Hilfe, die Amis kommen!

Translation from German: Help, the Yankees are coming! Used as the title of the 1985 movie National Lampoon’s European Vacation. If you know my family, it’s a fitting title for our European adventures. 

When I got to the airport in Paris, there were two customs lines and I got in the line most of the people from my flight were getting in. I don’t know how they figured out my nationality but a French guy pointed to the other customs line – “USA over there.” But I was halfway through the EU line and I had to cross several dividers to get out of the line. So, naturally, I did the most adult thing possible. I crawled across the floor of the French airport underneath the dividers to the other side of the room, the non-EU line. I looked up to see a bunch of Frenchies looking at me. I was the stereotypical materialization of the dumb American tourist. I was crawling across the floor and it was the epitome of sophistication. 

Afterwards, I walked out to meet Clark Griswold, er, my dad, in the main area of the airport. We got in a cab and drove to the Eiffel Tower, because why not? We then were at the Eiffel Tower for the appropriate amount of time to snap some pics for Facebook. Literally. We ran out of the cab, grabbed a selfie, and ran back to the cab, the epitome of the “check-it-off-the-box” style of tourism of the postmodern Instagramming era. It made me recall the part in European Vacation where the Griswolds go to the Louvre and Clark enthusiastically proclaims “Thousands of works of art to see! In the fifteen minutes before they close! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Afterwards, we darted off to the Gare de Lyon (picture me saying that with the most stereotypical Southern accent possible) and hopped on the first of several trains that would take us to Zermatt, Switzerland. 

The train from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland went fairly smoothly, but the train from Lausanne to Visp was a classic Griswold mess. The Amis got off at the wrong station, but the one nice Swiss guy helped  helped us figure out how to get to Visp, and which restaurant to go to while we waited for the next train. Eventually we made it to our hotel in Zermatt, and settled in for the night, ready for a full day of skiing tomorrow. 

Important note: ski runs in the Swiss Alps are way harder and steeper than New Mexico and Colorado skiing, and some of the higher runs that don’t have any trees mess up your depth perception and make it difficult to ski, and result in you falling down the mountain. Boom. Crash. Pow. I also sucked at skiing after not having done so in over five years with the exception of skiing/snowboarding in the Dubai mall, which doesn’t really count. So I came back with many bruises, to say the least. The Swiss should really invest in an Achtung, or warning sign to warn us overconfident American skiers. But written in English. That would be sehr gut.

After Zermatt, we headed off to go to Saint Moritz, Switzerland, where the Griswolds stayed at the strangest B&B ever. When we arrived, no one was there to check us in. Was this the right place? Our names were written on a piece of paper with the key attached so apparently so. Then it just got weirder, and some Swiss guy who thought we had left was walking into our room at six in the morning. He quickly realized we were still in there, and quickly left without another word. The next morning, I was showering, when some woman came banging on the door mid-shower, and then approached my dad. “Too long! She is taking too long! This is not normal! Too long!” I got out of the shower, we packed our bags, and said tschüss to that bizarre place. 

“It felt like that scene in Vacation when the Griswolds spend the night at the wrong German family’s house,” my dad commented. It was an über Griswold situation indeed. 

And then in typical Griswold fashion, the handle of my suitcase broke, retiring it from the many adventures it had taken me on. I was strangely and nostalgically attached to the thing. But getting a new suitcase would have to be postponed. Die Amis had a train to Rome to catch. 

Auf Wiedersehen. 

The Dharavi Slum: Mumbai, India

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The thing about India is that it is a land of extreme contrasts. In addition to having some of the most expensive homes in the world, there also is extreme poverty and dire living conditions. Unfortunately, extreme poverty still exists within India, and which leads to several human rights issues. The first step to addressing these human rights issues is simply raising awareness, which is why I share their stories with you.

Inside Mumbai, India’s largest city, is Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia and the second-largest slum in the world. It’s practically a city within a city, as millions of people reside within it. The quality of the dwellings vary, and some are actually very nice homes. The traditional definition of a slum has nothing to do with the actual living conditions of the area but the fact that it is a settlement illegally constructed on property not owned by the residents.

One of the first sites that we came across was a large complex known locally as “The Laundry,” where thousands of people would come to hand wash their clothes (some of the residents owned only one or two sets of clothing), sheets, and in some instances, towels and sheets from hotels and hospitals in the area. In one section of the slum, houses were shoved up against the barbed wire fencing of the airport, and children were running one hundred feet from where the planes were taking off. There were many openings where children could sneak out onto the runway, and even children who stayed off the tarmac ended up with permanent hearing damage from living directly next to a large international airport where planes were taking off every few minutes.

Within the slums, we passed by a medical clinic – though it had nothing more than a dirt floor, table, and the occasional rusty medical device here and there. This was where the slum dwellers went to get their healthcare, if they were lucky enough to afford it at all. In addition to expensive private healthcare clinics, there were government-operated hospitals where patients could receive care for a low cost or free, however, basically, as it was explained to me by a resident of Dharavi, these hospitals were a last resort where people went to die, because it was easier for a live person to limp to the hospital than to have to arrange for several people to carry the corpse, which is also considered to be “unclean” in many of the religious traditions of India. A lack of public health infrastructure meant that it could be days before a deceased individual could be removed from the slums, which creates a major health risk for the inhabitants. So, in some cases, checking into a government-run hospital in India is like climbing into your own coffin.

The risk of disease in the slums is high, and epidemics frequently strike the slums due to a high concentration of people in a small area and poor infrastructure. Pesticides are frequently used in the slums, which affects the children in particular, who do not have the antibodies to fight off the pesticide, and, as a result, become extremely ill, permanently disabled, or sometimes die. Within the slums, there are many stray dogs, which creates a major public health issue as a slum dweller is bitten by a dog every two seconds, and, in many cases, the individual bitten is infected with a deadly disease such as rabies. Many of Dharavi’s residents believe that there is a conspiracy by the Indian government to release rabies-infected dogs into the slums to reduce the number of slum dwellers so that they can build over the land.

Due to inadequate medical care, the intentional handicapping of people for the purposes of gaining more money from begging, or simple bad luck, there are many handicapped individuals living in the slums who are unable to join the workforce and earn a living to provide for themselves and their families. One man with an amputated leg was, due to an inability to afford crutches, basically crab-walking on his hands and one good leg through the streets of the city and the slum and through unsanitary conditions and toxic chemicals.

Unfortunately, the slum dwellers are seen as fortunate in comparison to some of Mumbai’s other residents. The poorest of the poor, the “street sleepers,” make up a large portion of the urban population. At my hotel, I could see some of the street sleepers from outside my window, which included women, children, and the elderly, who were lying on a hard concrete floor, sometimes without a pillow, blanket, or cushion between them. Each night, I saw a woman in the park across the street from my hotel sleeping on the concrete with her toddler. The woman appeared to be pregnant, and there was no one to watch out for them to make sure they were safe, a dangerous situation given that the streets of Mumbai were so unsafe for a woman that I was not allowed outside of the hotel after dark, and the recent gang rapes and murders of women on buses in the city.

Out of sheer desperation to spare their children from a life of poverty and suffering, some of the poorest parents would kill their own children and newborns. Unable to feed another child, good, kind people are being forced out of desperation to kill their own children to protect them from the pain of starvation, disease, and poverty. In many circumstances, it is regarded as an act of sympathy. Desperate for some income to feed themselves and their other children, sometimes the parents would then sell their own children’s dead bodies on the black market so that their organs can be sold on the black market.

While there are many challenges facing India, there is also massive improvement and economic growth occurring on a daily basis. Within the next twenty years, India will develop an even stronger middle class and become a major actor on the global political and economic stage. Businesses are developing, which will bring a multitude of benefits for the Indian economy and day-to-day lives of its citizens, which will – hopefully – bring an end to some of these struggles that individuals are facing and improve their quality of life. Additionally, providing vocational opportunities and improving conditions in the slum is not simply a human rights issue – it is an economic issue. With millions of residents, the slum possesses a huge resource of human capital that is not being fully maximized. Expanding job opportunities and education for slum dwellers will not only improve their quality of life and raise their incomes – it will also greatly benefit the Indian economy as a whole as it becomes one of the world’s major industrial centers.