Rose of Tralee sees ‘worst of misery and best of spirit’

The slums of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, are a world removed geographically and economically from the Dome in Tralee.

Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh is the fourth winner of the festival to travel to Kolkata to view the Hope Foundation’s work in the city. The foundation was set up in 1999 to run a girls’ home and has since been extended to 60 different projects in this teeming city.

Ms Walsh helped out while on the visit, saying she always wanted to do this kind of work but life kept getting in the way. "You take a number of things back from a trip like this. You come away thinking 'wow'. I need to realign myself with the bigger picture. The daily grind has to become less," she says.

“I used to think that I’ll just keep working and these kind of opportunities to travel will come up. The Rose of Tralee has kind of forced me to make choices I’ve always wanted to make.”

Ms Walsh’s seven-day trip has seen her visit the Hope Foundation’s work in the poorest parts of Kolkata, a city of 14 million people once synonymous with poverty, but which has made massive strides in recent years.

Human misery

She visited the foundation’s schools, pharmacies, homes and hospitals. The Hope Foundation hospital has 32 patients and is run on a budget of €160,000 a year, less than what it would cost to employ one consultant in an Irish hospital.

During the visit she saw the worst of human misery and yet the best of the human spirit.

Visiting a municipal dump where families scavenge for recyclable goods, and where the foundation has set up a school, was a standout moment.

“They are trying to encourage more children to come to them,” she said about the foundation’s work in the area.

“There’s 200 to 300 feet high of trash everywhere, broken glass and wild pigs while women and children pick through the rubbish.

“The children have no shoes so they are running around [barefoot]. There are rabies-infested dogs everywhere. Men are coming in and out in trucks and just dumping more rubbish.

“There are eight or nine kids who took me up onto the trash to show me where their homes are. It is a uniquely heartbreaking moment because they are proud of their playground, but when you look around, there is just faeces, pigs everywhere and heaps of trash.”

Nevertheless, like so many others who have visited India, she was entranced by the contradictions apparent everywhere. "Kolkata is such a metropolitan city. There are slums, but there is a lot of colour, texture and vibrancy. You see the hustle and bustle but you also see beyond the car jams and the honking horns."

Monsoon

While in Kolkata, she was made aware that homelessness is a way of life for whole families, many of whom have generations on the streets. They sleep under railway bridges and anywhere else they can escape the deluges, especially during the monsoon season.

“You have to be respectful because homelessness in Kolkata is a culture of theirs,” she says.

“There are families who sleep on the street because that is the way previous generations have done it. They are extremely protective of their children and their children are wonderfully happy people.

“The Hope Foundation is not trying to separate those families. They are just trying to protect those children that don’t have that structure.”