Six Degrees: The Stanford Journal of Human Rights

From Heart to Heart and Hut to Hut

By Apurva Khedagi Winter 2013

featureEcuador of Kandivalli feature.Women

13

From Heart to Heart and Hut to H

Improving basic health by building self confidence and self reliance in the women of Kandivalli.
There were houses next to houses on top of other houses in the Kandivalli slums. There were rats, human and animal feces, cows, spit, mosquitos, and, my greatest fear, a group of stray dogs, waiting as if they had just sighted fresh new bait. As I drew near them they started barking, and just as I thought I would be attacked, an uncle chased the dogs away. Suddenly, all my initial uncomfortable feelings were diminished by this strangers gracious actions. I realized this summer was going to be one those clichd once-in-a-lifetime learning experiences. As a kid every summer when we went to Mumbai to visit family, my parents and I would always drive past the numerous slums of Dharavi as we drove from the airport to our home. I always thought, no matter what career I would pursue, I wanted to come back and offer my skills to this part of society, to the people who needed it, who deserved it just as much as any other human being. Approximately, a family of 15 and many mice share around 300 square feet of space in a typical slum in Mumbai. Many have just built houses in illegally occupied land or illegally rented homes and because of this illegal status, they are deprived of basic services and rights. Due to a lack of toilets, people resort to using the local river for urination and defecation. During the monsoon season, a flood of rainwater spreads all of this waste throughout the slum. Along with this, the lack of clean water supply and space lead to the death of 13,000 children every year from preventable diseases like malaria and diarrhea in Mumbai. While scientists are working to find the cure for cancer to help save lives, so many lives can be saved in the world just by empowerment and external support. We have all the materials to help save millions of lives, throughout the world, and as the advantaged, it is our duty to help those who deserve the right to live. The Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health continued on page 15

14
by Apurva Khedagi

o Hut

PREJEAN: Continued from p. 8

People are getting sick all around here. But what can you do? When youre poor, theres nowhere else to go, said Bolivar Cevallos, a former Cacao farmer who abandoned his home after his daughter, Diana, contracted severe illnesses, allegedly due to exposure to pollutants.i Diana was diagnosed with histiocytosis X, a rare blood disease causing tumors that bore holes into her skull. Before Cevallos moved, he lived next to an oil well close to San Carlos, which had contaminated his water supply. Maria Barba, the doctor who diagnosed Diana, said the water likely contributed to her illness.ii Dianas story is typical of many Ecuadorian civilians exposed to oil extraction sites. From 1964 to 1993, Texaco, now owned by Chevron, operated an oil concession in Ecuador, causing unimaginable harm to the environment and the people of the Oriente, a region of northeastern Ecuador. Texaco neglected to manage the waste products of its extraction and contributed to a rise in serious diseases among the indigenous population. Yet, contrary to expectations generated by the violent histories of other oil-exporters such as Nigeria and Colombia, no armed struggle arose from the health and cultural grievances created by Texacos poor waste management. This surprising aberration is due to Ecuadors historical commitment to street

democracy, which offered a political opportunity for successful non-violent organizations to develop. Opposition movements therefore had no need to resort to violence. During the time Texaco operated its oil concession, it released over 18 million gallons of oil into the rainforest and destroyed the lives of countless people living in the Oriente. In 1980, Texaco deemed the 4 million dollar cost of moving waste products to concrete-lined pits too expensive and consequently left toxic waste in pits only several feet above the water table.iii Waste proceeded to leech into the water table and the wells that served as peoples main source of drinking water.iv Beyond causing this environmental disaster, other complaints against Texaco included the burning of waste oil without pollution controls, contaminating the air that the people breathed; spreading oil on the road, exposing people to oil-covered dust; designing pipelines that have had repeated ruptures, leaks, and discharges of oil; and failing to make an effort to clean up spills that would flow unchecked for days.v Reports arising in the 1993 court case of Aguinda v. Texaco paint a devastating picture of increasing disease in the region. According to a court-ordered report conducted by 15 scientists and supervised by Richard Cabrera, an Ecuadorian geologist, all 94 oil

feature.Women of Kandivalli

15

Action, SNEHA, has been working for the past two years on a project, ArogyaSarita - an Integrated model of Primary Health Care - a pilot project being implemented in Kandivalli, a slum area in Mumbai. The project aims to lessen the lack of health knowledge and provide quality health care using an integrated approach to health care. Through my fellowship, I worked in accordance with this project by improving the basic sanitation of the people of the slum community. Each week, I went on home visits with the staff of SNEHA to the various areas of the slum neighborhood: Janupada, Vadarpada, Shreeramnagar, and Damunagar. I became acquainted with the slum community and then conducted group meetings in three different areas of Kandivalli with three distinct women communities on topics, such as sanitation, diseases like malaria and typhoid, and gutters. While I helped spread awareness through group meetings, poster crafting, and displays, I realized that by spending time listening to their stories of struggle and sharing my own experiences, I

was building relationships with them. I grew especially close with some of the women, and there was even one child who would never let go of me once he saw me. I found that these relationships and connections were the only way I could relate to them and have them accept the scientific information I was relaying to them. I experienced the need for and the value of self-empowerment in public health. As I developed a relationship with the women in the community, every week they brought their friends along to the meetings, which in turn grew in size. The women actively participated in the interactive discussions and seemed to have really learned and understood the importance of sanitation. As I became closer with the women in each community and heard about their lives, they began to accept my presence and even willingly helped increase the attendance and reach of my message by bringing more and more friends to the meetings every week. Because of these relationships that I have been fortunate enough to have been able to build, even the goals I

16

wished to accomplish through this fellowship were easier for me to complete. Then, in the last few weeks of my fellowship, I gave the women I worked with and built relationships with sanitation materials such as toothbrushes, combs, and bandages, through the support of donors through the Haas Fellowship. Lacking basic resources, the women would not be able to incorporate all I had told them about cleaning their teeth, if they did not have a toothbrush. I realized that material support is also very much needed in helping stop the spread of preventable diseases. As I experienced in India, both personal,

grassroots support as well as material support is needed in order to help stop the spread of such preventable diseases in the slums of India. Almost half of all lives lost each year in Kandivalli, Mumbai are due to poor sanitation in the slums. Millions of lives are lost each year because adequate information and basic resources are not available. Many lives are lost because basic human rights are denied. However, millions of lives can be saved today, through the promotion and support of human dignity, by the approach of self-empowerment along with fundamental material support.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Apurva Khedagi is a sophomore at Stanford who will likely be majoring in Human Biology. This summer she performed a Haas Fellowship in which she self-designed a project to promote sanitation and basic health awareness to the communities in the slums of Kandivalli, Mumbai. Using group meetings to connect and understand the issues of the women in the areas, she tried to illuminate the importance of sanitation as well as help them come up with practical solutions themselves to help stop the spread of preventable diseases. Millions are dying each year due to unreasonable reasons, preventable diseases like diarrhea and malaria. Because they are denied basic human rights, many are in turn denied the right to live. Whether it is through Haas Summer Projects or lifelong projects, action must be taken.