Our benefit Wednesday night was an unqualified success. we raised 4,000 INR and got a lot more people interested in the school. Several party-goers are planning to visit the school on Saturday and may even donate some more money. Work began yesterday with the laborers preparing the walls for cement. A whole section of the building needs to be torn down and completely rebuilt to support a roof.
Fundraising is going incredibly well. We’ve nearly our share of the roof project and any extra will go to buy mattresses and fans. I think we’re really going to pull this off. There’s been a bit of a national competition for donations going on between all of us. I am very proud to say that the American contingent has raised way more than the rest, beating out the Brits, Germans, and Spaniards for charity domination.
Tomorrow morning we’ve got a 6:30am wakeup to go buy materials in time for the workers to start at 8:00am. It’s hard to push through the normal relaxed Indian pace to get things moving before next week. Everything seems to be going well so far, but I’m waiting for the inevitable complications.
Update: So I roused myself at 6:30am and went off to the school to meet with the builder. Today is the birthday of the Hindu god Shiva and I was a bit worried that the workers might not show up. Fortunately, everyone made it to the school and a list of materials for the next few days was drawn up. After a bit of discussion, it was recommended that I not tag along to the purchasing mission. As I can attest, a Foreign Idiot Tax is levied on any purchase appearing to be made by a foreigner and we didn’t want the price of our materials to go up. So, I receipted the principal, Manoj, 16,000 INR to buy cement, lime, sand, and rent some equipment. I also gave him my camera with instructions to take pictures so I can put them online. I’ll stop in later to audit the materials. It’s a bit of a balancing act to strike the right note of oversight and fiscal responsibility without coming off as paranoid and overbearing. I trust Dhanna and Manoj, and if it were just my money on the line, I wouldn’t worry about it. However, since I’ve now roped a bunch of other people into giving money on my say-so, I’m feeling the pressure to account for every rupee.
With typical Indian optimism, the school officials had assured me that 15,000 INR (~$300) would be enough to install a new roof. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a woefully low estimate. This morning, we went in search of the contractor who had built the original structures on the property. We found him at the chai stand below the fort, everyone’s favorite hangout. After the obligatory cup of chai, we headed to the school to get a firm estimate.
The builder’s face was in turns grim and animated as he examined the damage. It turns out that after the earthquake the walls had been repaired with a mixture of rubble, cow manure, and mud. Over time, the monsoon rains had washed out a lot of this glue holding the walls together. The walls need to be reinforced with cement and lime to be able to support a new roof. It won’t do much good to replace the roof if it ends up collapsing the whole structure. After a lot of bargaining, earnest hand-wringing on mine and Flavia’s parts, and discussion of various options, the final cost is 60,000 INR (~$1200) something like four times the original optimistic estimate.
The builder describing the damage.
The good news is that the school has agreed to kick in 20,000 INR (~$400), leaving our share to be 40,000 INR or approximately $800-900. Rather than try and do this piecemeal, we (all the couchsurfers staying at Ishar Palace) have committed to raising the full amount. We’re all busy today hitting up our personal networks to raise the money by the end of the week. We’re also reaching out to the larger couchsurfing community and trying to turn this into an official couchsurfing project. With the power of the internet we will succeed!!
Tonight is the benefit and Tom-the-Brit and Leo-the-German are on the streets roping in tourists to come and drink beer for the cause. We need to raise 10,000 INR (~$200) by tomorrow so we can start buying materials. We’re about $50 away from that amount. We can do it!!!
Tags: GVMSS Project, India, volunteer
Schoolkids at GVMSS. They are very excited to have their picture taken.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to raise money for a local school that serves Untouchable and low-caste kids in the Jaisalmer slums. I built them a website, which you can see here, and we’re hosting a benefit where we hope lots of tourists come and donate money. We’ve got live Rajasthani music, beer, and fabulous conversation. It also helps that it’ll be the only nightlife in Jaisalmer.
I am also breaking my lifelong pattern (except for those awful candy bar fundraisers in highschool) of never, ever asking family or friends to support my causes. So, I need your help. We’re trying to raise enough money
Kids in one of the classrooms that needs to be fixed.
to fix the walls and roof on one of the school’s buildings that was damaged in an earthquake in 2008. Right now the walls are crumbling and the roof is thatched so that when it rains, they can’t hold school. We think it’ll cost about $300. Anything extra will go to provide mattresses and school supplies.
I’ve been visiting the school since I arrived to get a handle on what would make the biggest difference and also to ensure that it’s not one of many NGO scams in India. Fortunately, it’s not, so I can now hit up all my friends for money with a clear conscience. You can read more about the school’s history here, but it was basically founded by several Brahmins six years ago when they realized that the city’s poorest kids weren’t getting schooling because they couldn’t afford the annual fees levied by government schools. They’re other good works include giving local children polio vaccinations and teaching community members (many of whom moonlight as prostitutes when things get tough) about AIDS prevention.
Neighborhood kids who don
Most of these kids belong to the Untouchable or Dalit caste and are seriously, incredibly, grindingly poor. The local community supports the school admirably, but in fits and starts, and they are unable to get together large sums of money to make big improvements. Basically, they need somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 to reinforce the walls and build a permanent roof over three classrooms. This is a shockingly small amount of money so I’m doing what I can to make it happen for them. Some other couchsurfers and I have clubbed together and come up with $150. We’re pounding the internets and our personal networks for the rest.
Since India is rife with scams, I’m doing my damnedest to make sure the money is spent appropriately. I’m going back to the school tomorrow with a contractor to get a firm estimate after which we’ll head to the market with our $150 and buy materials. I’m told this is the best way to make sure funds are not “diverted.” One of the couchsurfers, Flavia, is teaching at the school and will oversee the completion of the roof project when I leave. I feel pretty good about the principal - he gave up a university teaching position to work with Dalit kids - and I think the money will be used appropriately, I just want to take precautions.
So, dear friends and family, I sincerely hope you won’t mind my presuming on our friendship to hit you up for money for slum kids in India. I will send out a facebook plea and email appeal as well. If you can spare $10 or $20, I would really, really, really appreciate it. Do it for the children.
So - the nuts and bolts. It’s basically complicated for NGOs to get money from abroad, so for the short term purposes of this project, I’m asking for donations to be sent to my paypal account and I will withdraw them here. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, contact me, and I’ll work something out. You can send the money to paypal address: fkmclin@gmail.com with the note: GVMSS and I’ll add it to the total donation.
Thank you so very much for helping me and my cause out. The lives of these children will be improved beyond belief by your actions. I will put more updates up tomorrow after I confer with the builders.
Tags: GVMSS Project, India, volunteer
Today, my friends, I got rooked. I mean fleeced in the most embarrassing way. My host Dhanna says that Indians will cheat you with a joke and a smile. In my case it was a cup of chai and a good story. I am a complete sucker for a good story. I take small comfort in the fact that I was cheated by a true master of his craft. I am also heartily ashamed of my wasteful spending in such a poor place. It isn’t often that I blunder in such a way as to remind myself of how completely American (and comparatively wealthy) I am, but today was a real stinker.
The ironic thing is that today I had no intentions of buying anything at all. I was passing the afternoon with a stroll through the narrow alleys of Jaisalmer’s medieval fort. Since the Desert Festival is in full swing, the streets were deserted and shopkeepers were loitering and only half-heartedly trying to get my attention. I’d already stopped and chatted with a few locals and had been idly pricing some porcelein doorknobs that I’d been eyeing. By playing one merchant against the other I had finally arrived at my magical price: 15 rupees each down from 50. I was really getting the hang of bargaining in India. As they say, pride most definitely went before my fall.
Raj, my new friend, had wrapped up my parcel of five doorknobs and since there wasn’t another customer in sight, he invited me to stay for chai and a chat. Flushed with pride at my clever negotiations, I agreed. Raj spoke excellent English and was a spirited conversationalist. We had already argued over the relative merits of cricket vs rugby and had made our way to India-US relations. It seemed a shame to end the conversation and besides, I had nowhere particular to be. We were practically old friends.
I had already learned a bit about caste culture (it’s a big deal in the desert) and Raj began telling me of his father’s days traveling the desert villages, performing services as a Brahmin. Brahmins, as the priest caste, traditionally perform marriages, christenings, and give funeral rites. Raj and his brothers have taken over and in the off-season they go from village to village upholding these ancient traditions. Sometimes villagers pay in livestock, rarely in cash, and sometimes when they have nothing else to give, they pay in old antiques collected through the years. You can probably see where this is going.
To give the proper setting for my downfall, imagine being told these stories while sitting on a rickety leather stool, with a cup of chai in your hand, in a shop filled with dusty carvings. In a crumbling medieval citadel, in a desert city, by a weathered old Brahmin. I was captivated. He pulled out a stained leatherbound notebook where first his father, then he noted the date and payment for all their services. (A note here - I should probably have noticed that it was written in English. How many desert-dwelling Brahmins do you think keep personal notes in English? This did not occur to me until later) With a flourish, my story-telling friend unwrapped something he had gotten in a village deep in the desert this past summer. It was a heavy old lock with four oddly-shaped keys attached. He explained that it was a puzzle lock that could only be opened if the keys were used in their precise, hidden order. It was only used to protect the most valuable things a family might own since if one of the keys were lost, the lock would never open again. He challenged me to open it and I couldn’t. When he showed my how the clever contraption worked, I had to have it. (Cue huge sucking sounds here)
I justified it by telling myself that it was a perfect gift for my father, the engineer, who loves oddball gadgets. His birthday is coming up in a week. He’d love it. I was afraid to ask the price, and sure enough it was way more than I wanted to spend. But it was so perfect. Raj gently took it away and wrapped it up saying that he didn’t expect me to buy it, it was just an interesting oddity he had picked up in his travels. He showed me a smaller one that was a fair bit cheaper, but it didn’t have the same allure. I wanted that one. Our conversation continued but the hook had been set. My eyes kept wandering back to the lock, sitting on a shelf. It seemed to beat with the heart of the desert.
I’m not going to tell you what I paid, but I’ll tell you that it was about five times too much. It turns out that my antique was probably made of scrap metal in Jodhpur and was just varnished in black oil to make it look old. Ouch. I think the worst thing was that as I left the dim shop and cleared my head in the light of day I realized that I had probably been cheated. I just didn’t know how badly. I’m not one to begrudge a merchant a profit and it came with a great story. No, the worst thing was shamefacedly admitting it to Dhanna and his friends and then realizing what could have been bought with that money.
See, Dhanna helps run a local school for Dalit (the politically correct name for Untouchable) kids in the poorest section of Jaisalmer. What I spent on an idle trinket could have sponsored three kids for a year or helped repair the school roof that was damaged in an earthquake. I’m certainly nowhere near the richest tourist that wanders through Jaisalmer, but I’m worlds away from how these people live from birth until death. Dhanna is not rich himself, but he opens his home to travelers and lets them stay as long as they like for free. What I wasted on a bauble might be more than he makes in a week, or longer. How awkward and shameful.
It’s not that I’m ashamed of being a relatively wealthy tourist or an American. By good fortune I was born into a wealthy culture. It’s not a fact I want to change, it’s just the way things are. It’s just embarassing to have paraded my wealth and gullibility in the face of such true need. I am humbled. In part to make things right with myself, and because it’s a good and necessary thing to do, I have embarked on a project to build a website for the Free School for Disadvantaged Children (rough translation) or Gurukul Vidya Mandir Siksan Sansthan and then raise money to fix their roof.
In the spirit of my hard-won cynicism, I will check the school out and find out the particulars of its finances before committing my reputation on its behalf, but it looks pretty legit thus far. Stay tuned for more.
Tags: India, Jaisalmer, travel, volunteering