Applause for the toilet brush

Blond, blushing and with a dab of red on his forehead.There he stands, a Dutch guy in the Indian countryside.Responding to applause from a colorful gathering of forty Indian women.Because he cleans the toilet at home from time to time.

I'm on a field trip in the context of the Share People exchange.A group of ambitious Dutch people are working together with a lady from an Indian NGO on a project helping to develop further a business manufacturing textiles and clothing that's run by women.Dialoguing with these women, this multi-ethnic advisory team gets a better idea of how they live and work.And the ideas they themselves already have about how to build up their own business.Fitting into the history of the organization and really connecting to these women means that they achieve genuine results.All in seven days.Skeptical as I was before, now I'm equally surprised and moved by the results "my" group has been getting.

After this inspiring group interview the Indian women also want to know a little more about Dutch men and women.How do our days get spent?

“Getting up at half past six, having some breakfast, and then off to work," is how the first starts.“Yeah, emmm, just some yogurt and muesli.How do I get to work?Like everybody else, by car."Things that are obvious are often linked to a culture.Here men drive around on motorcycles, bikes, ox-drawn carts, jeeps and wagons drawn by camels.At best, the women sit next to them.

Around the table in the evening we talk about the things that seem so ordinary to us, when it comes to material possessions and the environment in which we live.To what extent are we in fact aware of our own past?Not so long ago owning an automobile was rare.The same went for having an entire house to live in alone.Developments in India operate like the traffic:everybody cutting across everybody else.So here in India you'll see a little old man sitting on an ox-drawn cart making a phone call, using the most advanced cell phone equipped with functions going well beyond anything I could imagine.

The ladies we see here are impressive.Brightly clad, they use one or two phrases to make clear what they stand for and what they want.Whether they are one of these women doing embroidery in a remote village or the chairwoman of the Rotary in Delhi or the director of Butterfly – an organization providing shelter and schooling for street kids from an empowerment point of view - they are in every way outstanding women.That "glass ceiling" phrase means nothing to them.

Where are the men in fact?At home, cleaning the toilet?

Sacred Cow

My mother would always sing my little sister and me a lullaby we went to sleep. What we didn’t know was that she herself had added to the last line of “Sleep, child, sleep” the intelligent lyric of “hmmtiddyhmmtiddyhmm”. The melody was also quite a musical challenge. Performing at the infant school I raised a storm of laughter when I provided a solo version of “hmmtiddyhmmtiddyhmm”.
I never sang that last line again.

Thirty years on this is what I see happening. Five people are walking round in circles in a room, doing something I can’t quite understand with cards and making animal sounds in the meanwhile: cows, dogs and sheep. A somewhat timid lady with a friendly smile comes in. She has just come out of a room where everybody was smiling at the others, winking, giving each other a hug and talking a lot. Her eyes wide as saucers, she looks at all these “cows” and “sheep” and does her best to connect, contributing the odd and winsome baaa or moo to the general cacophony. Consequence: the others burst out laughing. She stays alone. A “clash of cultures” can be as tangible as that.

It could have been the infants’ school. Yet it is a group of talented, highly motivated professionals using simulation training to prepare for a trip to India. Share People, an initiative launched by Icco, Jong Management and De Baak, organizes exchange programs that give talented Dutch managers the opportunity of putting their experience, knowledge and drive to work on local projects in developing countries. An intensive learning experience in which participants make a substantive contribution over a two week period. I’m the lucky trainer at De Baak who gets to go with them to India. My main job is to look after the learning process for both the groups and the individuals. Nelleke is the program manager: she has the contacts and the grass-roots expertise, in addition to vast experience with these exchange programs.

In two very full days spent in the woods of Driebergen, thirteen participants get to know each other, the trainers, the program and Indian culture. In breakneck tempo, they share thoughts about their individual learning goals, watch films about the poorest castes in Indian society, are given an introduction to the projects, and participate in discussions with experts on India and NGOs.

You cannot prepare yourself for how it will be to work with Indians in one hundred degree plus temperatures in a country where cows, cars, horse-drawn carts, rickshaws, beggars and cyclists hungrily compete for a share of the road. Where everything takes time, much time. Where the differences between rich and poor are unimaginable. With overpowering smells and sounds.
What you can do is to sense what it is to find yourself in an unknown culture with codes you do not know. Seeing what to do to find the quickest way to connect. Before you know it you find you’re imitating a cow or a sheep just to strike up contact. Of course it’s a little like learning to play a musical instrument ... without the instrument. But it does make you aware of how you operate, how you react. If only to understand that humming “hmmtiddyhmmtiddyhmm” has a charm of its own.

Annemarie de Jong
a.dejong@debaak.nl