dharavi

Today we went to Dharavi, the largest slum in India. We learned that instead of having all the negative stereotypes that come along with the term slum, Dharavi is a community of different businesses, some of which include recycling plastic, making pottery, and other small businesses. The communities are divided up by religion. As we walked through a predominantly Muslim community we saw hundreds of people getting ready for prayer. We then went through the Hindu sector and we saw that many of the doors were decorated with Hindu gods like Shiva. As we walked through the slum we were greeted with smiling faces. Children were so excited to see us and even stopped to say hi and sometimes followed us.

We then made our way to the community center, where we met kids our age who were in a program in which they learned English as well as a specialized talents such as engineering and coding. Our icebreaker allowed conversation and we had very good connections even though we weren't there that long. We exchanged instagrams, and laughed with them. After a fun "taxi cab challenge" we made it back to the Garden Hotel and at the end of the day we got onto the train to go to Heranjal and get our rest. 

Written by Aylin and Domenic