Visiting India has profound impact on volunteer

CHENNAI, India — After 30 hours of travel time, I was apprehensive when the airplane descended in the early morning hours. From the airplane window, I saw tiny pockets of incandescent city lights scattered throughout the foreign countryside. I was 12 time zones away from Utah. My first trip outside of the United States would introduce me to volunteer tourism. The two weeks in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu would include humanitarian work in a grueling city heat and traveling away from the volunteer home base into the mountains of India.

The artists of Chennai

The vibrant colors of the Hindu temple were scalding in the midday sun. A woman sat in the 90-degree shade outside the temple. She offered a broad smile and complemented her greeting by showing us her painting. The vivid magenta radiated from the paper in repetitious lines. I nodded in appreciation, unable to speak Tamil, the language of this region. Luckily, smiling is a universal gesture.

Another Rising Star Outreach volunteer and I made our way to the open porch of the temple, relieved that ceiling fans circulated the hot air. Dirt blanketed the tables and pungent odors wafted throughout the open space. Ten to 12 artists hunched over their artwork, painting with intensity.

Inundated with the sight of leprosy as well as being halfway around the world and slightly jet-lagged, I mustered some social grace by trying to start conversations with the artists. Surprised by the quality of one man's English, I listened intently to his brief story.

"For three years I have been painting as an artist at the Bindu Art School," he said with a sweeping grin, excited to impart his experience.

"How does it make you feel to paint?" I asked him, uncertain if he would understand my meaning because of our cultural differences.

With assertion he stated, "I enjoy it very much. Painting has made me forget that I have leprosy."

How could anyone forget that they live with one of the most debilitating diseases in the world? I was astonished to hear such a fact. Living as a member of the world's poorest of the poor, those with leprosy endure societal stigma, filth and little medical treatment on a daily basis. As a fellow artist, his statement reiterated for me the emotional power artwork can have on the psychological state of a person.