The Beautiful Struggle

The beautiful struggle: a lone fisherman
tries to catch a meal in Ali Bagh

One of my biggest challenges living/traveling abroad has always been the transition back to the US. 

Even after making this shift dozens of times, I still fail to maneuver between the realities of the two worlds I find myself in: for example, the fact that 22 out of every 25 children will drop out of school by the 5^th grade in Pakistan while I’m at school with 800 classmates who are now apart of the 2 out of every 25 American citizens with a masters degree.

As I boarded my flight yesterday – physically and emotionally exhausted from three weeks of piloting an education venture in India and Pakistan – I prepared for the transition to be as difficult and confusing as usual.

During my stop over in Abu Dhabi, however, I was reminded of a powerful lesson. While waiting for my connecting flight, I met the nicest 40-something year old woman who was traveling from India. We talked for some time about what she was doing in India, the business she started and the work her husband does, her daughters studying in college, etc. It was only after the never-ending 15 hour flight, as I was helping her get her bags, that she told me the real reason she was traveling to India: her beloved mother had tragically passed away after falling down a large set of stairs, and her beloved father had then committed suicide because he couldn’t manage to live without her.

…I was speechless...

Over the past few hours, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this woman, the struggle she is going through, and a quote from a friend’s email signature: 

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

The beautiful struggle: Two of my friends,
Raj and Indu, from the Dharavi slum in Bombay

Over the past few hours, I’ve begun to realize how easy it is for me to get caught up in my own problems, or even the profound problems that I am apart of in India, Pakistan, Kenya, etc., and to forget that everyone around me – even in the US – is also fighting their own struggles. They might not be fighting HIV as a single mother in a Nairobi slum, but perhaps to them, their own struggle feels just as equally heavy. As my mom once said, we all have some kind of a battle, and it’s not our right to judge whose battle is bigger or smaller.

Instead, perhaps our responsibility should be to offer a smile, a hello, a thank you, or even a free-pass / benefit of the doubt the next time someone seems to not care about the same things by which we are burdened. Because the reality is, they are probably in the middle of fighting a battle of their own, and they might actually need our support (or at least our understanding). 

Relearning how to smile in an Arizona Indian Reservation

The day after Thanksgiving break, I found myself on an Indian Reservation about 45 miles outside of Phoenix, heading down an empty road lined with cactus, giant tumble weeds, and San Tan mountain tops, all of which were leading us towards a pasty blue school known as Blackwater Community.

From the outside, this school didn’t seem much different than the schools around my neighborhood in Palo Alto; after looking deeper, however, it sadly began to resemble the schools I taught at this summer in Nairobi. For example, according to the Blackwater principle, only 50% of her elementary students go on to graduate from high school. And sadly, Blackwater is one of the best schools in the area: the graduation rate only gets worse amongst other Indian Reservation schools.

The goal of our trip, therefore, was to play a role in addressing these inequalities, specifically through the power of mobile technology. I was traveling with a professor from the Stanford School of Education, Dr. Paul Kim, who has developed a tool called the Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE). Put simply, the idea is that students use their mobile phone to engage with their curriculum (and each other!) in new and exciting ways.

While the tool has enormous potential (and Dr. Kim has run dozens of successful pilots), we unfortunately faced a number of technical challenges during our three day pilot test, and I began to question if we were really making a big difference.

On the flight back to SFO that night, I asked Neha Taleja, the Executive Director for the nonprofit that houses SMILE, if she shared these concerns. She agreed that the technical challenges were extremely problematic, but that we would work through them. More importantly, she reminded me of a little 5^th grade boy we had worked with that day, who decided to stay in during his lunch break to use the phone to create a quiz for his classmates.  According to his teacher, this was something he’s never done before. And that, to Neha, was what SMILE was all about: Generating excitement and engagement that has somehow been misplaced along the way.

 

Although it’s a simple anecdote, I’m realizing that there are profound insights and reminders to appreciate, particularly as I spend the next 3 weeks in India and Pakistan exploring entrepreneurial opportunities in mobile learning.

Reminders such as the gratitude found through appreciating these “small victories.” The hope discovered while focusing on why something could (and should) work, and not on why it won’t work. The liberation of not allowing perfect be the enemy of progress: of not trying to develop a flawless solution that addresses all the problems at once, but rather starting somewhere (even if it’s a simple start that has complications) and allowing the work to teach you.

And lastly, the importance of being able to smile along the way. 

Kibera dreams and education potentials

Electine is a 12-year-old girl in my 8^th Grade class in Kibera, an informal community in Nairobi once known as the largest and certainly most notorious slum in Kenya. According to her recent writing composition homework, Electine wants to be a pilot, so that she can travel the world and see places like the US, Tanzania and Ethiopia. In her words, “it is good to associate with different people and know more about them.” She also wants to make lots of money and buy her parents a house, build many schools and create an orphanage.

Even though life in the slums might make a dream like this seem impossible, Electine believes that her future is up to her, and that she has access to the tools that will help her. As she wrote in another composition assignment:

Education is the process of which knowledge is passed to the pupils by teachers. It is upon you to choose whether you want to gain by it or not. As for me, education will help me improve my living standard in the future.

Sheila, on the other hand, wants to be one of the country’s top broadcasters, “a critical career given that everyone relies on broadcasters for their information.” Like Electine, she is looking beyond her situation, and believes that education can unlock novel scenery for her and millions of others in slums like Kibera:

Education is the only way one is ever going to escape poverty and be ahead in life. It is a very helpful necessity that can improve lives of millions of people.

Throughout my four weeks volunteering and teaching in Kibera – both at Soweto Academy and several other primary and secondary schools – this hope and optimism in education was continually reaffirmed. At the same time, however, it was clear that the system was fundamentally flawed, failing to operate efficiently, failing to reach its potential of fulfilling dreams like Electine’s and Sheila’s.

Many of the failures were obvious, like the longest teacher strike that vacated government schools until just last week or the deteriorating/absent infrastructure. Others were less obvious, like the extremely low student enrollment rates (50%) in secondary school, the alarming amount of time (over 1/6 days per week) that teachers didn’t show up for their class, or the hyper focus on memorization and exit exams. In each case, it was clear that something more needs to be done.

In the words of Wendy Kopp:

Given that we know that education has the potential to be transformative, we must—for the sake of children and families, for our country, and for our collective well-being—do all that it takes to fulflill that potential.

Or, as Electine put it: it's up to us if we want [Kenya] to gain from education or not.

 
To view descriptions for each picture click here.

Football, girls and hope inside Asia’s most notorious slum

Several days ago, I trudged across the +100 degree asphalt of the Pakistan border, loaded with collages of memories from a short but overwhelming summer in India.  Shining brightest from this kaleidoscope of experiences was Dharavi – India’s largest and most enterprising slum – and the aurora of hope radiating from there.

When I first stepped into this labyrinth, Slumdog Millionaire community, I was mostly curious. Intrigued how an alleged 1 million people packed into a tiny .67 square miles could “decide to be happy, when they had every reason to be miserable.” Intrigued how generations could rise above their circumstances, and make the best life possible for themselves, despite everything holding them back. What I eventually discovered is that hope is central to this phenomenon.

Nicholas Kristof once wrote that development succeeds when it gives people hope that a better outcome is possible. Dharavi is a perfect case study of the effect of hope delivered.

As described in Poor Little Rich Slum, Dharavi is a cauldron bubbling with enterprise. With a never-say-die attitude. With spirit and spunk. A place where people believe that tomorrow can actually look better than today.

And Yuwa is one organization that is helping inculcate that belief at an early age, specifically with the +10 year-old girls who are learning football on a swampy mud lot behind the Mahim train station.

Despite the monsoon rains and the barely-lit lot littered with rocks, rats and restless boys, the girls continue practicing. From 7-830pm, 7 nights a week. Why? Because here the girls are apart of something bigger than themselves. Here they begin to realize that society doesn’t define who they are. Here they have the ability to create their own tomorrow.

And perhaps what’s most exciting is to see this evolution of hope in progress. Without a doubt, Yuwa is making tremendous strides in inspiring a brighter tomorrow, but their program in Dharavi is only 3 months old and there is still a lot of work to do.

For example, my last day at practice, I was walking back with the “human bus” of girls, dropping each one at their house, when I had the chance to ask Mansi* (pictured below) what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Although her parents have humble occupations – her mom cleans houses and her dad drives buses – they've managed to send her to a private school in the Bandra suburbs. Given this, I expected her to claim that she wanted to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or maybe even an engineer. But she actually has “no clue.”

Later that night, her mom told me that she lacks confidence.

If Yuwa is successful in helping inspire hope, however, I suspect Mansi’s answer will have changed by the next time I get to ask her this question. And as I journey to Kenya – to explore start-up development ideas – this simple mission of hope is one I hope to keep central.

*I know you’re not supposed to have favorites, but Mansi is mine. Perhaps because of her nearly perfect English, the way she makes sure I don’t get lost, or how she voluntarily shares her last prized piece of Cadbury chocolate.