Union Carbide">Union Carbide" border="0" alt="" />Well, today is the first day that I can officially say that I had a really good day. I woke up this morning without the joint and muscle aches of the flu that I felt yesterday, and my stomach was only a little bit upset too! Joe had gone to the corner store, which sells fresh egg, so I got to have a breakfast of scrambled eggs, and no spice. Then I did a load of laundry and went downstairs to play with the kids for a little while, which was fun. We were playing musical chairs with my Ipod, which each of the kids wanted to have control over. Mac doesn’t seem to have a very big presence here in India, but they knew how to start and stop the songs, so each of the kids wanted to be in charge of doing that. I decided that this was a recipe for my expensive device to get broken, so we compromised by me holding onto the Ipod and letting one kid at a time push the button.
Masaum came at noon to start running some of the plethora of errands that I had to run. Mainly I have to register with the collectorate because I am here for longer than six months at a time. I’m not sure if that is a safeguard against me staying here past my welcome or against me getting abducted into India society, but it does seem slightly strange to me. Some of the other volunteers also wanted to go and see the abandoned Union Carbide factory site, which is just lying in decay and disrepair. You have to go and get permission from some branch of the government to do that as well, so I was delegated organizer of that particular activity as well. The other item on the agenda was to go and get a couple of pairs of pants! So I an around collecting passports for photocopies and other documentation, and then set off with Masaum. On his motorcycle.
I should mention that everyone in India drives motorcycles. They outnumber cars on the street about twenty-to-one by the looks of it, and I’m sure that you can see in my photos how large and awkward cars are on small Indian streets. Absolutely no one wears helmets, neither driver’s nor passengers, although I have noticed that they sell them at every street corner stand, especially in Delhi. Maybe they’re crappy quality anyway… at any rate, this was my first motorcycle ride ever, so I told Masaum that, and told him not to drive too fast because I would get scared and fall off. He’s a good driver though, and by Indian standards, I would say that he’s fairly cautious too. I have to wonder what people here thought of this skinny little guy zipping around town with a white-knuckled white girl clinging to his shoulders (no one here holds on to the drivers, you see women in saris sitting side-saddle, talking on cell phones and looking generally bored with the whole experience).
I didn’t have long to get used to it though, because not ten blocks outside of Qazi camp Masaum’s motorcycle got a flat tire and we had to stop. I put some more minutes on my cell phone while we waited, and then we went back to Sambhavna so that I could get some more money for pants shopping. So we were off once again! After I got used to the initial shock of the whole thing it was actually quite fun. It was really nice to be out and about it the city, particularly with someone who knows it well. So I ended up having a really good time just zipping around doing errands.
First we went to get the permissions to visit the Union Carbide factory. It was in this decrepit old building where the biggest line-up was at the photocopy place (Indian bureaucracy loves multiple copies of everything, and luckily Masaum knew to stop at on of the many roadside vendors that make dingy, barely legible photocopies, so we already had two copies of each of our passports and visas ready to hand in). There was a dank and filthy room full of men crowded around one heavy-looking desk, each of whom stared at me like I was crazy and most certainly in the wrong place when I came into the room. I said “I’m here to get permission to go to the Union Carbide factory”. There was a few minutes of silence and then one yelled at me “Union Carbide permissions, hanh?”. We were told to come back between three and five o’clock to pick up our letter of permission.
Next Masaum and I went further down the same row of dingy buildings in order for me to register as a foreigner. We were directed into yet another dank dingy room with swirling ceiling fans, and a man wearing sunglasses told me in heavily-accented, rapid English which documents I would need. As the list grew, I stopped him and got out a piece of paper so that I could write it all down; in addition to eight passport photos, a letter from Sathyu conforming that I am staying at Sambhavna, and copies of my passport and visa, I was also told to make duplicated copies of everything. Phew… the funny thing was that the two people sitting at the desk in front of me remembered Diana and Jennifer, the two CIDA interns that were here last year. I guess there aren’t that many foreigners registering with the police in Bhopal!
After that Masaum took me to the first North American-style store that I have seen since getting to India. It was four floors high and very air-conditioned. They had mostly more western-style clothes, but I ended up buying what I would consider to be somewhat Arabic pants in both black and brown. Both pairs of pants cost me about Rs. 880, the equivalent to about $23 CND.
After that we decided to head back to Sambhavna to wait for our letter of permission to be ready, which we did t about 4:30pm. However, you know how I mentioned that I had been rather miffed that it hadn’t rained at all while I’ve been here? And it’s supposed to be monsoon season? Well, on our way back, the grey skies that had been progressively turning darker opened up on us. Luckily we were almost back at Sambhavna so only my shirt got really wet. At any rate, we got our permissions letter and then came to pick up all of the others going on the factory visit.
The factory is only about a fifteen minute walk away from Sambhavna, and that’s even in Indian traffic, so that’s pretty close. It was raining pretty steadily by the time we got there, so we were already pretty wet. The grounds are all enclosed so that people can’t get in, but that doesn’t stop the cows, goats and other wildlife feasting on the greenery inside the grounds. It was a little more than worrisome to see that, because the grounds of the factory are especially contaminated with the waste leeching into the groundwater, so I’m sure that all of the plant life in there is contaminated, too. However, we stopped at the dingy little guard booth and showed them our paperwork. After some deliberation, the guards told us that we were too late for today. Unfortunately we would have to go through the entire process with the paperwork all over again if we came back tomorrow. We waited under the narrow awning of the building that the men were in for a while for the rain to let up a bit, and eventually Masaun indicated that they wanted money if they were going to let us in. So we agreed to pay then Rs. 200 on the condition that they let Masaum in with us, even though he wasn’t on the letter that we had got from the collectorate, and they seemed satisfied with that.
The factory itself is really quite a strange place. It is certainly the most quiet and still place in all of Bhopal, because it is the biggest piece of land that no one is allowed to go into. The still and calmness of the place makes it feels like some sort of sacred ground or something. I guess in a way it is, because it is the cause of so many deaths. The strange thing is that it is absolutely lush and green everywhere, with picturesque little flowers and greenery bursting from everywhere. The rusting old machinery seems incongruous with the rest of the setting. Masuam had been to the factory four times before this, and was a good tour guide, pointing out where the half-full tanks of MIC were buried, and where the breaking point in the pipes was that the gas leaked out of. You can look at the photos for a better idea of what it all looked like. But one quick aside, mother nature seemed totally intent on re-claiming this land, and there was a ton wildlife in here. There was this stray dog that was kind of following us from afar, and because the air was so still, and the dog was so quiet, it really seemed like the dog was kind of watching over us or something. And then at this one point, when we were all standing underneath some huge machinery we heard this great flapping noise. We all looked up and saw this enormous white blur flapping not ten feet overhead and out from under the machinery – it was an owl! Anyway, I just liked that even though the water is still poisoned in there and that the grounds are so contaminated with toxins, nature is still trying hard to take back that piece of land.
Its now Monday morning for me, and I have been out of town for the weekend, so this is a little bit out-dated. Hopefully over the course of the day I will have the chance to update the old blog about the weekend adventures:)
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