India. „Reality tour“ to a slum in Mumbai: The media shows us a totally misconception of what the slums in Mumbai actually are!

Hi Steemies

Did you know I was in India 1 1/2 year ago?
Actually I want to share my experience I made in Mumbai and I want to open your eyes about the Slum in Mumbai. I couldn’t write it better than a friend of mine, Alenka:

One day we went to the slums of mumbai. Obviously the first thought that came to my mind was the word "poverty". 45% (9 Million out of 20 Million) of mumbais population does live in these so called slums. We ,western people, tend to have a negative mind about the slums and who could blame us, all we see is the media who associate bad words like "criminality" "hate" "sexual harrassment" with daily happenings within the slums. I did also not have the most positive mind about it and i was actually maybe a little scared to even go there. As i went inside this slum city my whole view, my whole perspective changed. I learned about that these people have an organised way of living.
They produce leather bags which get shipped and sold in lots of cities, even switzerland and france, they even have their own label and they do pottery which they sell on the local markets in mumbai, they recycle plastic in long steps and send it to companies which are producing chairs with those goods. They build the machines to crush the plastic all by themselves and these work, maybe even better than they do here. The slum i went to has about 1.5 Million people and every single one has their job. Everything is so organised and it seems like it's a whole city by themselves. The people there were so generous, so friendly and gave us the biggest smiles ever. The kids ran around, played with eachother in the most narrowest spots and laughed their hearts out while doing so. Even though these people have so little, their hearts seem to be much bigger than any western country's people. We had a tour guide with us who was leading us through and he was such a funny man, joking around and smiling all the time.

At the end of the tour we got the opportunity to talk to a man who founded these so called 'reality tours' . He was and is such an inspiration to me and to many of us. He's called Joseph and he told us about that he could have had a job in London, highly paid but he decided to do this instead. We asked him why and his response was: "When I was working in London I looked up to my Boss and my Boss's Boss and I was like, do i really want to become this? Is this what I want? I mean of course I would have earned tons of money but would that really have made me richer?" Joseph and lots of other people engaged with the slums and want to "support not destroy them" so they decided to found "reality tours" where exactly people like me, people like you get an actual look on what the slums are all about. Josephs view on the world is very very inspiring. He told us to do what we love and not follow society's views of what is called "success". Even small things can have huge impacts on every single person and the only thing you can't do is to give up.

This trip to india has changed alot of my views on certain things and i will definietly take this home as an experience i will never ever forget. I'm so so so so happy that i took this opportunity and i am very grateful.