Ottawa Report

Page 2

Ten years ago, I was in California, on a holiday from my job in British Columbia. I checked into a hotel in San Francisco. The desk clerk was an East Indian woman.

She looked at my registration form and in a lilting accent said: "You live in Vancouver? There are many Indian people living in Vancouver, I am told."

I was a little pleased to be recognized, I have to admit, but I wasn't really surprised since I was standing there wearing a beaded moosehide jacket and I had hair down to my butt! So I puffed up my chest and said: "Yes, there are a lot of Indians in Vancouver and you're looking at one."

The woman stared at me, up-and-down. She finally looked me straight in the eye and said, "Oh? Are you one of the red Indians? Or are you one of the real Indians?"

I was stunned. It was one of the few times I've ever been stuck for a comeback. I just muttered something and wandered away in a daze.

In any event, this old story is my way of introducing the fact that life has played another one of its little tricks on me because I am going to be spending the next two-and-a-half months of life in ? you guessed it ? India. I will spend most of my time in Rajasthan, in a small city named Kota. I will be working at the radio station there, helping to train some of the staff.

Just getting ready to make the trip has been an experience in itself. I've had to get shots to protect myself against a variety of diseases ? typhoid, cholera and polio. I've also begun taking pills to prevent malaria. My doctor has also given me a long list of no-no's. Number one on the list is ? don't drink the water. That also means: don't drink the milk, don't eat the fruit and don't use ice. There's more: no green leafy vegetables, no watermelon and no ice cream.

Now, in spite of these precautions there's still a chance I could get diarrhea, fever, muscle aches, headaches and vomiting. And it could be worse. I could still get malaria; and malaria, I'm told, can be fatal.

In addition to the shots, pills and diet, I will be taking some other precautions. For example, I'm bringing a giant can of industrial strength mosquito repellant. I'm also bringing my own hypodermic needles so I won't get AIDS if I have to get a shot over there.

But there's one thing I don't think I will be able to prepare for ? the poverty. I'm not talking about burns or bag ladies. I'm talking about a country where there is no low-income housing, no medicare, no unemployment insurance and no welfare for millions of people. It's a country where whole families ? babies, teenagers, parents and grandparents ? live for years on a sidewalk.

Imagine ? cooking, eating, urinating, making love, sleeping ? on a sidewalk with thousands of other people!

I don't know how I'll respond to the sights, the sounds and the smells of thousands of people living on the streets. I don't know how I'll respond if a small child comes up to be, begging for food, begging for money, begging for anything to keep him or herself alive. The thought that I will soon be face-to-face with that reality scares me. It scares me a lot more than the thought that I might get malaria.

I'm getting worked up just thinking about having to confront that level of poverty. But I'm also getting worked up thinking about Indian poverty in this country. Indian people here are obviously nowhere near as poor as Indian people there. But compared to the rest of the Canadian population, Indians in this country are poor. A lot of East Indians would find themselves right at home here with the third world conditions on many Indian reserves. True, we are lucky to live in a country that is not plagued by tropical diseases, that has a good health care system, a social welfare system, and in some place, water and sanitation systems. But not all of our people enjoy the benefits of the average Canadian lifestyle. Indian people here are still dying from diseases that are spread by poor living conditions.

Death by disease is an every-day ocurrence in India because it's a poor country with 680 million people. But Canada is an extremely rich country and it has just 25 million people. There is no excuse for Indian people to be so poor, to live in such wretched conditions ? here ? in one of the richest countries on Earth.

Enough of the down side. After all, I am looking forward to the trip. India is a strange and wonderful place. Up to now, it's meant little more than pictures on a page or words in a book to me.

I expect to learn a lot about India and the Indian people there. In the process, I might learn a little more about Canada and the Indian people here. And because I'll be forced to confront my feelings and fears, I also expect to learn a lot more about myself. Who knows? Maybe by the time I get back, I'll have figured out an answer for that desk clerk in San Francisco.