We slept in, sort of, with our plan to meet the guide at 6:45 am to head back to the Ganges for a boat ride and walk through the old city. It was foggy and chilly, but such a relief after the hot hotel room. Compared to the night before the streets were empty, tea shops open, a bit of activity, but almost tranquil.  It was fully light, but the river was misty as we glided away from the shore. The many cremations from the night before had dwindled to one, and large piles of ashes sat on the bank. After a cremation workers, not the family, take the ashes out into the river.

Remains of a Saraswathi statue, a bit forlorn floating alone.

The tipping temple in the back is slowly sliding into the river.

The sun peeked out for a minute.

Man gets his head shaved before entering the river.

We passed some folks bathing, monkeys running along rooftops, dogs barking or wandering, and clothes washers, all young men, standing thigh deep in the cold water, facing the shore and slapping articles of clothing hard on flat rocks, sounding like shots echoing off the ghat.

Boats full of pilgrims or tourists run a bit low in the water.

We saw men tying a small, white-shrouded body onto a board with several bands of rough brown rope-we did not, of course, take a photo. (Children under the age of 8 are not cremated, but rather sunk in the middle of the river weighted by stones.)

This is a bicylcle-powered school bus, of sorts. Note the girls are in their uniforms.

We put ashore at the larger cremation site, and walked up through enormous stacks of logs, with more being added in preparation for that day. Our guide led us up the steps and into a dark, wet, claustrophobic alleyway perhaps 5 or 6 feet wide. On either side buildings of several stories, a mishmash of houses, huts, many shrines–some just cubbyholes–gates, and every ten yards or so an open fire where one or two people were huddled, or, in one case a fire in a stone box maybe a foot square, around which four puppies slept on their sides, bellies toward the warmth. We were surprised to see a very large, dark brown horned bull come ambling toward us as our guide told us to quickly stand aside. There was just enough room for him to pass without brushing against us. He stopped, snorted, and put his head down to look for something edible in a small, muddy pile of trash and leaves.

Our guide stopped at one tiny store where various wooden figures and other trinkets were for sale, and we bought a small box of six Ganeshes, each doing something different–playing an instrument, dancing, etc. We came upon a spice and tea shop, where our guide had us enter and sit down. The shop had glass cabinets up the walls full of spices and oils, and all kinds of tea. The entire enterprise was about ten feet deep and maybe four feet wide. He ordered chai for us which we welcomed as the morning was still quite chilly. We were served the most delicious, hot, rich, milky sweet chai in little clay cups–it went down so easily that we asked for a second. While we drank one of the shop fellows pitched aromatic oils for various uses, and we bought an assortment including a cure for sleeplessness (lotus flower). From this shop another guide took us to see the outside of the Golden Temple, down an even narrower walkway with very highs security–since only Hindus are allowed in we could only peek, trying to stay out of the way of a stream of Hindus all barefooted in the cold, wet morning, heading to prayers.  We returned to the shop, met up with our guide again, and went back through the town to find our driver.

We went back to the hotel for breakfast and then got in the car to visit Sarnath. The trip there was short but harrowing…rush hour in full swing, and streets in abominable condition, and still very muddy from several days of rain. After 30 minutes or so we were there. First stop was the museum, small and largely dedicated to the Buddha, but also containing the original carving which is the symbol of India. During our visit the electricity went out for a few minutes, leaving the museum in total darkness, but no one seemed at all bothered, nor is this unusual for Sarnath.  Then we walked across the street, dodging hawkers, and entered the lovely and very peaceful ruins. There were many tourists from Thailand, Sri Lanka, China. We passed monks chanting and enjoyed what appeared to be a very tight knit family of dogs, all the same size and colors, led by mom (our guess) and who were playing tag among the ruins, staring off in the distance all in the same direction–they were like a little army in charge of the place.

This enormous stupa marks the site where Buddha first shared his teaching.

Looking up at the stupa, there are still carved stones in place.

Monks and another pilgrim chant as a dog sleeps on the lawn between them.

This dog family seems to own the place.

A pilgrim monk adds a candle to a row, hidden in the corner behind the stupa.

This is the place where the Buddha gave his first sermon, the spot marked by a huge stupa, a solid brick elongated mound sort of thimble shaped. In a nearby spot it is believed relics (maybe a small bone or two) were found in a jade box by a local king who threw them into the Ganges. He did not know whose they were, but this would have been the natural thing to do with cremains.

The park is both peaceful and clean and we enjoyed our wander. Next door is a Buddhist temple decorated with murals done by a Japanese artist showing the life of the Buddha. Many tourists/pilgrims were here from other Asian countries. Adjoining the temple is the grandson of the tree under which the Buddha first achieved enlightenment. On both sides of the shrine are a line of prayer wheels, Tibetan style, and there were several groups of pilgrims, some of whom asked our guide what were those things, while others walked along spinning each wheel in turn. Such are the varied ways in which Buddhism is observed.

Back at the hotel we collapsed in our room. Next day, Khajuraho!

And more!

Lots of items for sale related to Kali. We bought a few for good luck.

Goddess of wisdom, riding her swan and carrying her musical instrument.

Vendors around the Kalikat temple.

Sawarshati shrines still everywhere.

The Kalikat temple from outside…we hadn’t see the queue yet!

Sunday morning was our first hint of Kolkata heat…it was hazy in the morning as usual but by mid-morning the sun was out and we felt better in the shade.  By afternoon it was hot and we were sticking to the canopies over the sidewalk vendors.

We had a guide for half a day, and she took us first to the Kalikat Temple.  It being Sunday the place was a madhouse–all kinds of activity in the streets and continued activity for Vasant Panchami, the Saraswathi Puja festival.  Sidewalk shrines, marigold garland sellers, young women especially dressed up, though not quite to the extent we saw Saturday.  The queue to get into the temple was impossibly long, and in some places priests were blessing those in line in case they didn’t get in.  It appeared many people had come a long way to attend.  Since getting in was not possible our guide took us all around the outside instead, including the gate where they were taking goats in to be sacrificed.  We hurried past.  The meat is eaten by the family, having been blessed, etc., etc., but this was still rather uncomfortable to confront.  The variety of people in the street was amazing, from rather modern looking families, dark brown men sitting on the sidewalk in turbans and pantaloons, disabled beggars–a crazy scene.

We made a stop at the Victoria Memorial, an enormous building that was intended to be a bit reminiscent of the Taj Mahal (it’s not, really), and full of dusty exhibits and old pictures.  The surrounding English gardens are beautiful–not a speck of trash!

Victoria!

(I am going to post now but have a few short videos to add later to capture some of the sounds as well as sights of the festival.)

We drove down to the Ganges, our guide talking so fast it was hard to follow what it was we were going to see.  Well.  This is a spot where grieving families come at the end of the 13 days of mourning.  A small concrete open room is occupied by a priest who blesses those who come.  Men and boys who have lost a parent have their heads shaved right there on the banks and then walk into the water to bathe, and likewise women dressed in special white saris with red trim walk in as well, immersing themselves. Afterwards they change into clean clothes and they are ready to resume normal life.  It seemed like a mix of solemnity and, as men and women came out of the water, some measure of happiness, or perhaps relief.

Men have their heads shaved before a ceremonial bath in the Ganges.

The boy at the right is carrying a family Saraswathi into the water–returning her to the Ganges.

The open building in the back is where a priest blesses mourners

Ceremonial bathing and placing Saraswathi clay figures into the Ganges. Women go into the water in their special saris.

At the same time, there was a steady stream of men bringing the statues of Saraswathi to be offered to Mother Ganga–in other words, to be dumped into the Ganges to float away.  Solo men brought small statues which had been in home shrines.  Groups of men, singing, banging drums, and carousing in general brought large, and sometimes VERY large, statues requiring many hands to unload from pickup trucks, carry to the top of the steps, rotate 7 times, and then down the steps with much effort and into the river.  It was a wild scene.

Our guide dropped us at the Indian Museum, an odd hodgepodge of exhibits in a very old building, recently renovated we were told but not quite finished (many new signs pointing to non-existing places and exhibits, for example).  We were the only non-Indians there.  We were so strange, apparently, that in the bird exhibit a man came up to us to ask if his wife could have her picture taken with me.  Uh, sure!  Four, five, six pictures with various combinations of the women in the group were taken with much giggling and hugging.  We had not paid the fee for having a camera–otherwise David would have snapped a picture of me getting my picture taken with a bunch of strangers.  About that bird exhibit–there is a large case labeled “Birds of North America, South America and Europe.”  A big map, with stuffed birds on little shelves to show where they live.  For North America they had…a quail and a scarlet tanager, the tanager so old and dusty it was brown and grey.  Maybe if those are all you can get your hands on it’s better to skip that continent, yes?

We wandered back to the hotel, packed, and prepared to say goodbye to Kolkata.  Next morning we flew to Varanasi.

I have a feeling for Americans who have never been to India, Kolkata/Calcutta seems a dark, poor, slum-ridden, unpleasant place.  Black Hole of Calcutta, right?  (That phrase refers to a single incident of captured British soldiers in the 1700’s, not the city, btw.)

We might have felt that way too, if we’d stopped to think much about it at all.

Kolkata is certainly Indian: messy, noisy, complicated.  And it is fun, very safe, vibrant, exciting.  It is a walking city, a never-sleeps city, a shopping city, a colorful city.  Saturday was our first day more or less on our own, and we had a great time of it.

Our first event was arranged through our travel agent, SITA, a cooking class in a middle class home.  Our hosts live in a ‘housing estate’ which is a block of apartments, individually owned, about 5 stories high.  Very middle class, albeit with men walking around selling cooking pots and pans from large baskets on their heads, rickshaws and within a block or two a few cows lying on the sidewalks.

The Mrs. asked David to sit because he was “too tall.”

Our hosts are both educated and work as guides themselves.  When we arrived, Mr. Napan (I have to check this–we weren’t taking notes!) asked where we were from, and when I said California he immediately asked “Habla espanol?”  Turns out this is his primary “guide” language, in addition to of course Hindi, English and Bangla.  We had a lovely visit, served fresh orange juice to start, and then went into the kitchen to watch lunch being prepared.  It was delicious, and, of course, way too much food.  A chicken and potato dish, made with a paste of ginger, onion, and garlic; cauliflower prepared with salt, sugar (to help it brown), and cumin seed, as well as carmelized onion, garlic, and ginger; a simple yellow lentil dal, fish cooked in mustard with cilantro, and rice.  And of course homemade paneer sweets (sweetened with the juice of something we asked several times to repeat but never got it).  Stuffed.  She cooks in a tiny kitchen, moving between an electric hot plate for frying and browning, a 3 burner gas “stove” that sits on the counter, and a microwave.

After lunch we visited for an hour, talking India and Indian history, family, travel.  They want to come to the US (having traveled in Europe only) to see Miami Beach, Niagara Falls, and the Grand Canyon.

The drive to and from their home was as interesting as the visit.  It was a festival day and every few blocks there was a temporary shrine set up on the street, large and small, elaborate and simple.  One was decorated with colorful rosettes, which when we got close turned out to be made of concentric paper plates and cups, with plastic utensils arranged around in a corona.  Very creative.  Others were draped with sparkling garlands, marigolds (of course) and banners, some even with candles.  Many young women strolled in their festival saris.

One of maybe 20 pop up shrines we saw on the way back from the cooking class/home visit. Some bigger, some smaller.

Kolkata is the only large (14 million people) where there remain many walking/running rickshaws in addition to the ubiquitous bicycle versions.  Of course it is hard to imagine making a living this way, and I was surprised to see both young and older men doing this work.

I love the sign on the back: India is Great.

Every city we have visited has a large Muslim population.

There are so many carts drawn by men on foot–the largest with a few in the front pulling and a few in the back pushing.

One tiny sample of the bookshops–there are blocks of them.

Bathing on the street is quite common.

These figures are for home shrines, made of clay that supposedly dissolves when they are taken to the Ganges to float away at the conclusion of the festival.

The shopping scene is amazing.  We drove through the bookseller neighborhood, with blocks and blocks of book kiosks as well as book stores.  We drove through what seemed to be the plywood district, where almost every store sold “Ply.”  The area around the hospital is filled with stores announcing “Scientific” as well as chemists and medical supplies.  On the way home we asked to be let out at the New Market, which was built in the 1800’s and is, like a typical inside market in Latin America, a maze of stores selling food, housewares, clothing, trinkets, candy, jewelry, spices, crafts, and filled with men who try to lure you to their stores.  We went along with a few of them, and in one case were happily surprised that in addition to clothing–men’s shirts and women’s tunics–this tiny shop had a small corner shelf of spices in big jars.  They smelled incredibly fresh, and we bought garam masala and chicken masala, very cheap, in glassine envelopes which they sealed by running the folded edge slowly through a candle flame.

We also spotted, as soon as we entered, a store selling packaged snacks (chips and things) as well as various spices, where we picked up some saffron. But what attracted me to the store were several shelves of various types of the little breath-freshener anise seed mixtures you see in a dish at the register of an Indian restaurant both here and in the US.  I had hoped to find something similar to the delicious mix we had at Pindi in Delhi, and I did.

Our purchase of “breath freshener” mix.

(I am publishing this but will add a few videos in the next day or two–need a very good internet connection to upload them.)

We wandered back to the hotel, buying a little thing or two on the street, and ended up sticky and tired.  For dinner we were pretty sure we needed a non-Indian food and discovered a very well reviewed Italian restaurant was only a few blocks from our hotel, so we headed over.  A bottle of Malbec later, as well as a pizza (more like naan with pizza toppings, but delicious), salad, antipasti, and we went wandering in the neighborhood again.

Saturday night is a hopping time, and the streets were full of shoppers, people eating street snacks, children, teenagers, construction, road repairs–the hub-bub we’ve come to expect in Kolkata. We stopped at a music store, where the four young men working there seemed a bit standoffish and bored.  That is, until we started a conversation about what we should buy as good Indian pop, and could we listen to a few things.  All of a sudden the conversation was animated, friendly, and a lot of fun as one CD after another was opened, explained, sampled (and purchased–very inexpensively).  “This guy was #2 on Indian Idol but now he is a star and no one remembers #1!”  “This Pakistani fellow is wonderful–listen to this!”  Singing along, explaining the lyrics–we had a lovely time.

Walking back we again passed the ironing stand, where for 5 rupees he will iron your shirt with, of course, an old-fashioned non-electric iron.  I wasn’t comfortable taking his picture…but the smell of clean ironed cotton was so nice.

We returned to Patna proper for our last meeting of the day–with a group of women in the Patna slums.  Dodging vehicles and livestock, turning right and left and right again, through exceedlingly dusty streets, we arrived to a chalk-decorated pavement, a reception table with marigolds, the blessing ritual, and a welcome song of many lovely verses.

In the Patna slum we were greeted by a grouping of the very small–5 women–savings and education groups.

The nutrition lesson included a fascinating exercise.  Each 5-woman group was given a picture of “Meena and her family” a commonly used ‘typical’ Indian family:  Mother, 5-month old nursing baby, young son, adolescent girl, father.  The decision they were asked to make is how does the mother divide 8 pieces of chicken among the family.  Of course you know the correct answer, don’t you?

After the “chicken lesson” the women stood to sing the promise.

The correct answer is–

3 pieces for the nursing mother, 1 piece for father, and 2 each for the boy and girl.  While most groups gave the right answer, the follow up was the tough one (this was not the first time they had done this exercise)–is this what YOU do in your family?  Happily many women raised their hands, and one woman stood up to explain that her husband trusted her to do the right thing, and he was fine with it.  Now that’s progress.  For the women, and as importantly, for the next generation for whom they are responsible.

FFH lessons are used by Nidan to teach nutrition–again, employing the symbolism of the 3 colors of the Indian flag.

The program leader from Nidan is a woman–still unusual–teaching nutrition according to the Indian flag metaphor.

We were given the opportunity to ask them what difference the group had meant in their lives.  The answers were freely and quickly offered–

• We like managing our savings in a group where we have mutual support
• We have the opportunity to learn things that are relevant to our lives
• Now that we are involved in the financial dealings of the family we can make other decisions without being dependent on our husbands
• Before we didn’t know anything about banks or what they do, but now we understand what a bank is
• We used to pay interest to money lenders, but now we pay interest to ourselves

When the meeting was over we went up to stand with the women for pictures, and for the first time turned around toward the street, where we saw a large group of mostly young men, who all had their cell phones out taking pictures!  Maybe some of those lessons were sinking into them, too.

We had to leave to meet the other group for lunch, so we were back into the mini vans and off to navigate the dusty crowded streets of Patna to the revolving restaurant, where we ate too much and then headed to the airport for our return to Kolkata.

This is one of the fancier roadside haircut/shaving kiosks.

We saw many roadside vendors of clay vessels.

All of the taxis are painted, and most hung inside with the favorite or guardian god of the driver.

We didn’t see any riots, but the district has had some unrest lately which was in the papers.

One last note–as we stood outside the restaurant waiting to dash across the street to our van, two young teenage girls came walking past holding hands.  One was dressed traditionally Indian, the other was in colorful clothing but a full head scarf with only her eyes showing.  She was staring at me, so I smiled and she smiled back (her eyes were unmistakable) and gave me a little wave.  As she walked on she turned back to give me one more look.  I hope our encounter made her as happy as it made me.

Thursday in Patna was packed.  We split into two groups.  Our group drove into the countryside to visit a savings group, and then back into the slums (their word) of Patna to visit another self-help group of women, followed by lunch at the revolving restaurant and then back to the airport and an evening flight to Kolkata.  Yikes.

The drive out of Patna was dusty, noisy, and fascinating.  We quickly left the boundaries of the city and into the countryside, where after about 45 minutes we were in the extremely small village which was our first destination.

We were so honored to be there. Left to right Steve Hollingworth, Bill Phillips, Catherine Roth, Deborah Burand, and Marianne Udow-Phillips.

The poverty here is deep and to western eyes seems intractable.  None of the women have household latrines–everyone squats in the fields.  They farm–there was virtually no commerce.  The womens’ groups (they combined two to meet with us) come together to share savings, creating a pool from which they can borrow, and into which they pay in the form of purchasing shares.  Every year the accumulated savings, interest, and, if any, penalties (for being late to a meeting) are distributed and they start again.  This form of financial interdependency means they are able to smooth out their funds and have access to emergency money, e.g. for medical care.

The pavilion where the women met was in front of a manmade lake which provides water for animals, bathing, and washing clothes. Here is husband David Roth.

The trainer used rocks and pieces of paper to illustrate how many rupees diarrhea costs a family.

The women in this savings group explained how they keep their joint savings safe–3 keys held by 3 different women are required to open the strongbox.

The women brought their home piggybanks where to put “extra” rupees to bring to the savings meeting.

They had each brought their home piggybanks to show us how they put aside spare rupees in order to have the money to contribute to the savings at their meetings.  Monies are collected in a strong box with 3 locks, and in addition to the 3 women who each hold a lock, a fourth keeps the box, another counts the money at each meeting into the hands of a fifth who confirms the amount.  in the box they have 3 cloth pouches–one for savings, one for interest payments, and one for late-to-meeting penalties (this one was empty).  Many of the women had children in their laps, and men stood around the outside of the open pavilion observing the meeting, and, of course, looking us over.

The program representative from Nidan was giving them a lesson in how to assess the cost of diarrhea, using stones to represent different amounts of rupees.  He asked them to estimate what it costs to get transportation to the doctor when, say, a child has severe diarrhea (which all of them experience multiple times a year); what it costs to go into the hospital; what it costs for medicine or for IV hydration; what it costs to get back home.  They added it up my moving stones from one pile to another.  Next he addressed indirect costs.  What does it cost to miss a day of working, for example?  What does it cost a child to miss school if she has several bouts in a school year?  What does it cost a child for the rest of her life to have ill health?  What does it cost if this results in death?  In this group they estimated $20 in direct costs, and another $30 in indirect costs.  $50 is a LOT of money.  Several different women came up and moved the stones as they made their calculations.

As we sat in the meeting, a man drove a large herd of sheep by.

This is the first step for these women–to understand how expensive diarrhea is.  The next key part is to convince them, through health and behavioral education, that this can change.

We asked them what kinds of things they had used their loans and/or savings for.

• House repairs
• Expenses related to illness
• Clothes for festivals
• Paying the electric bill
• Feeding children a wider variety of food

I’d say that is a pretty good list.

In the distance, a man walked his water buffalo into the lake for a bath.

As we sat in the pavilion we saw men herding sheep on the other side of the manmade lake.

Women washing at the manmade lake.

After the meeting, the women walked home.

Everywhere in India boys find time to play cricket.

The narrow road–not much wider than a footpath, passed by houses, huts, livestock and people.

At the end of our session one woman stood up to tell us that they have no latrines, they have no access to clean water.  We wondered what would it cost for just this one village to upgrade this tiny bit…and India has 638,000 villages.  Yes, many of these women have mobile phones, but it’s a lot cheaper to get a phone than to get clean water.

Picturesque…and desperately poor.

A village well. If you look closely you see a bottle of soapy water tied to the well to make it convenient to wash hands. This innovation was brought to the village by Dr. Arthur Goshin, a Freedom from Hunger trustee, through his personal foundation.

This chalk drawing decorated the entry where we were greeted at Nidan’s offices, Patna.

Wednesday evening we arrived in Patna, a very small city in Bihar state–only 2 million or so people. It is about 50 miles from the Nepal border.  From the airport we were whisked immediately to the offices of FFH’s partner here, Nidan, where we were treated by a blessing, with colored chalk applied to our foreheads, a beautiful chalk drawing on the floor, many smiling people, and the upstairs for a series of presentations by program managers and clients describing the amazing work this organization delivers to Patna–and to its garbage and household workers, street vendors, home handicraft workers, children, low-caste workers, etc. (Caste plays a huge role in Bihar, still, dictating whom you vote for, your profession, etc. )

We were exhausted from our day–I had a bad cold–but invigorated by the blessing. They were generous with the chalk!

The programs are creative and far reaching. For example, they have been organizing street vendors, providing them with hygiene training, setting up a highly successful street food festival in Delhi, getting a contract at the local government building which employs 10,000 workers to develop a food court (and $58,000 in funding to build kitchen and other facilities). They want to make street food enticing and safe for the middle class and for tourists.  They have organized home handicraft workers, connecting them with foreign buyers, introducing newer, more modern designs so they can sell to a more diversified market, and opening a local retail outlet. Across everything they do, they use Freedom From Hunger methodologies to deliver health, nutrition, and hygiene training.

This is a group of home workers–handicrafts.

Here are garbage and housekeeping workers who have been organized by Nidan.

The woman on the right creates hand-painted silk shawls, from whom David bought many.

During much of the program we were served, as were the participants and program managers, a seemingly unending stream of food. Fried potatoes with a mint sauce, chicken kebabs, some fried patties (delicious), water, coffee, and then another round of chicken, fried potatoes, etc. When the presentations concluded they announced that now we would have dinner! Pooris, chicken, mutton, dal, rice, little cake things (savory), and fried fruit fritters for dessert. After we were all served they came around again to offer more chicken, more rice. We were groaning.

Tomorrow we split into two groups to visit programs in the countryside and in the slums of Patna. To bed!

Fried potatoes with mint and chicken kebab. Merely appetizers, if only we’d known it!

Every two or three minutes a young man circulated with more food.

David Roth, Bill Phillips, Steve Hollingworth, and Marianne Udow-Phillips.

We set out in multiple minivans, intending to caravan to the government day care site where we would meet a group of adolescent girls who are learning hygiene and nutrition through games, drama, and peer-to-peer training. Our CEO Steve tells us this is a lower working class neighborhood, a labyrinth of extremely narrow, twisting streets, teeming with commercial activities of every kind. Small stores selling sundries, barbers, copying and scanning shops, butchers, cooked milk products, sweet shops, kids in school, women dressed in the gamut of Indian and Muslim dress, men on motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, garbage heaps, knife sharpeners, dogs and goats, and and and! Our driver quickly lost the lead car and his way, and, incredibly, we ended up backing out of these twisting, narrow “streets” once, twice, three times, with various cell phone arguments as he tried to figure out where to go. We passed Laxmi Sweets 3 times, and in this maze when you are able to recognize you have been here before you know you are good and lost.

The set of photos below are from this little journey.

It is very difficult to convey just how crowded it is–these streets somehow accommodate cars and taxis (and the occasional bus, believe it or not) passing each other.

This man is stirring boiling milk to make curd.

Self-explanatory!

Produce everywhere.

Butcher shop–mutton?

Cauliflower!

A linoleum shop.

This glass case is filled with dishes that look like they might be various kinds of pickles.

Suddenly a young women comes up to the car and beckons the way, and we are saved. We pull up in front of a concrete building with a metal gate and small courtyard, where a gaggle of adolescent girls waits for us, one holding a tray of marigold petals on which is a small scissors. A length of crepe paper is stretched across the doorway and as the board members, Bill Hamm and I share the honor of cutting the ribbon to cheers from the girls, who then pop a balloon filled with confetti to more cheering. Off with our shoes and in we go to a delightful presentation by the girls.

The site is a government run day-care center. In the back of the room were a group of 10-15 toddlers playing–and periodically watching what the big girls were doing–another teaching opportunity.

They showed how they act out poor water sanitation as a drama of a family getting sick, for example, to applause and cheers, and then “the promise.” They hold hands in a circle, sing a song about how they will remember what they have learned, use it every day, and throw their hands up and cheer. The. A drama about good nutrition. Followed by the promise. Then an explanation by the girls about the three colors of the India flag, green for green vegetables, white for eggs and milk, saffron/orange for dal–and then the promise to eat these and feed them to their families every day.

This group of adolescent girls, most in school but some “left-outs” or “drop-outs” are learning hygiene and nutrition peer-to-peer.

They acted out dramas on a “stage” of chalked rooms (kitchen, latrine, water pump) to teach how to keep a family safe from diarrhea.

Afterwards the girls wanted to take our pictures on their mobile phones.

Monday morning breakfast at the lovely Kenilworth Hotel was the first step in our transformation from a little band of six to a complicated group of twelve, a mix of Freedom from Hunger (FFH) staff, trustees (3 of us), friends of the FFH family, and new inductees into the FFH circle of admirers.  We started the day with a meeting with local FFH staff and our president and CEO, Steve Hollingworth, who oriented us to the week, provided a rich background on the organization, its place in the microfinance world, and the status of the fight to end hunger.  Please, if you have something to give or want to know more, go immediately to www.freedomfromhunger.org.

We visited Bandhan, a complex company/organization which is primarily a bank, newly licensed as a full service bank, which has grown over the last 14 years into one of the largest microfinance entities in the world.  The associated NGO we are here to visit operates their health program, MAHP (Microfinance and Health Protection), started with the support of Freedom from Hunger several years ago, and which Bandhan has grown considerably on its own thereafter.  I won’t try to describe MAHP here–please see https://www.freedomfromhunger.org/what-we-do.

The Bandhan offices are in a modern building, but directly across the street is a small field with 3 or 4 tents.

At the Bandhan offices we were privileged to meet with Mr. Ghosh, their founder, CEO, and continuing inspiration.  A very soft-spoken, elegant man, he told us about his journey to begin Bandhan and his vision going forward.  My description of this experience is easy:  Wow.

These large steel containers have live fish going to market. The man sitting in the back is swishing his hands in the water to keep it oxygenated and the fish alive.

This gives only a hint of the crowd. We attracted some attention because we were in minivans, not the typical mode.

The next morning we trekked into the countryside to meet some of the people who deliver these services and some of the women who benefit.  We split into 4 minivans, accompanied by Bandhan folks, and sped out of Kolkata into village life.  What a ride.  Horns honking constantly (our driver favored a 5-honk sequence which he employed unceasingly and to no apparent effect), racing down a rutted, narrow, 1 and 1/2 lane road at its widest, through bustling crowds of walkers, bicycles (many), and the assorted 3-wheelers both motorized and human powered, as well as the occasional full size bus and large truck. To survive as a non-Indian you must simply give yourself over to the experience and remember that no one wants to get hit, that they have an uncanny ability to swerve within inches of obstacles and each other without stopping, and that it seems most days, most of the time, it all works out.  Indeed, we had no disasters.

Building materials everywhere.

A rather plainly painted truck.

A furniture factory. If you ever suspect the rough-hewn pieces you buy in the US are faked, you are wrong.

Along the road we not only saw the small shops and snack stands, but also tiny workshops where manufacturing was underway–wooden boats, wooden furniture, and metal bedstands.  As well, piles and piles of building materials.  Bricks (which they not only build with break up to form gravel–as there is no gravel naturally in this region), logs, lumber, bamboo.  Building is constant, and it seems the majority of houses and other buildings are unfinished.  Bamboo scaffolding very common, often with no discernible activity.

The countryside periodically opens up into broad fields–we finally saw where a lot of that cauliflower comes from–as well as large, shallow ponds used for shrimp and fish farming.  We saw many cauliflower trucks being loaded, 5, 6, 10 rows high, with men on the top catching cauliflower flung up from the side of the road.  In between the fields and ponds were children playing, including two boys playing badminton, dogs, cows, goats–as in the city.  The road is in rather horrific condition, at times so bad the cars actually slow down (!), and driving on the shoulder necessary to pass in many places.

Bamboo and rough lumber supporting a building-in-progress.

Periodically the road opens up into broad fields with livestock and cultivated fields.

The scourge of garbage–plastic bags and cans. What at first looked like it might have been the result of a tipped truck was just a block of sorted and bagged recyclables (we hoped).

Not uncommong–bicycle-powered cart piled with chairs.

Plaster images of gods for sale.

We finally stopped at a village, the name of which I have been unable to discover.  Here we had three encounters–we visited a home with a community health worker and her client, a 21-year old woman who is about to have her second child; a micro-credit group who showed us how they manage accounts and talked about their businesses; and a visit to one of these businesses, a home-based and thriving enterprise where the woman entrepreneur and her husband distribute printed fabric to be hand embroidered by women in their homes, and sell the finished products in turn.

Sitting on the veranda talking with the community health worker, client and some of her family.

Client and her 3 year old son.

Client and, I believe, mother-in-law after our meeting.

The visit to the pregnant woman was in her home, where we sat on woven mats in a sort of veranda around the core house, where 7 people live.  The “veranda” is bordered by a rough wooden fence on which they had hung a lot of clothing to dry.  As the meeting proceeded a larger and larger crowd gathered outside, men, women, children, babies, and so they could see better they began removing articles of clothing and flinging them up on the roof.  We were a major entertainment. You can see them in the picture above on the right.

Entourage!

Everywhere we went we accumulated an entourage of children, who were delighted to walk and talk with us, have their pictures taken (and took ours on their mobile phones).  One young man, who had learned some English in school, engaged me in a serious conversation of sorts–he is 12 years old, he has two brothers, has learned English in school.  One of the kids gave me a candy–“Tip-Tap”–a hard and rather spicy, sweet-sour treat, and they loved that I ate it and another child quickly reached into her pocket and gave me another.  Steve ate one and mimed being struck in the heart, staggering and making faces, which everyone found hilarious.

Probably the most inspiring moments were when we visited the credit group.  They were thrilled to see us, and told us a lot about their businesses–fish farming, a beetlenut stand, others.  At the end of their meeting one woman stood up to say “We have seen white people on television, but now we have seen you in person!”  It was a joyful meeting, where clearly the women are closely bonded and grateful for the opportunity to borrow (many times over for some of them) to continue to expand their businesses.

After the meeting we walked deeper into the neighborhood to visit a woman’s fabric business which she operates out of her home.  She has been in business for 14 years, using microcredit loans for the last 9.  She manages the manufacturing–distributing printed fabric to women who hand embroider it, keeping the books, etc.,–and her husband delivers the finished goods to their vendors.

A very poised (and beautifully dressed, perhaps for this occasion) businesswoman explaining what she does and how her business has grown.

Walking back through the village to visit the home-based fabric businesswoman and her family.

Our FFH guide, Alok, translating for us.

Because the area is seasonally very wet, in many parts of the village the walkways are somewhat raised, bricked in herringbone patterns, and in a kind of grid (in that there are a lot of 90 degree turns) circumventing stagnant pools, most of which dry up each year, to fill again in the rainy season.  Houses range from wooden frames with burlap or other material as walls, to 2 story plastered brick painted in bright colors.  Mostly the former.

Bandhan local office where Soumitra, our FFH guide, explained the local program.

We met and ate our packed lunches at the Bandhan office.  They could not have been more hospitable and welcoming.  We were happy to see FFH education and technical support continue to have an impact.  As one of our trustees, an economist said afterward, “The evaluation studies and statistics are all very nice, but being here all I can say is ‘this stuff works!””

We wrapped up the day at a monthly Health Forum, where we observed a lesson on diarrhea, an enormous, chronic problem due to lack of public and private hygiene, and about which we know much more than we did when we started (we have now attended multiple different sessions of training on the topic).  Personally, I slept in the van, as I came down with a horrible head cold–but David attended and took a few pictures.  Huge crowd, as you can see.  This was only partially because we were in town–this is a series of 22 monthly village-wide forums, using methodologies that FFH introduced, and which Bandhan has taken forward and expanded.

I’ve been asked to add a bit more about the mechanics of the trip, so here goes:

We have been staying in ITC hotels.  Turns out ITC stands for Indian Tobacco Company, which has diversified by buying what had been Sheratons.  They remain Starwood, but the Sheraton name seems to be disappearing one by one.  In Kolkata we are at a Kenilworth Hotel.  Because these hotels cater to an international clientele they have amazing breakfast buffets.  Everything from lettuce salads, cold cuts, cheeses, Danish, porridge (delicious everywhere), omelets-to-order, baked beans, broiled tomatoes, one morning creamed mushrooms, even, yogurts and corn flakes and toast…plus a full array of Indian food, both northern (what we see primarily in the US) and southern.  Made-to-order dosas, exceedingly thin rice flour pancakes with filling and without, and typically with 3 or 4 chutneys–coconut, tomato, mint/coriander, and sometimes “railway” which is my favorite and not just because of the name.  Various other Indian dishes with potato, cauliflower (in season now, and two-wheeled horse carts heaped with cauliflower are common), and other vegetable mixtures.  Sharp-tasting soups.  Idli (rice cakes) and parathas.  Noodles with peas.  Rice, always.  Fresh and canned juices (so marked), with watermelon juice being quite common but also mango and orange.  Suffice to say we have ample choices and perhaps a bit surprising, the food is fantastic.  We start every day extremely well fed.

Food–dishes and restaurants–are either “veg” or “non-veg”, with non-veg meaning almost always chicken but also mutton/lamb.   Everything is labeled, and, for example, because croissants have an egg wash they are noted to be non-veg.  The McDonalds’ serve no hamburgers, but instead chicken and fish, as well as “Spicey Paneer!” sandwiches.  Paneer is everywhere.  Paneer tikka has turned out to be a theme of the trip–we have had it many times, and always a little different, always great.  Well, perhaps the paneer tikka on the plane wasn’t so great, but it was certainly edible.

Hotel rooms have mostly been very quiet with comfortable beds and well appointed, though the array of electrical arrangements is broad.  Fortunately David brought the right combinations of plugs so we’ve always been able to charge phones, etc.   Sitting in Kolkata, I will describe the set-up in this particular room:  A wall socket with various holes and switches, to which is attached one converter, to which is attached a second converter, to which is attached a Belkin charger + surge protector which has multiple US-style outlets as well as a couple of USB ports.  At the moment all are in use–the 2 phones, the computer, the battery charger for the camera.  Looks strange, but it functions.

Really, we have no complaints nor have we run into intractable service problems.  Now, if the drivers would only stop honking…!