Pilgrimage to Bhopal

Late in the night of 2 December 1984 poor safety measures led to the release of 27 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide India Limited in the city of Bhopal, India.  The poisonous gas went on to kill 25,000 people in the minutes, days, months and years following.  Many more were injured and children there are often born with birth defects.  The Union Carbide Corporation did their best to downplay their responsibility as much as they could in the aftermath and after a sketchy settlement process they were done with the matter. When the Dow Chemical Company bought Union Carbide in 2001 they generously settled all outstanding claims against Carbide at home in the US and have consistently ignored claims from Bhopal.  The story is back in the news as a result of the public outcry over Dow Chemical’s sponsorship of the 2012 London Olympics.

In this post I want to share an account of my visit to the abandoned Union Carbide factory site last month.  All these photos and a few more can be found in a new set I have just posted on my flikr photostream.

I was four months old when the initial leak happened.  I probably heard it mentioned a few times in school or pop culture, but only knew about as much about it as anyone knows about horrible things that happened a long time ago in a foreign country.  The first time I really started to learn about it was after I heard about the culture jamming pranksters the Yes Men and saw this legendary 2003 hoax:

In 2007 when I was sent to Karnataka in South India as part of my internship through the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, I was trained in Calgary, Alberta with Prabjit Barn, another Shastri intern who was being sent to do research with the Sambhavna Clinic on the ongoing health impacts of the gas leak on people in the area.  When we all got together again in Delhi at the end of the internship some of us met up with some of Prabjit’s friends from Bhopal who had marched to Delhi to demand more from their government.  Many of the people I saw there were old women, including one octogenarian who apparently led the entire 700km march, walking faster than everyone else.

I learned much more later on after I returned to university and took on a group assignment where each of us were to take on different stakeholders on the Bhopal gas leak tragedy.  Despite all the depressing subjects I had studied up to then, I had never found myself feel so upset and moved by a research topic before.  In the way they allowed for the disaster to happen and how they have managed it in the aftermath, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical have showed almost no respect for human life and no legal system has been able to bring them to account.

In his 2004 documentary Scared Sacred, Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper visits a number of the planet’s ground zeros as a sort of modern pilgrimage to make connections and search for hope.  I wasn’t crazy about the film itself, but I appreciated how he decided to take a pilgrimage to Bhopal to pay his respects to these victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster.  I decided that the next time I was in India, I would do the same.

Believe it or not, the market for serving Bhopal gas tragedy pilgrims is not a big one.  Search any website or guidebook on visiting Bhopal and they will mention the lakes, temples and museums – but nothing on the single event that most people know the city for and how one can learn about it first-hand.  Through emails with Prabjit back in Canada and connecting with some people at the local Baha’i Centre I figured out where the factory site was and a couple clinics to visit and people to meet.

From what I read during my research I was pretty sure that the factory site would be closed to the public since the factory site itself has yet to be cleaned up and is a major part of the ongoing controversy.  To my surprise, my new friend Manoj and I were met at an entrance by three casually dressed men lying on cots who claimed to be in charge of letting people in.  For 300 rupees (about $6) they would let us in and show us around.  From looking at them I doubted they were in charge of anything.  I asked who they work for – the city, state or central government?  They said that they answer to the In charge, who was not around today.  In charge is actually a very common job title in India which means exactly what it sounds like.  Eventually one of the men brought me inside a building where their uniforms were hung on hooks on the wall and there was a pile of signed photocopies of passports and forms of other foreigners who went through the municipal corporation (think: city hall) to request access the legal (think: mind-numbingly bureaucratic) way, a three day process.  Three hundred rupees it is!

First stop was an empty lab where Union Carbide scientists did their research.  The floor was covered with broken glass from the windows and old lab containers.  Under the counter we found several bottles of lab materials left untouched that none have dared to disturb.

While the plant has been abandoned, it hasn’t really been abandoned.  As we walked along its lanes we crossed paths with women grazing their livestock and boys hanging out as they foraged for small fruit.  I have now learned that the people who live near nearby know that these are dangerous activities, but they feel they have no choice.  The pressure is worse when it comes to drinking the water that continues to poison them.  Researchers have found high concentrations of chlorobenzenes, organochlorines, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, zinc and mercury in the local water and soil.

It should be noted here that it is far to easy to make Indians look sad and severe in photos.  That’s just how they like to be photographed. These guys were actually really excited to see a foreigner and have their photo taken, but as soon as I raised my camera to my face, the smiles had been wiped off theirs.

We made our way to a very tall structure of pipes, platforms and containers at the centre of the site.  Our guide pointed out a tiny pipe near the top and said that it was the very pipe that the MIC gas escaped from that night in 1984.

Across from this structure was a giant tank sitting on the ground that reminded me of beached whale.  Not that I have ever seen a beached whale.  Our guide said that this was the very pipe that held the MIC gas before it escaped.  What happened was that some water leaked in past a number of shoddy safeguards, which caused a reaction with the MIC, dramatically raising the temperature and pressure inside the tank and leading to the leak.  Our guide said that the government later pulled the tank out of the ground so that they could more easily show the world the tank that killed so many people.  There are several other tanks throughout the plant which many suspect may not still hold MIC and other toxic materials.

As we walked through the site a police officer called down to us from a rooftop and our guide waved some pieces of paper he had been carrying up at him.  I assume those papers were standing in for the authorized forms showing that we were allowed to be there.

Before we left we walked over a wide concrete surface that was growing over with weeds.  Our guide explained that here there used to be a building there but it was torn down by a mob of local people in the days after the disaster.  They were enraged over what happened and decided to take it out on a number of buildings on the site.

Outside the plant Manoj and I crossed the street and walked over to a statue of a woman and a baby that I had seen pictures of years earlier online.  Its plaque reads:

NO MORE HIROSHIMA
NO MORE BHOPAL
WE WANT TO LIVE

We decided to make our pilgrimage complete by reading a couple prayers for the departed, one in Hindi and one in English.  I chose this short prayer:

O my God!  O Thou forgiver of sins, bestower of gifts, dispeller of afflictions!

Verily, I beseech thee to forgive the sins of such as have abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spiritual world.

O my Lord!  Purify them from trespasses, dispel their sorrows, and change their darkness into light.  Cause them to enter the garden of happiness, cleanse them with the most pure water, and grant them to behold Thy splendors on the loftiest mount.

-’Abdu’l-Bahá (Bahá’í Prayers, p.45)

The red text ‘ORA E SEMPRE RESTENZA’is Spanish for ‘Now and always resistance’

We also visited two amazing organizations that serve the victims of the disaster, Sambhavna Clinic and the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre. Sambhavna Clinic offers all types of health care to victims of the disaster as well as heath education and research work on the ongoing contamination of water and soil.  Prabjit had a list of people for me to say hello to for her, including Chandrakanta a very good friend of hers who does cleaning at the clinic.

At the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre we chatted with their new Public Relations Officer Tabish Ali. Chingari offers special education and other treatment for children who are born with severe learning disabilities as a result of the gas leak.  He told us about their activities and showed us a great short film he had just made with the help of a volunteer.  The film is made entirely of digital photographs rather than actual video footage:

To keep up with the ongoing struggle, I recommend the blog of the Bhopal Medical Appeal, a UK based organization that raises funds for these two clinics and works with the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.

UPDATE:  A version of this article was published by the Bhopal Medical Appeal on their blog at bhopal.org.  Click here to see it.  (21 March 2012)

‘Something so important’

About a year ago I put together this video while I was working directly with the Otesha Project as Programs Director.  To develop content for an upcoming fundraiser a number of the staff put together ‘digital stories’ based on our personal reflections on the work of the organization.  The cheesyness of my video irks me a bit, but you know what?!  I meant what I said and I still mean it, so here it is.  Bonus points go to whoever can mention the text I was citing at the 0:47 and 2:00 marks in the video.

The Otesha Project continues to spread the jam from their new downtown Ottawa headquarters and are now recruiting for the slate of crazy tours they have planned for 2012.  More information is available on the website.  Please share with anyone you think might be interested in connecting with Canadian youth around environmental sustainability and social justice as they live as part of a sustainable mobile community.

A story about how every day on an Otesha tour is insane

My friends at the Otesha Project inform me that applications are now open for this year’s slate of tours and I thought I would share a story from way back in summer of 2009 when I was a rookie Programs Director with the organization.  My role was to co-manage the organization’s cycling and performing tour program that brings groups of young sustainability advocates to schools and communities across Canada to deliver performances and workshops about environmental and social justice issues.  This story is accompanied by photos from a new set of pictures I have just posted to Flickr.

I was sent to help train the Rising Tide Tour and was spending my first of four days with the team on the road before heading back to the office to support them from there.  I began to understand the thrill of cycle touring for the very first time after only a few minutes on the open road as we left Moncton for Sackville.  When we found ourselves lost on a muddy logging road, cycle touring was seeming crazy again.  When it wasn’t raining it was unbearably hot and when we weren’t moving we were being swarmed by mosquitoes.  Throughout that day several bikes broke down and half of the team got lost in the forest.  All this on the team’s first day on the road.

We trickled into Sackville that night to swap stories about the day and gather our forces for the next.  The team would have the morning to themselves and perform at the Bridge Street Cafe in the afternoon.  We slept in tents on the campus of Mount Allison University.

As team members awoke the next morning to burn their oats, some of us considered taking advantage of pancake breakfast happening at a nearby church.  Just then, two tour members realized their bikes were missing and everyone started to freak out.  The only two bikes that weren’t locked to something.  This was a bike tour.  One person per bike.  Disaster!  And all this as the pancakes at the church may very well have been getting cold.  While most spread out across the town to do something about the missing bikes, some of us went directly to the church to make sure the pancakes were okay.

The reason I mention the pancakes is not to make me sound bad (although it also serves that purpose), but because at the church I saw a familiar face.  There was a young man there, not much younger than myself who I was sure I had met somewhere.  Was he from my home town?  Did I go to high school or university with him?  Was he one of the many cousins on my father’s side of the family?  Can I get seconds on these pancakes?  Can you please pass the syrup?

We rejoined the group to try to find the bikes with no luck.  But by the end of the day word had gone out throughout Sackville and many community members were stepping up to support the team with offers to give away and lend their old bikes to that the tour could go on.  That night as the tour members try to rehabilitate some loaned bikes our host at the university comes in to say that someone is on his way with a couple of bikes for them to check out.  Even though the tour members now had bikes, our host suggested they just accept the bikes and if they are no good, he will find a good home for them.

About half an hour later that same young I recognize at the the church came in the room rolling in two brand new bikes to give to the team members.  He heard of their plight and bought them straight away.  Ever since he first saw an Otesha performance at a Canada Millennium Scholarship conference in Ottawa in 2006 he had wanted to find a way to be involved.  The very same conference was where I also saw my first Otesha performance and briefly met him.

It blew my mind how a performance three years earlier in a different part of the country had played a part in the incredible act of generosity that we were witnessing at the same time as it also led me to work for the organization that brought the performance to the conference.  Knowing how difficult it can be for Otesha to deliver every performance it is asked to do, I could just picture the staff back in 2006 debating whether or not to the show.  What impact was it going to have?  How was it going to effect the members of the audience and support the goals of the organization?  They would not have been able to imagine what would happen three years later at a university residence in the Maritimes.

The bikes were gratefully accepted and as a thanks the team delivered an exclusive and hilariously unrated version of the play.  A couple days later I returned to by natural habitat, the office.  Meanwhile the team went on for several more days of cycling, performing, burnt oatmeal and insanity.

This year tour members will be developing new material, plunging their hands into the soil and  donning superhero capes as part of the People’s Performance Tour, Phenomenal Food Tour, Pedal to Plate Tour and Sunshine Coast Tour from spring to summer to fall.  Click here for all the dates, details and application information.  Bring a bike lock and a pair of those diaper shorts.

Click here to see the rest of my album from Rising Tide Tour 2009.  For more of my posts on the Otesha Project, start here.

This year’s World Religion Day celebration in Ottawa is going to dig deeper

Over the past few weeks I have been working with a committee of the Baha’i Community of Ottawa to organize Ottawa’s World Religion Day celebration.  World Religion Day is in Ottawa is normally themed around one of today’s major global challenges such as peace, the rights of the child and education.  In the past the event has rarely dug very deep into these issues as it adheres to a strictly family-friendly format.  This year we want dig a bit deeper while still being friendly to the families.

Our special guest speaker will be David Chernoshenko, the new City Councillor for Ottawa’s Capital Ward.  He is well known for his involvement in the environmental field as a filmmaker and the former deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada.  In case you haven’t seen it, here’s his inspired ad for his successful bid for a seat in council:

The title of the event is “Faith and the Environment: Celebrating Common Ground” and it can be seen as part of an important discourse about the interaction between science, religion and the environment.

I’m tempted to call it a new discourse, but in reality religion has been talking about science and the environment for as long as there has been science and religion.  It’s just that it can feel like a new discourse because it’s moving really fast right now as more and more religious people, scientists and environmentalists are taking each other more and more seriously at the same time as everyone is getting a little freaked out about the future.  What do our religions say about how we should be interacting with with the planet and all the other people who live on it?

There’s a statement of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s (one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith) from a lecture he gave in 1912 that I don’t think can possibly be quoted enough where he claims that

…Religion and science are the two wings upon which man’s intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism. (Paris Talks, p. 143)

Ottawa’s World Religion Day celebration will be happening from 2pm to 4pm on Sunday, January 16th at City Hall (110 Laurier Avenue West).  If you can’t come (or even if you can) check out Worldwatch Institute Senior Researcher Gary Gardner’s 2006 book Inspiring Progress: Religion’s Contributions to Sustainable Development.  It’s the resource that came to mind as I tried to think of the first best place to dive into the subject.  I’ll write more about this discourse into the future as I plan telling the internet more about the things I am up to in this area.

The BRQ

Like many organizations and movements, we at the Otesha Project love acronyms.  We use them for our tours, our partner organizations and even for each other.  One new one is the BRQ for the Billy Ray question.

See, the main character in the play that forms the core of our program offerings, Reason to Dream, is a typical Canadian high school student named Billy Ray.  One day his home room teacher Mrs Pinsky assigns the class a paper due the next day called “What are you going to do with your life?”.  In the hallway after class he finds out that all of his friends know exactly what they are going to do with their lives, even they are going to buy their first car.  Billy has no such vision of what he is going to do with his life.  When he suggests that he might not even get a car, everyone in the hallway freezes in horror.  “Well, I mean, I probably will.”  he says, and everyone sighs in relief before they carry on.

When Billy goes home to work on his assignment he falls asleep and into a crazy dream sequence that shows him the environmental and social justice implications of some of the choices he makes in his every day life.  Throughout, the question “What am I going to do with my life?”  keeps ringing in his ears.  And that is the Billy Ray question.

The 2010 Coast to Capital team performing Reason to Dream in Vancouver

Many kids decide at a very young age what they are going to be when they grow up, be it a doctor, an actor or a firetruck – but I was always undecided.  The first time I was really confronted with the BRQ was when I was in grade five when I was faced with the decision between advanced math or regular math.  That would dictate weather I could take advanced or regular math in junior high, which would dictate the same for high school, which would dictate if I could take a science or engineering program in university should I choose to go to university.  So the little grade five me was essentially being asked if I was prepared to completely rule out a career in science or engineering FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.  After someone explained to me what the word engineering meant, I was one stressed out eleven year old.

Thankfully there were grownups around to explain to me that in reality people change careers all the time and that I would have opportunities to change my mind later on.  Turns out they were right and that for many reasonable people the BRQ is a work in progress.  I have been finding it helpful to think about things in terms of what I want to learn about and what problems I want to work on based on what I think I’m good at.

One usually doesn’t expect to land a decent job right out of university, but somehow I managed to beat the odds and find myself starting a new job within two weeks of finishing my last assignment.  Serving as Programs Director for the Otesha Project turned out not to be a decent job but an amazing experience that I expect to be among the most important ones I will ever have.  As you may know, I am not a sports fan – but I imagine the feeling I have had working in the office of an organization I always admired is something like finding yourself a player on your all-time favorite sports team.

All of a sudden I was managing teams of enthusiastic and inspiring participants and setting them up with opportunties to work with other youth around really important topics like food, trade justice and the media.  Then I got to help plan the next set of programs and see them through to the end as I got all mixed up in everything the organization does.  Currently I am planning myself into oblivion as I finish up my tenure within the next few weeks.

As the BRQ rings through my head right now more loudly than it ever has, I have been updating my CV (another acronym) and thinking about what I need to learn next.  I just posted an online version of my CV on Linkedin, the social network for grownups.

I’ll keep you posted on what becomes of me, but in the meantime here is an index of some of my posts about Otesha followed by a picture of the best Programs Team the Otesha Project has ever seen:

• The time I was on TV to collect an award.
• The time I was interviewed for the Charlatan.
• The time we did a prank on April Fool’s Day.
• The time we made a funny video.
• The time I was interviewed for Here Magazine.
• The death of Andrew Wolf.

Programs Dream Team, 2009-2010

Andrew

What started yesterday as just another phone call from a cycling and performing team during a quiet day in the office has become the most tragic event in the history of the Otesha Project. I just got home for the first time since this all started and I just want to post a couple thoughts before getting some rest.

Along with all the messages we have been receiving from the media, we have also been swamped with so many warm messages of support for Andrew’s family, his team and for our program.  Perhaps the most moving message was the one I just read from Hannah Thomas, my counterpart at our younger, hipper, better at writing-er sister organization in the UK on her personal blog, Hannamade.  Like her, I never had the chance to meet Andrew Wolf, but, she says,

…I do know some things about him, as each person who signs up to an Otesha tour has these things in common: An incredible spirit. A thirst for adventure. A belief that the world can change for the better. A belief in themselves. Strong thighs, strong heart. A deep sense of morality. A smile. An inherent optimism and appreciation for people, beauty, nature, life. The ability to meet a stranger and soon enough, call them “family”. An open mind. A need to prioritise what’s important in life – people, experiences, contentment, our earth – over prestige or money.  A good sense of humour. An ability to laugh at themselves. Playfulness. A desire to connect with young people and pass on what they’ve learnt. A desire to stand up and be counted.

The world has lost another who was trying to change it for the better. Please, please, let’s do all we can to make cycling safer for ourselves and our loved ones.

A number of alumni of the program are congregating on Facebook to plan signs of support by wearing their Otesha t-shirts and riding in their local Critical Mass bike rides in Andrew’s honor.  Many more are sending their thoughts and prayers out for Andrew and his most amazing and graceful family right now as well as to the whole Highlands and Islands team.  The following is a prayer by written by ‘Abdu’l-Baha.

O Thou kind Lord!  Graciously bestow a pair of heavenly wings unto each of these fledglings, and give them spiritual power that they may wing their flight through this limitless space and may soar to the heights of the Abhá Kingdom.

O Lord!  Strengthen these fragile seedlings that each one may become a fruitful tree, verdant and flourishing.  Render these souls victorious through the potency of Thy celestial hosts, that they may be able to crush the forces of error and ignorance and to unfurl the standard of fellowship and guidance amidst the people; that they may, even as the reviving breaths of the spring, refresh and quicken the trees of human souls and like unto vernal showers make the meads of that region green and fertile.

Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful; Thou art the Bestower and the All-Loving.

More information will be posted as it is made available on Otesha’s Twitter feed.

Illustration by Coast to Capital Tour 2010 alumni Nicolette Rignault

“…and no one got chased out of town by angry pitchfork-wielding townsfolk.”

The Rising Tide Otesha team I helped train in Moncton, NB last summer

Last week I was interviewed for an article in Here Magazine about the Otesha Project cycling and performing tour we will be launching next week from Fredericton, New Brunswick.  It was written by fellow Carleton University alum Paige Aarhus and couple of minor warts aside, it’s a pretty fun article.

FREDERICTON – Be warned, New Brunswick: an army of eco-crusaders will soon breach provincial borders.

The Otesha Project is a youth-led environmental organization operating out of forward-thinking Ottawa, and they have a novel idea: why not put together a crew of 15-20 socially conscious young people, and send them across the country on bicycles to spread the message that green is good?

“We’re trying to see a change in culture that’s based less on consumption and more on community and justice,” said project director Samuel Benoit.

…

“We empower the tour members to take all of that into consideration. Say they’re going into Brooks, Alberta, which is a meat packing town; the play suggests that people eat less meat – so we leave it up to the team. If they want to change the play or adapt the message, that’s their choice,” he said.

In the case of Brooks, the team chose not to change anything – they were confident in their message, said Benoit, and no one got chased out of town by angry pitchfork-wielding townsfolk.

Click here to read the rest of it online at herenb.com.

Go see Avatar

I finally saw James Cameron’s epic new film Avatar with my father and uncle this afternoon and we found it both visually and thematically striking.  Yes it was just the Pocahontas story only with aliens and explosions, but on the other hand – it was the Pocahontas story with ALIENS and EXPLOSIONS!  Besides, as one of the most expensive movies ever made – don’t you think you should do your part and pitch in?

The story took place in the distant future on a far away planet called Pandora but had everything to do with planet Earth right now. During one tragic scene when the human forces attack ‘Hometree’ (a giant tree the locals live in) in order to access the mineral deposits beneath it, I was reminded of the following words of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the Son of the Founder of the Baha’i Faith, on the double edged sword of civilization (emphasis mine):

…on the one hand, material achievements and the development of the physical world produce prosperity, which exquisitely manifests its intended aims, on the other hand dangers, severe calamities and violent afflictions are imminent.

Consequently, when thou lookest at the orderly pattern of kingdoms, cities and villages, with the attractiveness of their adornments, the freshness of their natural resources, the refinement of their appliances, the ease of their means of travel, the extent of knowledge available about the world of nature, the great inventions, the colossal enterprises, the noble discoveries and scientific researches, thou wouldst conclude that civilization conduceth to the happiness and the progress of the human world. Yet shouldst thou turn thine eye to the discovery of destructive and infernal machines, to the development of forces of demolition and the invention of fiery implements, which uproot the tree of life, it would become evident and manifest unto thee that civilization is conjoined with barbarism. Progress and barbarism go hand in hand, unless material civilization be confirmed by Divine Guidance, by the revelations of the All-Merciful and by godly virtues, and be reinforced by spiritual conduct, by the ideals of the Kingdom and by the outpourings of the Realm of Might.

[Selections From the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Baha, p. 284]

Peace and Environment News article on Ottawa Baha’i community’s environmental action

Literally dozens of Ottawa residents might find themselves reading my words as they grab a copy this month’s (November/December 2009) of the free newsletter Peace and Environment News (PEN) published by Peace and Environment Resource Centre.  It was produced as part of an initiative with the Ottawa chapter of Faith and the Common Good, upon which I serve as Baha’i representative and chairperson. Faith and the Common Good is a really neat Canadian organization that works specifically with faith communities to help them address environmental and social justice problems.

The issue featured a number of  articles from different Ottawa faith groups on their achievements and challenges in engaging in environmental action and the teachings that inspire them to do so.  Click below to find a hyperlinked and illustrated original version to make those literally dozens who have read the articles become literally dozens plus another twelfth of a dozen.