deptford journeys

Deptford Journeys originally started out as an idea for a film while I was at college a few years ago. The idea didn’t come to fruition, instead I made Beating around the Bush with my friend Nick. If either of us can ever find a copy of it I will post it. There is also a version of the beginning of Deptford Journeys floating around which I made with my friend Andy, if I can get that over to India I will post that also – it’s complicated.

I have lived in Deptford for 10 years now. It’s the closest I’ve come to a ‘community’ in London so I also thought of developing Deptford Journeys into an OurSpace type thing for the Deptford ‘community’ but I don’t think I have the time or Deptford has the inclination to make it work. So instead I thought I would just use it to loosely document my travels. It’s more like a letter to my family.

This particular journey is the culmination of my first ever 5 year plan - 6 years later. (India would be proud of me) I returned to university 6 years ago to study Anthropology as a first step to working for an NGO. Since then I have been working for War on Want and ActionAid ‘fighting global poverty’ said with a clenched fist, or 2 clenched fists if it’s War on Want, but I always wanted to be working in the field. When my contract was up for renewal I asked ActionAid if they could help and I was given a few different options, all of which were self-funded but it was something I was determined to do.

In the end I chose India. I had no idea what to expect, I was previously working in campaigns and communications with no experience of working in the field so I’m on a very steep learning curve but doing exactly what I have always wanted. Working and living with the people affected and being part of their lives in an attempt to understand the problems they face, the aspirations they have and what we can all do to change the world.

The ActionAid post-tsunami response group is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, although I am working out of one of the hubs down the coast, based in Pondicherry but spending most of my time staying in the field. There are 5 programme officers and a team leader, all of them are Indian. There are 8 local partner NGO’s who were established before the tsunami but have since diversified slightly post-tsunami according to peoples needs that we work with.

So far it has been inspiring, I’m not sure if I have the solution yet other than the need for a fundamental shift in the human mindset. That’s not just aimed at the politicians, it’s for the normal person too. We desperately need to re-think about what we actually want from life. The only thing I am certain of is the consumer society we have come to covet so much in the West is not the answer; in the meantime we’re killing thousands of people unnecessarily every day. It’s time for change. But I knew that before I came here…

June 2007