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)

Anna’s presentation

Last post I  shared some photos of demonstrators at India Gate on the evening anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare walked out of Tihar jail to begin his public fast to demand a strong anti-corruption bill be passed by the Indian parliament.  Here’s a quick video of some of the chants.  If you watch very carefully you will see that magical moment when one chant leader is replaced by another.

Since then I have been witnessing Anna-fever all over the city.  Huge flags and loud slogans have been pouring out of trucks, cars and autorickshaws.  Last Saturday I witnessed as group of men rallied – flags, chants and all – their way from one metro line to another.  Half of each day’s newspaper has been dedicated to the story with articles on every aspect of Hazare’s health and the government’s ongoing efforts to get in front of the story for once.On Friday evening I hopped on a bus to Ramlila Grounds to spend a few moments at ground zero of Hazare’s movement, the space where he has been sitting and fasting, surrounded by his advisers, supporters and the media.

Getting off the bus, I followed the crowd through the streets of Old Delhi until I found my self in an orderly line that I knew must lead into the grounds.  Volunteers were handing out bananas and small plastic packets of drinking water.

Many have described Hazare’s movement to be primarily of the middle class, but one could see the poor of Old Delhi taking part as well.  Many were selling different versions of Hazare’s white Nehru cap with the words “I am Anna” printed on them.  There were young men circulating the crowd offering to paint the tricolor (orange, white and green) on your face for five rupees.  Further away a couple young boys were shrieking with laughter as they squeezed drinking water packets at each other.

Metal detectors and pat-downs by distracted police officers are a common feature of life in Delhi.  You can’t take a ride on the metro, watch a movie, enter a mall or temple without one.  By the time the line had taken me to the line of metal detectors I was already stuffing free banana number three into my mouth.  Just then thick white smoke started surrounding us to give the whole scene a much more authentic protest look and feel.  Rather than from tear gas, the smoke was coming from two bicycles with small fumigation machines.  The demonstration had been getting some bad press for the sanitary conditions.

Now in the grounds, I followed the sound of the loud speakers across a muddy expanse populated by streams of people navigating through the large puddles.  Compared to the rest of India, Delhi gets barely any rain but with a total lack of drainage, Delhi can flood with the best of Indian cities.  Half an hour of heavy rain can leave behind days of massive puddles.

It wasn’t long before I was in the thick of the crowd and finally setting eyes on the 74 year old Gandhian activist sitting below a blown up photograph of the original Gandhian (Gandhi).  Nothing between me and the big man but a moat full of media people and smokey Delhi air.

There was a similar spirit of fun and camaraderie among demonstrators that I had seen earlier at India Gate.  Children, youth, middle-aged and elderly people were all there and there was even a section penned off for women, just like what you can find on a Delhi metro train.  Hazare sat alone on the stage as others screamed into the microphone in Hindi, occasionally inspiring the crowd to chant ‘Long live the revolution!  Long live Anna Hazare!’

After an afternoon out with a friend the next day (Saturday) we saw a crowd of young men leaning in to watch a small television in a textile shop.  The government had held an emergency parliamentary vote on Hazare’s version of the anti-corruption bill and passed it.  He hadn’t eaten in 12 days but there he was on TV giving a raucous speech.  I asked one of the guys watching if he had eaten anything yet and he said that apparently he was going to hold off until Sunday morning.

Since then he ate breakfast checked into a private hospital here in Delhi where he is reportedly being attended by 36 doctors.  Now that they have defeated corruption, Anna’s team has announced their next project – they want Indians to have the right to recall Ministers of Parliament mid-term.

This whole story has raised to many important questions over the past few months related to democracy, the role of institutions and of the culture of corruption.  Along with constant updates on Anna and the government’s response to his movement, the papers have also been providing a steady stream of op-ed on the story.  Everyone has an opinion on it, but mine is still under construction.  Might have more on that here later.

Anti-corruption demonstrations in New Delhi

If you haven’t been in India or purposefully following the news here, it’s possible that you might have finally heard about the intense conversation about corruption that is going on here.  That’s because this week zillions of people have been taking it to the streets to show their support for activist Anna Hazare.  Seeing on the news that demonstrations were just around the corner at the iconic India Gate monument, I decided to grab my camera and check it out.

This blog has gone without updates for a long while, but I do have a bunch of interesting items to share so I decided to get warmed up by sharing some timely photos.

This story has finally broken into international news thanks very much to the decision of Delhi police to arrest Mr. Hazare for refusing to abide by a number of the conditions they had imposed for his next fasting sit-in. The purpose of the sit-in was to demand a particular piece of anti-corruption legislation to come before the Indian parliament just the way he think it should.

Long story short, they decided to release him from prison a few hours later but Mr. Hazare decided to stick around in the jail and begin fasting there.  He finally decided to leave today and made is way to Ramlila Grounds in Delhi where he plans to continue fasting for the next 15 days.

A few more photos can be found in this new album on Flickr.  For a good primer on the whole story, check out this article from the Globe and Mail.

The Baha’i Academy (where I have been for the past two months)

I have always been fascinated by how Baha’i and Baha’i-inspired organizations tend to evolve so drastically to meet changing conditions and build on experience.  The Baha’i Academy is a perfect example.  It began in 1982  to provide an academic home for some of the many Baha’i scholars who were forced to flee Iran during the Islamic Revolution.  For many years they ran training programs for Baha’is who were coming in from all over the world in venues all over Panchgani like the campus of the New Era Teacher Training Centre and the famous Prospect Hotel.  In 1998 the Academy moved into its current home right next to the Baha’i Bhavan (Baha’i Centre) and an old house that apparently Gandhi had stayed in at some point.

'Baha'i Academy 002' by Flickr user Neissan Alessandro

In 2000 it began to collaborate with a number of colleges and universities across the state of Maharashtra to offer a program that helps to fill the gap that exists in value education offered to students.  Since then the Academy has gone on to focus more and more on this program and develop curriculum that is used along side curriculum developed by the The Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences (FUNDAEC) in Columbia.

To support the Academy’s efforts to build institutional capacity I have had the chance to help out things like their three year planning process, website planning, curriculum development and public relations work.  One of the main reasons I decided to set out on from home again this year was to have the chance to work in an environment where I could more directly and explicitly apply the teachings of the Baha’i Faith in the context of a formal organization.  It’s been incredibly stimulating to spend so much time studying material to try to draw from the experience of other Baha’i-inspired organizations all over the world that are part of this collective learning process about how to effectively engage in social action and discourse.

Click here to see a small set of photos from trip I went on to Nashik for the Baha’i Academy.  Click here to see a larger set from the Baha’i Academy, including many of enormous toads.

More GIFs from Japan

Normally I try to take a few photos when I visit new places to try to capture some of what it was like to be there.  Japan is too weird for photos.  It demands more weirdness.  It demands more GIFs, and so does the Internet.  If you like them, share them.

The first one is from the Shinjuku area of Tokyo and the second is from the Great Buddha in Kamakura.

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.

Photos from Oujé-Bougoumou, Northern Quebec

Yesterday was Take Your Son To Work (Just As Long As He Doesn’t Touch Anything And Takes Some Pictures) Day for my father, which is cool, because yesterday also happened to be the day he was flying to northern Quebec to visit a site he is working on.  His company has been providing project management for a number of construction projects for a new Cree First Nations community called Oujé-Bougoumou.  The major project right now is the Aanischaaukamikw Cultural Institute (AKA the Cree Cultural Institute), designed by superstar Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal.

The pretense of my being able to come along for the ride was that I was to take pictures to document the progress of the project and have some nice pictures all the companies can use for promotional material.  Most of the pictures aren’t terribly interesting, but I have posted some of the good ones online to my flickr photostream.

The building will house office space for a number of Cree organizations, workshops for craftspeople, historical archives, a gathering hall and exhibition space all relating to Cree history and culture.  The design is based on the traditional Cree shaptuwan, a space for feasts and gatherings and being inside feels like you are under a giant canoe.

Click here to see a few more images.

I don’t understand dungeons and dragons.

[This is the fourth in a series by myself and Jennifer Valberg of me not understanding things.]

Saskamatoonamawan

Did you ever think that you were the type of person who wouldn’t ever make conversation by talking about the weather?  The weather always happens and it usually the same thing that happened last year at around this time, right?  Well, coming back to Ottawa from the a frozen city in the middle of Canada called Saskatoon, I found myself remarking on the weather like the worst weather remarkers out there.  “It was really cold, but there wasn’t much snow.”  I would say.  “I flew over Toronto and saw barely any snow!”  Now I’m even blogging about it.  This has to stop.

Anyways, I went to Saskatoon.  It was really cold.  I spent the whole time playing board games, watching movies, and putting food inside my body.  All indoors.  Click here to see a very small set of photos I took on the inside of various Saskatoon buildings.