I’ve been adopted into a big India family. Given the level of comfortableness and ease with which I’ve slipped into the routine of this campus, I believe that’s an accurate way of depicting my next four months. Everyday I work of course, but my colleagues and my students are a source of enjoyment and I am treated magnificently well here. In fact, at the beginning of the week I even described working here as an “All-inclusive work environment”. I have a good room with a comfortable bed, which is cleaned out every other day for me. Breakfast, lunch and dinner at the mess hall serves delicious spicy Indian cuisine. Hell, even my laundry is done for me. And to top it off, I enjoy playing my daily 11-on-11-football match with students and teachers. O and don’t forget my new friend and gym partner Ravinder Tanwar (who happens to be one of India’s national lightweight boxers). So like I was saying my accommodation is more than comfortable, and I feel very at home here.
The week began when I received my class schedule for Monday-Thursday and found out I will be working with three English classes a day, grades 7-9. Those first classes went by with ease as I introduced myself to the students and had them ask questions about me. This was a great way to gage their understanding of English and their confidence, and I am happy to say the students of all grades did impressively well through the week. As one of the teachers was ill this week, I additionally decided to help teach her 10thgrade English class on the subject of Anne Frank’s diary. Fortunately my last semester of university I had a class dedicated to the very subject.
Besides enjoying the school and my work there, I’ve also been going out into the field and working with Bhoruka Charitable Trust. Initially, the scope of work that had been prepared by the head office, led the division office here to have me rifling through documents to try and make heads and tails out of it. After several hours in the heat of un-Air-conditioned office, I packed up some documents to head back to the school. When I returned on Friday, I present my work that I had created in the excel sheet, and although they thought it was good, we were going to be off to the field to meet with social workers. These workers go into the villages to encourage and educate the residents on programs that BCT is helping implement in their areas, in this case it was facilities to provide water. It might be surprising to find out the challenges it takes to convince these people in rural areas that having a steady water supply will be a good thing. Even if that means they have to pay for it. In any case, we went to the meeting with these workers, and by the end of it I was quite irritated. Yes, I was not happy. A five-hour meeting in an unfamiliar language without translator is quite frustrating. I had my computer with me and finished some work but nonetheless the experience lasted to long.
The following day, Saturday, I went into the office and had a conversation with my project coordinator. I will leave out the details of the conversation, but now instead of doing a time-intensive research project that would most likely not be implemented any how, I will be working with BCT on administrative policies, their marketing campaign, and training their staff workers to be professional and efficient. I have to say I was quite pleased with myself and began by making sure the office as well as the school (which the NGO owns) could be found on Google Maps. So contrary to what I said last week about not being able to find where I am on a map, I’ve already changed that. Check it out here: http://goo.gl/maps/g8LFd
The next four months will still bring many challenges, even if I have found a new comfort zone here in India. There is much for me to do, and I won’t hesitate to help as much as possible in order to leave this area at least just a little better than when I arrived.
