An Hour Before Sunrise

                Whenever I travel via Kolkata (Calcutta) I have a tradition.  I like to wake up an hour before sunrise and walk the alleyways.  My path often leads me past the large market near Sudder St.   The streets are full of thousands of the homeless sleeping under porticos, on top of food carts, along the sidewalks or, during the hot months, in the middle of the road.  After waking, they rub their aching backs and then their lives unfold entirely in public; they bathe in the street, brush in the street, dress in the street, buy a cup of chai and start their day in the street.  Where will they go to work?  What will they do all day?  I watched one such man put on his sandals, roll up his mat, tuck it in the bottom of his food cart, pull out a stove and wok to start cooking atop where he’d spent the night.  He was still there cooking pakora when I passed by late that evening.  When I walk by in my sneakers and travel pants they probably wonder why a “man of privilege” is sauntering around their sphere of poverty.  Perhaps they think I’m just there to “slum it up” for a morning… as yet another passing diversion.

                Here in America I now have a new tradition.  I wake up an hour before sunrise and ride the streets.  On my bicycle, I short cut through the Walmart parking lot on my way to work.  The homeless are there sleeping in old Buicks, ramshackle RV’s, old vans with black garbage bags taped over the windows and in the backs of pick-ups covered by homemade plywood toppers.  Few realize that the Walmart parking lot is one of the only places that people are legally allowed to camp in their vehicles overnight for free.  As I ride by, they wake up.  Where will they go to work?  What will they do all day?  They rub their backs, which ache from sleeping in the passenger seat, before wiping the condensation from the windshield.  As they look through the fogged glass perhaps they see me as just another “man of privilege” out for some morning exercise on his road bike.  But I’m not out for exercise, I’m going to work as well.

                Many of the men who seem so poor in the streets of Kolkata, view themselves as one of the ones who’ve made it.  They’ve left families behind in the far flung villages of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.  They cook samosa and sell chai all day.  They sleep in the street to save money… so as to send it home to their families.  Their families often have no fertile land or are uneducated and therefore unemployable.  Their kin are eating while many of the neighbors are not.  While the tourists to Sudder St. view them with pity, they may actually feel a sense of pride.  They are feeding large families back home thanks to those four rupee cups of chai and two rupee cups of “ice cold lemon water”.  Even better off are the bicycle rickshaw drivers.  Many, myself included, grimace as they see an emaciated old man pedaling and sweating, in the kind of heat that only Kolkata can produce, conveying a fat merchant to his shop.  But how does that rickshaw-walla feel about himself?

                Yesterday, the sun was hot as I picked vegetables.  The sweat ran down and stung my eyes.  I work on a local organic farm making just a bit over minimum wage.  Few realize that there is no overtime pay or health benefits in the agriculture sector.  It’s codified.  The pay is meager and the work is hard.  Occasionally, a volunteer will come that wants to work a few days to get his or her hands dirty, to ‘reconnect’ with the earth they are estranged from or perhaps just, ‘slum it up’ for a few days.  Recently, a professor of songwriting from a large university came to work with us.  We became engaged an interesting conversation about modern life and incomprehensible trends in our culture.  At a certain point, he gave me a quizzical glance and asked me about my educational background.  After giving him a very abridged account of my studies and work he responded in a rather surprised tone,

“Oh… I guess I just expected that those working on a farm were, you know, high school drop outs and those who didn’t have any other option.”

I responded, “Well Nick over there just finished his Master’s in Biochemistry, Leah has a P.H.D in the clarinet, Steve used to play Tuba for the New York Symphony and, as far as I know, all of us are here by choice.  We love our jobs and prefer a rich life to a rich pocketbook.”

The truth is that I actually do like picking vegetables out in the hot sun.   I like getting dirty, sweating and not having a car to drive to work in.  I like my life, even with all its discomforts and many frustrations.  I’m free to live according to my convictions about the environment, society, culture, agriculture, nutrition etcetera.  Leo Tolstoy put it best when he wrote, “There is nothing more intolerable for a man than to live in contradiction to his convictions.”  So, I feel rich.  I feel like a man of privilege.  But when others see me riding home from work in my muddy Carhartt’s, on a hand me down bicycle laden with blemished vegetables… they probably assume me poor.  By most governmental and social indicators, I am poor.  I earn less than the national poverty threshold, take classes from the community college, my kids eat ‘free lunch’, we shop at Goodwill and receive WIC and MEDICAID.  The experts say I’m poor and many members of the political establishment and public consider “folks like me” a drain on society and the economy.   So am I? 

The numbers do not reflect the environmental value of choosing to live simply.  The public health stats do not assume that my kids eat better, and by better I mean healthier not more, than many of those in higher brackets.  Those who suppose the poor to be parasitic do not know that I run a non-profit on a volunteer basis.  The social workers would not guess that I’m prepping for med school as well with the intention of bringing high quality healthcare to the Himalayas.

                Occasionally, as we lived in remote villages in the Himalayas over the years, a western tourist would stumble across our path… literally.  More often than not, I’d be wearing the same Carhartt’s muddy from building a school, trail, a health clinic or just simply farming.  Like the professor volunteering at the farm, their curiosity would be peaked and would want to know my backstory.  Amanda would often invite them over to our mud floored cabin, lacking electricity or running water, for a cup of tea.  Almost everyone had the same reaction, “Man, I’ve always wanted to do something like that, something that really mattered.  To live someplace like this.  I’ve just… just… never been able to.”  By all indicators we were poor in that context, so why were we considered rich by our guests?

                I’m a rich man.  I’m rich because I’m healthy and loved, have incredibly supportive family and friends, am the citizen of a country which supports its citizens in all seasons, am able to live according to my convictions and have the freedom to pursue a better life for myself as well as my neighbors near and far.  I have found again and again, around the world that the poor have a beauty and a richness to share.  Like the rich, the poor want to share that richness but have “just… just… never been able to.”  When we co-founded ECTA, our mission was to show rich and poor alike that we are “able to.”  The lines between rich and poor are blurrier than we imagine, highly based on context and perception.  Unfortunately, most people allow the narrowness of their contexts to invisibly limit the possibilities.  Throughout the years we have worked with an incredible array of characters.  We’ve seen patients become caretakers, struggling students become teachers, farmers become community developers, mothers become midwives, drop-outs become ambulance drivers, the malnourished become strong healthy individuals, the poor become rich and the rich become poor to make it all happen.

                I’ve had to reinvent myself as of late as an “older student” and now the Executive Director of ECTA International.  ECTA is growing, changing and reinventing itself as well.  Check in on our website, www.ecta-international.com to see our redefined mission and vision.  Follow us on Facebook to keep up with current events and to discover articles on issues related to our work.  Look to yourself to discover what your part is in ensuring that “All can be born into love, live in hope and die with dignity” rich and poor alike.