Calcutta volunteer stint skews attitudes and preconceptions

Emily Menkes' experiences amid the poverty and grime of Calcutta lend a whole new meaning to the festive season.

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Public holidays can take on entirely new meanings when they are experienced in a different context.

This year, I am spending Christmas and New Year in Calcutta, working for the Institute for Indian Mother and Child (IIMC*).

As a result, my preconceptions about the meanings of these holidays have been completely skewed.

Even in a secular context, the meaning of Christmas still has relevance and value, particularly the emphasis on family, togetherness and charity.

And there is nowhere in the world better to appreciate the full implications of this idea than Calcutta.

With 14 other volunteers from New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Germany and Italy, I have spent December in very basic conditions in the middle of a densely populated, dirty and fascinating city.

It's been a massive reality check for us all.

India's renowned culture shock and poverty have been intensified by a lack of hot water, myriad mosquitoes and relentless noise, air and water pollution.

These inescapable features of life in Calcutta penetrate even into our dreams, despite the knowledge that we are staying only seven weeks.

Seven weeks can seem like an unbearably long time under these circumstances.

But a resilience born of camaraderie and the knowledge that we're doing something useful makes it all seem worthwhile.

As a result, our spartan circumstances have become increasingly easy to adapt to and, as our attitudes have changed, so have our preconceptions.

The IIMC is a developmental organisation split into four main missions: medical, educational, micro-credit, and women's empowerment.

I originally came in order to teach colloquial English and computer skills to Bengali children but, as December is an examination month, my activity has been limited to occasional teaching of instructional songs and painting in creches, orphanages and schools.

I've also taken part in the healthcare activities the other volunteers are involved in (all except me are medical students).

Working in rural health clinics, I've learned how to dress wounds, administer injections and record temperatures, respiratory rates and blood pressure levels.

Not what I came for, but that hardly matters on the ground in India.

We have tried (because we're young and passionate) to take this developmental project to our own personal and grassroots level.

On Christmas Day, we took food to the slum areas of Tollygunge, the neighbourhood around our guest house in southern Calcutta.

It caused, in its intensity, a near-feral lolly-scramble, with reams of malnourished children bombarding us for our food.

As a result, the provisions we got didn't last nearly as long as we'd hoped.

Having extreme poverty right on the doorstep of our middle-class, relatively safe neighbourhood proved how these realities simply cannot (and should not) be ignored.

Another personal project has been helping a genuine victim of circumstance get his life back together.

One of the volunteers talked to a beggar on the street, found him to be intelligent and articulate, and shortly afterwards introduced him to the IIMC director, who is in the process of providing him with a place to live and a micro-credit loan.

Not only has this helped him, and us (with our desire to make change), but it has also helped to soften our scepticism of the beggars who are devastatingly present on most street corners.

As India has many scams and gang connections, every beggar's presentation and story has to be taken with a pinch of salt, because you are never sure where the money you give them is really going.

I have never fully appreciated my fortunate circumstances until