My Intercultural Experience
India is incredible with all its traditions, festivals and especially its people!!!
I am Nils, FSL India volunteers for the last nine months. I am placed at Hunsur, near Mysore passed way too fast. I lived in an Indian family, went to traditional Indian weddings, learned to read the local language Kannada. I became friends to auto-rickshaw drivers and the most contended. I worked during the day time with tribal children. The first four months I worked for the Nisarga Foundation School, 15 kilo metres away from Hunsur. Totally 30 children were rescued by Nisarga from child labour and were also abandoned and abused children. The target is to give the children a warm meal every day and if possible introduce them one day to a governmental school. It was very special for me to go with my Headmaster Mahadeva to villages and observe the discussions about the importance of education.
Further, I had very interesting experiences while going to a national community rights meeting for Tribals. After I worked in another school, which is located 9 kilo metres outwards Hunsur in a village called Nellur Pala. Every morning I enter the school, warmly welcomed by 150 children, saying “Namaste sir”. It is incredible how much cheerfulness these children have in their minds. More than half of them live without their parents in the school, because their villages are too far away. Four times in a day all the children gather. In the morning they gather once for breakfast, divided in boys and girls they sit cross-legged in the dinning-hall. Before they receive their breakfast they will sing two songs, followed by a prayer. Later they gather again on the playground to stand in formation. Two children read out the news of the day and after will pitch the state and sing national anthem. It is fascinating with how much proud and concentration they sing and later march into their classrooms.
I really enjoyed seeing the progress in each and every child. In the beginning I could not remember their names, because they almost sounded all the same to me. Now I know them all and know exactly all their behaviors. Especially the girls seemed to be really shy in the class. Now they have become more self-confident and creative. It was shocking for me to see in the beginning, that all children in drawing-class just knew how to copy the sample. Finally they worked out a beautiful calendar by themselves. One of my biggest challenges was to enter the 1st and 2nd grade. There were 25 children waiting to be handled by my Indian colleagues with the stick. When my French mate Erwin and me tried to work with them the first time, we were totally exhausted within 10 minutes. We were desperate, we did not know how to communicate with them and some of them didn’t even know the local language Kannada rather only speak their tribal dialect and then how we could communicate with them in English or in our broken Kannada?
After a few weeks our classes were only based on action and making pictures. I felt that it was necessary for me to enter earlier to this amazing grade. There is nothing in my project that makes me happier than listening to all the children, begging me to enter to their classroom, while seeing their smiling faces. A day I will not forget the day of the Hindu-Festival “Holi” in March. After being welcomed by a bucket full of colors from strangers in Hunsur, I had to “fight” again through a dozen hands in each and every color in project. The children “doused” me and it was one of the most joyful moments I had in India.
India is incredible with all its traditions, festivals and especially its people. By mistake I took a few times the wrong bus to project and found myself in the middle of nowhere. It just took minutes, until people came and talked to me and invited me to drink Chai in their house with their families. India is such a huge country and each state has its own language and own sub-culture. But you can be sure you will never get lost because of their fascinating hospitality. There is so much more volunteering work gives you and nothing more interesting than to see and learn every day something new in the other culture. In the beginning it may be shocking, but as time passed by, I began to love it. It really does not matter, if it is about wearing a Lungi, playing Kabbadi, drinking very sweet tea, listening to the national-anthem or get asked about the important fact if you had your food.
Nils Hungerland
FSL India Volunteer from Germany