Taming the tiger


You support all who are falling and raise up all who are bowed down. – Psalm 145:14

A fence on the other side of the river from Samshernagar on the edge of the dense Sunderban forest keeps the tigers out of the village.

Still, the remote location of the village and a decline in employment opportunities have left the men and boys no choice but to venture into the forest to make a living by fishing and crabbing, honey collecting, wood cutting and firewood gathering.

In the last several decades, more than 150 men and boys in this community and two neighboring ones have been killed by the Bengal tigers and many more injured. The “tiger widows” are ostracized by their communities and lack the skills to become self-sufficient.

These are the marginalized women SARANI (Society for Action on Rehabilitation Awareness Networking and Information) and MCC are helping to empower.  

One afternoon, we sit in a bookkeeping class for the women who have started home businesses to generate their own income. Many of them have learned sewing and garment making skills and they are proud to show us some of the clothing they have made. MCC provided the funds to purchase the 15 sewing machines in the classroom.

Bijolibauligayen tells us she that with her new sewing skills she can earn enough money to feed her children and send them to school.

At the end of the class, students who have completed other courses are presented certificates. We celebrate their achievement.

The next morning, we visit a woman who has started a sewing business in her home. With what she earned at first, she was able to buy her own sewing machine. “Now, I can make anything,” she tells us.

Another woman, Shefali Mridha, shows us how she has learned about vermiculture, cultivating earthworms to convert organic waste into fertilizer. She sells compost to her neighbors. SARANI is working with the villagers to regenerate the soil which has become unproductive because of increased salinity.

Shefali tells us she has learned a lot and she wants to share what she has learned with her neighbors. “If I don’t share what I’ve learned with others, what I have learned has little value,” she says.

Later that morning, we are invited to join a village meeting where program participants and others thank us for helping provide some assistance for their community.  SARANI leaders tell us that only two men came to the first meeting they held, but now, many more people are coming and the women are also getting involved and speaking up.

SARANI leaders tell us that other organizations like MCC have promised to provide some help for these communities, but when they see how remotely the villages are located, they politely say they cannot come.

“But you have come,” one of the village elders tells us. “You have spent the night and you have spent time with us.”  


Ron Byler is executive director of MCC U.S. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family includes seven
Read more