Nothing Constant But Change
Nikhit D'Sa

"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination." - John Schaar

"Human Ecology is the study of the interaction between humans and their social, cultural, natural, economic, and political environments." This is the definition that I rattled off for the last four years to any person inquisitive enough to ask what I was studying; it was clear and easy to understand, yet obscure enough to appease nosey relatives. I formed this definition from a few scattered readings about Human Ecology and from College of the Atlantic's (COA) mission statement. However, while the definition I spouted to strangers and prying relatives may not have changed over the last four years, my understanding of Human Ecology has morphed into a more symbiotic relationship between my studies, interests, and reflections. Human Ecology has slowly taken on the metaphorical nature of a journey wherein it is not the final destination but rather the transit that is most rewarding. Ultimately, this journey of Human Ecology has become not only one of exploring my passions in relation to education and psychology but also a quest to understand my role in the lives of street children.

My journey began in Mumbai, India. Even though my friends and I grew up right next to street children, we were dissuaded from socializing with them or allowing them to play cricket with us as they stood by our compound walls watching. They were the social pariahs of my childhood. The only time we talked to street children was when they came begging for food or money and we had to drive them away. However, they were welcome when one of the old sewers in our gauthan (community) backed up and we needed someone nimble and thin, yet disposable enough, to climb through our excrement and unplug the drain. When leftovers were about to sprout fungi, we offered one of them a meal. When we needed someone to clean a dusty, moth-infested loft or climb onto the parapet outside our windows and sweep it out, we sought out some unnamed street boy and offered him compensation, usually all too little. We had desensitized ourselves to their situation.

This attitude began to change for me in 5th grade. Chooski, one of my friends, invited a street boy named Ravi to play cricket with us. Ravi worked for Chooski's mother running errands and doing odd jobs. We had seen him working in the cold-drink store owned by Chooski's mom (from where she also sold illicit, homemade liquor). At first, Chooski's invitation to Ravi took all of us by surprise. But in the interest of keeping things affable, we allowed Ravi to play cricket with us. Soon he was playing cricket with us every day, and by the end of the month we were playing matches against his group of friends, all of whom were street boys. Over the next few years I got to know several other street children. As I began to see them as friends and peers, I started volunteering at a non-governmental organization (NGO), raising money for the basic necessities of street children as well as distributing food and clothes. I spent a lot of time with the street children talking, playing, and teaching them English. I was privy to their life stories as well as trivial details about whom they were best friends with or where they had slept the night before. Being the same age as they, I was allowed into their world of adolescent moods and opinions - a world that coped with matters ranging from illicit drugs and alcohol to falling in love and getting annoyed with NGO helpers. They gave me a different point of view on adolescence and on growing up in the city of Mumbai.

Although my life before COA was shaped by my interactions with street children, it was during my first year at COA that I began to see the connection between my life with these children and Human Ecology. I realized that my perspective of Human Ecology was influenced by an ideal of social work and community service. I began examining how an interdisciplinary education influences philosophies of community service and experiential learning. The history, educational philosophies, practical applications, and social impacts of community service programs were the basis for my understanding of Human Ecology. My education at COA became a mode to better understand India's community service programs for street children. Since most of the programs I had worked with lacked vocational and experiential education components, I was intoxicated by the idea of being able to help street children in Mumbai, India by working on a better-defined community service program.

The implications of this perspective came under personal scrutiny during my travels through India, South Africa, and Brasil with the International Honors Program. My independent research through all the countries dealt with how street children viewed authority figures. The time I spent with these children in different cultural and social contexts made me question not only my educational philosophy but also my understanding of Human Ecology.

In Brasil I spent a lot of time with an interpreter. Since I did not speak Portuguese, this volunteer, Maria, was my only link to the children; she was the middle person between the children's culturally specific stories and my India-tainted questioning. Often, Maria was my passport into places and neighborhoods I would never have been allowed into alone: This became very evident one March evening as I waited for Maria at a bus stop. It was fairly late and dusk was beginning to turn into night. It was not our regular meeting place, but that evening we were going to find a group of street children who slept together in an open-air lot inside a favela (slum/shanty settlement). We had received permission from the local gang leaders to visit this lot and Maria had decided that the safest place for me to meet her would be outside the favela at the bus stop.

As I stood there checking my watch from time to time, I saw the red glow of a cigarette lighting up in the distance. A group of six young boys were walking my way. They were all dressed in baggy jeans and flip-flops. Some of them had t-shirts of the local futeball team, others had tank tops, and some were barechested. I literally felt the hair on the back of my neck rise as my extremities became extremely cold and jittery. They walked into earshot and I stood as still as I could; they had not noticed me yet. They were just about to pass me when one of the younger ones saw me standing there and nudged the others to look my way. I tried to avoid their gaze. As if they had practiced this several times, all of them changed direction at once and made their way to the opposite side of the street from me. While they stood under the street lamp, I noticed the condition of their clothes and realized that they probably were street children from the same lot I was about to visit. As the oldest boy put out his cigarette and made his way across the street to where I was, I pulled out my Portuguese phrasebook. He saw the phrasebook and a sadistic grin stole over his face. I realized my mistake.

As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he gave me a smug look and asked me something in Portuguese, knowing that I could not answer him. "Eu não comprendo" I managed to mutter. He began to speak faster as his vicious grin grew wider. "Eu sou de India" I said, trying to make sure he knew I was not from the United States. As every second passed, he grew more aggressive. As I looked through my phrasebook frantically trying to find the right way to say, "I have permission," he turned around and gave a short sharp whistle; his friends from the other side of the street got off their stoop and began to jog over chattering and shouting. Just then, the bright headlights of an approaching bus lit up the shadowy road. As we stared into the light, the boys crossed the street and stood right behind me.

The bus pulled up right in front of me and I was relieved to see Maria's familiar face as she alighted. I looked at her in trepidation and wondered whether I should jump onto the bus. She looked at me, then at the boys, and then back to me. The bus sped away. "O que é o problema?" she said in a bold voice asking them what the problem was. The boys mumbled something as the eldest moved forward and began conversing with her. They went back and forth for a few minutes and by the end of it the oldest boy had his arm around my shoulder and was leading me into the favela. Having come close to mugging me, the boys laughed awkwardly and became our tour guides for the night.

This incident, coupled with several other anecdotal events from my travels through South Africa and Brasil, changed my outlook on street children and the role I played in their lives. Before the trip I was convinced that there was a universal model that could be concocted when working with street children; after the trip I began to see the importance of cultural sensitivity in the work that organizations do with street children. I realized the futility of a universal model. My viewpoint moved from community service to community-activated service - it was essential that street children be involved in the programs that were designed to 'help' them. I began to understand that unless people are immersed in the culture they hope to work in, they will never be completely effective; my nonexistent Portuguese language skills could have cost me a lot more if Maria had not shown up in the nick of time. As my perspective of Human Ecology began to morph into a culturally sensitive community education philosophy, I started to see the importance of returning to India to work with the street children whom I knew and understood.

This insight led me to reflect on the years I worked with NGOs in India. I remembered the frustration I felt with NGOs who neglected the actual problems that street children faced, only concentrating on precautionary methods. Moreover, my new insights into a Human Ecological interpretation of culturally sensitive community service made me want to be active in my home country. This led to a handful of my high school friends and me getting together with the common motive of founding our own NGO. In 2004, we established Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC) in Pune, India: a residential facility for six street children, run completely by college students, that provides vocational, educational, and social programs. We had our work cut out for us; we had to work on being recognized as an NGO, select the six street children, and find a temporary home for AIC.

By the time the selection process for the six children was completed, my own internal conflict had reached its peak. I could not justify being in the United States studying for my Bachelors while we were establishing an NGO in my home country, thousands of miles away. I had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that in a country of twenty million street children, we were helping only six. In my gut, I felt that the NGO needed to have a broader mission to reach out to more street children. Moreover, the mission of the organization was disillusioning in the larger scheme of things; no matter how many children we helped there would still be millions on the streets. We had fallen into the very same trap as the NGOs who had frustrated us; we were concentrating on the day-to-day problems the street children faced but were not considering the source of all their problems.

The longer I worked with AIC, the more insular my outlook became. My blinkered and over-protective attitude toward the six street children was shielding me from actually dealing with a distressing situation in India. At the beginning of 2005 I temporarily resigned from AIC. While I agreed to continue helping with fundraising in the United States, I could not justify making decisions that would shape the lives of those six children in the state of confusion I was in then.

Since this decision, one question has continually haunted me: If there is no realistic way to work with all the street children in India, what avenue should I take? How should I approach this conundrum? The disillusionment that my work spawned has, once again, morphed my understanding of Human Ecology. Once I realized the futility of trying to solve all the street child problems, I turned my focus to understanding street children themselves. I reasoned that if I could not help all street children, at least I could understand the social, cultural, cognitive, psychological, and moral development of the few I was going to spend time with, an understanding that would make my work more effective. My Human Ecological focus turned to adolescent development. In my quest to help street children, I began to comprehend the need to understand them developmentally.

My perspective of my role in the lives of street children has shaped how I view my educational philosophy, how I view Human Ecology. When I first came to COA, I viewed Education Studies as the way out. I wanted to teach street children and decided that getting certified to be a teacher would give me the necessary skills and experience. I was more interested in the social service aspect of education; I wanted to be able to take my skills out on the street and work with street children directly. I wanted to impact their lives and how they viewed the world. Through the experience I had in the field and my aspiration to take my work to the streets, my idea of Human Ecology morphed itself from the generic definition that I used to give friends and relatives to a community service approach. The cultural insight from South Africa and Brasil made me reevaluate my focus on education and community service. I realized the importance of a socio-cultural approach to service. However, my work with AIC has helped me realize the importance of understanding street children developmentally so that I can more effectively help the ones I work with.

Human Ecology has been ambiguous as a term but explicit as an epistemology. I understand it as the lens that I use to see the world - a lens to understand my role in the lives of street children - children who have changed my perspective of Human Ecology, have given my definition fluidity. As my journey changes, my definition of Human Ecology will change. It is continuous, organic, and ever-changing. The only constant is that it is a way to see the world - a way to understand my own position in the lives of street children. Nosey relatives might keep quizzing me about Human Ecology and I might keep giving them a generic definition, but it is the innate epistemic fluidity that defines me and my journey.