Visit to an MCC Partner and Women's Group

For the past two weeks, Ruth and I have been busy moving into our new roles and office space in the MCC India office in Kolkata. It feels very good to finally be here even though there is still so much to learn. January is the time when we’re busy working at the annual budget and program plans for the next year. This is primarily Ruth’s responsibility as the new director for our office.

We’ve both had panic moments when various parts of the puzzle didn’t seem to fit together. Thankfully, we have an excellent Kolkata staff that has made it possible. Different people have been able to supply us with different pieces to the puzzle. Ruth and I have also been taking long walks around Kolkata to help us become familiar with our new home.

It’s hard to describe those walks past many small shops and streets full of people. We pass flowing water hydrants where people are washing. We walk past auto and machine shops that spill over onto the sidewalks. And we walk past poor laborers who have thrown up a piece of plastic supported by sticks against a wall as temporary shelter. People everywhere are friendly and we’re surprised at how quickly we’re beginning to feel at home.

On Saturday we accompanied our MCC staff to visit a development project in West Bengal near the Bangladesh border. (See the pictures above.) We enjoyed the verdant green scenes of growing crops as our train traveled through this rich river delta. At the end of the train line, we walked to the river bank where we were ferried to the other side on small boats. Then we climbed onto motorcycles that had been converted into huge tricycles for carrying passengers. After a short ride we arrived at our destination.

Our program partner, the Resources Development Foundation (RDF), has been working at rural development for seven years. As we arrived, the local welcoming committee showered us with music and flower petals. They proudly showed us around their beautiful demonstration farm which is actually situated on a small island in the middle of the vast farming delta, interwoven with canals and small rivers.

Salinity is a big problem as salt water coming from the sea makes the water in the rivers unfit for irrigation purposes. One project has been the building of a sluice gate to keep the salt water from infiltrating the area. Another is building water catchments to collect and store fresh water. As a result of such work, ten villages are now able to raise two or three crops annually instead of the traditional one.

It’s a very poor area in which seasonal agricultural workers earn as little as $25 a month and primary school teachers earn about $125 a month. A recent RDF initiative has been to start women’s groups and farmers’ groups working at economic and social transformation. One of the women’s groups was in charge of our welcome and preparing the gourmet feast for our outdoor picnic. It was rewarding to see their pride and confidence in hosting us. They are clearly determined to create a flourishing community.

Some of the challenges they talked about are the dowry system and early marriages that force women into prescribed roles with little future. Micro-credit economic schemes, raising social awareness, and adult education, are all part of their efforts. They believe women are crucial to the wellbeing of the family and the entire community. Empowering women is key to the empowerment of their villages.

The work in these West Bengal villages involves a strategic partnership between the local women’s and farmers’ groups; the efforts of RDF (in which may retired professionals from Kolkata donate their time); and MCC, representing the generous contributions of congregations in North America. Ruth and I have the blessing of serving at the intersection where it all comes together.

Christmas in India

The one picture above is of children in a school that MCC helps support in Afghanistan. The other is of the snow capped peaks of the Himalayas as seen from hill station where Ruth and I spent Christmas. I began to write this Christmas post from New Delhi. We already feel like old pros as we tool our way around town in auto rickshaws. We have come to enjoy this city. It’s hard to believe that our first three months of language studies are already behind us. Those Hindi script squiggles that meant absolutely nothing are now beginning to form themselves and make sense to us. Language study can be both frustrating and incredibly fascinating for our fifty year old brains.

We spent Christmas in Mussoorie, an ancient Himalayan hill station that is 6,000 feet above sea level. We went there for several days of relaxation and also to check out further language studies for our MCC team. Chitranjan Datt, the principal of the famous Landour Language School, graciously interrupted his vacation to meet with us one morning. We had a fascinating discussion about Hindi and how our brains learn languages as we sipped tea on his patio overlooking the hills.

This is the first Christmas season that Ruth and I celebrated without our children. December 23 was also our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. We could not help reflecting on how this year marks a new epoch in our life journeys. I remember teasing Ruth many years ago as I was studying Buddhism that the last stage of one’s active life, following that of a householder, is the stage of renunciation. I jokingly said that I was thinking about becoming a monk after our children left home.

Maybe Ruth and I have become a monk and nun couple if there's such a thing. We said goodbye to so many things, including our children and our home in Virginia, to take this assignment. At times we’re painfully aware of all we left behind but we’re also amazed by the new world unfolding in front of us. We absorbed the stark beauty of the distant snow capped Himalayan peaks as we trekked on various paths and ally ways around Mussoorie. One day a knowledgeable Indian man showed us the various peaks through his telescope. He claimed that the most distant peak we could see was actually in Tibet.

In the past month Ruth took an administrative trip to Afghanistan to visit with our MCC partners. She was shocked by the devastation she saw in Kabul, to war-torn capital city and could only imagine what the rest of the country looks like. There is little to see from the billions of dollars the American government dumped into the country. She was also impressed by the love and perseverance of our partners. Will the Afghani people finally be able to achieve a degree of self-determination in order to rebuild their devastated communities?

We also participated in an MCC strategy session on Myanmar (Burma) that was held here in Delhi. That country has captured my heart and imagination ever since I traveled there for MCC in 2000. Its people have known no peace since the Second World War when it became a front in the fight between British and Japanese forces. Thousands of Indians fled the country, many of whom died in the long trek to Bengal. After a short spring of independence after the war, the government was hijacked an oppressive military junta engaged ever since in a protracted civil war with its ethnic minorities.

I am now finishing this post from our apartment in Kolkata. There will also plenty to occupy us in India in the coming year as we assume the roles of Ed and Twila Miller, our capable predecessors. We look forward to settling into our apartment and beginning to work with our excellent staff that has kept this program running with their years of dedicated service. It rarely makes headlines but it is, nevertheless, so necessary for creating communities that reflect God’s grace and justice. Things like education for children, healthcare, and community development are the bedrock for flourishing neighborhoods.

It is also evident that we will need to give more attention to the work of peacebuilding and nurturing healthy and mutually respectful interreligious relationships. Tensions between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus have flared into communal violence in several places in the past months. Some of you may have heard news reports of violence in Orissa and Nandigram. I especially look forward to leaning to know the Mennonite communities in India in the coming year. Hopefully we can work together toward a grace filled and transformative presence in the subcontinent.

This Christmas season Ruth and I reflect on the meaning of being followers of Jesus in our world. Jesus was born into a poor family in a land occupied by a brutal empire. The Christmas story involves the humiliation of this family’s forced travel to their home province to pay the mandatory Roman taxes. During this trip Jesus was born in a stable with common shepherds as witnesses.

One can easily imagine Jesus becoming an angry and violent revolutionary. Instead, he chose to live out of the center of God’s love for the whole world. His strategy for social transformation began with himself and his band of disciples. His struggle for peace with justice was always through peaceful means. Ruth and I pray that we can be true followers of this Prince of Peace in the coming year.