Surveying Slums in Cuttack, India

The sanitation initiative that I’m working on here in India, Project Sammaan, is centered around the construction of over 100 toilet facilities in the eastern Indian cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, in the state of Odisha (formerly Orissa). We’re preparing to commence construction in both cities, which means a great deal of work needs to be done to prepare the sites in which these facilities will be built.

To that end, I spent last Saturday in Cuttack with several project partners, including those from the local government, visiting the slum communities where we will be building to survey each proposed site to gauge what needs to be done (e.g., demolition of existing facilities, identification of nearby utilities, seeing what degree of encroachment has occurred on any open spaces, etc.) prior to ground-breaking.

It’d been some time since I last visited Cuttack’s slums. Most of my time is spent in Bhubaneswar as our office is there and a majority of the work will be done there (nearly 90 facilities to be built versus Cuttack’s 32). It takes about an hour each way to drive out to Cuttack, so I typically only go out there once a week to meet with our government partners. This is not to say that Cuttack and its people are any less deserving of attention, it’s just that the time spent anywhere has to be relative to the project’s demands and Bhubaneswar tends to win out on most cases.

This was not the case last weekend, though, and the work provided not only an additional opportunity to visit Cuttack, but to get back in the field and spend time engaging with the people, which beats being in an office every time. I brought a camera with me to document the visit and, as is usual, the combination of a foreigner and a camera proved too irresistible for folks, especially children.

It can be challenging trying to get any work done in this context, especially when that work is taking pictures or filming with the intention of capturing the setting undisturbed, to be a “fly on the wall”. For every one candid shot, I’ll end up with a hundred where kids (or even adults) pile into the frame, with the ubiquitous phrase, “one photo” on everyone’s lips.

Normally I just end up abandoning any attempt at work after a while and play with the kids while taking pictures of whomever requests one. This time, however, was a bit more serious as I wanted to get a lot of shots of the pre-existing conditions of many sites as the “before-and-after” juxtaposition once the Sammaan facilities are built will be too good to miss out on. That said, and while the intention surely was there, the end result was the same; I’m just a sucker for kids and can’t say no when asked for something, especially something so simple as a photograph. That and I have quite an amazing collection of photos from my time here in India, largely thanks to these trips into the slums. Win-win, baby.

It’s already oppressively hot here, and that ended up cutting our visit short a bit. People, especially government folks, around here don’t like to start their days too early, so we didn’t get out to the slums until after 11a. By midday, it was easily over 100-degrees and sunny. Not to paint too heinous a picture, but going into broken down, often overflowing toilets in these conditions gets pretty old, pretty fast.

As truly pathetic as this is, I am proud of myself for being able to work in these conditions and to do so with a smile on my face. This feeling tends to quickly turn to shame, though, when I think about all of the people that see this as a daily reality. After a few hours in the slums, I’m exhausted. There’s no escaping the claustrophobia of the cramped quarters, no reprieve from the heat, and the sheer number of issues you see can be overwhelming. The people that thrive in these communities are genuinely incredible; there’s no chance I could endure what they view as the status quo day in and day out.

Anywho, here’s a bunch of pictures from the trip:

As is typical, upon seeing this photo, the woman in blue had the most beautiful smile

This girl’s eyes are mesmerizing. Unfortunately, light eyes and hair color tend to be indicative of malnutrition.

This was initially supposed to be a picture of just the man holding his baby, but the neighborhood kids were having none of that action.

These guys were pretty drunk, but super friendly.

A polluted canal that dissects two of Cuttack’s slums (homes are visible on the banks). The communities use this for bathing and clothes-washing, as well as drinking and cooking water.

One of the toilet blocks that is no longer functioning, yet is the community’s only sanitation option aside from open defecation.

Originally published at kevinshane.me on March 2, 2014.