I walked into a room, smaller than my college dorm room and was immediately greeted by 15 young women with giant smiles and bobbing heads. I was ushered to one of the two old chairs in the room, one for their “impressive” white guest and one for their trainer, a Hindu woman who was well-educated and devoting her time to teaching English to a small rural community of Muslim women. These ladies were born and raised in Metiabruz, many of them had never left the geographical constraints of the Muslim neighborhood. The trainer and I sat elevated above the 18-24 year old women who giggled while calling me “Ma’am”. It was their very first day of formal English class. They were already learning how to speak of their goals in English. It was in preparation for interviews in the IT sector. I tried to say encouraging things to keep them from being shy and timid but they were worried to mess up their limited, yet impressive English around me. As they became more comfortable, several of them shared their goals and desires: to make their families proud of them, receive a useful education, and be a strong and caring, but independent woman. These women that live on the opposite side of the world from the Silicon Valley and my home, that dressed in all black, covering their faces, and even at times their eyes, that had a different religion, culture, and understanding of the world, had the same goals as me and my 20-year-old friends.
I’ve heard countless times in blog posts and by peers who have traveled to the most remote villages in the world that they have this life-changing realization that people in these communities are somehow “just like us!” But were they? I had just traveled across the world through a program at my prestigious private university in California and my highly developed critical examination of issues facing those defined as the ‘global poor’. To say the young women in Metiabruz were ‘just like me’ would be a grave exaggeration and a disservice to the unique experiences and outlook they share with one another that makes them so different from me.
We visited them during Ramadan. As I sat in the classroom listening to them banter back and forth in Hindi, Bengali, and broken English, I noticed my stomach growling so I reached for the granola bar in the front pocket of my backpack. I pulled apart the chocolate chip peanut butter Chewy bar that I bought in the Safeway in Santa Clara. It wasn’t until I got ¾ of the way through my delicious, yet not completely filling granola bar that I realized the women were eyeing me in longing. It wasn’t because it was a Chewy bar and that was their favorite brand. It took just a moment for my completely ignorant move to click in my head. These 15 women sat in class in solidarity with one another through this special month of fasting, where they did not touch food or water during the daylight hours. They did this for God. They did this as a community; and I was reminding them of just how different our worlds were as I ate my American granola bar. I have never been able to withstand a single day of fasting, not even in my dire attempts of becoming a better Catholic every time Lent rolls around. These women were different than me. They were in ways stronger, more disciplined, more committed to their faith and their community. To say they were ‘just like me’ would be not only wrong, but insulting to them.
Nevertheless, their smiles, their excitement at meeting someone different than them, and the nerves they faced in talking to a special class visitor were all somehow universally present whether in Metiabruz or a classroom in Monterey, Ca. They were intrigued by our differences, as was I. And once they stated their goals of becoming strong, independent, and thoughtful women, making their families proud, and breaking boundaries of what is expected of them in their communities, I noticed an underlying commonality. Regardless of the different worldviews, the different religions, customs, and traditions, something deep tied us to one another.
I still do not fully understand why this moment sticks out more clearly than all the rest when I think about what I learned from my time in Kolkata, but something about it challenged me. I now embrace that our differences define us as communities but our similarities define us as humans. In this, we are all uniquely and fully human beings.
Although it’s safe to say that even 6 months ago, I believed somewhere deep down that there was a common thread that connected us all as human beings, no matter what our differences or backgrounds, it certainly came to light in this encounter. I learned that it’s this deep core connection that helps me feel pulled to learn about people, especially their differences and their backgrounds. I grew in my understanding of what it means to be human, and just how universal that is to us. That’s what makes us interactive beings. That’s what helps us connect to others, even when we are on the opposite side of the world. That’s what made this experience so much more than just going into a new city, doing a research project, delivering a product, and believing that I saved their world. Their world, their life, their core, is mine.