Volunteering

I awoke to the sound of a loud chanting coming from outside my room window. It was 5:ooam on my first day of volunteering and the wake up service was the call to prayers at a Mosque down the street. This call, which occurred 5 times a day, would be my alarm clock for the time I stayed at this guest house.
I met Adrian at about 6:00 am and we walked to Sealdah Train Station where we would be volunteering. The 15 minute "commute" to the train station would take us through a very poor slum area of the city. The fortunate people in the neighborhood had store fronts that by day they sold goods and services and by night they and their families slept inside the small 15'x10 shops. Out on the sidewalk in front of the shops were the carts. These folks sold food and goods on their carts or tables by day and slept on top of, under or around the carts at night. Again, these were whole families camped out, including little kids and babies. Many utilized a tarp, tied to the buildings and trees to provide some shelter or shade. Then there were the people that just plain old lived in the street. The walked around by day and laid down on the sidewalk at night. Needless to say, many of them were not in the best health. At 6:00am on the walk in, most of the people were still asleep, so the walk went by quickly. By midday the sidewalks would be choked with humanity and it would be like walking upstream in a river to try and get somewhere.
When we arrived at the train station, I realized there was another group of street people and those were the people that lived at the train station. The term "street person" is commonly used here to refer to people without homes. This term seems to me to be more appropriate than "homeless". To me "homeless" seems to refer to someone who grew up in a home but that somewhere along the way something went wrong and now they are without a home, but may, soon enough, have their luck turn and be off the streets. This doesn't apply to the "street people" of Kolkata. They were born on the street, live on the street and will spend their entire lives on the street, including having children.
The people that live at the train station were just waking up when we arrived. Many of these people were children. Orphaned children that live at the train station. The organization that I came to work with is called CRAWL. It stands for Children's Resolution and Women's Learning Society. Along with having a small classroom for children to learn English and math in one of the suburbs of Kolkata, they do two train station "projects". These two projects would be the ones I signed up for at the train station called Sealdah and another train station called Dum Dum. Train stations become very populated with street people because the metal roofs over the platforms provide shelter from the sun in the day and the rains during monsoon season. The train station is also one of the only open areas of ground to lay down on in the city. Pretty much every other square inch of land is being used.
The work at the train stations is suppose to focus on the street children. In the mornings we buy food and milk and feed the children. We then play with them for a little while and then tend to any wounds that anyone at the station, not just the children might have. We set up a spot on the far platform at the train station, mostly out of the way. When a full train pulls into the station, it's amazing the number of people who get off of it and at times it's not hard to image how people can get trampled to death. In between the train arrivals, though, there's a relative calmness. Besides Adrian and me, there are 4 other volunteers. These other volunteers, all female, live in an apartment out in the suburbs where the English and math classes are taught. And all of them teach these classes. Most, but not all, come to at least one of the train station projects some of the time. Adrian and I are the only ones who have signed up only solely for the train station projects. Feeding the kids is pretty easy and their fun to play with too. The wound care is relatively straight forward with only a couple of nasty infections here or there. After a few days you get to know the names of the kids that live at the train stations. They love it when you break out your camera and take their picture then show it to them. There are about 2 dozen kids all together and then a handful of mothers with children or babies that we feed. While we feed the kids, train loads of people go by, many of them staring with a "who the heck are you?" look on their faces. This is not a touristy area at all and I don't think many westerners come through here. While Hindi is the most wide spread language in India, the people of Kolkata and its state, West Bengal all speak Bengali. Most of the people I encounter here do not speak English, especially not the people that live on the streets. Many of the signs are written in 3 languages: Hindi, Bengali and English.
On my first day at the train station I was watching one of the kids draw on a piece of paper while through the fence three adults were wrestling a huge pig to the ground. This was occurring on an empty railroad track. They finally got the pig down and tied up and were dragging it off while it was squealing and screaming. I had planned on working with CRAWL for one month, but would leave them after one week. A few of the other volunteers would leave as well.