Dirty Wall Project

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It’s finally here!!!

After 3 years of work which included assistance from numerous people who donated their time to taste test recipes, offer editing expertise and the time-consuming work of designing the book, (huge thanks to Nicole Sims (Coley Sims Creative) who donated hours and hours and hours…) Kerosene Curry has arrived. The book’s journey began in the slum community of Saki Naka, Mumbai nearly three years ago. My mother (Cindy Ryan) spent a very hot and cramped couple of months inside tin shacks huddled over kerosene burners in the lane ways of the community madly trying to decipher the hindi/marathi language using hand gestures as she penned the women’s recipes. The women, who come from all parts of India to attempt a better life in Mumbai, were  humbled, excited and proud to show off their traditional styles of cooking passed down through generations. Leaving Mumbai with a small book filled with wrinkled pages of notes and hundreds of photographs she arrived back home. Three years later, which included multiple trips straddling India and Canada, the crumpled note book has morphed into a beautifully designed book with the women’s stories, recipes and photos of the community they call home. This book has been the ultimate labour of love and we are so excited to bring their recipes to life for all of you.

The women of Girls Can Be (also from the Saki Naka community) spent hours sewing reversible aprons made from 100% cotton sheeting to be sold as a compliment to the cookbook or alone. The colourful, bold patterned sheeting is used in slum homes as bedding and can be seen drying in the sun on bamboo poles, hung on wire lines on the backs of tin huts, and used as curtains in ragged doorways offering colour and pattern to bleak surroundings.

DWP’s new partnership with Lost + Found Cafe in Vancouver has given DWP a new home base here in Canada where you can purchase your very own copy of Kerosene Curry! All proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Dirty Wall Project.

Kerosene Curry Cookbook: $29  

Reversible Apron: $20 

Combination Kerosene Curry cookbook + reversible apron $45 (shipping/handling $5 per book/per apron (within Canada)/ $9 (USA)/ International rates differ depending on country.

To purchase a copy of the book please email: dirtywallproject@gmail.com or call Lost +Found Cafe 604-559-7444 (Vancouver)

Below is the story of how this book came about…

June 2010,  Mumbai, India

My eyes water. It may be from the heap of onions, freshly sliced, sitting on a plate nearby, or it may be from the smoke of burning garbage, or the sweat dripping from my forehead into my eyes, or it may be the kerosene burner, throwing invisible fumes into the small, windowless room.

I wear a scarf to wipe my eyes and my forehead. I wipe my hands on my pants, so that the pen doesn’t slip out of my fingers, and the paper I am writing on stays dry. It is humid, hot and stifling in the tiny dwellings in the slum. I have been invited into their homes to watch and learn how to make amazing, simple, Indian food.

Once the women wake the children, put away the sleeping mat, sweep out their tiny homes, and clear the puddles and garbage away from their doors, we walk to the shops. There is some excitement in deciding what to cook. We shop together at the markets, but I pay for everything. This allows the women to cook recipes they wouldn’t be able to afford, and to make enough to feed their families for a few days, with ingredients left over. I am excited about their menus each day, eager to make sense of the complex flavours, and  learn the methods for making delicious curries, chapati, and sweet treats.

The Saki Naka slum community is home to women from all over India. The food they cook reflects their heritage in the spices they use, the methods they use, and the type of food they covet. Goats were slaughtered in front of me, chickens necks were sliced and their feathers were expertly and quickly removed, fish were grabbed by the gills from a bucket of murky water, slapped on a large, grimy stump, heads were removed, and the scales were scraped with a dull knife. All this bloody carnage was plopped in plastic bags, tied tight, and dropped into the women’s shopping bags, but not before the flies had had their feast on the raw meat. Vegetable vendors line the uneven streets with piles of expertly arranged produce to seduce the crowds of shoppers. We buy bitter gourd, tiny eggplant, lots of onion, bags of garlic, and bunches of cilantro. The tomatoes are plump and juicy and thrown into another plastic bag with some green chilis. I am the subject of much conversation. I can tell by the hundreds of eyes who are staring at the only westerner in these parts. The stares melt into grins and a nod of the head and sometimes a lilting “hello”.

The cooking and the prepping takes place on the floor. Indian women handle food with delicate gestures,  slow chopping, and gentle stirring. The food is not attacked, it is seduced into simmering broths of heady, spicy aromas. Debris from slicing, grating and pounding is scraped by hand off the floor, and put into a container to be disposed of later. Knives are basic. All the prepped ingredients are put into little containers to be used as necessary in the preparation of a meal. Dishes are washed and rinsed under a tap in the corner of the room where they also bathe. They take care to wash all meats and vegetables before using, and  expertly guide children, with their muddly feet,  around the sliced and diced ingredients laying in dishes on the floor. Children are offered tastes in tiny, metal dishes and relish the flavours. Torn pages from newspapers drink the leftover oil from deep fried morsels. Nothing is wasted in the slum. Everything is repurposed.

I watch from my cross-legged position in a corner of the room and write furiously in my notebook,  making notes about approximate quantities (they don’t measure), cooking times, and trying to decipher what they are telling me. They speak Marathi. Sign language is necessary. I am startled when all the homes have an electric grinder to make the masala paste and grind spices. This is their most coveted cooking tool and the their only appliance. As the food bubbles in hammered aluminum pots with plates for lids, the women wipe away the mess on the floor and bring out a wide stainless steel tray with 3″ sides. Flour is sifted in to the tray, water is added bit by bit and their strong, bony hands deftly knead the flour and water mixture into a smooth, elastic dough. Balls of dough are pinched off the large piece, rolled into balls, dipped in flour, flattened into small disks, rolled out, folded, floured, rolled, flipped and finally laid to rest on a pan, pre-heated on the kerosene burner. There is more flipping, and pressing of the dough to make cloud like puffs of air within the layers of dough. Of all the food I have watched the women prepare, the chapati is revered and each woman treats the dough slightly differently, some oil the dough while cooking, some splash it with water. It is eaten everyday and it is necessary for a cook to master the process.

When the food is cooked and ready to eat, all the cooking pots are moved under the tap to be washed later and a fabric or a woven plastic mat is laid out on the floor for seating. Water is poured, perhaps a mango drink is offered. Kane and Ashley are called from their work and the three of us eat, cross-legged on the floor, all eyes watching us.  The hospitality is gracious and sincere. Guests eat first, the family eats later, despite our protestations. Neighbours come by to see how we like the food, children lurk in doorways, and we pepper Ashley with questions about the food, the women and their families, their situations and where they came from. The stories are as varied as the women, and though they all have different financial situations from dire poverty to ownership of a slum home, they live in a community of people bound by a caste system with few opportunities to swim against the tide of poverty.

It has been an enriching experience. I will take with me their lessons on generosity, neighbours helping neighbours, giving when there is nothing to give, and the sincere attitude these women had when trying to teach the foreigner in their midst how to cook on one burner, without measuring, crouched in living spaces not much bigger than a western bathroom.

Though they have yet to dress me in a saree, but have intentions to, I have learned how to say “enough, no more”, in Marathi. “Bus, bus!!” I moan, as they try to feed me another plateful of food.

The Dirty Wall Project will be producing a cookbook of these recipes, with the women’s stories, and photographs of their families, themselves, and their homes. The cookbook will be for sale, with 100% of the proceeds used to make many lives more comfortable in india.

Sincerely,

Cindy Ryan

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12►

Written by Cindy Ryan

Maya is so tiny. Still under 80 pounds and she is six months pregnant with her fourth child. But there has been progress (She has gained almost 20 lbs in the last 7 weeks) and the sustained hope that with four women watching over her she will deliver a healthy child from a healthy body.

For a poor woman in Mumbai to deliver a baby in hospital and receive a modicum of care, she must register with a municipal hospital. This will ensure her baby has a record of birth, the first step in being counted. Maya, in her early twenties, and already a mother to three children, is one of millions of poor women, pregnant, malnourished and frail who must rely on inadequate maternity care at a municipal hospital or remain at home foregoing any prenatal care.

Maya’s home is a tiny cement box just off the lane way, near the bridge where the traffic flows day and night and the bad kids from the slum gather to lounge, spit, and pass time. Standing in her home I have to be mindful of the fan just above my head. Maya turned it off and giggled as she rummaged through the plastic bags hanging on nails, looking for her past medical records. Her husband, Pramod, sat slumped against the wall, sleepy from a night of work at a powder coating company. He made a comment in Hindi to Maya and her eyes glossed over with tears and her face became tight. Reluctantly, Maya left her home with me to go to a municipal hospital to register and get the first check-up for her pregnancy. Once in a rickshaw, Maya let the tears flow and I anxiously asked Indu, who was accompanying us, to ask what was upsetting her. Maya told Indu that her husband told her she was to return home within two hours or she should not come back. Hoping this was just a sleep-deprived man talking nonsense, we continued on our journey to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital and took our place in a line-up outside in a cement courtyard to wait over an hour for a clerk to open a window to process maternity patients for one hour only. There were at least 80 women in front of us, and soon, over 100 women behind us.  Maya perched on a ledge wet with spongy green moss while Indu and I kept our place in the line. The women waited, tolerant and patient. The hems of their sari’s wafted in strong breezes, fluttering and falling with each gust of wind that suddenly came and went. There were burka-clad women chatting in tight groups and women sitting cross-legged on the ground continuously wrapping the end of their sari’s over their heads for shade.  A few husbands littered the crowd. I was envious for Maya that some of these women had husbands by their sides.  When the rain started, the chatter became more animated, and the wait became more frustrating.

Once inside the hospital, Maya was separated from Indu and me, and made her way upstairs to sit in rows of a few hundred pregnant women for her turn to be weighed, measured, have her blood tested, talk to a doctor, and then return downstairs for a tetanus shot and supplements which, in Maya’s case they were out of. This was a four hour process. Indu and I took turns sneaking up the stairway to peer in at the waiting women, trying to spot Maya in the crowd, trying to determine when it would be her turn. The public area of the hospital has two benches for hundreds of people coming and going, waiting and worrying. We eyed the benches, waiting for a turn to sit if only for a few minutes.

Municipal hospitals are for the poor and are run by the government. The services provided are barely adequate and anyone who could afford to go elsewhere would not enter this place. The interior of this hospital had moldy, smeared walls and large rooms with numerous beds and no privacy. Rusted iron tables sat beside sagging iron beds covered with dirty pink pieces of rubber laid over stained sheets. The staff seem burdened and sluggish. The cleaners mopped lazily over large swaths of floor, moving dirt around in concentric circles.

For the poor, the alternative to having their baby in a municipal hospital is to have a home birth. Maya, who is from Nepal, had her first daughter, Suman who is now six, in a field in a remote village where she lived.  Her second child, Prem, now four years old, came suddenly while Maya was in her home. Her third child, Nandini, was born in a hospital in Mumbai, just over a year ago. Maya and the many poor, pregnant women like her, need much more care than what a municipal hospital can provide. Thankfully, Mumbai has a Foundation for Mother and Child Health clinic (www.fmch-india.org) which provide mothers free information on nutrition, health care, hygiene, as well as necessary supplements and personal attention from Dr. Rupal Dalal and her team of social workers and nutritionists. When we first took Maya and her children to Dr. Rupal a few months ago, she weighed 70 pounds at four months pregnant. Suman and Nandini were malnourished and Prem had calcium deficiencies. Watching Dr. Rupal handle her caseload of women and children is inspiring. A pediatrician and a mother, Dr. Rupal is devoted and dedicated to their care. She requires the women to be pro-active with the health of their children and themselves and to visit the clinic on a regular basis. It is a struggle to keep these women, many of whom are illiterate and abused by husbands, to maintain the regimen Dr. Rupal and her team aim for, but the success stories, of which there are many, are worth the fight. Months ago, we took a family of six kids to Dr. Rupal, all of them malnourished, and they are now healthy, active and energetic.

Since our departure from Mumbai in August, we have enlisted the help of two wonderful women (Jaita Guhu and Aarti Kalro) who had volunteered with DWP in the Saki Naka community, to ensure that Maya and her family continue to get the care they need to become healthy. Jaita and Aarti have kept Maya and her children on task with supplements, hospital visits and visits to the Foundation for Mother and Child Health. This is no small favour. Maya can’t manage any of these trips on her own and her husband has so far not accompanied her, so Jaita and Aarti must take hours out of their day to ferry her back and forth through the thick of Mumbai traffic to ensure she gets to the clinic and the hospital. Because Maya can’t read, they must also help her to understand instructions for medication and supplements. Her health and the health of her children count on them.

Aarti and Jaita report that both Nandini and Prem are now healthy and Suman is progressing, but not quite there yet. Maya is now almost 90 pounds at 6 months pregnant, but still needs more nutrient rich food in her diet. Dr. Rupal gave Maya some food bars containing essential nutrients as well as some health bars for the children. She has instructed Maya to include eggs three times a week in all their diets. Aarti is suggesting that she take Maya to register at a municipal hospital much closer to the community which will make it easier to get to when the time comes for Maya to give birth.

With the expert care, and loving attention that Maya and her children are receiving from all of these selfless women, we are hopeful that she delivers a healthy baby while improving her own fragile health. The problem Maya and most poor women in India face is the lack of knowledge regarding basic nutrition and the lack of quantity and quality of food they can afford. One out of every three malnourished children in the world live in India. Many kids in the slum live on glucose based biscuits, sugary tea, watery dal and white rice. As Dr. Rupal has pointed out to me, malnourished kids have stunted growth, lower IQ’s, and higher rates of infectious diseases. Cramped living conditions, open sewers, and not boiling drinking water leaves them at risk for constant illnesses. The Foundation for Mother and Child Health (FMCH) is taking the necessary steps to educate those who come to their clinics. Kane and I met with Dottie Wagle, the Chairperson of the India Branch of FMCH. In our short meeting we understood how determined she is to continue this initiative in other areas in Mumbai, making this amazing, free service for the poor accessible to more communities throughout Mumbai.

We are hoping that Maya and her young family can be the example of what quality care, education and a community of caring women can do for the poor, the illiterate and the abused. Maya is becoming less shy and more capable and is already showing signs of a take-charge attitude to her children’s health-care. This is progress. We had a chance to talk to Maya, Suman and Prem on the phone while they were with Jaita a few days ago. Though the conversation is limited to the little Hindi we could understand, it was great to hear Suman’s raspy voice and Prem’s constant chatter. And sweet Maya was as happy to hear our voices as we were to hear hers.

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I look across the clinic waiting room and watch the young mother. Her face is held in contempt, her eyes stare straight ahead and her lips are curled down and I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking.

An hour before, while I was walking through the community, I noticed her youngest daughter wobbling after her older brother towards the school, barefoot and filthy, her stomach protruding prominently over her shorts. I stopped the ragged twosome and asked where their house was. Ashley and I went to their home and found out the family had only recently moved to the community in the past few weeks. This family’s story is a familiar one across India and our community. Meager earnings and six children leave the young mother over-burdened and unable to cope with the numerous medical ailments of the children and she has begun to turn a blind eye to the obvious health problems her youngest daughter faces.

I nudge Ashley and whisper to him to look at the mother and ask why he thinks she looks so angry with us? He’s uncertain as well and we think maybe it’s because she’s unsure of us and might be wondering if we are as well meaning as we say we are. A few more minutes go by but I can’t take it. I ask Ashley if he’ll sit beside her and ask her what’s going on and if she is still OK with us taking her children to the doctor?

Ashley gets up and quietly sits beside her and speaks to her. I watch as his face turns from concerned to frustrated and I fear what she has said. He puts his hand up in frustration and sits beside me. He tells me she wants to know why we are causing her trouble and why we can’t just leave her alone? I look down at her daughter who stands below me gently tugging at my leg hairs, her huge unblinking eyes are dark brown, nearly black. She is unaware of her problems and I’m saddened, not by her mother’s comment, but by the situation so many families find themselves in and the lack of knowledge they possess to pull themselves out. This mother, no doubt, came from a family just like her own, starved of nutrients during her early years which stunted her development both physically and mentally, setting in motion her current situation.

It seems everywhere I look since my return to Mumbai I see insatiable greed that is ruining the lives of those at the bottom of India’s economic pyramid.  Money drives our world and in India’s boomtown, money means everything, including access to proper education and healthcare.

India’s Healthcare system is divided into two parts, municipal (government) or private.  The private healthcare option ranges widely from the mildly affordable to the ridiculously posh with deluxe surgery suites. But the municipal level is even across the board with crumbling buildings, overworked doctors and packed, filthy corridors where the the sick come to get sicker.   The cost of care is low for surgery and medicine at the government hospital but the chance of infection and long waits are guaranteed. India’s upper class often speak highly of these government hospitals speaking frankly, saying that these hospitals are there and free so why do the poor patients still want to come to the private hospitals? I have met with countless cases in Mumbai where adults and children have contracted HIV through blood work at municipal hospitals. (Read my blog post about our friend Ganesh’s final hours at Sion Municipal Hospital last year). I have had the opportunity to work helping poor patients in dozens of hospitals both private and municipal across this city and each time I am no less appalled and embarrassed for a city with immense wealth to house patients in crumbling buildings, with rusted bed tables and stained sheets. Two weeks ago, while funding an angiography for a DWP patient at a municipal hospital in Mumbai, I decided to attach my small Go Pro camera to my backpack as I wandered the halls hoping to show a glimpse of what India’s healthcare system looks like from the bottom up. Two hours later as we still struggled to get the appropriate forms filled to even gain admittance for our patient, I suddenly noticed I was surrounded by tan coloured uniforms and one angry hospital supervisor yelling at me in Marathi. The gig was up and I was quickly escorted out of the hospital for illegally filming and taken to the hospital police headquarters to meet the sergeant. Nervous and ever thankful that Ashley was with me to translate for me, we found ourselves sitting on metal chairs in a dimly lit and dank room. Behind the desk sat a young sergeant with a pleasant demeanor. He was told by his officers what I had been up too and gave me the opportunity to explain. Explaining that I only wished to document our patient’s procedure for our records, I apologized profusely while thinking how Ashley was going to break the news to my parents that I was now in jail?! After a few tense moments he looked at me and thanked me for helping his country and people.  I was shocked and relieved and finally relaxed. He then went on to say that the healthcare system is terrible and sickly and the government does not want any filming or photos making it out of India or to the media. He was embarrassed for his country…but what to do he said??

The state of the healthcare system does not stop at the hospitals, but spreads deep into each community across the city in small decaying clinics and pharmacies. India’s drug market is also split in two, selling prescription drugs by “branded” (quality) or “generic” (low quality and sometimes completely fake). Prescriptions from government hospitals are often given using the generic names which sell for a fraction of the cost. A branded pack of pills will sell for 100 INR($2 CAD) where their generic counterpart will sell for 20 INR (.40 cents). This is great in theory because generic medicines are somewhat affordable for all sectors of society but…nothing is ever as it sounds. I have filled hundreds of prescriptions over the last few years and finding these generic drugs can sometimes be next to impossible. As a business pharmacies are not interested in selling drugs which are one quarter of the price, as they stand to make less money.

The next major problem in the system comes in the systemic abuse of antibiotics across the city. Small shops turned into “clinics” and “hospitals” hand out cheap antibiotics like candy to nearly every patient through their door. Just yesterday, an article in the Times of India wrote about all the new viruses including a new strain of drug resistant TB which antibiotics and the rampant abuse of them has surely caused. Every slum community has a small clinic nearby where the majority of people go because the cost of drugs is cheap. The clinic near our community is a ten minute walk away and deals with any type of case. Patients complaining of upset stomachs, diarrhea or with open wounds are all given the same generic blue or white pills which sit in the clinic’s only drawer in two separate containers, wrapped loosely in newspaper and cost 50 INR – $1 CAD. The antibiotics clear up the problem quickly, but not forever, and both patient and doctor are happy.

Malnutrition is so rampant throughout India (1 in every 3 malnourished children worldwide live in India) that it is believed to be double that of sub Saharan Africa where massive droughts and food shortages are abundant and pandemic. Yet, 48% of India’s children are malnourished, underweight, under height and developmentally challenged due to poor nutrition and hygiene habits where food is available and within reach for nearly all urban slum dwellers in the city. Perhaps the way to help this next generation of India’s poor is to educate their mothers about nutrition and hygiene, to ensure, despite their economic standing, the improvement of their children’s health and well-being as well as the need for birth control. With no money for birth control and no control over their own bodies, women must endure multiple pregnancies, miscarriages and the premature deaths of their children because of illness and abnormalities.

Eight months ago I briefly came into contact with relatively new NGO in India called the Foundation for Mother and Child Health (FMCH). FMCH has done extensive work through South East Asia and has expanded their field of help to Mumbai, India. I became immediately interested in their work and visited their clinic a few months ago and followed up, bringing several malnutrition cases from our community across the city to see their doctor (Dr. Rupal) and the team of health care providers. The thing that struck me is the care and passion they have to truly bring about change in these young families by nurturing the babies and teaching the mothers practical and useful knowledge. FMCH concentrates their efforts on children 0 – 6 yrs. old, holding daily clinics, cooking demos and awareness campaigns all geared towards the developing child and their mother.

Two days ago I sat in front of our school during our monthly health camp and watched as mother after mother with swinging babies on their hips and children in tow lined up to see a doctor and I realized that these young mothers need help and access to the knowledge to help their children, and not just another blue pill. A few hours later, I travelled across the city to FMCH’s offices in South Mumbai and met with their committee. In our meeting, we took turns discussing our work and what we both had to offer one another all in the hope of fighting the same battle. FMCH is currently looking to expand to other communities and I have pitched for that next community to be ours. This will be a big project and partnership, but one that can truly have a lasting and meaningful impact on hundreds of families and India’s next generation.

FMCH will be visiting our community in a few days to view first hand our centre and projects and with any luck to set in motion a health commitment to an entire community.

Sincerely,

Kane Ryan

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