Shanti-Dan

O.k. I have tried to ensure that I write on this more…

Today was my last day of volunteering. The emotions were mixed as I knew half of the women I worked with have no idea who I am or what I am doing there. But there are a few whom I will remember for a long time. Their faces are so beautiful full of life and love. It was truly amazing how much I could communicate with them without language.

I thought maybe I would give an average day of volunteering. You wake up at 6:45 (more like 7 if you are me) which is followed by a fifteen minute walk to mother house (the place where Mother Teresa is buried and lived) where there is free breakfast (which includes white bread, a banana and chai) for volunteers. Then together the volunteers say a prayer, a hail Mary and a song; this is followed by morning announcements from one of the sisters (don’t take photos, don’t give cigarettes out to clients, we need help for Christmas etc…). After this you congregate with the people going to the homes where you work and you head out for the day. The home where I worked had the least volunteers. It is one of the smaller centers and it is strictly for women volunteers only. At first I thought this was stupid, but after having a naked cognitively disabled woman chase me around the center one time, I think I am began to understand why. So usually the three to five of us (depending on the day) get on a bus and head out to Shanti Dan. The bus in the morning is crazy. Traffic is insane and to the Western eye there is little to no traffic rules. Usually half dizzy and bewildered we stumble off the bus and then have another 15 walk to Shanti-Dan.

The morning in Shanti-Dan usually starts off with about thirty women attacking you because they want nail-polish or they just want affection and they love to say hello. I have gotten really good at prying myself away from the death grip of about four or five women. If they were much bigger I would probably have been crushed ages ago. This usually if followed by helping them with morning chores. This includes doing laundry (which is a lot of fun, laundry is all by hand and they all sing and make it fun), this is then followed by scrubbing down the bathrooms, and then fixing and making beds. At 10 it is time for chai. So I head out to a little park and we have crackers (350 calories each! These are intense crackers), and chai with the other volunteers. After about 15 min it is back to work. In the afternoon it would vary, for a while I made Christmas cards, and then I had to take apart quilt after quilt of wool yarn (they re-use the yarn). Other times we would cut or paint nails (I quit painting nails because it simply caused too many fights among the women). Then at 11:30 we leave. In the past I would take a bus home, but this proved to me less than desirable. The buses are crowded, and I really did not appreciate having 15 Indian men pressed up against me because there were simply NO seats. Hat’s off to their ability to pack as many people as they possibly can into one bus but my claustrophobia would get the better of me in these situations. So I reverted to walking home. This seemed to be a good thing to do because not only did I have room to breath (even if it is polluted air) I also got to see SO much more of Calcutta and the people who reside within this city. The walk home usually takes about an hour (sometimes longer if we meander).

So that is the day in the life of a volunteer. So what did I learn from this experience? Well… Maybe it is a little too soon to say. I did learn that Shanti-Dan is NOT for the faint of heart. How things are done are questionable. The center itself eternally frustrated me (maybe another blog for another time will be me venting about the Catholic church and charity organizations in general). But the things ones sees are not easy. There was a woman today who because of her mental illness puts rubber bands around her fingers until they get very swollen and begin to puss and bleed. She is missing about six of her fingers because she has continued this process until they fall off. She showed me her finger today so I took her to the sister to have it dressed. The sister proceeded to tell me that no matter how many times she bandages the woman she just rips it off and continues the process of taking off her fingers. I will admit that my stomach heaved and dropped in this moment. There is too many of them for them to have to take the time to meet the needs of each one personally. And sometimes this is hard to watch. So I handed her some pieces of the quilt I was taking apart and just hoped she could understand what needed to be done. I was very impressed by her patience and vigilance to take apart the wool piece by piece. I then began to wonder how much of their behavior is because of sheer boredom? There have been many difficult things. The amount of lice I witnessed was enough for one-lifetime. We also had a few women die while I was volunteering. Not to mention many of them are disfigured because their families attempted to burn them to death. But admist all these things that would make me weak at the knees were followed by beautiful things. How helpful the women were in general. How they would hug you and hold your hand. How they would try to explain to you things about themselves. How they would sing and dance. I even had one woman ask me to marry her! I suppose this was flattering? How very funny they were. So much of the time was spent laughing with them. Laughter is so healing.

I know I have learned so much. Sometimes it is too much to even try to process let alone understand.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my life.

Enjoy the pictures :)