EIL Intercultural Learning

A two week trip to Rajasthan in February 2009 made me want to return, and volunteering offered a way to spend some time there as something other than a tourist. So in mid January 2010 I flew out from an icy Dublin to a foggy and cool Delhi, wondering if what I was doing was absolutely crazy! But from the moment I landed I met the helpfulness and kindness of Indian people. I couldn't find the host organisation representative who was supposed to meet me in the throng outside the airport, but before I could start to panic people at the Aertel desk in the arrivals hall took over, phoned the host organisation and found him for me.

I was one of nine 'over 30s' volunteers. It was a great group, and we jelled almost immediately. Four of us were grandparents! The first week was an orientation week. We were taken first to Agra, but failed to see the Taj Mahal because it was so foggy! Then on to Jaipur where the host organisation has its headquarters. They organised talks about Indian life and culture, and visits to Amber Fort, a Bollywood movie and the bazaar. We stayed with local (English-speaking) families, who were very welcoming and hospitable and fed us delicious Indian food. On the last day we were told a bit about Shiv volunteer camp, and the teaching and day care work we were to do. Then we had an overnight train journey to Barmer, the chief town of the district where Shiv is. The train was meant to leave Jaipur at midnight, but it was four and a half hours late which meant we were very tired and cold when it finally did arrive - so tired that it was easy to drop off to seep as soon as we had found our bunks.

At lunch time the next day we were met by a minibus for the hour's drive north through the desert to Shiv. The landscape is flat with occasional low hills, and only scrubby acacia and low bushes growing in the sandy earth. The volunteer camp is on the edge of Shiv, which is a fairly large village with shops and stalls lining the main street. There is a post office, a police station, and a little hospital, as well as a temple and several schools. While I was there the hospital provided (outpatient) treatment for a couple of volunteers, one with a badly scalded foot and another whose face swelled up after an insect bite. There were little mosquitos around, and we were provided with mosquito nets and electrical mosquito deterrents in our huts, but malaria is not a problem in Rajasthan. Shiv is on the main road running parallel to the Pakistani border which is just under 100km away, so there are military bases in the region and we had to sign in at the police station when we arrived and sign out when we left at the end of our stay. Shiv volunteer camp is a collection of little thatched mud brick huts. Each hut has a bathroom with running cold water and western style toilet. Most volunteers share a hut with one other person, though younger volunteers are housed three to a hut.

Volunteers teach in primary schools or work in day care centres in Shiv itself and in the surrounding villages. These are government schools - free education, books and lunch for all the children. But it is hard to get good teachers to come and live in this arid and poverty-stricken region, so the host organisation focuses on providing help with education. The village where I spent two hours teaching English and maths every morning was one of the small settlements out in the desert about 7 km from Shiv. The original village of mud brick houses was devastated by a flood in 2005 - after centuries of arid conditions in the Thar desert there have been two severe floods in the new millenium, but for the last three years there has been a severe drought. A non-government organisation (NGO) built 16 stone houses and a community hall on a new site on slightly higher ground, nearer the local water supply - now it is only 5 or 6 km away! These houses all had a big courtyard, with a covered area for the kitchen in one corner. The NGO had left an inscription in Hindi on one of the houses they built which reads 'the low status of women is a result of illiteracy'. The villagers themselves were building more houses, but the first thing they had built was a small temple, which was inaugurated during my first week there. They had donated the community hall to the government for use as a primary school.

The school consisted of one room, with mud floor and rugs for the children to sit on. Other groups of volunteers had painted the white walls with the alphabet, numbers, names of the colours in English in the appropriate colour, and a nice central decoration representing the 4 seasons. There were blackboards against the wall in separate corners of the room, and since three volunteers taught here the children were split into three groups - 1st class was the babies, officially 4 and 5 year olds, but smaller children followed their older friends and relatives to school, including a 1 year old who was a bit of a problem as he ate the crayons and distracted the others! 2nd and 3rd classes were combined, and these ranged from 6 to 8 years old, while my group was combined 4th and 5th classes ranging in age from 9 to 11. The school teacher took the whole school by himself when the volunteers left at lunch time. He teaches them through Hindi (which is not their mother tongue, so they start learning it in 1st class) and the volunteers teach English and maths. We had an Indian teaching 'executive' from the camp who acted as interpreter when necessary, helped us prepare suitable material, and got us to fill in report forms on what we had taught each week.

Every morning, as soon as they saw the minibus arriving, the children would run to greet us with bright eyes and big smiles. They were shabbily dressed and barefoot, but they seemed reasonably well-fed and were always happy. First they would go into the schoolroom for prayers in front of the picture of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning. The chant finishes with the words 'shanti, shanti, shanti' (peace, peace, peace) and was followed by the national anthem. After that the volunteers would go in and everyone stood in a circle to sing the goodmorning song (to the tune of Frère Jacques):

Say good morning, say good morning, How are you, how are you? Time to start the lesson, time to start the lesson, Now now now, Now, now now.

The children are really lovable, bright eyed and eager. Even the least clever ones try really hard and are desperately keen to get things right. One little girl in my class was very clever, and I asked the teacher whether she would go on to secondary school, but he explained that although she really should it is unlikely that the community would support secondary education for a girl. Many girls here marry at 15 even though legally the minimum age is 18 for girls and 21 for boys.

The English I taught was rudimentary. My class knew the English alphabet, numbers up to 100, and colours, and could read individual words such as cat, dog, sun, goat, milk, etc and even queen from flash cards. And I found some nice posters with animals, birds and shapes. The host organisation have a collection of teaching aids available for volunteers to use. I tried to teach them to use simple sentences, and games and songs in English are very good for this. They loved playing 'Simon says'. I supplemented the maths they had learnt from the teacher through Hindi, teaching them the English words for what they were doing, and giving them practice in addition with carrying, subtraction with borrowing and, towards the end, multiplication.

In the afternoon I taught English and computers to a class of girls in Shiv village. They ranged from 9 to 14 years old, and these girls were much better at English than those at the KKD school. They were from more educated and better off families, and all but one attended a private school. We were able to read stories with them - fairy tales like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Cinderella, and Goldilocks were popular. We would ask them questions to check their understanding of what they had read. At the computer we taught them to use Word, and that also gave them practice in writing English as we would get them to write about their best friend, what they did in the holidays and so on. There was no internet connection for the two computers we used.

On a typical morning I would wake to the chirping of sparrows and cooing of doves. Those energetic enough to be up by sunrise could attend the 7am yoga session in the recreation hall, but I'm afraid I only managed that twice! Hot water was available from a communal tap at any time of day for washing clothes or ourselves. A 'shower' consisted of pouring hot water from a bucket over ourselves. We would collect pre-breakfast tea from the dining hall, and sit sipping it on the step outside the office building, soaking up the sun like a row of lizards. It was really cold overnight for the first few weeks, and there were only two or three weeks near the end when I did not wear a fleece first thing in the morning. However by March the temperature in the middle of the day got up towards 40, and after lunch it was pleasant to sit in the cool of the hut rather than outside. After breakfast we prepared the day's lessons in the recreation hall with our Indian executive, hunting out suitable teaching aids from the host organisation stock or making worksheets and flash cards. Then the minibus would take us to our schools, and fetch us back in time for lunch. After lunch there was more preparation and afternoon classes. Food was mainly vegetarian, with chicken and eggs once a week. We had fresh fruit twice a day - oranges, papaya and delicious bananas quite unlike any we get at home, and occasionally pineapple. The diet was fairly low in protein and high in carbohydrate - mainly rice, potatoes and chapattis. Chocolate, biscuits and bottled drinks, including beer, were available in the camp shop. Strangely enough I found I didn't want sweet things - the sweet spiced chai offered before breakfast and in mid afternoon provided enough sugar. In spite of the large amount of carbohydrate I ate I lost the excess weight I'd put on in the last few years, and felt that the low fat content of the food and absence of desserts and sweets made for a really healthy diet. But some volunteers longed for chocolate and cake!

One weekend the host organisation organised a guided tour of Jaisalmer followed by a camel safari in the desert to the west. Great fun, though camels are not the most comfortable beasts to ride! Jaisalmer is an ancient town 100 km north of Shiv, with shops and houses within the walls of its great fort which perches on a rocky outcrop above the surrounding plain. On several other weekends some of us went there by bus and stayed overnight in a hotel. Volunteers from Shiv were well known and welcomed, and we had many interesting conversations with people from hotel keepers to stall holders.

It was my second visit to India, and so I knew something of what to expect, and I did not have a problem with culture shock. The traffic is chaotic, rubbish is left to lie everywhere, and there is poverty and lack of opportunity especially for women. But the people are so kind and hospitable, and although they have so little they are always smiling. The highlights were my interactions with people of all kinds - the more educated and prosperous people in Jaisalmer, the families living traditional lifestyles in Shiv and KKD, the young Indian executives working for the host organisation because they felt that this charitable work was important and worthwhile, and the above all the beautiful children that I taught. It was challenging to try to find ways of teaching that the children could relate to. One big problem with trying to teach the children to read was that the western books available in the camp described lifestyles and expectations that were completely alien to them, and Indian children's publications in English tended to use too many long and difficult words. But this was a challenge I found interesting and enjoyed. I've always liked camping, so I enjoyed life in the volunteer camp. Although I was prepared for the possibility of being a little depressed or anxious at times in such a different environment, I never actually had to deal with such feelings. I was lucky in the group of volunteers I was with, and I found the teaching fulfilling. When the time came to leave I was very sad, but I shall be applying to go back again next year!