Loaves and Fishes, A White Lie, and A Yard Sale.

This story started two weeks ago, before Hurricane Harvey and the disaster that it brought to the state of Texas. As I read the paper and watch the news, I am floored by the devastation, of course, but more so by the hundreds of people who came to help. Who just showed up willing to do something. The man who didn’t know how he would be able to help and wasn’t with any relief organization, but who rushed to Texas with his boat, and ended up rescuing something like 81 people and a cat. Besides individuals, there were non-profits as well as government agencies helping.

In contrast, what happens on the other side of the world when the government is too busy to help or even caused the flooding in the first place?

What happens when the flooding happens in a slum in Bangalore instead of a state in one of the richest nations in the world?

How ridiculous is it that the only people who came to help are my neighbors and I? Untrained, unfunded, and unqualified to help, but the only ones to show up. It’s true that God can seriously use anyone.

Another house in Ambedkar Nagar will most likely fall tonight. Sitting in my dry home listening to the rain pound relentlessly on the roof, it’s hard not to feel guilty having a clean, comfortable, and warm space to live. The community where one of the anganwadis we have been working with is located, has had a home collapse almost every night it’s rained this hard. So far 14 houses have collapsed. The first 2 days the local government BBMP official visited, took pictures and handed out food. The next 3 days, which also happened to be Friday and the weekend, they said they were too busy to come by. With mud and flood water and filth and flies and snakes and trash and tears and despair all around. According to one local, this neighborhood hasn’t experienced this type of flooding in the 30 years he has lived there. According to him and other long-time residents, this monsoon season was so harmful because a BBMP construction project in the area diverted the rain water from its normal course, creating a backup and flood waters with dire consequences for 14 families.

Two days after the first of the torrential rains and floodwaters destroyed homes in Ambedkar Nagar, we found out about it from Bagya, the anganwadi teacher, unofficial mayor of the slum, and all around good person when we called her to find out why she hadn’t shown up for our meeting at BBMP about potties we are trying to get built for the preschool. When asked how we could help, she suggested that we bring some snacks, medicine and drinking water. We bought 100 bananas, huge water bottles, and Parle G biscuits at Grand City, a shop located right outside of our gated neighborhood, which has successfully cornered the market on any food or household items the residents of Adarsh Palm Retreat and surrounding neighborhoods could ever want or need, and whose owners are notorious for their lack of generosity. Through an outright threat of boycott by myself and a proposed posting to the neighborhood listserv of their unwillingness to help out flood victims, and Urvi’s sweet request (essentially my bad cop to Urvi’s good cop) one manager finally ponied up 800 rupees to pay for the bananas from his own pocket. In addition to these snacks, we also planned to bring vegetable puffs, which can be obtained for a few rupees from local bakeries, but none of the shops had anywhere close to 100, so we went to 4 different shops and still only came up with about 50. Next stop was the pharmacy. Bagya had asked for cough, fever, blood pressure and “sugar medicine,” which I can only assume has something to do with diabetes. The gentleman at the pharmacy would not sell us bp or “sugar medicine” since we didn’t have dosage information, which seemed like a good call since the wrong dosage would definitely be a problem. On a different note, the pharmacist did however, agree to deliver Xanax to my home later that evening without a prescription.

When we arrived at the neighborhood it was clear right away that things were not good. Everything was covered in mud, belongings were hung to dry or broken, waterlogged and strewn all over the community. And people were crying, coughing with fevers, and really hungry. We handed out food and medicine in the anganwadi as fast as we could. We had a ‘loaves and fishes’ moment when we realized we were probably going to run out of veggie puffs, and started breaking them in half, which allowed just enough to serve each person once (and a few people who snuck back in line, twice).

A widow with 5 small children was staying in the anganwadi shelter since her home was uninhabitable, and was wailing about the devastation. We sat with her, held her hands, and told her that she was not alone. We fed her and her kids, and visited her home to see how we could help. None of her neighbors were helping her, and we asked several for assistance for her and her kids, and to share their homes with her if needed. It was at that moment that I felt most inadequate. With no knowledge of construction and no support from NGOs (although we did reach out to our contact at United Way of Bangalore several times, but she never got back to us) or the government, and no real resources, there wasn’t much we could do to help. My first instinct was to offer her and her kids a place to stay at my home. To give them warm showers and a place to sleep. But thinking about my kids at home and the many diseases that living in a slum brings, I was scared and didn’t open my mouth to offer. I keep thinking of how other, stronger helpers would have responded.

The assistant teacher at the school, Sheila, who lives alone refused to stay with neighbors for fear of getting head lice. Instead she preferred to stay in her water-logged home which smelled of mold and rotting food. She could barely walk because of an infection on her thighs from dirty water getting into a cut. She needed immediate medical attention.

Five different people who had not been able to travel to pick up their medicines because of the flooding for at least three days asked for help in getting their bp and “sugar medicine.” I called the doctor and nurse whose clinic serves this neighborhood, but they were “too busy” to bring medicine. The doctor even hung up the phone. Not wanting residents to have to wait additional days for potentially life saving medicine, we went to the clinic to pick up the necessary medicine, and brought Sheila along for treatment. The doctor tried to explain to us how to give people the appropriate bp and sugar medicine, but since Urvi and I are completely untrained in anything remotely medical, and Thamil, my helper who came along and IS actually a certified nurse and completely overqualified to work for me, but who hasn’t done any actual nursing in years, we asked the trained nurses to please come to the neighborhood. The doctor refused to allow them to go, saying that they had too much work to do at the empty clinic. We tried to appeal to the doctor’s humanity saying that people would die without their medicine for this amount of time – no luck. We tried to appeal to her sense of duty saying that she serves this population – she said she isn’t a mobile clinic. We tried to bribe her – but she wouldn’t bite. At that point I started snapping photos of the clinic, the doctor, and her staff, and I may have indicated that I was a journalist. (Blogging is practically journalism, right?). At that point the doctor quickly agreed to send both of her nurses to the slum with us for two hours, and in that two hours they were able to see about 500 people. We paid them for their trouble. The doctor even went the next day to follow up with the patients, and she is probably waiting for her pay-out and for an article to come out in the local paper about her heroics.

BBMP promised that they would deliver food that Friday evening, but by 6 pm it was clear that wasn’t happening. Urvi and I visited a local shop and bought rice, lentils, sugar, oil, and some other necessities to get them through. And a friend was able to quickly mobilize to get a cooked rice and dahl delivery for 200 people by 11:30 pm, but the rice was undercooked, apparently, and everyone was unhappy. Fortunately, over the next two days we were able to provide lunch and dinner that everyone approved of from a local ‘hotel’ AKA roadside food stall. We were able to raise funds to pay for the food from the bake sale/yard sale fundraiser we held in our neighborhood that weekend. This was the first yard sale many expats and Indians had ever gone to, and most were surprised by how many useful and like-new items they could get for next to nothing. The drivers and helpers in the neighborhood were able to purchase items for half-price the following day, and were happy both that they were able to support people who lost their homes as well as buy things they wouldn’t normally be able to afford. One of our helpers was able to find a rug, a table and chairs, and a full set of dishes. And we were able to raise over 50,000 rupees (around $750 US) for the people who lost their homes.

This week we went to Ambedkar Nagar to do a needs assessment and figure out how to best utilize the money we raised. Bagya suggested cement and blocks for rebuilding, which, I assume, for 14 homes will be way over our budget. We are hoping that BBMP, having caused all this flooding in the first place, will take the lead in paying for the bulk of the rebuilding and trash/debris pick up, but having had several disappointing meetings with the BBMP office about potties, I’m assuming we are going to have to do the work ourselves. So again, we will show up, and see what happens.