitary wear and how to use it; it was as if so many questions had been unanswered for such a long time. Each women declared she felt it was important for younger women to have the information that they themselves had not had.



We focused the group's momentum into creating the first issue of a community magazine - the 'Kandi Women's Magazine'. All content was written by group members and produced using the computer skills they'd learnt. It featured a report of our research project into HIV and AIDS which encouraged support and friendship towards people affected by the virus, tips on how to stay healthy, articles with facts about periods, and a healthy eating pyramid diagram. To all of us it felt like the start of something, and we hope this first issue of the magazine is one of many.

How is it possible to return home with more questions than I had when I left? India's impact in my life feels far-reaching as I still try to process my experiences. My notebook full of Gaddi songs, kindly written for me by girls from the group, is a prized souvenir. I have taught the haunting songs sung to me by Lata, Reyka, Rashma, Keiran to youth choirs in my community. To my delight these British young people have been eager to lend their voices to these melodies, and in doing so have gained some small glimpse into life in Kandi. One of the women's songs, titled 'Tera Khayala' was recently performed to an audience of 1000 by the Devon County Youth Folk Choir. I hope to spread the stories and songs that I was privileged to witness at the women's group, and it is my wish that in Kandi the women's voices continue to grow stronger.

Unveiled

by Laura McAdam

I walked into an urban slum in India surrounded by the stench of sewage and rubbish through the tiny brick and mud homes, and into a large community hall.

In front of me sat a hundred or so Indian women singing and smiling at me. I knew that four years ago one of the partner organisations funded and supported by Christian Aid was invited by this community to help them from the brink of extreme poverty. As with so many other groups, these people had been excluded from wider society, ignored by the authorities and were plagued by domestic violence. When our partners first visited the women didn't come out of their homes and they wore sheer veils covering their heads - simply as a barrier to the outside world and everyone in it.

I was astonished to sit in front of this group of smiling, unveiled women as they told me what they'd acheived. Our partner had helped both men and women to raise the status of girls and women to have equal standing. For the first time these women believed that they had a big part to play in bringing their community out of poverty, and that they were equal and worthwhile human beings. The men saw too that they needed the women to become economically active.

The women told me how with a loan from us which they've now paid back, they have formed money lending group to help small businesses start and about the training courses they've undertaken to learn new skills including literacy. They told me how the women took off their veils and stood alongside their men to face the world. They told me how their unity was their strength and how they fearlessly take on the authorities to provide their basic rights like clean water and primary education. They told me how they rally and picket the police when they know corruption has taken place, and how they work with families to eradicate domestic violence in their community.

In front of me where the faces changing India from the roots, and they're doing it themselves. All they needed was to be told it was time take off their veils.

My Bracelet

by Laura McAdam

Visiting overseas projects with Christian Aid can sometimes be a bit embarrassing as they tend to give you presents even though they themselves have so little.

I was leaving a women's rights project in Northern India when they presented me with a number of gifts simply for giving them some of my time to hear their stories. One of them was a plastic red bracelet and as I sat in the back of a car on the to the station with a few of the project's ladies I explained to them that my wrist was unfortunately too big to wear such petite jewellery. They suddenly grabbed my hand while simultaneously producing some sort of cream and the next thing I knew my hand was contorted in a way it probably was never meant to be and I had a bracelet on my wrist which I was fairly sure would never come off again.

After my hand recovered and I had spent a few days with the bracelet annoying me, particularly as I tried to sleep with it on, I returned to the UK. For many many months after I returned from India I wore the same red plastic bracelet on my right wrist. Most of the time I didn't notice it but occasionally it niggled at me. I kept it on for two reasons (other than at the time it appeared to be indestructible). Firstly it reminded me of the strong women I met in India who are working to change the position of women in their country and bring themselves out of some of the most extreme cases of poverty in the world. And secondly, it was annoying. Unfortunately I still needed something tanglible to remind me that for the majority of the world life is more than simply uncomfortable, that if I get too comfortable then I become ineffective and I lost touch with not only my calling as a Christian but my responsibility as a human.

The bracelet eventually broke, but I still have it. It sits in my room, I see it every day and it still niggles at me. And I'll keep it in view as long as I still need reminding.

In her own words: Gita’s Story

by Laura McAdam

Taken from an Interview in Kanpur, India in 2008


‘My father was a very cruel person, he was always beating my mother. After some time my mother died from my father’s torture. Then he married again, and he always beat his second wife as well. He was really very cruel.

He put my [step mother] in a box and locked it, sometimes he put fire so that she burned all up her body. He tied a chain and locked it round her ankle, sometimes he beat her so many times [she would] wet herself.

I was small and didn’t do anything, sometimes he tortured me also. There are still marks on my leg.

My step mother fell down and cracked her hip, nobody took her in so I admitted my mother to hospital. My Father was told, [came to the hospital] and threw my mother onto the garbage and said ‘Don’t bother with her’.

I went to my father and fought – ‘You should take care of my mother because she is injured and needs help from you!’ He refused.

Then Seema and Ranno (pictured below) told me about Sakhi Kendra (A Christian Aid partner organisation) and we contacted them six months ago (August 2007). They came and organised a public meeting at my father’s place. There were approximately 200 people there and they motivated and organised a signature campaign for justice, for shelter for my mother and for her rights.



About 150 women petitioned the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) and gave him the signature campaign. Then the SSP ordered the police into organising an enquiry – the women said no to this [as it wasn’t enough] – so SSP ordered the police in charge to go with the women to the house of my father.

The women threatened that if the police didn’t help quickly then they would have sit down and hunger strike. This made the police help and they evicted my father.

The group of women went to the hospital and took my step mother and put her into my father’s house. My father was chucked out, he came wanted to take food and money but the group of women told him to go away. My step mother told him to go away because now it’s her house.’

All the women now provide support to Gita’s step mother. At present she can walk with a Zimmer frame but is in a lot of pain. Gita added ‘She said she couldn’t come here [to meet us] so told us to tell her story.’

Gita’s friend Seema said ‘We have acheived so much, perhaps we couldn’t have helped without Sakhi Kendra.’

Gita stated: ‘We want to help other women also, and we feel we have power. We can do anything.’

Sakhi Kendra is a partner organisation funded and supported by Christian Aid working for women’s rights, against violence and abuse against women, and helping individual women in trouble.

In her own words: Reema's Story

by Laura McAdam

Taken from an interview in Kanpur

'My name is Reema, I wanted to study but when I went to school some of the boys teased me. I answered back to them but they threatened to kill me saying ‘how dare you try and stop us’. One boy proposed to me but I told him I didn’t like him. Somebody told my mother about what had happened and my mother became very angry and suspicious thinking that I was not good. Then my parents organised a marriage for me and forced me to marry a different boy.
After I got married I was not happy. I had been studying and I had wanted to do something in life. My husband and my in-laws said ‘we’ve bought you so we can do anything to you.'

One night my husband made me lie down and then he tied me up and sexually tortured me all night. When I claimed he tortured me all night he said ‘we have bought you so all the rights of your body are mine.’ I said ‘no, this is not right’, and so he tried to hang me.

Then I gave my husband a glass of milk and he put his hand over my mouth saying I had attempted to murder him. I attacked him back and my husband called my parents and told them ‘your daughter is not good and does not obey me.’ My parents took my husband and my in-laws side. I attempted suicide as I thought that nobody in the world who would understand that my pain existed. Then someone found me and my husband carried me to the police. I told the superintendent everything and he didn’t know what to do with me because I didn’t want to go back to my husband and I didn’t want to go to my parents house either. So he called Sakhi Kendra (A Christian Aid partner organisation) telling them ‘There is a girl here who is suffering so much – can you help her?’ I was sent to the [Sakhi Kendra safe house] on 27th June [2007] at 6am.

At present I am very happy here because all of the members are like my family, only better. The best part is that they understand me and appreciate me. When I came here I was frightened but very quickly I liked it better than my own house.

I am [in 2008] 18 and studying for my graduation, and I am trying to become economically self dependent as soon as possible."

Sakhi Kendra is one of Christian Aid's partner organisations in India. Sakhi Kendra campaigns for women’s rights, against violence and abuse against women, and helps individual women in trouble.

Christian Aid works in some of the world's poorest communities in 49 countries through partner organisations. We act where the need is greatest, regardless of religion, helping people build the life they deserve.