Odd Days
Long day today. Went on a walk through Dharavi (the single largest shanty towns in India and possibly the largest in Asia) in the morning, with a local guide and four engineers interested in making a better version of the blue tarp that seems somewhat ubiquitous. Turns out that Dharavi is not really the right place for this (most of the housing is pretty solid and hundreds of years old) but it was interesting nonetheless. We spent most of the day taking to small manufacturing and recycling operations within dharavi and then moved to the residential part of the slum (shoulder-width alleyways, very little light, a complete maze...but not depressing...too busy with small bakeries and washing and people going and coming from work to be depressing). We met with someone who lived there and who showed us her house and offered us a big tin cup of water, which I drank (no ill effects, I was kinda expecting to get sick, but boiling water is such a pain in the ass in the slum that it means something when you offer it so someone should drink it and nobody else was gong to...it was also that sort of test which I can never turn down). After this we stopped by the single (well, half room) house we went to a school and then over to colaba where we looked at a different slum, this time without a guide. The Colaba visit (cuff parade) did not go as well. We began asking about construction materials and word spread that we were builders, who often have a bad name in the slums. We walked partway into one of the clusters (shoulder width alleys again) and spoke with some people but a crowd gathered and it was not exactly friendly so we left.
Some pictures of dharavi taken by other people:
aerial
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7611827@N02/636537408/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soumik/196151232/
Inside
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9366320@N02/638290198/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9366320@N02/637404939/
Actually, I stopped by this shop today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianfisk/660786539/