The "Slums"

12:45 PM Goan Time

READING: The Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen
DEVOTIONS: Daniel 9
MUSIC: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb – U2

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were spent visiting the various schools and Bible studies and neighborhood “slums” of the organization’s work in Bombay.

I want to start by describing the slums because I guess I really didn’t know what slums were or not having been in the “slums” of India, didn’t know what to expect and I assume the same concerning you.

I don’t know, maybe “shanty town” gives you better context. I forget what they are called in Peru. The Spanish word barrio comes to mind, but I’m not even sure what that means exactly.

The slums are similar to what I experienced in Peru, but everything is much more dense, more compact. So many more people, more trash, more dogs, more everything.

Generally, the small one or two room “houses” are made of brick and wood. Sometimes the walls are corrugated metal. The floors are dirt or brick or sometimes even some form of ceramic tile. There is usually electricity in the slums though power outages are periodic. Most houses had a ceiling fan and some had TVs.

I traveled to Bombay with one of the other volunteers. Six of her friends from the UK (that’s the United Kingdom--England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Whales, etc.--one is Irish and another French, but they all live in or near London.) After our daily visits to the slums we spent time “debriefing” and “processing” our experiences. It was helpful to go through these experiences together. Listening to some of their responses to what they saw, heard, smelled, felt allowed me to realize some of the reasons I may or may have not felt what I did or thought I should have. For instance, some of them said it was not as bad as they thought it would be. They said they weren’t as shocked or heart-broken as they had expected to be. To some extent I felt the same way but was not sure why.

One of the conclusions we came away with is that the attitudes of the people transcended their physical circumstances. We saw very little despair in the slums. Granted, we went to a Christian church and mainly visited people who were followers of Christ. We met people whose children were receiving a relatively good English language education for free. We met people that over time had developed personal relationships with our guides. We met people who had put their faith in God. But even though a small percentage of the slum-dwellers were Christians, the overall attitude was normalcy or better, sometimes even joyful.

The people were proud of their homes. They were excited for us to visit, talk, drink tea and pray with them. There was a sense of ownership (though, I am not exactly sure who owns what) of their dwellings. There was much cleaning, much sweeping, much hair and body washing. Some of the slums are different than others. After one of the Bible studies, I was walking down the cobblestone pathway between homes. The pathway was clean, the brick houses were painted soft pastels and other colors, the roofs of these houses were made of arched brick tile, there were all these flags and banners strung above the roofs. I kept thinking this is kindof nice. How can this be “nice”? I’m in the slums of Bombay. It made me think of Venice, albeit a cramped, tiny Venice with open sewers and no boats, but Venice nonetheless. Of course, I’ve never been to Italy.

Another reason the slums may not have seemed so bad to us is that we visited during the prime season. The weather was not so hot, maybe the high-70s where in the summer, 110 degrees plus is common. It was also not during the months of monsoon season where floods are constant and unstoppable.

This is getting long, so I will wrap-up. Some of the slum-dwellers came from the country, so this was a step-up. Some were just happy to see white people. But, as one member of our group commented something to the effect of that there is nowhere in the west where if rich people from a far off land or planet came to visit would they be treated with such hospitality and kindness as we were.

The sense of community in the slums was almost palpable. It seemed that everyone’s children were everyone else’s children. The older (still very young by Western standards—like 5-years-old) took care of the younger children while the father was off at work and the mother was working or cooking or cleaning or taking care of the house.

Though we are all human and all live on the same planet Earth, the slums of Bombay are a different world. There are defiantly some things that are objectively better in the west, health care, sanitation and education come to mind, but as I am always reminded when I visit the developing world, we in the West have a lot to learn from them and a lot of which to be envious.

The Poor You Will Always Have With You

2:57 PM Bombay Time

READING: The Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen
DEVOTIONS: Daniel 9
MUSIC: America: A Tribute to Heroes

So the preaching went fine on Sunday. (My dad asked how I was chosen to speak. I think it was because I was white, male and visiting.) I spoke on David being a man after God’s own heart. I opened with a couple of illustrations and then traced four aspects of David’s character through four stories in First and Second Samuel. I closed with his prayer of Psalm 51. I think it went well. I don’t know how my illustrations translated but the English speakers said they liked the sermon.

Monday we went sightseeing in Bombay. We visited The Gateway of India. It is similar in significance to The Gateway Arch in St. Louis—actually, I guess the arch is our version of The Gateway of India.) December’s pictures will be up in early January. We had lunch at a nice restaurant. We went to The Hanging Gardens where nothing was hanging, but I think the name of the place has something to do with the plants hanging in the ponds.

Then we went to a big mosque on the oceanfront. This was moving because I saw a side India I had only read about and not yet seen. Walking the half-mile brick sidewalk we encountered many handicapped and severely maimed people. There were people missing limbs, people with body parts deformed and people with other ailments. I guess they were Muslim—many were chanting and praying. I guess they made enough begging to have people take care of them allowing them to survive, but I am not sure how. It was numbing and heartbreaking all at the same time. I have written before about feeling an “infinite smallness”, a phrase I stole form the Salman Rushdie newspaper article. The enormous size of India’s humanity is so overwhelming and here, on the outskirts of this place of religious significance, were the absolutely lowest of the low. I guess it has always been this way and probably always will be this side of heaven. The disciples ran into beggars at the entrance to the temple. Jesus said the poor will always be with us. All I could do was walk by, observe and pray, sometimes all three of which seem useless.

Lost in the Translation?

11:10 PM Bombay Time

READING: Culture Shock! India by Gitanjali Kolanad
DEVOTIONS: Daniel 9
MUSIC: Forest Gump Soundtrack

So after working until 4 AM on consecutive nights, I completed the main portion of the summer camp video. It feels good to get something done. This one turned out pretty good and the boss was pleased. It’s Saturday night here and the sermon is written. Only God know how it will go. I don’t feel very nervous yet. I think it’s fairly well written, but I have always been a better writer than a speaker. I didn’t sleep very well last night (new surrounding maybe) and I’m not sure how I will sleep tonight, but we will see.

I am in Bombay. Two of us flew here from Hyderabad Friday night. I just hung out today writing the sermon and reading. Tomorrow is church. This week we will be working with the slum outreach teams. The teams use combination of evangelization, Bible study, medical care, microloans and microenterprise to improve the lives of the people living in the slums. I’m not sure what my role will be, but I’ll let you know.

There was a somewhat comical, somewhat sad, maybe tragic is the right word (or maybe it was harmless and I’m just jaded) incident that took place on Wednesday. I don’t know how well it will translate from my mind to my blog, but I will do my best.

Wednesday was the annual Christmas program at the school on base. This year it coincided with a visit of a team from a church in Atlanta. After welcoming the team and several songs, skits and dances from the Indian kids, an American pastor from the group stood up to address the students. The first thing he did was tell some kids who were standing against wall to sit down and pay attention because what he was saying was very important. Now I think I had been told prior that they group was from a Baptist church but three sentences in to the pastor’s talk, he removed all doubt. It was the old fire and brimstone Jesus loves you, you are going to hell if you don’t believe number, conjuring up wonderful memories from the church I sometimes attended during grade school and it’s AWANA program.

Oh wait, I almost forgot and I don’t think this is the pastor’s fault, but the school on campus is an English medium school meaning that all but the youngest kids spoke and understood English but for some reason there was a translator up there translating the pastor’s English into the native Telegue (hopefully, this sets up a little of the comedy later).

So anyway, this guy is giving the salvation message to these kids, some of them are already Christian, some of them are not, but all of them attend a school that is supported and staffed by almost all Christian teachers, teachers who have, can and will develop real relationships with the students and lead them toward Jesus.

Toward the end of his talk, the teachers directed some of the students out to prepare for the next skit, but the pastor stopped them, “No one should be going anywhere,” he said. “This is important.”

A little later when he had all kids standing up praying the salvation prayer he wanted the kids to repeat after the translator in Telegue but of course, a vast majority of them understood English and repeated after him in English while the translator was speaking in Telegue. A lot of it was just jumbled noise, but I’m sure some of the kids got saved twice that day.

I don’t know, maybe I’m jaded, but I don’t think that is the way to reach kids that go to a Christian school.

Preaching on Sunday

So I'm preaching on Sunday. It's one of the excuses I'm using for not wrtitng more on this thing. Please pray for me in preparation and delivery these next few days. I'm supposed to lead devotians next week, too. I guess I should start looking into that ... I want to steal the devos I heard on a trip to Jamaica, but the leader can't seem to find them. Bummer!

And my sister respectfully requests that if you leave a comment on this blog, please sign it.

-sl

Christmas Spirit?

I haven't really thought about Christmas too much this year which is good and bad, I guess. No materialism or shopping or other American crap, but also not much reflection on what it is that we are remembering and celebrating. My reminders of the holiday are the Westerners here saying I can't believe it's X amount of days 'til Christmas. Yesterday, in church, the sermon was from parts of the Christmas texts, but I was in and out of consciousness.

Most of the kids in the teachers training program left this weekend on their holidays so campus seems emptier. The school Christmas program is next week. I'm here until Friday. Then 5 days in Bombay with the OM team in the slums, then Goa for Christmas and some R&R.

I've been away from family on several Thanksgivings and one Christmas before but never both in the same year. It has always been harder for me to work on Easter, I think, because it is less commercialized in the States and so it has been more spiritually significant for me. But this year I won't be working, just continued separation from family and friends.


I finished up the English church video church project. It feels good to be productive and busy even though I am not very happy with the video camera footage I shot or the overall project. The boss is back and we will continue to work on the larger and significantly more complicated summer camp project. I will suggest to him that he edits during the day and I will edit at night in order to complete the project before Christmas. (Maybe by then, I'll feel comfortable with the editing software.)


I received my golf work schedule for 2006. It is pretty close to perfect and a huge answer to prayer! (21 events--which is a good number--2 weeks in Hawaii, 2 weeks in Mexico and several other cool places in the continental U.S.) I finish up my season mid-November, opening up next winter for another mission opportunity.

F.Y.I.-- I will be returning to the States Feb 9 or 10, a little earlier than planned to allow me to rest a few days before traveling to Hawaii.

Peace,
-sl

"Where you have hope, you have a middle class."

11:20 PM Hyderabad Time

READING:
The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman
Culture Shock! India by Gitanjali Kolanad

DEVOTIONS: Daniel 9
MUSIC: None

So, I’ve been fairly busy editing this week. It is going well, although the learning process is slow and sometimes frustrating. I’m almost done with my first project for a church in England and hope to continue working on the summer camp DVD this afternoon. I promise to write more about India soon, maybe next week after the boss gets back and assumes control of the equipment. I have lots of things to write about in my head, but for now you are stuck with more Friedman.

FIRST 2 RANDOM QUOTES …

We were sitting around at dinner discussing the young Irish gentlemen’s world travel plans for the year ahead.

“I really wasted my 19^th year,” one of the older volunteers said, exasperated.
“Where were you?” she was asked.
“Therapy.”

"After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's."

--BILL RICHARDSON, New Mexico Governor, retracting the biographical detail he had maintained for nearly four decades: that he had been drafted to pitch for the Kansas City Athletics in 1966 before an injury compelled him to bow out of baseball

(Time.com)

Today more various and a little more random passages from The World is Flat. This time on the developing world:

In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping declared, “To get rich is glorious,” and opened the Chinese economy. He dismissed those who questioned China’s move from communism to free markets by saying what mattered was jobs and incomes not ideology. Deng tossed over decades of Communist ideology with one sentence: “Black cat, white cat, all that matters is that it catches mice.”

More open and competitive markets are the only sustainable vehicle for growing a nation out of poverty, because they are the only guarantee that new ideas, technologies, and best practices are easily flowing into your county and that private enterprises, and even government, have the competitive incentive and flexibility to adopt those new ideas and turn them into jobs and products.

From The World Bank

In 1990 there wee 375 million people in China living in extreme poverty, on less than $1 per day. In 2001 the number was 212 million. If trends hold, in 2015 the number will be only ("only"???--I guess it's all relative) 16 million.

In South Asia—primarily India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—the numbers go down from 462 million in 1990 living on less than one dollar a day to 431 million in 2001 and down to 216 in 2015.

In sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, where globalization has been slow to take hold, there were 227 million people living on less than $1 a day in 1990, 313 million in 2001 and, and an expected 340 million by 2015.

“Where you have hope, you have a middle class.”

--UNAMED SENIOR CHINESE GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL

And that is why it is no wonder that the children in the developing world—the unflat world—are ten times more likely to die of vaccine-preventable diseases than are children in the developed flat world.

“The most important health-care system in the world is a mother. How do you get things in her hands that she understands and can use?”

---RICH KLAUSNER, a former head of the National Cancer Institute who now runs the global health programs for the Gates Foundation, on the development of drugs and delivery systems that presume a broken health care system and therefore can be safely self-administered by ordinary people in the field.

Bush's Moon Shot

DAY 35 – 11:07 AM Hyderabad Time

READING:
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Culture Shock! India by Gitanjali Kolanad

DEVOTIONS: Daniel 9
MUSIC: Caedmon’s Call – Share the Well

So, I don’t know if you enjoyed or found interesting my last post, but I find that kind of stuff fascinating. Pretty much my weekday days have been spent working on video production which is great but not much to write home (or in your blog) about. We are working on the summer camp video and last week I shot tape with the mother of one of the other volunteers for a short video about the organization for her church and small groups. I will have three days alone with the editing computers, as the Indian I am working with will be traveling. I know all the theory and have ideas as far as what I want to do but have never really physically “edited”. I have sat in on and produced numerous pieces but have never actually touched the keys. Please pray I learn the machine quickly and am productive this week.

So back to the boring (or fascinating) stuff ...

This remainder of this post comes from a great book I am reading, The World is Flat by New York Times Foreign Affairs Columnist Thomas Friedman. It’s a riveting book and I recommend it to all who want to broaden their knowledge on globalization, world affairs, world business and economics.

Today’s passages are on modern America …

The assumption that because America’s economy has dominated the world for more than a century, it will and must always be that way is as dangerous an illusion today as the illusion that America would always dominate in science and technology back in 1950 …

Getting our society up to speed for a flat world is going to be extremely painstaking. We are going to have to start doing a lot of things differently. It is going to take the sort of focus and national will that John F. Kennedy called for in his famous May 25, 1961, speech to Congress on “urgent national needs.” At that time, America was recovering from the twin shocks of Sputnik and the Soviet space launch of a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, less than two months before Kennedy’s speech. Kennedy knew that while America had enormous human and institutional assets—far more than the Soviet Union—they were not being fully utilized.

“I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary,” said President Kennedy. “But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to ensure their fulfillment.” After then laying out his whole program for putting a man on the moon within ten years, President Kennedy added, “Let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs … This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts.”

In that speech, Kennedy made a vow that has amazing resonance today: “I am therefore transmitting to the Congress a new Manpower Development and Training Program, to train or retrain several hundred thousand workers, particularly in those areas where we have seen chronic unemployment as a result of technological factors, in new occupational skills over a four-year period—in order to replace those skills made obsolete by automation and industrial change with the new skills which the new processes demand.”

Amen. We have to do things differently.

Later Friedman writes (emphasis mine) …

We have way too many politicians in America today who seem to … go out of their way actually to make their constituents stupid—encouraging them to believe that certain jobs are “American jobs” and can be protected from foreign competition, or that because America has always dominated economically in our lifetimes it always will, or that compassion should be equated with protectionism. It is hard to have an American national strategy for dealing with flatism if people won’t even acknowledge that there is an educational gap emerging and that there is an ambition gap emerging and that we are in a quiet crisis. For instance, of all the policy that the Republican-led Congress could have made in forging the fiscal year 2005 budget, how in the world could it have decided to cut the National Science Foundation by more than $100 million?

Later (again, emphasis mine) …

To be sure, it is not easy to get people passionate about the flat world. It takes some imagination. President Kennedy understood that the competition with the Soviet Union was not a space race but a science race, which really was really an education race. Yet the way he choose to get Americans excited about buckling down to do what it took to win the Cold War—which required a large-scale push in science and engineering—was by laying out the vision of putting a man on the moon, not a missile into Moscow. If President Bush is looking for a similar legacy project, there is one just crying out—a national science initiative that would be our generation’s moon shot: a crash program for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in ten years. If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, in one fell swoop he would dry up revenue for terrorism, force Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia onto the path to reform—which they will never do with $50-a-barrel oil—strengthen the dollar, and improve his own standing in Europe by doing something huge to reduce global warming. He would also create a real magnet to inspire young people to contribute to both the war in terrorism and America’s future by again becoming scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. “This is not just a win-win,” said Michael Mandelbaum. “This is a win-win-win-win-win.”

I have consistently been struck that my newspaper columns that have gotten far and away the most positive feedback over the years, especially the young people, have been those that urged the president to call the nation to this task. Summoning all our energies and skills to produce a twenty-first century fuel is George W. Bush’s opportunity to be both Nixon to China and JFK to the moon in one move. Unfortunately for America, it appears as though I will go to the moon before President Bush will go down this road.

a European Cow Makes $2.50 a day

DAY 31 – 12:00 PM Hyderabad Time

READING:
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Culture Shock! India by Gitanjali Kolanad

DEVOTIONS: Daniel 9

MUSIC: None

Please pray for the World Trade Organization meetings in Hong Kong December 13-18. From Time Magazine (Asia, November 28^th)(click here to read entire article)

“The meeting is billed as critical for wrapping up a new multilateral trade accord, the ninth since 1947. This one is known as the Doha Development Round because it was conceived four years ago in the Qatari capital and is supposed to give a special boost to poor countries. But at a moment of rapid change in the world economy, with China emerging as an industrial colossus and India and Brazil starting to throw their weight around, the stakes in Hong Kong are higher and the pre-meeting positions more intractable than ever. Talks on freeing up agricultural trade are stuck as usual, and without a breakthrough there, little else can happen. Following recent inconclusive talks in London, expectations for Hong Kong are being drastically scaled back. "Unless a miracle happens, I don't see anything emerging in Hong Kong. Nobody I know believes a deal can be struck," frets Jagdish Bhagwati, a specialist in the economics of trade at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the WTO, acknowledged as much this month when he said that too little progress has been made even to have a full draft text of a new trade accord ready for Hong Kong.

Later in the article

(The World Trade Organization) has delivered some stinging blows to both the European Union and the U.S., including rulings that some of the most contentious subsidies they pay to their farmers, on cotton and sugar, are illegal. Absent a Doha agreement, says Stiglitz, "the best hope for developing countries would be for them to use that rule of law to push back at the U.S. and the E.U. Once they have shown that subsidies are illegal, they can then come back to the bargaining table."

There's no question that the multilateral system governing global trade remains inherently unfair, tilted in favor of the U.S. and the E.U., which have long set the agenda. Failure to correct the flaws means that the politics of trade will just get nastier. The global economy stands to lose out, too. It's widely assumed that new tariff cuts and the removal of trade barriers would substantially boost growth. Estimates of the size of that boost vary widely, from labor union economists, who say it would be minimal, to the University of Michigan, which figures a reduction of trade barriers by even one-third would increase global economic output by $574 billion a year.

An accompanying story discussed the issue of Western farm subsidies that distort global prices. (click here to read entire article). It’s really good. You should read the whole thing.

By far, the biggest problem Diarra (a cotton farmer in Mali, a country in West Africa) faces, though, isn't environmental or even in Africa. It is 5,000 miles away: the $3 billion or more the U.S. pays its 25,000 cotton farmers in subsidies every year. Washington uses taxpayer money to guarantee American farmers a price—currently about 72¢ per lb.—whether it rains or bakes and no matter what happens on the world market. By contrast, in 2003, when Mali's cotton farmers earned 42¢ per lb., Diarra says he made a profit of $480, which he used to buy four cows and send his children to school. In a bad year such as this one, when Diarra expects to make just 32¢ per lb., he will lose money and fall further into debt with the government cotton company.

That sinking price makes a huge difference in West Africa, where more than 10 million people depend directly on cotton to pay for food, school fees and housing. The crop provides Burkina Faso and Mali with half of all their export earnings; in Benin it accounts for 75%. "If there is no cotton growing in Mali, Mali doesn't work," says Demba Kébé, an adviser to that country's Minister of Agriculture.

U.S. cotton farmers aren't the only ones feeding at the government welfare trough. According to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington lobby outfit, last year the U.S. doled out more than $12 billion in subsidies to its farmers on everything from corn to sugar to tobacco. The Europeans spew out subsidies, shelling out $53 billion. With cotton, as with other crops, all those subsidies distort global trade by encouraging U.S. farmers to produce more, which drags down world cotton prices and hurts farmers such as Diarra. "I don't blame the Americans, but I want them to allow me to make a profit," he says, sitting on a broken metal chair with his 3-year-old son Diakaridia wriggling on his lap. "I want to be able to take care of my family, to be able to feed them, to clothe them and to be independent of anybody."

The latest round of talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) was supposed to make Diarra's modest wishes come true. Launched in 2001, the Doha "development" round is intended to thrash out new trade arrangements for agriculture, with a specific focus on reducing the rich world's subsidies and opening Western markets to the developing world's producers. In return, the vision goes, the developing world will allow more access to its service industries, such as insurance and banking.

Thus far, the talks have gone nowhere. Two years ago in Cancún, Mexico, they collapsed after developing countries refused to open the door to their service industries until they got a favorable deal on agriculture. Trade ministers will try again in Hong Kong in December. But the prospects aren't promising. The WTO boss, Pascal Lamy, said that he would have to delay a draft deal because "there is not a sufficient level of convergence."

Later in the article

In a world of perfect Ricardian economics, West African cotton growers would be thriving. That's because they can produce and trade high-quality cotton more cheaply than just about anyone—for about 31¢ per lb., compared with 68¢ per lb. in the U.S.

But the subsidies U.S. cotton farmers receive help destroy any advantage West Africa's farmers have. Since the mid-1990s, when U.S. exports of subsidized cotton began growing—according to Oxfam, U.S. sales went from a low of 17% of the world export market in 1998 to 41% in 2003—the world cotton price has dropped by more than half. The International Cotton Advisory Committee, which promotes cooperation among cotton-producing countries, estimates that developing-world cotton growers, including Burkina Faso, Brazil, India, Mali and Pakistan, have lost $23 billion over the past four years to Western subsidies.

THIS IS A GOOD PART HERE

The irony, says Oxfam, is that annual losses in export earnings in most West African cotton-producing countries are comparable to U.S. aid donations. Burkina Faso, for instance, received $10 million in U.S. aid in 2002 but lost an estimated $13.7 million in exports because of U.S. cotton subsidies.

LATER IN THE ARTICLE

U.S. cotton growers are correct in saying they are not alone in the subsidy sweepstakes. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, rich nations spend more than $280 billion a year on agricultural "producer support." The U.S. is a piker compared with the European Union, which, when non-cash payments and other aid are added in, spends more than three times as much coddling its farmers.

THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART

World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern estimates that a European cow receives $2.50 a day in subsidies, while 75% of Africans live on less than $2 a day.

Hope of coming to any sort of an agreement in Hong Kong seems dim. "It does appear to me that we will not make as much progress in Hong Kong as we had hoped for,” said Mike Johanns, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. So all we can do, I think, is pray. Pray that the countries of the world will work to level the playing field, open up agricultural free trade with the developing world that may begin lifting them out of poverty.