Dear Family, Friends and Strangers,
I’m sorry this hasn’t been a more active blog over the last five months. The deeper I got in to my life here in India, the harder it grew to take time aside to narrate it all here. And now it’s the ninth of march, and tomorrow I board a plane out of Varanasi, and after some travel to here and there, I’ll be home in Toronto on the 23rd of March. Somehow, these 5 months have flown by.
I’m sorry this hasn’t been a more active blog over the last five months. The deeper I got in to my life here in India, the harder it grew to take time aside to narrate it all here. And now it’s the ninth of march, and tomorrow I board a plane out of Varanasi, and after some travel to here and there, I’ll be home in Toronto on the 23rd of March. Somehow, these 5 months have flown by.
Some of the recent stories I haven’t told here include the crazy whole staff (meaning 25 people!) retreat to Jaipur in Rajasthan, during which I learned what an Indian shopoholic looks like (!), the weekend in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh’s state capital) with 22 Nepalese women, a series of tragedies from within our beneficiary community, Holi (India’s festival of colour -- see above photo) and the launch of the beautiful children’s library which Andria has been working on since October. I’m out of time now, and will have to share those stories orally once I’m home. One last story, though, I can tell: yesterday’s big event. International Women’s Day!
Empowering women is at the heart of the way WLC works. The first thing we do when we enter a needy community to launch programming is to start what we call a “Mahila Mandal” – a group for women in the community to meet regularly to talk about issues in their lives, homes and communities. The idea is to provide a mechanism for women to support each other and to engage in collective action to work change in their own lives, and it works: these groups have worked, with WLC’s support, to lobby local government for basic services (things like healthcare, electricity and roads), have supported each other in situations of domestic violence, and recently one group has worked to shut down a liquor bar in their neighbourhood contributing to alcoholism amongst men in the community. WLC also provides adult literacy classes, skills training and small loans to the women we serve, to allow them more independence and the means to earn their own livelihoods.
Naturally, International Women’s Day is an important day for us, and for the women we serve. And so, yesterday, over 500 women from the slum communities around Varnasi, the WLC staff, and us interns took to the streets of Varanasi to make our voices heard about the importance of women’s rights. Women waved signs and banners, cheered and shouted slogans: my favourite one translates roughly to “We are the women of India. We are not delicate flowers, but flames”! Andria and I dressed in saris – the official attire of adult women in India – for the first time, in honour of the occasion, and joined the 4 kilometre march in the blazing sun, shouting the protest chants along with the women we marched with. Along the route, people stopped and stared, hanging out of windows or crowding in front of shops to see what on earth so many women could be doing shouting together in the streets. It was a remarkable and joyous spectacle, and great fun to be a part of! The march ended with songs and dance from the women, and a massive and tasty feast.
International Women’s day was a perfect note with which to end our internships. Today has been a day of packing and wrapping things up, and starting to say our goodbyes to the friends, colleagues, neighbours and children who have made these months so rich, and turned Varanasi in to a home for us. Leaving isn’t easy.
Many of my “loyal readers” (that’s you!) already know this, but once I’m back in Toronto, I’ll be continuing to work with World Literacy of Canada – they’ve offered me a job at their Toronto office, as the overseas program manager. This is fantastic, and I’m extremely excited! A real job! With a fabulous organization! AND I get to keep working with the amazing India staff, and for the wonderful women and children I’ve met and come to know during my time here. I feel very fortunate. This means that once I’m back I’ll be diving straight in to “real life” – working full time, looking for an apartment, etcetera. It will be a crazy adaptation to make. But I’m getting ahead of myself – I still have one more day of this adventure to finish, before I can start the next one.
Thank you for reading!
Love,
Emily
