Volunteering Again in Kolkata

October 7, 2011

Soon after the McKernan’s arrived, we went to the “Mother House”, the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, and burial place of Mother Theresa. We were coming for our orientation so we could start volunteering. We arrived early, and found that the orientation was actually moved to a nearby orphanage which is also run by the Missionaries of Charity.

Joe and I waited on a bench in the courtyard of Mother House, while Lizzy and Mel paid a visit to the small museum and Mother’s Theresa’s tomb. “Mother House” is something of a monastery and they expect people to treat the space with respect and maintain silence. As we waited, a group of local high school kids that seemed to be on some sort of field trip, led by their teacher, burst loudly into the courtyard. By the way they were dressed and the fact that some of them were tapping away on their cell phones, they must have been from a privileged private school. Some of them also had cameras, or at least camera phones, and we noticed more than one of them start to take our picture. Being in the home of one of the world’s great philanthropists was apparently not quite as interesting as seeing a couple of scrubby westerners in the flesh. A couple of the bolder young men approached us to take pictures with us. We let them have their fun. During the second photo, though, one of the sisters came out and scolded the boys, saying that photos were not allowed inside the building. He didn’t care and as soon as she turned her back, they continued to snap photos of us. Needless to say, this felt very awkward.

The orientation was pretty much the same as I had remembered. We were given spiels about what each center does (orphanages, homes for the disabled, homes for the dying, etc.) issues of poverty in Kolkata, how to understand the industry of begging in certain areas of the city, etc. Although I had an interest in volunteering at a different place than I had been before, I also wanted to go to Prem Dan, the home for dying and disabled that I had worked at before, so I could possibly meet some of the patients I had known before. I also knew that this was one of the bigger centers that prefers short term volunteers. I knew that I would be in and out of Kolkata and couldn’t commit fully to long-term work. If I had signed on to work with children I knew that I would be doing a disservice to them since it is not healthy to have such a constantly changing crew of volunteers passing through for brief periods of time.

The next morning, we made the walk to mother house to start our day of volunteering. The walk invigorated me. As I have said before, there is something special about walking through early morning Kolkata as people are starting their daily grind. The children in uniforms on their way to school, the men in their lungis bathing in the public washing facilities, bikes strapped with dozens of live chickens making their deliveries through the neighborhood, goats tied to posts calmly ate their food scraps and garbage, and street vendors cooked up sweets for breakfast. Things were carrying on just as I had remembered. When arrived at Mother House, I was further comforted by the breakfast tradition remaining simple and unchanged since I had last been here. Volunteers would assemble in a concrete room to share a humble breakfast of tea, bread and sweet little bananas. The volunteers, coming from affluent corners of the globe, from Japan to Sweden, Canada to Spain, rich suburbs of LA to rich suburbs of Kolkata, shared the same prayer as always. I have my issues with how the Missionaries of Charity operates on many levels, but this tradition of passionate volunteers amassing from all over the world is something special to behold. The warmth that grew from within made me that much more excited to start my day and a new journey in this city.

The first thing that was noticeably different was that nobody walked from Mother House to Prem Dan anymore. Instead, everyone took the bus, which probably took a little over half the time that the thirty-minute walk took. Part of me thought it was lame and lazy of the volunteers, while another part recognized that it would at least give us more time for work. And there was a little bit of laziness in me as well that enjoyed not having to make that long walk that early in the morning. I had also heard that an American volunteer had lost his legs when he was hit by a train on the walk to Prem Dan a few months earlier. Supposedly this led to volunteers being encouraged to take the bus rather than walk.

A couple days earlier I had been wondering which of the patients would still be at Prem Dan. If somebody was gone, did it mean they had gotten healthy enough to leave, or had they died? I mostly thought of Raju, the mentally and physically disabled man that I had spent a lot of time with. I had worked with him to help him learn (or re-learn) how to walk His legs were too weak to support himself, so we exercised every day, until he was able to walk with my help, and eventually he was able to hobble a few steps on his own. When I left, I had made sure another volunteer would keep up with his exercises. I had no idea if he would still be there. He was not terminally ill as far as I knew, but it seems as though anybody could easily catch tuberculosis there and whither away in a matter of months. Perhaps he would still be there, continuing to make progress, or, better yet, maybe he had been deemed strong and healthy enough to leave and relatives had come for him. The night before I started to volunteer again, I had a dream that I was walking into Prem Dan, looking for Raju. He spotted me first, getting up out of bed and walking towards me. He had a freshly shaved head and a slight grin. “Raju, you can walk!” I said. He responded, “Hey Joey, how are you?” and proceeded to shake my hand. Not only had he learned to walk, he had learned to speak, and even learned English, complete with a purely American accent. Dreams are funny that way.

I started to get nervous before I entered Prem Dan. The dream had gotten my hopes up, and I knew it was unlikely that many if any of the men that I had remembered would actually be there. Upon entering, I quickly saw one of the most familiar faces of Prem Dan, named Raju, but to many simply referred to as “goiter guy”. The bulbous goiters on his neck had doubled in size since last time, but he was still as smiling and charming as ever. He had also accumulated more bracelets that he had either made or gotten from volunteers. He stretched out his tiny, fat hand and shook mine heartily. That would probably be the high point of my day. As I walked further into the courtyard and into the building, among the patients, the shock began to grow. There were almost no familiar faces, and the condition of most of the men was appalling. A line of men squatted against one of the walls, some of them with missing limbs, others with gaping, untended wounds with flies feasting on the vulnerable flesh, some just laying on the concrete, too sick to hold themselves upright. One man dragged his partially paralyzed body with his arms across the concrete in front of my path without the assistance of anyone or anything. Another man sat in a broken wheelchair in a pool of his own urine and feces. A younger man seemed to be missing about a third of the top of his head. It looked like it had just been sliced off with a sharp knife. Had I just walked into some grotesque horror show? Was this the same place I had fond memories of? I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but somehow I was far more taken aback than I could have anticipated. Maybe the fact that I had gotten to know many of the patients over time made me see them in a much more human light, rather than just a mass of humanity in desperately poor condition.

I continued to walk through the inside and outside of the building, looking for Raju, or any of the other men that I had remembered. As I walked along the concrete path that edged the garden, one of the patients grabbed my arm and pointed to a man laying down on the concrete nearby. He wasn’t speaking, just pointing at him. I thought maybe he needed to be carried inside to use the bathroom, but as I got closer, I realized it was something entirely different. His eyelids rested just above closed and flies were starting to buzz around his face. His cheeks were sunken into his face and his arms were rail thin. I felt like I would snap them if I accidentally leaned on them. He must have looked much older than he really was. I touched his arm and he didn’t respond. I put my fingers to his neck and tried to feel a pulse. He was gone. I saw one of the sisters nearby, and waved her over. She also checked for a pulse. She probably saw the shock in my eyes. For her, of course, this is routine, but she tried her best to say what she thought was the right thing to say to me. “Oh, well…ya know, this happens sometimes.” I was too shocked to respond to her frankness. I had only been here for twenty minutes, and I had already found a dead man.

My shock of finding a man who had just passed away would fade quick, but it was immediately replaced by the shock of the condition of the man in his moment of death. One of the original objectives of the Missionaries of Charity is to give people a dignified death, and at least in this instance, I feel that they failed. This man died alone, laying on a slab of concrete. Perhaps he had been “rescued” from the train station, where many sick and dying patients come from, but perhaps he also had a community there. I don’t know this man’s story, and I can’t say for sure what would have been best for him, but in my opinion, he did not leave our world in a dignified or respectable way. I don’t fault the sister that was so casual about his passing, but it did lead me to questioning the whole system of the Missionaries of Charity, their motives and their methods.

Throughout my first week of volunteering, I saw some things that I felt were a positive change, and some that were negative or disappointing. First, there was a long-term volunteer - a nurse from New Zealand - who had taken charge of the dispensary at Prem Dan. She spent her days dressing wounds and doing other sorts of medical treatment on the patients. She worked hard and she did great work. It was a welcome change from before, where anyone who felt comfortable enough, was performing treatment on patients whether or not they really knew what they were doing. They also had a new rule that volunteers that wanted to help in the dispensary must commit to two weeks. It was a modest rule, but it was a step in the right direction. Prem Dan is a revolving door of volunteers, many of whom spend just a few days. Those that are so short term spend more time processing what is going on around them and figuring out the ropes than actually assisting effectively in the center. It seemed that the powers that be had taken this into consideration and the way volunteers operate seemed to have been re-shaped since last time. A lot more of our work was focused on doing the “chores”. Laundry, dishes, floor-cleaning, etc. There seemed to be more Indian employees that did the hands-on work with the patients. This meant less time doing the messy stuff like carrying men to the bathroom, cleaning them when they had soiled themselves, feeding those that couldn’t feed themselves, etc. I appreciated the organization for hiring more local help (job creation=less poverty=success!). It led me to wonder what the real purpose of the volunteers was, though. I mean, we were basically doing manual labor to help the organization, which was fine. At the same time, most volunteers came here to connect with patients, connect on a personal level and share love with the so-called “poorest of the poor”. It is a commendable motive, but I felt there was less of this going on than last time I had been here. If volunteers weren’t going to be having this experience and simply be doing manual labor, why not eliminate the volunteers and hire local help entirely? Like I said, job creation can be a positive result of charity organizations. There can also be the positive aspect that the local employees speak the language of the patients and understand the culture better, making them more effective help. On the other hand, I still feel like there is a certain element that the foreign volunteers bring to Prem Dan that local employees won’t provide. It is the passion. Sometimes the patients need personal attention, affection, a friend. For the Bengalis hired to work at Prem Dan, they are carrying out their tasks as if it is any other job. I don’t want to disparage the hard work they do, because they do work hard, but their motive has more to do with a paycheck than the desire to help give back to their community and make the patients’ lives a little more enjoyable.

And I guess this leads me to the main idea that I have to think about when I am volunteering with the MC’s. Neither me, nor the Missionaries of Charity will ever have a major impact on poverty in Kolkata as long as it continues on the simplistic path it has been following from the beginning. However, it is difficult to deny that as a volunteer, you still have the capability of making small changes in the lives of individuals. You can fill in the personal gaps that are being missed by the institution. You can take the initiative to hold the hand of that man on the concrete so he at least does not die alone, or make sure that Raju is getting his exercise every day on his path to mobility. Maybe it is sitting with Raju the goiter guy, as he shows you all his bracelets, or shaving Hussein the blind man so he doesn’t have to sit with itchy stubble all day. These are the small things that you have to make an effort to do as a volunteer because otherwise it will be hard to see purpose in your efforts and even harder to see that perhaps there is hope underneath this veneer of horror show after all.