Actor and humanitarian Ashley Judd, board member of Population Services International (PSI) and Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, addressed women’s empowerment and wrote daily posts for the ONE Blog, during her March 2007 travels through India. This week, she posts her final entries from the trip.

Wednesday, April 11

Today we drove for a long time to arrive at Neelam’s neighborhood. Upon arrival, Diane was waiting for us, dear, beautiful, strong, brilliant, intuitive Diane, and once again we entered the smothering, narrow, yet vast world of slum living, extreme poverty style.

The rows and rows and rows of houses, many with modest religious icons or now dead flowers over the shabby portals, were crammed full with people going about their daily lives. I had the chance to stop and really study the amazingly creative, and clearly unsafe electrical wiring that manages to bring a modest amount of light to these homes. It was another reminder of how what we would never accept is what poor people live with each day. A small, eye-level panel was exposed (they cover it with plastic for the intense, long rainy season), and out of each tab flowed a snarled clot of raggedy wires that are propped up in a makeshift way as their way to interiors throughout the slum. The electricity is available 24 hours a day, the water is available 5-7 a.m., and again for an hour in the evenings.

Every few homes is a business of some sort. One business consisted of a man squatting in the narrow corridor, doing repair work on someone’s all-important kerosene lamp. The tank, which holds enough fuel to cook 2 meals, attaches to a valve, and there the little flame comes out. Obtaining the fuel is a big part of poor people’s struggle, especially when they have difficulties with their ration card. Often, they are left to buy fuel on the black market, which is hard on them financially. This particular family limits their cooking to once a day. At night, they eat the morning’s leftovers.

Further down, the air occasionally ripe with the unmistakable smell of the river into which the sewage flows, we paused. This house, pushed up against the others, was where Neelam, 14, and her sister, Komal, age 10, were waiting for me in matching yellow saris. Both girls are very small and frail, with long dark hair. Komal’s is lustrous and smooth, Neelam’s is rough, coarse, dry. I wondered if it was from malnutrition. It is, partially, but it’s also largely due to the fact she mothers her little sister, taking care of her hair the way Indians do their daughters, but no one takes care of hers.

The house had a squat toilet in a cubicle at the entry, and a main room with only 2 small tables. A woven plastic mat and a school book were on the floor. Color portraits of the children mother and father were placed carefully on the table. There were some domestic things, pots and pans, stacked on the floor, and a tiny kerosene cooker. There was a second, smaller room behind. There were no windows.

The children each took a hand, brought me in, sat me down. They were eager yet reserved. Indian women sit alongside one another, knees touching, arms draped across each other’s legs. I have picked up on this and immediately got comfortable with these precious girls. They would never sit in my lap, but they did snuggle close, and let me love them.

The daddy became HIV+ having sex outside the marriage. His status was discovered when he became very sick. He died soon after being tested. The Mama was tested; she was able to access antiretrovirals, but she was so far gone and didn’t respond well; she died soon, too. Within months, the girls, plus their then 5 year old brother, were orphans. They have an aunt who lives with them. She is positive and has TB. She sleeps alone in the back room as she is highly contagious. They have, thank God, a grandmother. She does much of the cooking.

Neelam exclusively supports this family of 5. From 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m., 6 days a week, she works sewing to earn what she can. It’s not nearly enough to feed them all, and we know Neelam because we supplement their diet through our nutrition program. After work she has a half hour break, at which time she goes to night school until 9 p.m. English is her favorite subject and she wants to be a flight attendant. This small child is at home each day only long enough to get a little bit to eat and to sleep.

She told me she likes where she works, she likes sewing. There are 11 other employees there, all are children. She says the boss is nice. She has no idea where the clothing they make is sold. I have been so stunned about the resiliency of children. This young girl has no idea that having a job is illegal. She has no sense of our outrage. She has simply adapted, naturally, out of grief and for her own and for the survival of the 4 who rely on her.

India has shown me aspects of human nature I had not noticed on my previous trips, such as the mental twists in Neelam’s mind that allow her to actually believe, in truth or in perception only, that she enjoys the human rights abuse of child labor. Of course, there is a pay off: with her working, she is able to keep what is left of her family in tact, and to an orphan, what’s more important than that? Of course she loves her job.

Where Neelam is all gentle responsibility, her baby sister is all attitude. She is the only person with whom I have sat who actually responded irritably to the suffocating heat. She wiggled and fidgeted. I got a bottle of cool water to place on her neck, and she squirmed away from me. I got a cold cloth and put it on her wrists, but that was all she would tolerate out of me. She was clearly fed up on a number of occasions and when we later walked the neighborhood, she flitted behind, ahead, alongside; she has so much energy and pizzazz. She definitely wanted to be near me, and tucked in close much of the time, but she made her boundary very clear and insisted it all take place on her terms. Good for her!

The little whippersnapper at one point went over to be with her sister. She crawled up under her arm, legs drawn in close, and found her familiar sweet spot under her wing. Neelam grew, somehow, a little bigger, and tented herself around the smaller girl. Mommy sister. What a heartbreaking site. To imagine her and all the orphans in the world becoming care givers for others before they have outgrown their own childhoods simply renders me speechless.