Seeing the face of real poverty

By Darrell Laurant

Published: October 31, 2008

Mark Russell never thought he would be able to walk past someone lying on a city street without stopping.

That was before he went to India.

“It’s just overwhelming,” he said. “I had read about it and heard about it, but really seeing it is something else.”

Russell is the director of L’Arche Blue Ridge Mountains, which describes itself as a “faith-based community … made up of people who have intellectual and physical disabilities (core members) and those who assist them (assistants). We live together in mutually supportive relationships, discovering the unique gifts and talents of every person. Our goal is to be a sign of hope and a changing presence in the local community and the world.”

Changing Central Virginia is one thing. Changing India — where Russell recently attended an international L’Arche Conference in Calcutta — is quite another.

“My idea of travel,” he wrote after he returned, “is go somewhere and become part of where you are — get to know people, get to see how things work there, maybe help out if you don’t get in the way. I hate crowds and always try to find some way to be busy because I feel so out of place in crowds.

“But, on the first morning in Calcutta, I tried to take a walk when it was cool (it was never cool) and quiet (it was never quiet) and before the crowds came out (they never went in).

“After less than a block, I realized that I was walking through people’s bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms. I was totally out of place. People did not glare or seem to resent my intrusion, but I was very aware that it was wrong to stroll around people going through their lives and in some cases possibly their deaths.”

Of all the countries in the world, India and China may offer the most dynamic contrasts, like ancient trucks trying to function with high-tech engines. As Russell discovered on a brief Indian tour, the juxtaposition of new and old is often striking.

“As we drove through the countryside,” he said, “the one thing that struck me was that everyone was making bricks. Every field had a kiln, every road had women walking down it carrying bricks on their head. People were even digging for bricks that had been buried.”

Meanwhile, cattle stand in the middle of the road, perhaps secure in the knowledge that they are considered sacred animals.

“Our guide told us they do this for two reasons,” Russell said. “One is because the breeze from the passing vehicles blows the flies away. Also, he said, they seem to get high from the exhaust fumes.”
Like almost all Western tourists, Russell kept his camera busy during his visit, and one of his favorite photos shows street beggars in front of a Rolls-Royce dealership.

“That was in Delhi, which was a very modern city,” Russell said.

In India, humanity displays itself in multiple layers — tradespeople, software engineers and beggars, all living close together. It produced Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa, both of whom have had an enormous impact on Western moral beliefs, yet still nurtures a caste system that perpetuates stark injustice. It is considered a model for the world in religious tolerance and diversity, and yet we read about violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims.

All of this was almost too much for Mark Russell to take in in just 10 days. The experience prompted him to craft a written statement that he shared with fellow members of the Church of the Covenant upon his return.

“Every time someone asks me ‘What was India like?’” he wrote, “I have no way to answer. There is ancient history, beauty, creativity, art, eloquence, but at the root it is people. More people than I had ever seen in one place and living in ways I had not experienced.

“Poverty to me was living in homes with an outhouse and a wood stove, not sleeping on sidewalks and using the gutters as toilets and rivers as sewers. Not walking by bodies and leaving some rupees by a hand that might never close on them. Not seeing open sores that would never be treated. Not smelling those sores.”

L’Arche, originally founded by a French Canadian seminarian named Jean Vanier, has sunk deep roots into India. It rests on a model of taking people as they are and treating them as equals, resisting the twin urges to dismiss or pity them.

“I saw people in India scavenging through garbage dumps alongside dogs and pigs,” Russell said, “and as we passed, they would smile and wave.”

One of the “core members” of L’Arche Blue Ridge Mountains is also from India. Local board member Ann Butz accompanied Russell to the conference.

“I feared going on this trip,” Russell wrote. “I did not want to face real poverty, but now I know that real poverty is failure to change. It is not hunger for food but hunger for resolve to be someone new.”