Why Help Abroad?

When we tell friends about our choice to go work in India in international development, one question returns often:

Why help abroad? Why not at home?

There’s no denying there’s plenty to do back here in Canada. We may have a good standard of living as a whole, but there are still tons of areas for improvement, whether it’s with the uncomfortable problem of homelessness, or with the Innu living in precarious conditions.

That being said, one of the gifts that travel has given me is a larger sense of empathy for my fellow human being. (Or, perhaps more accurately, it was always there and travel has helped me bring it to the front of my values.)

In other words, I do not distinguish along national lines when I react to human suffering. I feel a closer kinship to my friends and immediate family, but beyond that bond of closeness, I feel as strongly about others regardless of where they’re from.

Every human suffering beckons me to help.

When you consider, say, India and Canada on an equal footing in terms of the validity of the people requiring help, it certainly appears that there is more work to be done in India than back home. But I’m under no illusion that the amount of help I can bring would be greater in India than in Canada. That is to say, there might be more work to be done globally in India, but my own contribution to the overall sum of human dignity and well-​​being is probably equal if I apply it in North America or elsewhere.

Why, then, have I decided to move to India to help out?

Down to it, the decision to help abroad is selfish.

Travel is a huge personal value for Helene and I. We love traveling, encountering other cultures, and then learning and adapting to them. We love the energy and movement we feel in places like India, and we find life in Canada to be too tranquil and predictable in comparison.

We feel as strongly about working with rural communities in India as we would with lending a hand to the marginalized and disenfranchised in Canada. If we ever get tired of traveling, we might feel compelled to help back home; but for the time being, travel makes us happy, and we’re glad we can go to Orissa to work there.

As my friend, writer and activist Minister Faust, once told me:

Helping others requires joy in your own life.

Travel makes us happy. Hence, it’s the best way for us to help humanity as a whole, in our own small way.

Photo credits: Double room with a view of the giant by Jeremiah John McBride — CC BY-​​ND 2.0

Thoughts on Travel

As we prepare for our new adventure, we spend a lot of time reading online resources.

We’re big fans of a forum known as India Mike, for one. India Mike, in many ways, is the Indian equivalent of Raoul’s China Saloon: it brings together a community of people (Indians, expatriates and travelers) who hold a genuine interest for India, and who trade info, travel tips, photos, and stories in a friendly atmosphere.

The general attitude on India Mike is the opposite of that of the vast majority of travel bloggers, who attempt to showcase the exotic side of a destination for the benefit of readers who will most likely never visit it.

Even the very best travel blogs are written by travelers who merely pass through a country, and then explain it to people who don’t travel much. In writing for their target audience, they maintain the point of view of a stranger. It creates a distance: those they visit are the odd ones, not them! They do not truly experience the place, and thus they fail to embrace the fact they they are the ‘weird ones’…

Now, we love to share our travel experiences with friends and family, of course! But that’s not why we travel. We travel because want to understand the world, and ourselves… It’s impossible to explain everything. Many times, we only begin to understand a long time after we’ve experienced something. It took us a good year to even begin to process our three years of living in Shanghai!

We can’t explain everything that has changed with our personalities and our worldview. Some things have become so “normal” for us that we have a hard time imagining that they have not always been this way.

If life is change, then travel is life at a hundred miles per hour!

We have to constantly learn. To pull yourself out of your routine is the best way to learn who you are, and what you can accomplish.

What we’d really like is for you to join us “on the ground”… Two hours in India are worth a large pile of novels and essays! If we can but tempt you to go see by yourselves, whether India or another country that interests you, then we will have succeeded!

What did you think of the pictures above? Do you find them fascinating? What we find fascinating is not that we see these things in India, but rather that they surprise no one. They are normal…

Photo credits:

1. Champaner Road © Luca Belis
2. One Armed Baba © Sama of India Mike. The “one-​​armed baba” has kept his right arm up in the air for decades in devotion to Shiva.
3. Sound Sleep or Levitation? © Lucas Belis

All photos are taken from collections on India Mike.