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Archive for December, 2009
The contrast between the slum we visited on December 23rd & our Christmas turkey dinner in a boutique hotel the next day is indescribable really, but I’ll try!
Dharavi slum is the largest in Asia, 1 million people live hee in a very small area. It is a model slum in many ways I think; it exports $650M per year of goods manufactured inside the slum. The main 4 industries are recycling, leather, pottery & clothes & fabrics.
Our guide, who is also an ambitious college student, was born & still lives in Dharavi. There’s a feeling of community here, & everyone watches out for their neighbours. Because it’s a legal slum, government authorized, it has electricity & sewers; so there’s no comparison between it & some of the other slums.
Our guide told us that 60% of Mumbai’s 20+ million people live in slums. There are 2000 slums in the city; of these only 36 are legal, government ones, so it’s a far cry from Dharavi to some of the other wones.
Even in Dharavi, la creme de la creme, the average house size is about 10 feet by 10 feet – not exactly what we’re used to – & 4.5 people live in each house.
After the wake up call of December 23rd, we toddled off for our ‘traditional Christmas dinner’, of turkey etc., at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Mumbai. This was followed by a manager’s tour of the rooftop spa – buffet lunch, white chairs & tables, swimming pool. The Christmas spa brunch, including a glass of wine, was billed at Rs 4000, about $100.
Both our tour on the 24th & our Christmas lunch were a glimpse at how the ‘other side’ lives for us.
Been in Udaipur, in South Rajasthan for just over a week now & thoroughly enjoying it. The view from our room & from the rooftop restaurant is spectacular – we see the whole of Lake Pichola & the old town (about 450 yrs. old).
The traffic’s still crazy in the tourist lanes on the other side of the lake, reached by a footpath, a bit hard on the nerves, but doable. Our favorite place to visit is the huge Indian market, very close to the tourist beat, but oddly free of foreigners. The vege market’s the best with its kaleidascope of colors. Whatever we buy here in the Indian market we pay regular Indian prices, rather than ramped up tourist ones. For example my made-in-India watch cost Rs280 (about $7).
We see no women at our family run hotel; all the kindly, English speaking staff are male, except for the family matriarch, who ‘womans’ the downstairs desk in the late afternoon, greeting guests with a friendly ‘namaste’ & selling them toilet paper!
Fortunately we meet females in the service industry – our lovely travel agent & the family across the lane from our hotel who I had chai with after a very skilled shoulder & neck massage from their 20-year-old daughter.
Tomorrow we’ve been invited on a short road trip by our travel agent & her colleague, to some villages including his home village, then to Mt. Abu overnight. Looking forward to it.
I would like to share with youthis excerpt from my self-help memoirSurviving Eldercare: Where Their Needs End and Yours Begin.
If you would like to purchase this book for yourself or as a gift please visit my website – www.ellenbesso.com. There you can order the print or eBook version using PayPal orthere is a list of selectstores whereit isavailable. Ellen Besso
Surviving Eldercare – The Introduction
Putting ourselves first is a concept that is very difficult for women to hear. It goes against the grain. After all, we’re women, aren’t we meant to nurture? Years ago when I was in group therapy, the facilitator used to tell us to put ourselves first. As many of us were mothers, that made her request an especially tough one.
It took many attempts on the part of the therapist before we began to understand what she was talking about. What finally convinced us was the idea that we would be better mothers, partners, workers – as well as better human beings – if we prioritized our own needs.
Maybe I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I didn’t buy into the ‘relentless busyness’ of modern life, as Wayne Muller, author of Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest and Delight, calls it. This may have been partly due to my increased awareness from being in the group, my partner’s balanced way of living and also the result of the deliberate choices we made together about the lifestyle we wanted and where we chose to live.
Although city people, in the eighties we made our home in an old farmhouse just north of Toronto, and since 1990 we’ve called a BC coastal community a forty-minute ferry ride from Vancouver our home. Even when we went back to city living for almost five years early in this decade, serendipity provided us with a slower-paced living situation in a very special little community called Quayside Village Co-housing. Life within the community is a microcosm of a slower society, where neighbours stop to pass the time of day, have tea together and share common meals twice each week.
When Oprah Winfrey first had life coach Cheryl Richardson on her show in the early nineties, the audience actually booed her when she advised them to put themselves first, a surprising and unusual reaction on their part. They obviously felt very strongly about this topic, perhaps because of their conditioning combined with their biology of nurturing hormones.
Certainly things have changed since then, but I’m not sure just how much. Many women now take the advice of professionals and carve out some regular time for themselves. They may have a massage now and then or take an hour alone or with friends. However, to ensure our needs are fully met, we need to carefully develop a daily rhythm of mindful balance. It’s our right and we’re entitled to this.
The responsibility of caregiving is still considered women’s work almost exclusively in our society. Most paid and unpaid caregivers are female. Our elders rely on their daughters, daughters-in-law and granddaughters for help if they do not have a spouse to care for them. Many of us have been raised to believe our job is to take care of our family’s needs, including those of our aging parents. This is particularly true of women born in the baby boomer years (1946 to 1965).
For the past ten years I have been a caregiver for my mother who has Alzheimer’s disease. I haven’t done it solo, my brother took a very active role in the first years, organizing and managing her in-home care as well as visiting our mom regularly. We’ve been very fortunate to have many loving private and care home professionals who have done most of the practical work of looking after mom.
The midlife caregiver experience can be very stressful. Midlife is a time when our focus and our energies are shifting inward, yet now we have an additional responsibility. It’s easy to lose sight of ourselves during the process of taking care of aging parents. This can be especially true in a shared living situation, where the caregiver is available to her parent around the clock.
It may be some time before we begin to realize, and even longer before we acknowledge, that a large part of the stress we’re experiencing with its accompanying sadness, guilt and frustration, is a result of our complicated relationship with our declining parent. At first we may think it’s our job, our business, our partner or our kids that are the cause of our nagging worries.
When we do become aware of the root of our problem, we often feel we shouldn’t complain. After all they’re our parents and we have a duty to them. Perhaps we say to ourselves, “What right do I have to feel burdened when I’m not doing the bulk of the daily care?”Â
Finding the balance between the doing and the being – between the demands of the outer, physical world and our inner emotional and spiritual one – is so important for women. There are many reasons midlife might not be the ideal time for caregiving. We may yearn to begin new ventures such as travel, school, volunteer work, hobbies or a new business, our energy levels may be lower, we may be experiencing health issues including perimenopause and menopause challenges, or we may want to retire and do whatever pleases us.
Humans are like plants. It takes a lot to kill most plants. They can survive for years in poor soil, and poor light. But it’s not good enough for us to just survive”¦to ‘get through’ our parent’s declining years. We deserve much more than that. If we burn ourselves out it’s difficult to recover a state of good health and joyful living.
For the most part no one is able to put herself first at all times. We deserve to experience life as full human beings”¦ multi-faceted women. Only by feeding ourselves in every way possible will we be empowered to live the rich and joyful lives we yearn for and deserve.
I challenge you to question your beliefs and to change your thinking and your habits around being a midlife caregiver. It won’t happen overnight. Change takes time, contrary to what the ‘quick fix’ marketing tells us. When we are aware of our own needs, we can develop new ways of caring for those of our parent. Once we have created balance in our lives, we have the foundation to build our dreams on.
Made it from Jaipur to Udaipur on the overnight bus on Wednesday. I had no problem with the bus like when I attempted to take the upscale ‘Magic Bus’ from Bangkok to Laos last January. I had to get off the bus right in the Bangkok station; my daughter thought it was claustrophobia & I think she was right. (Some of you 50 or over will remember the old, decrepid, colorfully painted Magic Buses that went from Europe to India via Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan & Pakistan during the 60′s & 70′s).
Anyway, the desk clerk at our beautiful upscale Jaipur hotel booked us onto the overnight government bus & the manager decided since we were good customers & he’d taken a liking to us, to comp us with a car & driver to the bus station a short trip away, instead of us shlepping over their with our bags in an auto rickshaw. The irony of it, as it turned out!
The bus left at 7:20, a little late, & was to arrive in Udaipur at 5:30 am. The hotel manager, who was from Udaipur, said it would be dark when we arrived, so just to have tea, then get an auto rickshaw to our hotel. Our hotel was expecting us, & said they had a place where we could rest until our room was ready at 10 am.
The bus itself was fine; the route & ‘amenities’ not so good…We were given 2 reclining seats plus a double berth up top. I didn’t want to use the berth as it seemed like a closet to me; also it would be difficult to climb down fast enough when the bus stopped for washroom breaks (I knew from previous experience that the bus would stop suddenly, apparently at random, & an employee would shout instructions to us in Hindi).
We went along fine for over 2-1/2 hours, then we stopped at what I guess was a ‘typical’ rural, small town bus station; it was full of Indian men, not a woman in sight; men who had no English, they just stared & stared (quite typical). When I asked the driver, he said it was a 5 minute stop. Don found us a door marked ‘toilet’ in big letters & we went past the doorman, who did not ask for any money, to the inside squatter cubicles. So far so good…
The next stop was only 1-1/2 hours later, at 10:15; it was a foodstop also, a bit more upscale I think, but we didn’t need food or toilets at that point. Then the bus stopped again at 1 am at another bus station; this one with 2 women waiting with partners for buses. I got off & asked the driver where the toilet was. ‘No toilet’ was the reply, so I got back on, not really needing to go but not wanting to get caught out uncomfortably.
Then we stopped once again at 2 pm & we both got off. Again I was told ‘no toilet’, & told I could go around behind the building. But 2 nice men showed me a room that looked like a washroom, however there were no squatters in there, so I just went in one of the little cubicles anyway, with one of my feet in mud (I hoped)! I felt comfortable then, & went back to my dozing, stretched across the 2 seats of the bus, while Don slept upstairs.
At 4 am, much to our surprise, we suddenly arrived at Udaipur, 1-1/2 hours early. I had a headache from my head bouncing on the seat for so many hours! We weren’t sure what to do & there was no answer at the hotel, so we agreed to take an auto rickshaw ride with a patient middle aged man who hadn’t hassled us, for a very high fee. While I was sitting on a bench in the bus station while we decided what to do, a bird shit on my head & my hand. The kindly auto rickshaw driver & Don wiped me off.
The ride through the sleeping city of about 500 thousand was quite remarkable. We wound through narrow lanes, all the businesses had their garage doors closed, it was very still. When we arrived near the hotel, a 5 km ride away, the auto rickshaw driver told me to wait with the luggage in the auto rickshaw while he & Don went up the hill to the hotel to awaken the staff.
I told Don to stay within earshot, but they disappeared for about 10 minutes. I became increasingly concerned standing there by myself, for women, especially western ones, are not safe in deserted places at night in India . Finally I decided that the guarding of the luggage was not worth the potential harm to me, so I grabbed my carry-on bag & went up the steps to the hotel, where I lost my temper & cursed at Don for leaving me there alone!
We were taken to the rooftop restaurant, where there were 3 Rajasthani-type couches with low tables. We were given the largest area to rest on; it was about 15 feet long & about as wide as a queen size bed, with a woven blanket covering a foam mattress; we also asked for blankets & were given 2. It was cool & damp there, but we slept for a couple of hours.
I awoke to a pink sunrise over Lake Pichola, where the hotel is located. The whole trip was quite surreal.
Just spent a few days in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, northwest of Jaipur, at an eco resort. It was billed as ‘magical’ by our Lonely Planet book; the reviewers also said it was like going back in time.
It was indeed like stepping back in time, but without the magic on my part anyway. I wasn’t prepared for this dusty desert of rural Rajasthan. I found the energy disturbing, especially on arrival; I couldn’t say why.
Our resort was beautiful, & we learned new ways to preserve the environment & save water.Since the place was somewhat of a home stay, & the family was traditional, ‘house rules’ were stressed in the info. given out on arrival (they weren’t called rules): no touching; legs & arms covered for males as well as women were the main ones. Food was delicious, & made with much care; much of it was grown on the property or nearby.
After I left Shekawati, my research uncovered info. about gender selection in Rajasthan – female infanticide is much higher in Shekawati than in other states in the country. The female to male ratio here is about 750 to 1000; the country as a whole is 927 to 1000.
