by Anne Lynam Goddard
In January 2006, CARE Chief of Staff Anne Lynam Goddard and actress Meg Ryan traveled for four days across India — the third largest salt-producing country in the world. When people add salt to their food, most never connect the seasoning to a woman in the Indian desert, struggling to survive in the harshest conditions imaginable, or to her children who have never set foot in a school. The following is an excerpt from Anne's personal journal following a daylong visit to the desert in the western state of Gujarat. While there, she and Meg met with salt workers and their families, and learned how CARE is protecting their dignity and helping them connect to basic services that weren't available before. Meg discussed her trip and CARE's work with Oprah Winfrey during her appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on March 1, 2006.
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Meg Ryan sits with members of a village women's group in India. CARE's programs in the area are helping poor women and their families get access to health services and education, two key resources in breaking the cycle of poverty. (©2006 CARE/Josh Estey)
Fifteen miles into this roadless journey, we haven't seen even a single tree or stone as a landmark. Then, in this flat emptiness, we see a thatched roof and, as Meg puts it, "a colorful flower standing tall in the distance." Her name is Leelaben. She is a 35-year-old salt pan worker, a wife and mother of six children. Meg and I exchange a look. We cannot imagine how anyone can survive out here. But people do, somehow, and they have for generations.
Reality Rubs Salt Workers Sore
Leelaben welcomes us into the small hut she and her family of six call home for eight months out of the year. Like others in the desert, they migrate back to their village when monsoon months set in and the work ends. She explains that her family makes about $1.50 a day harvesting salt. Leelaben walks us behind her hut, past a broken bed made of wood and rope, to where her family harvests salt, to help us learn more about the extreme challenges of the work.
As we peer into a deep hole in the earth, she says they dig roughly 70 feet straight down to find brine, the raw material for salt. The first 30 feet they dig by hand, then a gasoline-powered drilling pump takes over. The brine is pumped into the salt pans.
Her three salt pans — each half the size of an Olympic swimming pool — are made by stamping the ground and building a two-foot barrier around the edges. This process seals the pan's floor, compacting the ground so the salty water won't seep downward. As the pan's saline water evaporates in the sunlight, layers of big salt crystals are left behind. Workers painstakingly rake them to the side in tiny mounds before filling the pan again with brine.
Leelaben describes the work as "back-breaking" and "infectious." Working barefoot in the salt water and atop hard salt crystals causes severe skin disorders. Most families can't afford boots. Not only does she work with her husband under the blazing sun for eight to 10 hours a day, but she also is responsible for preparing the meals, fetching water and taking care of the children, who help out in the salt pan, too.
Breaking Down the Layers
Hansaben, 16, is the daughter of a salt-pan worker and a student at Ganatar, a CARE-sponsored boarding school. (©2006 CARE/Josh Estey)
Until a couple of years ago when CARE began supporting their cause, salt workers like Leelaben battled it out alone against the many unseen obstacles in this desert of 1,900 square miles.
CARE's work here is part of our SNEHAL (sustained nutrition, education, health and livelihood) project. The project operates in four districts in the state of Gujarat to improve health and social conditions in 3,000 of the poorest villages, connecting people to previously unavailable government services. The project benefits nearly 3.8 million people — primarily women and girls, as they are the most marginalized by poverty.
Like almost every woman in the desert, Leelaben wakes just before sunrise each day to work in the salt pans. She takes a break at 10:30 a.m. to start a fire and cook a meal for her family. She returns to the salt pans at 1 p.m. and works until sunset. Then the family eats whatever is left over from the mid-day meal.
Once a week, tanker trucks filled with drinking water come to the desert. Leelaben tells Meg and me that she either rides a bicycle or walks five miles to the tanker to fill two 13-gallon containers. Before CARE approached the government about dispatching their tankers to the desert and supplying water to the families here, Leelaben and her children had to go more than double that distance to reach the nearest water pipeline. Reducing the distance lifted the burden somewhat.
Salt workers also did not have health services, because of their nomadic way of life. However, CARE made the case that they are in one place for eight months of the year, so a medical health van now visits the desert twice a week. Now the families are able to immunize their children, and they've learned the importance of good nutrition for pregnant and lactating women. Families also are provided with boots to protect their feet when working in the salt pans.
Herself a woman denied education, Leelaben tells us she knows that the only way out of this life for her children is through schooling.
"I want my children to become educated so they can have more control over their future," Leelaben says. Then Meg asks if, even with an education, there's any chance of them getting out of the salt pans. To this Leelaben replies: "They might still work in the salt pans, but because they can read and write and understand their rights, they won't get cheated by the traders."
To help the children gain that knowledge, Leelaben takes on their workload while they attend classes started by CARE. Her children still help out, but for most of the day they attend school — or rather, thanks to CARE, the school now comes to them.
A few minutes' drive past Leelaben's hut, we visit two of the schools. Situated in what resembles the foundation of a salt pan, the 10 by 10-foot schools are made of scraps of wood and dried mud, with thatched roofs. To help keep the children cool, the floors are dug three feet deep into the desert floor.
Each school buzzes with the energy of some 25 students. I was especially glad to see that nearly half of the students are girls, who are traditionally denied an education because it's believed their place is the home.
Meg and I climb down the hardened mud steps and observe children learning their ABCs on a blackboard. "Apart from all else," Padia says, "they are learning how to dream, and to make their dreams come true, despite the odds."
Returning to town, our last stop of the day is the Ganatar boarding school, started by CARE and managed by a local partner organization. In contrast to the desert schools, the Ganatar campus and its dormitories are surrounded by real flowers, trees and green grass. Together, these schools make a sustainable academic option for children whose only school otherwise would have been life's hardships.
Inside a Ganatar classroom, we meet with a group of girls who radiate with excitement. The girls explain to us that they are not only receiving a basic education, but also learning about health, rights and skills to generate an income. One girl, 16-year-old Hansaben, proudly hands Meg a small bag she had woven by hand.
Hansaben, who attended school when she was younger but was forced to quit when her family began migrating to the desert, explains that "there were no schools in the desert. Our only skill was working with salt."
Today, Hansaben and her siblings attend school with the goal of exchanging the uncertainties of migrant life for the stability of a rewarding life away from the desert. "I tell others to study hard and become something in their lives, just as we are doing. We want to take advantage of this opportunity to help carry the family workload in other ways."
Fittingly, our day ends when the girls sing "We Shall Overcome." Even though these girls sing in the local language while Meg and I join them in English, we understand each other.
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