Stories of Engaging in Land Rights Issues from Servants to Asia's Urban Poor.


Servants is a network of faith-mission communities committed to living and working holistically with the poor 'outside the gate' in Asia's urban slums.   

*      The first story is of 'John and Kelly Smith and the Bullah Slum'.

 

A few years ago John and Kelly decided it was time for them to respond to the needs of the poor more personally, more practically. So they decided to go with Servants to India. And upon their arrival in India they began to look around town for a slum where they could live.

 

In 1999 John and Kelly and their young son Tom moved into the Bullah slum, built on government land along the bank of a drainage canal.

They found a little hut and settled in alongside 900 hundred other families.

 

Over the next couple of years John and Kelly immersed themselves in the life of the slum, living alongside the slum-dwellers, learning their language and culture, and developing dozens of reciprocal relationships.

 

On October 19th 2001, someone pointed out to John a notice that had been pasted onto the communal toilet block. It said that the council was going to clear the slum and relocate the people 25 kilometres away in 6 days time! Understandably, the people were distraught!

 

John called several community meetings to discuss the eviction. After hearing anyone who wanted to contribute, the people decided they need-ed to get 1) a stay order until winter was over, which would give them time to raise the deposit to buy new land in the relocation area; 2) legal title to the new land before the relocation took place, and 3) legal entitlement to new land for all people in the slum who owned huts.

 

John, who is a lawyer by training, had identified a group of local lawyers who could take the case to the Delhi High Court. He liaised between the representatives of the slum and the lawyers and, eventually, together they got the backing of the court for the slum-dwellers basic demands.

 

During the hearings, a judge asked for a list of the families in the slum, and the council refused to make their list available. So John and his friends in the slum had to embark on the huge logistical task of making another list of all the families in the slum.

Kallu was one of John’s friends in the slum who'd offered to help. And the two of them, with the help of their friends, set about the task of collecting all the information. Kallu's hut became the centre of operations, documenting everyone's name, ration card, hut number, and entitlement.

 

After weeks of hard work, Kallu and John eventually got an up-to-date list together that helped ensure the entitlement of a dozen or more families who were eligible but would have otherwise missed out in the allotment

.

One day John was dropping his son Tom off at school, when he saw liter-ally hundreds of armed police in riot gear getting ready to forcefully clear the slum. John borrowed a friend's mobile phone and contacted everyone he knew in order to stop the provocation, and the inevitable violence that would result from the fighting that would follow the police action. Fortunately, at the last minute, the police force was recalled to barracks and the relocation was deferred.

 

Subsequently John and his friends were able to negotiate the peaceful relocation of the people, in the end getting land entitlements for more than eighty per cent of the slum-dwellers - some 750 families.

 

However, the people discovered there was no water, no electricity, next-to-no transport, and their new land was three to five feet lower than the road, so when it rained, it flooded, and became a dirty great big swamp!

 

John and his friends had to go back to court with the lawyers time and time again to make sure that the level of the land was built up, drinking water was provided, and electricity was put on. There are still not enough buses. So the struggle goes on.

 

In the meantime John has contacted local agencies and negotiated the provision of small loans to help the people start some small businesses.

 

John is now writing a brochure on relocating slum-dwellers, in the hope of it being used to inform people of their rights in future forced relocations.

 

John's story is a good example of simple, practical, heart-felt, hands-on, grass-roots care for some of the most marginalised people on earth. And   I hope that there will be many who read this story who will decide to join John and Kelly and their friends in the urban slums of Asia.

 

But not all of us will be able to pack up our bags and join a team in Manila  Calcutta, Bangkok or Phnom Penh. In which case my next story is for you.

 

 

 

*      The second story is of 'Peter Norton and the Cabramatta Gardens'.

 

Peter, and his wife Adrienne, wanted to go to work in Vietnam with Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor. But, as often happens, things didn't work out the way they had hoped they would. So, instead of moving to Hanoi, this Kiwi couple decided that they would  move to Sydney and work with the Vietnamese community in Cabramatta.

 

When they arrived in Cabramatta, Peter and Adrienne joined Urban Concern, a faith-community linked to Servants  - not only overseas, but also back home, in our own backyard. Through Urban Concern Peter and Adrienne were introduced to Cabramatta and soon got to know not only the Vietnamese but also the Cambodians - and refugees from Former Yugoslavia as well. The whole world was on their doorstep!

 

In late 1999 Peter and his friends began to discuss the idea of 'doing something together' in the community. By January 2000 the idea of 'doing something together' in the community had resolved itself into the idea of 'a community garden'. In February 2000 the Hughes Street Playground had been identified as the preferred site. And in April 2000 a formal proposal was submitted to lease a portion of Hughes Street Playground as the site.

 

Now the Hughes Street Playground was a notorious place. It had been taken over by the 'smack squad' a long time ago. But Peter and his friend Jeremy thought it was the perfect place for local people to begin to take back some of their space and put it to good sustainable community use.

 

They not only got permission to use Hughes Street, but also a grant from the Fairfield City Council of $10,000 to fund the initial set-up of the garden.

And they got together with a group of local representatives over a twelve-month period to work out the details as to how to proceed with the project.

 

The group came up the idea of having an 'Open Day', to share the dream of the garden with the community, and to invite people of various ethnic backgrounds - especially those people on the ‘margins’ - to join in and work on the project together.

 

Invitations were given out in seven different languages through community radio and a letter-box drop, and about two hundred people turned up for the 'Open Day' in March 2001. Ninety filled in forms with their suggestions.

 

In June there was an excursion to other community gardens round town. In August there was a training day on 'organic gardening'. And in October

there was the first on-site work-day. So by December 2001 the first eight plots were planted - and by January 2002 the first crops were harvested.

And by July 2002 all twenty-three plots had been completed and allocated.

 

The construction of the garden has been dependent on the people in the project who are prepared to work for benefit of the whole garden, not just their own patch. And a committee of three people has been elected from each of the three language groups represented to manage the project.     

   

The garden has been a great success on a number of significant levels.

It has restored the park. The play area that had fallen into disuse is now being used again by families. The plots are fully subscribed and well main-tained and people can gather fresh herbs and vegetables on a daily basis.

  

Moreover, the garden provides a productive therapeutic occupation for a group of retired, unemployed or underemployed Cabramatta migrants and refugees. And it also provides a safe place for people to forge reciprocal  relationships of acceptance and respect across the cross-cultural divide -

a symbol of what many of us believe is the 'kingdom of heaven on earth'.

 



* Names and Indian place names changed to protect security

 

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