Oasis staff can listen to the ladies’ stories as they paint their hands with henna.
Joy Andrew writes:
It’s not easy, trying to distill all you’ve learned during one of the most extraordinary times of your life into 300 words.
But that’s what I was asked to do by Tearfund, so who am I to argue?
I’ve spent the last ten months in Mumbai, volunteering with Tearfund partner Oasis India.
I thought the hardest thing would be putting a limit on all I had to say. But as I sit here trying to work out where to start, I feel like I have no right to talk about India’s poverty.
Lifestyle
When I leave nice restaurants and shopping malls on my way to my lovely flat, I have to walk past people living on the pavements, a network of dirty rags, plastic sheets and wooden poles their shelter. It’s easy to feel guilty.
When I meet tourists or people who are over here with work, they all talk about their feeling of helplessness when the beautiful street kids in grubby clothes and knotted hair come begging for money.
‘Even if I emptied my pockets and gave away all my money, it wouldn’t help,’ said one person that I met.
We’re almost obsessed about money in the West, as if it’s the answer to all problems.
I used to wish I had a brain that understood economics, so I could better understand why so many people are poor and be able to come up with solutions.
Sudheer’s story
This week I interviewed a guy called Sudheer. His mother Ria used to work as a prostitute after being sold to a brothel. His father still works as a pimp.
Aruna, a project run by Tearfund partner Oasis India, helped Ria leave the trade. Some five years on she no longer takes drugs.
She goes to the church that meets in Aruna’s drop-in centre and works at a Salvation Army shelter for children whose mothers work in the brothels.
Sudheer says, ‘I am thankful to Oasis India for helping me and my mother because my own family would not have done as much.’
He started working for Aruna in November. He gets to know pimps and tries to show them that there are other options open to them.
Love can transform lives, even behind brothel walls. Photo: Peter Caton/Tearfund.
Testify to love
He told me that recently he helped one man who was living in the red light area and dealing drugs. His wife had left him and when Sudheer met him he hadn’t had a bath in days.
Sudheer bathed him, gave him two shirts and Aruna helped get him admitted to hospital. Sudheer says, ‘My mother is proud that I help people who are down trodden.’
So I’m coming home with a head full of questions and life-changing memories and a heart full of countless conflicting emotions (and quite possibly with a stomach full of unpleasant organisms and bacteria ….), but also with the certainty that I need to speak about the way I have seen lives change when people show love, and a determination to try and live a life where loving people is more important than possessions or making money.