My Month in India

My Month in India

My name is Elsa Edling from the cold and small country Sweden and I have just spent a month working as a volunteer in India. I worked in the project Joseph Rural Development Trust (JRDT) in a small village near Chennai and my main assignment was to teach English at the local schools. I signed up as a volunteer at FSL-India who found and placed me in this project.

 

The orientation week

 

I met FSL-India staff and their other volunteers on the 6th of August at Kundapur. Altogether we were 45 volunteers from different countries out of which 37 from Germany. We would all spend our first week together with FSL-India for an orientation week.

 

We all lived together in a hostel and during the orientation week we all learned a lot about the Indian culture, e.g. how to dress, how to eat, not to use your left hand, not to show your feet at others and so on. We also made small trips in the village, went on a classical music concert, visited nearby projects and more. The orientation week was really good since it was a nice and soft start to new Indian life and it was nice to meet the other volunteers to discuss expectations, hopes and fear and so on.

 

My biggest expectations and also hopes for this month was to learn a lot about the Indian culture and being able to really help out and be of use in my project. Some of my biggest fears on the other hand were that just this wouldn’t happen, that I was not going to be able to fit in and not be able to help out at all at my project. I was going to be an English teacher without having a language in comment with the children. So I was afraid that the children would not be able to understand me and therefore not learn anything from me. Another thing that worried me was to unintentionally offend someone by doing something seemed as rude without knowing how Indians interpret it.

 

My project

 

After the orientation week we all travelled to our different projects. After 23 hours of bus journey I finally arrived at Manampathy Kandigai where the director, Mr. Arokiaraj, of JRDT lives. I was going to stay at his place together with his wife Anita and their two-year-old son Alfred. Arokiaraj’s parents also live in the house since it is normal in India to take care of elders instead of sending them to senior homes like we do.

 

JRDT is an organization that works for developing and improve the standard of living of the people in the villages. This they do by running an orphanage, organizing Eye and Dental camps, First Aid camps, helping disabled people, building toilets, building school walls and more. My major assignment here was to teach English at the local schools and the orphanage, but when I had time I also helped out with administrative work, like taking pictures, writing for the blog, updating the website and so on.

 

 

 The plan for me was that I would teach in one school in the morning, come home for lunch, teach at another school in the afternoon, come home for tea and biscuits and then teach at the orphanage in the evening. Due to travelling, holidays and more I was not able to keep this plan every day. Sometimes I would just be at home in the afternoon without much to do. That is why I started to also help out on the blog and so on, because this I could do from home.   

 

To work as an English teacher was a bit of challenging because of the very thing I was afraid of during the orientation week, the language barrier. It is hard to teach a language that the children do not speak, especially when you do not speak their language. But the children were very happy to have an English teacher who had come all the way from Europe. So most of the time they would do their best to understand me and do what I told them.

 

Because of the language barrier I would mostly teach through simple methods like songs, drawings and easy sentences and this would be very effective. The children love learning songs and dances. I was quite often left to be in-charge of whole lessons myself and sometimes this would be just fine but sometimes I wouldn’t at all be able to control the children. But then I just had to ask for help from the other teachers who then would sit with me during class and only make sure that the children would listen to me. At one of the schools I would even get help from an Indian English teacher who would help me to translate what I was saying to the children and then I was able to also teach more advanced things which is really great.

 

“The Stick”

 

One thing I found hard for me working as a teacher was sometimes to get the attention of the children. At some schools they had very high respect for me and always listened and did what I said since I was foreigner and exciting but in some schools this had the opposite effect with the children more interested in getting my autograph, shaking my hand, touching my hair and so on than actually to listen to me when I was teaching. To get the children’s attention in India they unfortunately use “the stick”.

 

Beating children in school is officially banned in all of India, but despite this is it still practiced in most schools. “The stick” is simply a normal stick with which you smack the kids if they are not listening or doing their assignments properly. I talked a lot about this with the other teachers and they say that since the children are brought up with it at home this is the only way they will listen. I never even touched the stick even though the children themselves would suggest it when some children were being too loud, but I was also at times not able to control the children by myself.

 

What I think sad about this is that other methods are not even being tried out and you see how the children learn from this and that older children will go around smacking younger children with sticks just like the teachers. Of course this is nothing you can change during three weeks or even a whole year. We shouldn’t forget that also in Europe children were beaten in schools as part of normal life and allowed until only 20-30 years ago. An official ban is a step in the right direction and hopefully will this ban eventually be practiced in the schools.

 

My host family and living in India

 

Living with a host family was great, because then you really get into the Indian culture and life. In my family we would only eat Indian food and I would also eat the Indian way, with my right hand. Arokiaraj and Anita took great care of me and always made sure that I was eating properly, took me everywhere I wanted to go and also took care of me when I got sick. Getting sick is unfortunately something that is hard to avoid but as your stomach gets tougher this will happen less often.

 

Arokiaraj would also take me on trips where we visited other projects, other villages or his relatives. I quickly started to feel at home there and if I had the possibility I would have loved to stay for longer. Also in the village I started to feel at home. The village is very small so everyone knows everyone and I was the only European there so I would draw some attention when I would walk out on the streets but everyone would be very nice and always ask “How are you?” and invite me in for tea or dinner even though this phrase was the only English they knew. As long as you stayed very polite and friendly everyone would treat you the same and wouldn’t mind that much even if you happened to do something considered as rude.

 

As I lived at Arokiaraj and Anita I would always wear Indian clothes which would be very much appreciated by everyone, the dress code, to cover your legs and shoulders, is important here in India and especially in small villages. Anita helped me to buy clothes on my very first day. The Indian clothes are also good because they protect you from the sun but since they are so loose they don’t feel too warm.

 

The warmth was one thing that was hard for me to cope with during the day I would usually get very tired and get headaches. My host family would therefore make sure that I rested and drank a lot of water. But the warmth is something you eventually get used to and after a while it won’t affect you that much.

 

Altogether my stay in India was really good and actually the biggest problem that one month is much too short time. The people here are all so friendly and nice and the differences weren’t as big as I would have thought. I made a lot of friends with whom I still have contact. Not at least my host family, which I already promised to come back to visit, but also among the other teachers and volunteers. Going to India was a great experience for me, filled with challenges, learning of new things, getting to know a new culture and meeting different kinds of people and I am really happy that I made this trip. Going to India is something I highly recommend and if I could I would have loved to stay for longer.

 

 

Elsa Edling

FSL-India Volunteer from Sweden

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