After two and a half months here in India I would like to look back on some experiences I have made so far. 

But first a small disclaimer: My first impressions are just this! My blog is NOT a “single story” about India trying to stress all clichés and western white narratives, but first of all the overwhelming emotions of happiness and welcoming from this beautiful land of Kundapura and its warm-hearted people. It is very easy to generalize my experiences but all of them are only lucky coincidences that happened to me, a white male, son of two German doctors.

My unjust privileges are tremendous and should not be forgotten. Almost instantly my host family and their house felt like a second home and I am very happy that they welcomed me with an open heart. We can talk about everything very comfortably and I love that they show me Indian culture like I was a part of their family since forever. Sometimes the language barrier plays some funny tricks with us but in the end, we always understand each other even in difficult topics. Apart from that, I like to learn Kannada which my host family happily supports. Already we have got some running gags going on 🙂

Furthermore, my host mother Sudha is the best cook in the world! She would never let me go out without one of the most delicious meals in my stomach and honestly, I look forward to dinner every day as it is so tasty! That is also one of the reasons why I try to help her and the family as much as I can, even though their incredible hospitality sometimes gets in the way 😉 Every time I get the chance, I will do the dishes and offer my help. 

One chore I have to do for myself is washing my clothes by hand on the washing stone in the garden. Every second day there is water coming from the grid and that’s when I wake up an hour early to wash my stuff. A very exhausting habit but it saves time and water for the rest of the day.

My project at the Higher Primary School Vandse also is a lot of fun even though it definitely needed some time for me to adjust to it. The school educates almost 350 students and some classes hold up to 49 students. This makes it difficult to communicate with the whole class and it is a big task to keep them quiet. 

Still the students are very curious and seem to enjoy our interactions as much as I do. 

Breaking the ice with the students and teacher was especially difficult because remembering the new names in Kannada was very hard for me. Another issue in the beginning was my lack of authority in front of the children. Being unable to speak their mother tongue and being unsure about all procedures didn’t help in this regard. But now after some time I feel very comfortable with my work – the children respect me and I have as much fun joking around with my teacher colleagues as with the students. Nevertheless, you should know that still sometimes the friendly teachers tend to hit the children on their backs even though this bad habit of punishment goes out of use nowadays. 

Some Special experiences I have made so far were the two weddings I was able to attend, seeing the Dasara Festival in Mysore, working at the organic Varanashi Farm and seeing the world heritage site Hampi. The two weddings I have been to were both as much fun as they were different. On the first wedding me and the other Volunteers saw a turmeric ritual where the bride and the groom get soaked in water and turmeric while jokingly fighting back at the guest slapping them with the spice. This evening, we even performed a dance for the couple before partying and dancing like I never did before. After another day of bachelor’s pool party, they were married with over 1400 guests! It was completely overwhelming to see so many people coming and taking pictures with the newly married couple.

The other marriage we saw was in the mountainous region of Coorg where a good friend from the Varanashi Farm invited us to join. Just seeing Coorg – which almost seemed like another country with it’s cool climate and big mountains – was amazing. But the marriage really made us question whether this is still Karnataka. The traditional dresses of the men with their old silver knives and the women wearing their Saris in a completely different way than we have seen before beautifully showed us the diversity of this country. And then I thought by now I could maybe at least keep up a little with the Indian dances but the people from coorg taught me to be humble. Euphoric, we danced for hours only to the music of traditional drums and flutes. In the end the marriage was conducted by cutting banana stems in a magnificent ritual. Both weddings were very beautiful as they were different and unique to my eyes. Another great experience was the visit to Hampi eight of us volunteers did.

A place so loaded with culture and history that you almost got numbed by the many huge stone temples-built centuries ago. We only spent three days there to do some sightseeing but I feel even after one month of just walking around I would still find new monuments and for sure my curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied. 

The same way I feel about the famous Dasara Festival in Mysore where all of us volunteers watched the great parade with many elephants and traditions from all over Karnataka.

In October we had two weeks of school holidays so we worked on the Varanashi Farm, a small organic business located near Puttur. Even though we had to work from 9 to 4 o’clock every day, it really felt like a holiday. On the farm there is a big natural swimming pool and the staff is so incredibly nice that it instantly became a happy place where you could feel very comfortable. Our tasks there included Areca Nut picking, weeding, peeling of cocoa beans and making compost. All of us loved it so much that we are already looking forward to living there again during our summer holidays! These were only a few experiences I was able to make so far and while my writing skills probably could not get the feelings and details to you as good as I would like to, let me just end on this note – it is amazing here in India!