FIRST PERSON:For three days last month, rugby union player JAMIE HEASLIPvisited some of the Irish charity Goal's humanitarian projects in Kolkata, India, and pitched in with the locals. This is his diary of his trip.
DAY ONE
I have just arrived at Kolkata airport and already I’m wondering how people can function in these conditions. The first thing that hits me is the noise, followed closely by the humidity and the heat. It’s like being wrapped in a roasting hot, wet towel.
No sooner have I picked up my bags than Lisa O’Shea, head of marketing at Goal, is there to whisk me away in a jeep, while telling me what I will be doing that day. After a quick stop for a shower, I’m straight into it. This is exactly what I asked of Goal: I wanted to get stuck into the different projects it is involved with, not just stand by and watch.
We head to Goal’s brick-kiln project. Goal is working at 35 of these factories, where whole families live and work. There are 2,500 children and 8,000 adults. I am immediately put shovelling heavy clay into wooden wheelbarrows, and am very lucky to have the gentle giant Bob Casey [the London Irish player] with me to help out.
We soon get our technique sorted out, with the help of some insider tips from the men already working on shifting the clay to the mixer. I’m not an hour into the job before I have three great big blisters on my hand. I swear I can hear my dad laughing all the way from Naas. He always laughed at me doing manual labour.
It isn’t long before I am too tired to shovel any more clay, so I lend a hand at making bricks. It isn’t much easier as each one has to be made by hand. I can’t believe how one woman, who is no more than 25 years old and has a child, just blasts through making them. I am probably slowing her down, but at least I give her a laugh.
She tells me they each make about 2,000 bricks a day, which earns them roughly €1. I can’t believe it, given the heat and the appalling conditions. To make things worse, if it rains while the bricks are stacked up to dry, the whole batch is ruined and they earn nothing.
The next phase of the process involves hardening the bricks. The workers stack the dried bricks in a honeycomb formation, cover them with wood and light a fire around it. The fire has to be tended 24 hours a day by men who walk around constantly, ensuring it is always burning.
Bob and I try stacking the bricks and tending the oven. Before long, we are both dripping in sweat and absolutely shattered.
We are amazed that people can do this back-breaking work in such oppressive heat day after day for only €1. But these families have to survive and the human spirit drives them on.
DAY TWO
The second day begins with another early start. Lisa has organised for us to go to Dhapa dump, where Goal is working with 6,000 people living in four settlements, and to the Rehabilitation Centres for Children. At the dump, we visit one of the many schools Goal is supporting. We listen to the children learning English, Hindi and Bengali. An education will provide them with a chance to have a better future. It may allow them not to have to scavenge in dumps for a living, as their parents do.
The school is a beautiful little place and the water and sanitation facilities provided by Goal are amazing. I keep thinking of what kind of life the children would have if Goal were not there to help. Next to the school, some pigs wallow and even defecate in a pool of filthy water in a hollow in the ground. Without Goal’s help, the local people would have to use that water for their everyday needs.
After this, we are off to the Rehabilitation Centres for Children to visit a children’s hospital Goal supports and see how it improves the quality of life of the children who come under its care. The hospital helps children with polio, clubfoot and other orthopaedic problems.
This is particularly close to my heart. Before going professional in rugby, I finished a degree in medical engineering. So I understand the work done by the people at the hospital to help the children – and the inner strength of the children who go through treatment. The very young ones are lucky, because they won’t remember their time at the hospital, or the operations, and their mothers can stay with them.
But the parents of the older children can visit only when they aren’t working. It requires enormous strength of character on the part of these children, and they are very humbling to be around. I sit with one girl, Bernali, who is scheduled to have an operation in the morning. It must be a scary prospect for her, but she doesn’t bat an eyelid while she lies there waiting to have the procedure. As far as she is concerned, the operation will change her life. It is an honour to visit this small hospital, which is doing such great work for people who otherwise wouldn’t have the means to get help.
DAY THREE
The day starts with a trip to another dump, where Goal is helping 1, 800 people who make a living foraging for items that can be recycled.
Howrah slum, where the dump is sited, is an attack on the senses. The minute we step out of the jeeps, we are hit by the usual hot towel of humidity, but this time it seems like the towel has been dragged through an open sewer.
We visit a school and see the great work being done by teachers who are giving the next generation the chance to have a better life.
Water pumps and clean sanitation provided by Goal are being utilised fully. In the west, we take such things for granted. They are crucial in these places to combat disease and bad health.
At Howrah, I want to see how the youngsters might take to playing rugby. As it turns out, they are like children all around the world: you just throw a ball into the mix, and they run around screaming, smiling and having fun.
I’m always astonished how sport transcends cultures and creeds, and gives people so much enjoyment. During my ad hoc rugby lesson, about 20 of the children mob me, trying to take me down and wrestle the ball off me.
After the dump, we go to a community that lives on a marsh beside one of Kolkata’s main railway tracks. The Goal-supported community there consists of 2,800 families. Arriving at the Goal school, which forms part of its Right Track programme, we are taken aback to see women hunched over digging through cow manure. They are knee-deep and digging through it, wearing neither gloves nor shoes.
For the umpteenth time on this trip, I am amazed at how people survive, and at the strength of their will.
The children are eager to see what I am capable of when it comes to sports. This time, however, I am schooled in their passion: cricket. It takes me a couple of overs to get used to swinging the bat, but I manage a couple of sixes and fours. I come into my own, though, when I am fielding, making quite a few decent catches, which impresses my young hosts (I think). I am struck again, and humbled, by how sport gives people enjoyment, regardless of where they live and in what circumstances.
I am grateful for my trip to Kolkata. It lets me see the terrible circumstances many people have to live in, but I also witness the strength of humanity in diversity, and the ability of people to make the best they can of terrible circumstances.
I am amazed by the work Goal is doing in Kolkata. They have provided water and sanitation to almost 500 schools since 2005. I hate to imagine how things would be if Goal wasn’t there helping the communities I visit.
Without Goal, these communities would have nowhere to educate their children, nor would they have sanitation facilities. They would be forced to use the water in which pigs wallow to wash themselves, their clothes and their food. The sides of pathways or pools of water would be used as community toilets.
Experiencing all I have done is a humbling experience and I still don’t think it has totally sunk in yet. All I know for sure is that Goal is making people’s lives and communities better.
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