Volunteers

Sanjaynagar Mukhundwadi is the name of the slum area where I’m currently posted. The hospital runs a clinic every night from five to eight in which patients can see a doctor and receive medicines for 5 rupees per visit, which is the equivalent of about 17 Australian cents. There are two doctors who sit either side of a small desk in a room that teams with mosquitoes after the sun sets. Together the doctors see up to 180 patients on a very busy day making an average of 2 minutes per consultation. The time is without a doubt insufficient but given the time constraints and lack of manpower, these doctors do an exceptional job of providing healthcare to a community who would otherwise have had to go without. Keep in mind that simple chest infections, skin wounds or dietary deficiencies would have literally destroyed lives and families were it not for these doctors.

That being said, the doctors are only a part, and not even necessarily the most important part of the centre. The doctors come from outside. They were born, raised, educated and now live outside the community. Everyone else who works there are volunteers who were born, raised and now live in the community. I could write endlessly about the centre itself, but this article is primarily about them.

Over the last two days I’ve met many of these volunteers; there are about 20. Most of them are around my age (some of them do not know for sure so they just guess). I got a chance to talk to one of them in depth. I was interested in what motivated this young man, who came from a cash strapped family, to forgo salary paying work and instead work for free for the centre. He told me that when he was growing up he was helped by volunteers from the centre. Young men and women gave him a hand and pulled him up out of the vicious cycle of slum life and now he felt that it was his turn to do the same.

I asked him, what he thought his life would have been like if he had not been pulled out.

He told me that staying in school and continuing his education was the most important difference that was made. You see many children, if not most children, come from families in which their parents are self employed. They are working selling fruits and vegetables, or shining shoes, or working as servants, cooking or cleaning, in the homes of the middle class. Basically in unskilled industries. Most parents want their children to stay in school, but sometimes their insistence is not strong enough, or they do not fully realize its benefits. The children who drop out realize that they too can work in these industries and make some quick cash.

Imagine being in their situation.

It starts off with you ditching school to go and help your dad shine shoes. Like any young kid that idolizes their dad, you feel proud to be doing the same job as him, to be at his level. Soon you realize that instead of working side by side, you can both make more money if you work separately. You’re now earning an income that brings home some desperately needed cash to your family. Your parents are thankful, and again you feel proud. Then you realize that as you get more efficient, if you lie about your income to your parents you can keep some cash for yourself. Cash that’s all yours and nobody elses. Cash that you can do whatever the hell you want with. Why not? After all, you earned it right?

You go watch a movie, you see all the movie stars that everyone always talks about for the first time. You buy your first cigarette, drink your first whisky, why not? All the other men are doing it. Don’t you want to be a man too?

The volunteer I spoke to told me that he can count the number of people in his grade at school that do not drink or smoke on his hands. There are five thousand school going children at any one time in the area.

He doesn’t drink or smoke, and now that he is 22 he no longer feels pressured either, his time is over. He has been saved.