Food Before The Law
While life is not picture perfect in the USA, one thing America can justly pride itself on is the idea of the “American Dream.” No matter your initial socio-economic status, hard work and ambition can provide you a ticket to a better life. I have a friend from high school that grew up in a drug-infested, poverty stricken neighborhood in Chicago. He worked hard and obtained a scholarship first to Phillips Academy Andover and then to Harvard. He is now a star trader at Goldman Sachs and his prospects are unlimited. In India, such a rise to the top from an underprivileged background is virtually impossible. The country revolves around an elite 1% of the population that owns the other 99%, with family businesses that extend for generations controlling the lot of it. The poorest are so poor that there is little hope to rise unless some sort of viable standard of living is obtained. India is a nation of about 1.15 billion people, and the amount of untapped potential that lay in the slums and in the countryside is staggering. Without the basic necessities of life, how can these children even begin to dream? What would they even dream of?
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Slumdog
It was the Oscar winning movie that couldn’t help but make the world fall in love. Given the success of Slumdog Millionaire, Dharavi was naturally my first foray into the vast slum life of this grand city. Even though I had already been working with slum kids at the Akanksha Centers, I thought it was important to explore their lives in the slum itself, to see firsthand where they came from and to understand their worlds. The Dharavi slum remains the largest slum in Asia, and with over 1 million people clustered in 1 square mile, it is the only slum that you can see from the moon. There are numerous tourist agencies that operate there and offer guided walks through the area. The tour guides explain that their mission is to show visitors that the slum is not filled with a lazy and apathetic people, but rather a hard-working community that collaborates to live another day. There are over 10,000 different industries in the slum, from the traditional pottery and textile industries to an increasingly large recycling industry that processes recyclable waste from other parts of Mumbai. Dharavi exports goods around the world, with the total turnover estimated to be around 650 million US Dollars per year. The men in the slums work 10 hour days, melting aluminum and plastic, without even masks to protect against the fumes. The women wash empty kerosene cans in boiling hot water from dawn until dusk, without gloves to shield them from burn. And they do this for a mere 150 to 200 rupees a day. To give you a first-hand sense of the disparity in Bombay, I was at a friend’s birthday party on Marine Drive where her Indian boyfriend bought the table a 21,000 rupee bottle of champagne. The bill for 6, which he covered, was over 100,000 rupees. In 2 hours. Sans food. Most people wouldn’t see that amount in their lives.
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A Delayed Departure
I thought I was leaving for Brazil on October 10th. But I had trouble getting my visa—for reasons too complicated and too boring to explain— and I’ve been stuck in Los Angeles. After three long weeks, my passport finally came in the mail, and I’m hoping to be in Fortaleza by next week. So for my first blog entry, I figured I’d tell you a little bit about myself and my relationship with Brazil and the state of Ceará.
Each of my family members has deep connections to Brazil. If I wanted to, I could start the family history about forty years ago—when the Silvers’ love affair with the land of Pelé, Xuxa, and Lula began—but instead I’ll just clarify that my parents aren’t Brazilian. My brother, who is a Brazilian citizen by birth, married a woman from Ceará this past summer.
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Why Hip Hop???
Hip Hop Hut. ©Melissa Adams 2005
• What do you like about Hip Hop?
• What do you dislike about Hip Hop?
• How did you first hear about Hip Hop?
• Who is your favorite Hip Hop artist and why?
• What influence do you think Hip Hop has on young people in northern Uganda?
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Two Weeks Before Heading Off To Malawi
It’s two weeks before I head off to Malawi and I am buzzing. I am currently trying to read everything ever written about HIV/AIDS in preparation and the reading list just seems to be getting longer and longer. I am definitely “hooked” on this subject.
I recently got a CD of Peter Mawanga’s “Zanga Zo zama,” the primary musician who I plan to collaborate with in Malawi. Peter’s music is hard to get in the states and he actually arranged an inter-continental rendez-vous between myself and a mutual friend who gave me his CD. I closed my eyes yesterday and listening to the whole thing from start to finish and was left salivating at this guy’s breadth of musical knowledge. He rocks.
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