In Chennai, India, “home” is found in unexpected places.
Families live on the sidewalks of Chennai, India. (Marilee Pierce Dunker/WV)
Have you ever seen a homeless person on the street and wondered where they came from? Where were they born? Where is their family? Most importantly, how did they end up living in a doorway or sleeping under a bridge? On a recent trip to India I had the chance to actually ask that question of a group of homeless people and the answer was both heartbreaking and shocking.
I traveled to India to visit with Rochunga Pudaite, an evangelist from the mountains of Manipur whom my father loved like a son. World Vision helped support Rochunga as a student, and he in turn went on to help thousand of tribal children as he had been helped.
When I left Manipur, I went on to visit several World Vision projects in other parts of India. One of my stops was the city of Chennai, home to India’s largest urban homeless population. For the 40,000 men, women and children who live on its streets, Chennai is an easy place to be born, live and die without anyone ever noticing. As one street-dweller told me, “People pass by us without really seeing us. It is as if we don’t exist.”
But World Vision has seen the need and is effectively changing the world for thousands of Chennai’s invisible poor.
A stretch of sidewalk that a family calls home. (Marilee Pierce Dunker/WV)
I went with Christiana Paranjothy, a World Vision India staff member, to see a program that is offering hundreds of families the opportunity to move off the street and into apartment buildings. Our first stop was to visit families still living on the street, waiting for a chance to be relocated.
“Seventy-one families used to live right here,” Christiana informed me, pointing to a stretch of sidewalk. “Fortunately, we have already moved half of them into small apartments.”
I couldn’t imagine 71 people living on that narrow strip of dirty cement, much less 71 multi-generational families. There just wasn’t room. As my eyes ran down the length of the walk-way, I noticed piles of household belongings neatly stacked against the wall: boxes of pots and pans, clothing, blankets—everything these people owned.
A single stunted tree had broken through the pavement, providing the only spot of green in the landscape of cement. About 30 women and children gathered to sit under its sparse shade to talk with us. One woman kept busy breaking beans into a pot for supper, and I realized that we were sitting in her “kitchen.”
“I’d be interested to hear where you all came from originally,” I asked, addressing the adults, hoping to hear some interesting stories. “Did you come to the city to find work? How did you end up living here?”
My question fell into a sea of blank stares as my audience pondered my question. Finally a voice spoke up. “We were born here. This sidewalk is our home. This is where our parents and grandparents were born … right here … on this sidewalk. This is where we are from.”
Families pull together and care for each other while living on the street. (Marilee Pierce Dunker/WV)
Now it was my turn to ponder as the full meaning of her words sank in. The idea that the filthy, noisy, exposed patch of dirt and cement upon which we sat was the only home any of these people had ever known had not occurred to me.
During my time with World Vision, I have met many who were forced to live in doorways and alleyways…abandoned street children and youth running from abusive situations. I have met men and women made homeless by war or natural disaster, and people sick with AIDS or other diseases that made them outcasts. Others left their home to find a better life and discovered only greater hardship.
Almost everyone I have ever met came from somewhere else. But these people came from here. This was their home.