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The other day I started watching “The Sound of Mumbai.” As I travel to Kolkata, India each year to volunteer with slum children I was drawn of course to this film. In my time with poor Indian children, I always feel I learn and gain in many ways much more from the experience than what I give, so I was intrigued by this effort to showcase Indian children singing the much-loved songs from “The Sound of Music.” I will admit that it seemed rather ethnocentric that foreigners would find it useful to teach under privileged Indian children English songs that have nothing to do with their background, ethnicity or environment. But I guess I was wrong.

In An “English goddess” for India’s down-trodden, BBC News reported that the dalits of India are “building a temple in Banka village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to worship the Goddess of the English language, which they believe will help them climb up the social and economic ladder.”

The dalits, known as untouchables, are so low and vile that they perform the most polluted, menial tasks in Indian society, working with animals skins, waste and tending pigs and buffaloes. Ghandhi called them harijan, or “children of God.” While discrimination based on caste is illegal in India, and has been since independence in 1947, many of the country’s 200 million dalits face injustices daily, living in slums and squalor, attending school but made to sit and eat separately and suffering violence perpetrated by higher caste Hindus whose actions often go unnoticed or are disregarded.  Indeed, the Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) charity has stated that while some crimes are reported, much caste-based discrimination and violence in India goes unrecorded.

Just this week, an Indian dalit boy was killed because he had the same name as that of high caste man’s son. The boys father, Ram Sumer, had been given several warnings by Jawahar Chaudhary to change the names of two sons whose names were the same as his own, Neeraj and Dheeraj. The body of Neeraj, 14, was found in a field by two friends: he had been strangled. Chaudhary denies involvement saying he was framed, but two acquaintances of his have been arrested.

But hope springs eternal, and for the dalits of Banka, action means change. About two-feet tall and made of bronze, the newly ‘minted’ Goddess of English is modeled after the Statue of Liberty. According to Chandra Bhan Prasad, a dalit writer who came up with the idea:

She is the symbol of Dalit renaissance. She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat – it’s a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code. In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever.

While Hindi is the most widely spoken, there are dozens of languages regularly used in India with hundreds more in use in rural areas. To communicate, Indians often use English as their lingua franca. In Banka, Nalanda school principal Shiv Shankar Lal Nigam says that “It’s not possible to get by in today’s world without English. Even to communicate with people in other Indian states, you need to know either the local language or English. Since you cannot learn multiple Indian languages, English has to be used as the link language.”

Kamlesh was pushed on to a pile of burning rubbish for walking on the “wrong” road

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While in the US attitudes towards gays, lesbians and transgendered people are changing, there is still a stigma present that makes it difficult for many young people exploring their sexuality to do so freely and safely. While on the one hand there is the tragic story of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his roommate used a webcam to spy on him in an intimate encounter with another man, on the other there are movements such as The Trevor Project and It Gets Better that speak

Anna Grodzka

against hate and intolerance aimed at gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered individuals.

Moreover, it is still in the fashion (see Designer’s Choice:Transsexual Models) and entertainment segments of American society that people who see themselves as other than heterosexual seem to be most visible (think Chaz Bono on Dancing With the Stars). While worldwide countries such as Nepal and Pakistan are legalizing third gender roles, in the US gender diversity is still a contested topic. But, there are stories of professionally successful transgendered people who are clearly accepted in mainstream society here and in other Western nations.

Georgina Beyer, 1993

Long before Anna Grodzka, however, New Zealand’s Georgina Beyer, neé George Bertrand, was very likely the first transsexual in the world to win a seat in a national office; Beyer was elected to the New Zealand Parliament by a mostly white, rural, conservative constituency that was perfectly aware of her background.

Of Maori heritage, Georgina grew up on a rural farm, an indigenous young man coming of age in a society dominated by white privilege. Georgina’s story only begins here; she was ‘educated’ in the streets and clubs of urban New Zealand, spending time in prostitution and using drugs, working as a singer and dancer in the transvestite nightclubs of Wellington and Auckland. After a brutal rape, Georgina retreated to the “remote” town of Carterton for drug rehabilitation, became a community organizer, was elected mayor of the town in 1999, and eventually made her way to the national stage as a member of parliament. Her story is told in all of its elegance, humor and irony in the documentary, Georgie Girl. I saw the New York premier of this film at the Asia Society and was both entertained and inspired. Especially when the film showed a clip of Georgina’s elderly, rural white constituents talking about “our Georgie.”

Amanda Simpson

In the United States, in 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Amanda Simpson, 49, senior technical adviser at the commerce department in the bureau of industry of security. Simpson changed from a man to a woman in the late 1990s while working in Arizona at the missile firm Raytheon. A former test pilot for Raytheon, the Telegraph reported that Simpson persuaded the company “to adopt a policy protecting employees from discrimination and abuse based on gender identity.” In her governmental position, Simpson is in charge of protecting national security through the management of international trade, enforcement of treaties as well as the promotion of homeland, economic and cyber security. In regards to her new employment status Simpson said:

I find it interesting that while Chaz Bono’s stint on DWTS was plastered on every major newspaper and celebrity magazine in the US, I found Simpson’s announcement in the The Telegraph.

In November, 2010, Alameda County elected 49-year-old California patent lawyer Victoria Kolakowski as the United States first openly transgender trial judge. Kolakowski beat prosecutor John Creighton 51 to 48 percent, a margin of nearly 10,000 votes, to become a member of California’s Superior Court. Previously, Kolakowski was an administrative law judge for three years working on energy contract and compliance disputes for the California Public Utilities Commission.

As I write this, I wonder if it is a coincidence that both Simpson and Kolakowski were both 49 years-old at the time of their appointments. At this age biological women would be going through menopause and entering obscurity in the American public eye as ‘gendered women,’ by which I mean they would no longer draw attention for their beauty or ugliness, their fertility or lack there of.

Indeed, historically and worldwide, postmenopausal women have often gained positions of importance normally reserved for men in politics. Remember Margaret Thatcher, Gold Meir and Indira Ghandi? Currently serving are Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany; Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland; Pratibha Devisingh Patil, President of India; Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia; Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and many more in Brazil, Finland, Kyrgystan, Slovakia and Switzerland (for a little insight on this read Gender and the Company We Keep). Perhaps because middle-aged, menopausal women become invisible in the sexual/youth-centered American psyche, accomplished transgendered women can succeed minus the fanfare – both pro and con, as we seem to either applaud or bash a person’s appearance according to prevalent norms- that accompanied Bono’s stint on television. But I digress!

Victoria Kolakowski

In their coverage of the November 2010 elections in the US. the New York Times published an interesting article that provided an overview of transgendered candidates running for office in California, Oklahoma, Oregon and Maryland entitled, “Advocates Hope Transgender Identity is not a Defining One.”

This article states that “gay rights activists hope that the visibility of the candidates will help normalize people’s relations with people who are transgender — a broad category that includes heterosexual cross-dressers, homosexual drag queens and kings, and those who believe that they were born in the wrong body.”

Yes, I look forward to the day when people can just be people, not referenced by race/ethnicity, gender/sexual preference, age or any other qualifier, seen simply as a person good at their job.

Also of interest: Third Gender Legalized in Pakistan, In Nepal: Third Gender Citizens Recognized

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Anaesthetist Dr Erol Can (left), playing a yayli tanbur, an Ottoman violin with Professor Bingur Sönmez holding a flute. Doctors in the Istanbul hospital are reviving ancient musical therapy for a variety of illnesses. Photograph: Jonathan Lewis

The Guardian recently published a piece entitled, “Turkish doctors call the tune with traditional musical cures.” A hospital in Istanbul is using complementary therapy for a range of illnesses by playing ancient Arabesque scales and patterns (see photo above). Stressing that music and healing is not new, the doctors explain how different pitches and patterns produce varying effects. For example, Dr. Sonmez says that “Without having to prescribe additional drugs, five to 10 minutes of a certain musical piece lowers the heart rate and blood pressure.” He further states, “We are not doing anything new, and we are not reinventing the wheel . . . The positive effects of music therapy have been known for well over 900 years.” According to the article, the use of musical instruments “was integrated into medieval Islamic medicine as early as the 9th century, when scholar and philosopher Al Farabi discussed and cataloged the effect of different musical modes on body and psyche.” Dr. Somnez says the staff sometimes play music for each other on break so that everyone is “cared for.”

To read the full article from the Guardian click here.

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Photos above, Korea, 1979, 1981

‘Amerasians’ refers to the offspring of foreigners and women in Asia. ‘Dust of life’ refers to something or someone of no importance. Generally, the word ‘Amerasians’ speaks to the illegitimate children of soldiers – US soldiers – who’ve been stationed or experienced their “R & R” in Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations. Often without citizenship in their native lands, ignored by the country of their fathers, theirs is a tragic story with debates political, personal and cultural that continue to the present (see clip below from the documentary, “Left By Ship”).

We all know that traveling is an education sometimes better than college. Not having gone to university after high school, I took many short-term clerical jobs before getting hired by now defunct Eastern Airlines in 1975. Living in Miami, feeling at loose ends and looking for a ‘greater purpose in life’ (whatever!), I learned about a volunteer organization called Americans for International Aid that used airline employees traveling of free humanitarian passes to bring back to the US kids adopted by Americans. I was so excited, I telephoned the founder, Jodie Darragh, immediately and within weeks I was on my way to Seoul with three other volunteers courtesy of Korean Airlines. Here was a sense of purpose, using my travel passes to help new parents save money by bringing their children back for them and at the same time bring needed supplies to those still waiting. It was the start of what one might call a compulsion that continues till this day.

Back then, often on trips to Korea, I delivered clothing and other donations to orphanages in the countryside. On several trips I took a bus up to Father Keane’s St. Vincent’s Home for Amerasian Children (see photos left) in Bu-Pyung, just outside of Inchon, sometimes staying over at the orphanage. What’s an Amerasian? In the US we are so used to people coming in all colors and sizes that often differences go unnoticed. In Korea, sometimes people would stop ME to take a photo because I have blond hair and blue eyes in a country where everyone has brown hair and brown eyes. That’s OK for me, I’m a foreigner, but not for someone who lives in Korea.

These Amerasian children were born to Korean mothers and most often American soldiers. Poor girls from the villages sometimes became ‘wives,’ cooking and cleaning for soldiers during their post, using the money to take care of not just themselves but their families. When the GIs were transferred they often left illegitimate children behind. Not recognized as “Korean,” stigmatized socially, educationally and economically, especially if their father’s were African American, these children were essentially stateless. Like most Asian societies, in Korea your father’s lineage plays a key role in mapping out your life opportunities. Abandoned by their fathers, the future for these children was bleak. As a mother now myself, I cannot imagine how the mothers of these children must have agonized over leaving them at St. Vincents, hoping that in Fr. Keane’s care they would have a better chance in life.

As a result, in 1987, Congress adopted the Amerasian Homecoming Act that focused primarily on Vietnamese Amerasian children. This new law did permit mothers and other immediate family members to relocate to America (in Vietnam they were ‘gold children’) with the Amerasian children. Between 1987 and 1994, roughly 25,000 Vietnamese Amerasians, by then 12-25 years of age, and another 60,000 to 70,000 family members immigrated to the United States, with the majority settling in California.

When the US closed Clark and Subac Bay US Naval bases in 1992, thousands of Amerasians were left behind. Amerasians who could somehow document their paternity – for some it could be simply their appearance – from Thailand, Korea, Vietnam and Laos were allowed now to ‘come home.’ Those in the Philippines, where the US had been a military presence for 100 years, were excluded.

Below is a clip from Left By Ship, a newly released documentary about children left behind in the Philippines. For more information on the Amerasian Act, the Amerasian Homecoming Act and stories of resettlement in America, read:

Surviving Twice: Amerasian Children of the Vietnam War by Trin Yarborough

Dust of Life: America’s Children Abandoned in Vietnam by Robert S. McKelvey

For a cultural/social view of an Amerasian daughter returning home, view Daughter from Danang.

For a response to this film from a Vietnamese Amerasian adopted by an American family and for current information on the topic, visit the blog, ‘Ethnically Incorrect Daughter’ by Sumeia Williams.

Click below to viewLeft By Ship.

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This week newspaper headlines are filled with tragic stories of people dying of hunger in Somalia. Caused by droughts but exacerbated by politics, in southern Somalia the Al-ShaBab insurgent Islamist group is blocking the escape of starving people to feeding camps. The Al-ShaBab leadership feels it is better to starve than accept food aid from the West, distrusting aid workers as spies. Those who have escaped to refugee camps in Kenya face overcrowding conditions and even violence. More than 800,000 Somalis are now living outside Somalia, while nearly 1.5 million are internally displaced. Having stopped Western humanitarian aid to the region, they are widely blamed for the scope of the current devastation where tens of thousands have died and 500,000 children are on the brink of starvation.

Last month, Nicholas Kristoff wrote about the role of breastfeeding as a part of the cure for global poverty in his post, The Breast Milk Cure, in the New York Times. He reported that a 2008 study in Lancet said 1.4 million child deaths could be averted each year if babies were breast-fed properly. That’s one child dying unnecessarily every 22 seconds.

This is World Breastfeeding Week. Begun in 1991, WBW is now celebrating 10 years August 1 – 7. When mothers breastfeed their children they promote good health by passing on antibodies, stave off malnutrition and diarrhea in poor countries and create social and psychological bonds beneficial to survival. However, it is not just the mother’s who need to be educated about breastfeeding. The website states it best:

When we look at breastfeeding support, we tend to see it in two-dimensions: time (from pre-pregnancy to weaning) and place (the home, community, health care system, etc). But neither has much impact without a THIRD dimension – communication! Communication is an essential part of protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding. We live in a world where individuals and global communities connect across small and great distances at an instant’s notice. New lines of communication are being created every day, and we have the ability to use these information channels to broaden our horizons and spread breastfeeding information beyond our immediate time and place to activate important dialogue. This third dimension includes cross-generation, cross-sector, cross-gender, and cross-culture communication and encourages the sharing of knowledge and experience, thus enabling wider outreach.

Certainly, in an ideal scenario in the case of Somalia, it is imperative first that mothers be cared for, then their babies can have increased odds of survival.

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With the World Cup and the Olympics coming soon to Brazil, tourist interest in the country’s slums, called favela’s, is on the rise. Host to 20% of Brazil’s poor, 8 million residents, favelas were often hotbeds of gang, drug and other types of illegal and violent activity . . . till now perhaps. There is a growing awareness by the better-off of the favelas gritty music and art scene. With the scheduled global sports competitions shining a light, social and financial support from Police Pacification Units, known as UPPs, means that many homes now have electricity and running water. Local authorities too see a lucrative future in the tourist trade; Rio’s favela is perched high on a hill with beautiful views of the city. Residents are now proud of their urban community. Through music and art, dancing, singing and murals painted on buildings in the slum, they display their colorful stories of poverty, hard work and resilience.   

For those seeking an in-depth, ethnographic look at life, humor and survival in a Brazilian favela, I recommend reading ‘Laughter Out of Place’ by Donna M. Goldstein. As the description on the UCPress website explains:

 Donna M. Goldstein challenges much of what we think we know about the “culture of poverty.” Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns. These women have created absurdist and black-humor storytelling practices in the face of trauma and tragedy. Goldstein helps us to understand that such joking and laughter is part of an emotional aesthetic that defines the sense of frustration and anomie endemic to the political and economic desperation of the shantytown.

 I’ve used this book in my cultural and medical anthropology classes. Goldstein guides us inside the favela. We learn to care about the people in this shantytown, her friends and their families, and understand the humor they find in incidences that would send most of us to a state of despair. 

 If you want to see (and feel!) the action and the violence, to hear the laughter and pain of life in the favela, rent City of God, directed by Fernando Meirelles. I show this film regularly in my introductory cultural anthropology and sociology classes; it’s a visually brilliant movie based on a true story. In my opinion it’s one the top films of the last 20 years. Both the book and the film will show you what’s behind the scenes, culturally, politically, socially speaking, as we move towards the Olympics of 2016 and perhaps contemplate a visit to Brazil . . . or at least it will help flesh out the ‘two minute’ exposes of Brazil that network news will pass on as journalism.

 For a BBC article on Rio’s hopes for a tourist boom, read below or click here, ‘Rio seeks to boost favela tourism.’

Rio seeks to boost favela tourism

By Amy Stillman Rio de Janeiro,

9 November 2010 Last updated at 04:24 ET 

Patricia Correia Capistrano looks out of the window above a row of shampoo bottles and hair products, scanning the street of Rio de Janeiro’s largest shanty town, or favela, Rocinha, for potential customers.

Sensing a quiet afternoon, the 28-year-old hairdresser relaxes into conversation. “The government wants to make the favelas safer for tourists because the view up here is amazing,” she says, resting her arm on a salon chair. “Everyone here is focused on the World Cup and the Olympics.”

As Rio gets ready to host the matches in the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics two years later, the city’s hillside shanty towns are the target of a government clean-up that in turn is being used as a springboard to develop tourism in the favelas with special tours. Favela tours provide an exciting alternative to Rio’s well-known tourism circuit of Sugarloaf Mountain, the Christ the Redeemer statue, and the beach. Built on steep hillside slopes, the favelas have breathtaking views of the city. They also offer a unique glimpse of how some 20% of Rio’s population lives, and an insight into Brazil’s cultural and musical heritage.

 ”The favela has become part of the Rio postcard,” says Eduardo Mielke, a tourism researcher, based at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK. Police presence In the last two years, 13 of Rio’s 1,000 or so favelas have seen a permanent police presence, known as the Police Pacification Units (UPP), which aim to drive out the drug traffickers that control the slums. “By 2014, we’ll take the UPP to all the communities in the state that are still controlled by criminals,” Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral said.

“It is a new moment for Rio that will give visitors the freedom to get to know the city better.” In August, Rio’s tourism ministry launched a programme in the Santa Marta favela – the first slum to become part of the UPP project – to train residents to become tour guides.

Since the creation of the Rio Top Tour project, the favela once ruled by the city’s largest drug gang known as Comando Vermelho (Red Command) has become a tourism hub, with 4,500 visitors in the programme’s first month.

 Street signs in English have been placed throughout the community, and there are now 30 different tourist attractions, including a samba school, a local art gallery, and the spot where the Michael Jackson music video, They Don’t Care About Us, was filmed. “Before the UPP came in, Santa Marta was dangerous,” says Daniella Greco, who volunteers in the favelas and works with a tourism company.

“The community is happy to have the tourists there – when you had [drug] trafficking, tourism didn’t happen.” ‘Pacified’ Rio Top Tour is due to be extended to other favelas before the World Cup comes to Rio, although some have already used their own initiative to promote tourism.

Rocinha is home to some 250,000 people Cilan Oliveira lives in the Pereira da Silva favela, where he works as an artist and a tour guide for Project Morrinho – a 350 sq m (3,800 sq ft) model of the favelas built by local teenagers. “I love showing people this place because they get a better idea of our community,” he says. “I say to them, welcome to my community – relax, we are peaceful here.”

Until now, the violence that plagues the slums has limited their tourist appeal to a few operators that market their tours to adventurous backpackers.

The government aims to open the favelas, once “pacified”, to all types of visitors. “The safer the place is, the more tourists you can attract,” says Mr Mielke. “This is part of the government strategy – to use the favelas as another selling point of the city.” 

But critics say that the government’s plan fails to understand the complicated reality of favelas like Rocinha – which is home to some 250,000 people, and has operated outside the reach of the government since migrant workers started flooding into the shanty town in the 1950s.