rashida bee and a following

Rashide Bee Interviews">Rashide Bee Interviews" border="0" alt="" />
Monday July 30, 2007

Well, this morning was a tired morning. We didn’t get back from Orcha until after three last night, and I woke up at seven-thirty like clockwork anyway. I wonder if that it part of getting older. Anyway, I will tell you all about Orcha soon enough, but first I wanted to mention meeting Rashida Bee, and going out into the communities with the other volunteers to do a survey.

Friday afternoon Masaum had caught a cold from wandering around in wet clothes through the factory all the evening before, so he wans’t up to driving me around and getting my registration taken care of for me. Instead some of the other volunteers were going to New Market to do some shopping, so I decided to do that as well. We went back to the store that I got my pants from and also to the bookstore to get Harry Potter (for yours truly of course!). I was surprised at how well I knew my way around, even though I had only been there a couple of times before. It felt good to actually have a sense of where things are… I think that it added a little order to my world ☺.

When we came back from our little shopping excursion, some of the other volunteers were going to the old Sambhavna building that was used before this one was built to interview this woman activist Rashida Bee. Rashida Bee has started the Chenghari (sp?) trust up with the money that she got for an international award. The trust deals with people that have been severely affected by the gas disaster and water contamination, and then mostly children and women. There have been a lot of kids born with birth defects because their mothers were drinking contaminated water while they were pregnant. The trust tries to find specialists that will do surgeries for them for free, and tries to find special schools that will take the kids with mental disabilities.

Anyway, two of the girls were doing a radio piece about the disaster, so they were interviewing her about that. The other two girls were interviewing here about international activism because she has become such an international figure in the movement. I of course was just there to tag along and take photos. As soon as Aanya introduced me though, Rashida Bee said that it would be great if I could come and do a creative photography project about the kids that Chenghari trust, so that made me feel good. Not having much to do around here is still driving me a little crazy, so it made me feel a lot more useful. Rashida Bee, who I had heard about back in Canada, was really wonderful and warm and open. She just seemed so genuine and welcoming that it seemed like that might be a place that I could really do some work, even though she doesn’t speak any English! You can check out more about her at http://www.goldmanprize.org/node/83.

On Saturday morning I decided that I would go with Anisha and Casey out to the “basties” (I’m not sure of the spelling, but it means communities) that were affected by the gas and water contamination. They are helping with a study that the clinic is doing about whether these women are experiencing premature menopause as a result of the gas/water. I didn’t really do anything but watch, because the community workers are going through the actual surveys with the women in Hindi. But it was really interesting to see all of the different homes that people live in. At one point we went into a part of the neighbourhood that Casey and Anisha hadn’t been to yet, and all of the kids started following us around hardcore! At one point there must have been thirty of them just walking with us where ever we went. When we went into one of the houses to watch an interview, all these kids came in with us!!! The father kept shooing everyone out, but they’d just wander back in five minutes later! It was insane. Luckily Casey and I had to leave to catch our train at that point, so we left the interviewers in peace! I couldn’t help but be a little shocked at the lack of privacy though… I guess curiosity over the white people was just too overwhelming!

Next: Orcha!