I think the nicest thing about this little trip was that there wasn't anyone there. It was quiet and calming. Just a great juxtaposition from the ordinary noise, chaos, and crowds you find in the rest of Chennai.
From it's horizontal branches, the Banyan tree grows shoots down into the ground for support. The next picture shows how they had to provide additional steel structure to the branches that were particularly weak (and probably to ones that endangered visitors by growing over the path).
In the afternoon we went to a local branch of an MFI (micro finance institution) that operates in Chennai called SMILE. After a brief introduction to their organization we went to a self help group meeting. This was, by far, the best experience I've had so far. The women in the picture below all live in the same village and all have outstanding loans with SMILE. They gather weekly to submit their repayments to the loan officer. The meeting starts with the loan officer playing the anthem of the company and having the women recite the oath. The oath basically includes all the rules (such as: I will work hard, I will be cooperative and supportive to the other women in my group, I acknowledge that if another woman in my group cannot repay that I must pay for her...) The women pictured below are sitting in rows according to their loan groups.
Each group leader collects the repayments from the women in her group. The woman on the far right below is the (overall) group leader who collects all the payments from all the groups. She also counts it and hands it to the loan officer - the man on the left.
The children were very excited to see us, and much like my previous visits to developing countries, they were particularly excited to see their photos on the digital camera screens.
The women of the SHG (self help group) were also extremely excited that we were there and wanted to take and see pictures of themselves as well. Unfortunately I think my camera was on a little delay for the following picture, so that everyone was already walking away a little. The girl on the left is Helena, she's from Mexico, and Caroline in the bottom is from Canada but studying in Germany. They are among the 10 or so interns that I interact with the most.
The most fascinating part about this visit was definitely the ability to interact with the women. None of them spoke much English, but we had a few interns who spoke Tamil and were able to translate back and forth. They did an excellent job, but I couldn't help but feel like they were saying so much more than was being relayed to us. The girl speaking in the picture below is Nikhita. She's an undergrad at Brown, but her family is from Chennai, so she was translating for us.
(According to the translations) the women were very forthcoming and honest about their experiences within this SHG. Many said that have been very profitable in their small businesses, but that they would like to grow. We mentioned that they could pool their resources together and rent a space to put their sewing machines and all work together. They claimed that they didn't know how to do that and that they weren't educated enough to expand like that.
One of their biggest complaints was the amount of their income they spend on rent. Because this community is still "in" Chennai, most people rent their homes from a landlord who charges extremely high rents. The women were very open about the fact that they would rather have the MFI give them a house and have them pay off weekly payments for their home. Of course, there are many reasons why an MFI can't do this, but we proposed to them that they get together and go to the loan officer and branch manager with their concerns. On an even bigger scale we asked them if they had ever run for local government office. Most said that they wouldn't know how even if they could. The woman from CMF (sort of our group leader) mentioned a study done up in the northern part of India which showed that women politicians tended to spend more money on education, health services, etc. whereas men tended to waste much more of the community surplus. They didn't seem surprised by this, but nonetheless, still felt like it was something they couldn't do.
They were so excited to talk with us - the woman on the left gave all the girls bindis.
It's about 7am right now and we're getting ready to go back into the field to see a more rural SHG settup and get to more about the activity in the village. I will post again today or tomorrow with more pictures and stories.
beautiful pictures kj....i really like photos of people and these are great!
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