The inevitability of change

Any trip that you take back to a familiar place will be met with change. After all, change is the only constant in the world.  Many philosophers have emphasized that from the ancient wisdom of the Buddha through to the more contemporary writers such as Osho and Eckhart Tolle. India, being such an enduring nation, also has its history and traditions that seem so entrenched, also sees change. Some seems so obviously in need of a new perspective that one almost wonders why The Hindu newspaper would  have as a headline that women are now learning to drive rapid transit. Yet, such a headline is indeed a reflection of important changes in the roles of women.

I spoke with the taxi driver whom I have now known for 5 years. He lives in a rural community near here and has 2 children. His 15 year old son he describes as doing nothing but he proudly tells me of his 17 ½ year old daughter who will finish school this year. He will then marry her off. In the west, we might bristle at this but for this man, this represents major change – it is the daughter who is being given room for education and then marriage to follow. He has consciously waited for the education to occur. This is progress.

This is a region under a lot of pressure. At the end of 2011, Cyclone Thane went through here with winds up to 140 km/h. There has been much physical damage. As you can see in the photo, the piles of salvaged wood represents the fact that almost 60% of the trees in the area were lost or damaged. While there has been rapid growth of some of the underbrush, cash crop trees have also been damaged such as the cashew tree. Yesterday, a young man described how his family has lost their crop and that the family is without means at the moment. He works at an internet café and is able to bring in some money. He says that, even many months later, there is no word from the government on exactly what compensation will be received.

Stumps yet to be cleared along with stored logs awaiting disposition

Another person told me that it took over 3 weeks for any power to be restored after the cyclone. What was restored was subject to 12 hour blackouts for many months to come. Today, we have seen 2 blackouts at our guest house. One every morning around 6 a.m. but only last for about 90 minutes. Given that is during daylight, it is not such a concern. Another occurred last night but it was in the dark allowing my wife and I to begin our little dinner in romantic blackout.

There has also been little rain here. Overall, through India the monsoon is late and has been about 25% below normal. The implications for agriculture are massive. Certainly, this is not the only area of the world affected by weather. The United States is undergoing a drought that has not been seen for about 40 years. Greenland was recently reported to have had an unprecedented melt. There have been the mudslides and flooding in British Columbia. Mother Nature has a marvelous ability to remind us just who is in control. The ground here is dry. In the village down the road, the large water pond which is typically fairly full this time of year is within inches of being dry.  There is also a growing risk from salination of the water table. Some here tell me that there is a year left before the problem reaches the community in which we live. The implications for farming, trees, energy and being able to live are enormous.

Yet the poverty implications of drought are crucial in many ways. Recent research has told us that child abuse and maltreatment does have a link to increased pressures from poverty. For the poorest this can bring the pressures here in India that can lead to the trafficking of children. I will be visiting two centers in Chennai next week and will learn more about the current stressors. Last time I met with one center, they described that these pressures see traffickers come into villages promising work in the cities for the child. The father, seeing what he believes to be a win for the family (a fee is paid for the child) and a win for the child (who would be given employment and a place to live) agrees to the bargain. He naively believes that he has done something good to help his family survive. His daughter will be trafficked into the sex or household servitude trades perhaps in India, more often overseas.

There is also pressure on families because prices are going up. A simple example, the taxi ride from Chennai down to where I am staying was 25% higher this year. We had been warned by friends that this would be the case. We see increases in food prices from our local fruit stand and grocer.

So yes, change is inevitable but for some it will bring hardship. Even the local merchants who often see tourists through the region are barely managing as there are so few tourists. The guest house here are all full of vacancies. My newly developed and completely unscientific British Airways Index noted that there were only about 6 non-Indian persons on board. This would typically be about 30% of the passengers. This time, there was the usual group of Indian families returning from lives overseas to reconnect with family back home; there were the grandparents returning from pilgrimages to see their grown children and their families but there were very few of us obviously coming to be a tourist.

Being the curious kind of guy, when standing waiting for luggage arriving at snail pace, I chatted with some of the tourists. One was there for 3 months for a volunteer gig and a few were going to wander with backpacks. Not a lot of tourist dollars on this flight. Friends here tell me that the tourist traffic in the region overall is down very significantly. This impacts the economic base for many.

The community here is much quieter with visibly fewer tourists to be seen. This creates for us more chance to be quiet. I have my first meeting with the child protection group tomorrow and thus, a better sense of what I will be doing during this visit.

My good wife April

The wonders of “IT”

As a social worker, there seems no escape from it. Everywhere I go, it seems to follow me. There I am already on this trip to India, on a flight from Calgary to London, and I am engaged in it. “It” is the sometimes not so subtle activity of observing people, their behaviors and wondering how they fit into various social work theories.

So, I am sitting in the second row in the cheap seats on British Airways watching three mothers and their babies in the row in front of me. In so doing, the work of attachment theorists John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main came to mind. Here I was, essentially in an attachment laboratory watching the mother – child dyads at work.

In the seats in front of me was a remarkably anxious mother. She was nervous about the interactions between she and her baby which was reflected in the way in which the baby would not settle down. As the little boy grew restless or noisy, mom got anxious and then so did the baby. It would take quite some time for the baby to settle.

At the far end to my left was the emotionally cold mother. Oh she was good at the basics of feeding, changing diapers and so on. She was not emotionally available however. Thus the child managed her mother by using intense, pay attention to me behavior. If the mother did not respond, the child intensified.

In between the two mothers, was a woman who was significantly in tune with her child. She could read the cues well and responded accordingly. The child settled knowing the mother was at hand. It was interesting to watch this mother, at one point, assist the anxious mother. The baby calmed in the arms of this stranger although kept his mother in sight suggesting that there was indeed some level of security in the attachment relationship.

Later, on the flight from London to Chennai, I watched a mother engage in face to face emotional mirroring with her baby. As the child would smile, so did the mother; as the child’s gaze wandered to something, the mother followed and responded. When the child was upset (as so often happens when children are cooped up in a plane for 9 hours) the child sought out mother to be soothed. The mother was highly responsive and the child calmed very quickly. Further, the child sought out eye contact with the mother who offered this vibrant communication.

As the observer, I was also fascinated with the cross cultural nature of what I was observing with these and several other examples. It very much reminded me that attachment is not about culture but about the essential relationship between a parent (in these cases all mothers) and their infants. It is such an amazing building block for the future allowing the child to predict whether or not the world will be safe and responsive. What a joy it was to see tis in action.

While I was observing, I also saw cultural responses from people around these babies. At the time, I was reading Lisa Aronson Fontes wonderful book Child Abuse and Culture. She quoted the American writer Barbara Kingsolver in what seemed a most appropriate quote about an experience in Spain’s Canary Islands:

“ Widows in black, buttoned downed CEO’s, purple sneakered teenagers, the butcher, the baker, all would stop on the street to have little chats with my daughter… Whenever Camille grew cranky in a restaurant…the waiters flirted and brought little presents, and nearby diners looked on with that sweet, wistful gleam of an eye that I though diners reserved for the desert tray. What I discovered in Spain was a culture that held children to be its meringues and éclairs. My own culture, it seemed in retrospect, tended to regard children as a sort of toxic waste product: a necessary evil, maybe, but if its not our own we don’t want to se it or hear it or, God help us, smell it.”

The flight was almost entirely Indian in at least culture, although passports suggested a wide array of residence countries. There was the nurses (husband and wife) now living in England; the retired engineer from Chennai; the family from Toronto; the older couple who resided in Chicago – but all predominantly Indian in cultural origin. There were but a small smattering of other races. So, when as the last half hour of the flight occurred, the plane began a slow descent which is so hard on infants, the cacophony of cries that emerged almost in unison, was impossible to ignore. But unlike the same experience in North America, here was a chatting about the noise and the challenges for the babies and – most importantly – an understanding that just made the experience quite normal.

I believe it was Mark Twain who spoke about the value of travel. I should look that up but, as I write this in rural India shortly after arrival, there is no power, much less any internet. But this journey has awakened my sense of how powerful parenting can be. I am reminded why we teach about attachment and the wonderous journey it can create for a child.