The past few days I have been in Madurai, a small city an overnight train ride away. Accompanied by a lovely colleague and IJM aftercare manager, I had the privilege to interview a couple of students in the government law college there. Both are children of former forced laborers, rescued from a brick kiln in 2004. Both are the first in their families to attend college. Both are full of ambition, driven by a desire to excel so that they might fight for their humble communities. Sitting on a rusted green folding chair up on the rooftop of the law college hostel, tape recorder capturing the answers to my questions asked for me in Tamil, moleskine in hand as I scribbled translations, I thought to myself, how do I do this justice? And justice is a word I do not use lightly. His story deserves an audience. His story deserves a truthful telling, neither polished off nor embellished.
I suspect this question will haunt me the deeper I am immersed into this work; how do I do this justice? The more I engage with the culture, the customs and -- mostly -- the people of South Asia, the more I doubt my ability to recount the stories and provide the panoramic view I can barely take in when I'm standing right here seeing and smelling it all in real time. I'll continue to offer simple snapshots of my life and work here...though no more tonight. I am too excited to sleep not in transit, with my backpack looped through my arm on the third bunk of an overnight train like last night, or in the back seat of a car bumping down a dirt road then scraping by buses on the four hour journey back to the city, like my nap(s) today (I got off the train this morning at 7:30, brushed my teeth at the office, had a coffee and headed out on another trip to interview a family very recently freed from a rock quarry).
Perhaps I'll sort out some of the bits and pieces from my whirlwind "business trip" over the weekend. Until then, I send you the blessings I (accidentally!) received from this elephant:
No comments:
Post a Comment