Today we headed out to a small village that the local ministry refers to as “The Stone Village”. It is named this as it sits right next to a giant rock quarry and the inhabitants of the village almost all work at the quarry.
We have spent the past week working in the slums, but it didn’t prepare me for this village. The people live in thatch huts with padlocks on the doors to keep intruders out. I’m not sure the point as I watched a dog make his way out of the hut through one of the walls. Most had holes and were 6 feet high at the peaks and 10-15 feet long. There were smaller 3 x 3 huts that looked like they could potentially be used as bathrooms. We also saw cisterns that could be filled with water. But, we peered into the two in one housing section and one was empty and the other was so full of garbage and waste that I can’t imagine anyone drinking the water that came from it.
A small hut The cistern with the drinking water.
The small housing area was empty as everyone who lived there was actually off working at the quarry.
We learned from the ministry personnel who brought us that most of the people who live in this village come from another village for work. They leave their families for 6 to 12 months in order to make enough money to support their families and then return home. The workers return again when they can no longer afford to be in their own village. This is hard to fathom as this isn’t lucrative work. For most, the pay is around 200 rupee or the equivalent of $4.25/ day. I find it challenging this year to live on $3/ day for food. How can they do all of their daily bills on a salary like this and have money to send home to their family?
But, this was not the part that I found most haunting about the day. From where the huts were located, we could see down into the rock quarry. Through my telephoto lens, I found it heart-breaking to watch this small boy, maybe four or five sit in the quarry. What kind of a place is this to spend a childhood? I could see my nephew Max in this quarry spending a 12 hour day waiting for one or both parents to finish working.
But, then I looked further on to see a woman with a baby on her hip carrying a giant basket of rocks on her head. Is this my sister with my niece Ava on her hip? I could barely breathe with the dust and I was above the quarry. What kind of life is this for a child? For a family?
But, where I had to turn away was when I saw a couple of children who could be my niece Ellie, my nephew Max, or my niece Kera. It is always hard to gauge the age of children here as nutrition is so non-existent that most children seem incredibly small. But, from across the quarry I could see this small child walking across the cliff pushing rocks down to the waiting truck.
For the family, a full truck means more money at the end of the day so this child has learned to assist in the process by pushing rocks that looked to weigh as much as the child down the hill. Is this the face of child labor? Is it what poverty really looks like? A childhood spent in a rock quarry trying to help put food on the table. Where are the games, the free play, coloring or swinging on swings? I am so thankful for the childhood my nieces and nephew can have in the United States. I am also convicted about how often I complain about how hard a job I have and yet how simple my job can be compared to laboring in a rock quarry day after day in hopes of making enough for my family to eat.
After we finished walking around and praying for the village we did a small children’s program. About 40 local children came and it was fun to see the joy they still had in the midst of trying circumstances. I’m not sure if these children spent the day in the quarry or whether they were left behind. But, I am so thankful for the opportunity to sing “Father Abraham” or “Who’s the King of the Jungle”, to act out Bible stories, and to provide hope of something so much better than material wealth in a place where the children have so little. It was amazing to hear the laughter and the joy and the cries of “Auntie, take my picture!” It is hard to match the two experiences that took place less than 30 minutes apart on a “typical” day in India.
I do know that this morning I was reading James 1: 9-11 “Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.” I have been pondering these verses all day and as I prepare for bed this evening, I wonder how it all fits with what I experienced today.
