We visited the school for the third time to talk about germ theory, hand hygiene, and first aid. I’m extremely surprised by how quickly these students remember what we tell them. Our translators also are doing an excellent job, seemingly taking the teaching into their own hands.
Between the schoolhouse and the park where we play, there is a strip of twenty or so chest-high, tarp-covered homes on the sidewalk. The strip is divided in the middle by a gated display of Ramakrishna’s first British disciple standing above a polluted pool. A student that acted as a bacteria cell in one of our demonstrations led us into his home on this strip. A young girl cooked on a kerosene stove as I scooted in on my butt. Turja and I sat alone inside for a moment, cross-legged with our heads just below the tarp. The father of the family quickly came to greet us. He is a former rickshaw-driver that now works in the mineral water factory a few kilometers away. He said four people live and sleep on the 25 sq. ft. cement tile floor. When I asked through Turja if the city hassles them about their overt squatting, he said people only get paranoid when a government doctor visits the settlement to treat them.
The US consulate, a young Penn alum, dropped by our education camp in a full business suit. When a Pratit member picked him up, he immediately said, “I didn’t bring a checkbook with me.” Aww, shucks. One-by-one, we talked his head off. He kept the conversation light and uncontroversial while we discussed our organization, slums, and Kolkata in general.
We took the consulate on a tour of the squatter settlement, the likes of which I doubt he had seen before. The houses are made of bamboo, most with tarp covers, and usually reach three or four stories high. The alleys between them are no wider than four feet. We visited at 3 pm but most first floor rooms on the shadowed interior of the settlement were completely dark. We were invited into the home of Payal, possibly the brightest student that we’re teaching. Her mother left her family when she was about one and her father is an abusive alcoholic that lives with her grandmother and her. They had a two-story home with only two rooms. The three of them slept on the second bamboo floor, a 50 sq. ft. room. They also had a battery-powered TV in their bedroom. When we walked out, we saw the floss we gave Payal on the first day hanging by the door.
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