Email from India April 15 02

April 15, 2002

Dear Everyone,

Greetings from Hinda and Peter. We hope all is well with you as it is with us. The only thing that is not great is that it is very very hot here, and it gets hotter day by day. By the time we leave here on May 4, it will be at the peak. Now, it is only a little over 100 degrees each day, sometimes 104 or so. Anyway, we can’t control the weather.

Since we only have less than 3 weeks before we return home, we’ll probably make this our last letter to you.

We have one more small trip planned for this weekend to Chennai where we have been a few times but never for overnight. Chennai is the 5^th largest city in India with a population over 6 million. It is on the Bay of Bengal, (Indian Ocean) and therefore quite humid.

We are very pleased with how things have been going here at work. We just helped RIDE do their latest annual report complete with photos – some of which we took – and it turned out very well. We helped edit the English and wrote some of it, and most important helped RIDE learn some of the techniques for formatting it on the computer, especially cropping and sizing the photographs.

One of the most important things in our opinion was the creation of a series of meetings between RIDE and loom owners and government officials to dialogue about child labor and discuss ways of reducing/ending it. On Saturday afternoon we had a very important and successful meeting including some of the most important and biggest loom owners and important government officials. At the meeting RIDE “unveiled” a new kind of loom that can make the famous 2 sided, 2 color sarees without the use of child labor. At the meeting, one of the largest loom owners committed to purchase some for his factory, and before the meeting ended there was a commitment from the largest loom owner to convene another meeting (it will be the 3^rd one) before we leave here. So we are very happy about this development because there seems to be desire to continue to work on the problem.

We have also been spending a lot of time teaching one of the people here much about computing and many other things that are important to running an NGO, (non profit), and so by the time we leave we will have passed on quite a bit of information. This person is a woman who has not had the opportunity to learn many of these things and it is gratifying to see how much she has grown and is growing.

We will give you a more complete rundown of all of our activities, accomplishments and failures at another time.

Yesterday was the Tamil New Year and there were a variety of interesting celebrations and observances including special foods at the restaurant where we usually eat.

We went to a village in the morning and took some great photos – we hope - of people, farms, children, etc. While all of the Indians are very friendly, the villagers seem to be the most friendly, and it is very geuine and open. We will give the photos to the villagers. The last time we did that they really appreciated it.

Hinda started taking photos of the people in the restaurant and now there is no end to it. Each worker, about 240 of them wants their picture taken and she now can get a job in one of the malls when we return taking Santa photos! Hinda is the most popular persons in all of Kanchipuram.

We still have to fight with the hotel almost daily about no hot water, although during the day the cold water is hot because of the high heat here. They always want to send a “boy” to fix the water when Hinda is in bed.

As you may know, there is a lot of female infanticide in India. Girls are not desirable. They have to be married off with an expensive dowry and for poor families it creates a problem. And because women usually don’t work especially in the villages, they are not wanted and thus many are killed in early infancy. Even though it is against the law of course, it still happens very frequently.

There is also a big problem with child prostitution especially in the big cities. We have seen this also in Thailand.

The problem with the laws here is that they are often not enforced. There is a lot of corruption and bribery in almost everything. Everything is for sale by every official and it is a very big problem.

Traveling here by car or bus is like playing Russian Roulette and sooner or later you will be involved in an accident, either minor or the other kind. Luckily, we only are going to have 3 more “long” (50 mile) car rides and hopefully Lady Luck will be good to us.

So, that’s all for now. See you in less than 3 weeks.

By the way, if any of you have contributed to RIDE please let us know so that we can have RIDE thank you and of course we want to thank you also.

Regards and love,

Peter and Hinda