Oversea Activity  Japanese Staff  Hiroko Machigami

　【Hiroko Machigami-Career Record】
　Food Processing Staff (currently on maternity leave)

• 2004　Graduated from Shukutoku University
  with International Communications Major
• 2005　Volunteered, interned, and worked as a kitchen
  staff at Asian Rural Institute
• 2010　Worked as a food processing staff in India
• Currently, a mother of one child

Who is Your Neighbor?

“Who is your neighbor?” Before summer holiday, Dr. Miura questioned us staff members. In the bible, there is a teaching that says “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In a country with such a high population rate, we have so many Indian neighbors around us. Amongst so many people, who shall I call my “neighbor”?  

February of this year, the first task I was given as I reached Allahabad was to make sausages using pork meat. It was a project aimed to increase the income of the village farmers through selling processed products. We bought the village pigs, processed it, and added values, so not only were the pigs sold with values, but we were able to give jobs to the villagers by hiring people to process the meat. We hope that, by involving the villagers in production and food processing, they are able to acquire food processing techniques and will feel satisfied with their daily lives. 

In this area, where Hinduism is widespread in religious aspect as well as cultural aspect, it is common for people to consider pigs as filthy creatures. There was a reason why we chose pork processing as a part of the project in the midst of all that. There is a village right near our campus that people call “Swineherd Village.” It is a village where Parsis, outcastes, live. Most of the villagers are day laborers, and most families are big, with many children. Even if they want to work, the works they can do are limited by their castes, most of them being physical labors with little wages, such as carrying bricks and painting walls at construction sites, weeding under the blazing sun, picking garbage, and so on. Therefore, providing them with jobs such as pork processing allows them to become experts in their own field.
 

However, compared to us Japanese workers as well as those coming from upper castes with college degrees, the people of the village differ in terms of wage basis. They cannot afford medicine for the sick, education for children, and there are some staff members who ask us to lend money. Even the female workers who made sausages with me are mothers of 3~4 children. One of them received education up to 10th grade, but never graduated with a degree. The other two hardly went to school. To make selling products with them is harder than making them voice their dreams. It is really hard to convince people who want to work for tomorrow’s living, to work hard for a business that might work out in the following years. They cannot imagine the far future. My own enthusiasm and hope that it is worth the effort to work together with the villagers to make something that is delicious and profitable was far too different from the villagers’. I learned that it is a lot of work and a challenge to make one simple project a success.