There was a religious celebration in the Bihari camps and although people couldn’t tell me exactly what the religious significance of the day was, it involved different families taking the responsibility to cook a special type of food for the whole community. A ring is hidden in the food and the person who gets the ring takes the responsibility of providing the food the next year.
We were invited by some of the teachers from our organization who work in the camps to attend the festival. As I mentioned in previous entries, the conditions of the camps are very poor, but today they were alive with festivity and scattered houses full of people eating the food, which was a yummy sweet rice and milk dish (payish) and a fried flat bread (loochee).
We ended up visiting quite a few homes and the generosity of all the families we met, not only to us but to their fellow community members was humbling.
My most humbling experience came in the last house we visited. At that stage I was extremely full but our hosts kept insisting that we eat more. As we sat and chatted, the community members who had gathered started to tell us that there had recently been a government order to destroy the slum they were living in – and that it was due to happen sometime this week. In comparison to some of the other camps/slums, this one was fairly clean and ordered – as it had been destroyed last year by a fire and had been rebuilt.
No provision has been made for where these people are meant to go and the families that I spoke to said they have no plans yet and they will sort things out as they happen.
It is so difficult for me to comprehend being in that situation, but I think that if I was, feeding and entertaining my neighbours would be far from being a priority, yet alone a couple of complete strangers!!
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