September 2010
9 posts
Auroville
On the Saturday after Orientation Week, before everyone else left, we decided to venture to Auroville, which is 14km outside of Pondicherry.
Auroville is a community based on a social experiement. It was founded by a lady referred to as “The Mother” in the 1960s. There are photos of this woman all over both Pondicherry and Auroville and to be honest, she is pretty scary-looking....
Orientation: Friday
As the last day of Orientation Week came upon us, I realised how sad I was that the others were leaving. It seems miraculous that we’ve spent such a short yet intense period of time together and got on so well, and no cliques have formed, despite some people I feel I got closer to than others.
The morning was spent filling out an evaluation form for DiA and having one-to-one’s with...
Orientation: Thursday
We went to Sharana Village by minibus. This is where Florence will be working. It is quite a way away from central Pondichrery and I do feel for her having to cycle there - especially as she only just learnt to ride a bike before she came out! I have to cycle to Volontariat too but it only takes twenty minutes and the walk is only 45.
Sharana is tiny compared to Volontariat - about a sixth of the...
Orientation Week: Wednesday
Today we all got a bus out of Pondicherry to Arul Ashram, an ashram for HIV and AIDs sufferers. Like Volontariat, it was very pretty and well-kept, and we had a talk from Carol, one of the women in charge there. She told us about the huge stigma attached to HIV in India, and how many families cast out their own rather than bring shame upon themselves. Carol gave the example of one family who gave...
Orientation Week: Tuesday
I have seen so many photographs of India, Indian people, Indian scenes, but none of them prepared me. You cannot represent this place with a single image. Nor a single sound, nor taste, nor smell: just as all the senses are crucial to a complete picture of life, only the synaesthesia of actually being here can provide one with a full experience of India.
Walking out of the guest house in...
Orientation Week: Monday
We walked to Sharana headquarters, on a pretty, leafy side road. Sharana is the NGO with which Florence will be working and consists of social work, women’s empowerment and teaching. However it has a few different places - HQ seems to be the administrative hub, whilst the village, a little way out of Pondicherry, is home to the creche and women’s project.
We walked up the two flights...
Arrival in Pondicherry
We caught a bus from Mamallapuram to Pondicherry on Sunday (5th September). Luckily the bus that came along wasn’t at all full, with air conditioning, reclining seats and a Bollywood film showing at the front!
When we arrived in Pondicherry, a place that seemed far bigger and busier than I’d expected, we got rickshaws to the International Guest House, where we met our India Volunteer...
Arrival in India and Mamallapuram
Although it was 4.30am and completely dark, the temperature when we - all the other DiA volunteers minus Gaia - landed in Chennai was around 28 degrees c and enveloped us like a fist. After the heat, what hit me was the noise. The beeping of horns overlapped each other without a gap for silence, creating a cacophony of sounds which was pretty invasive. I felt not far removed from how the British...
Introduction to Development in Action and what I...
After reading Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” a few years ago I knew that I wanted to go to India. Such a vast, diverse country with its many states, religions, ethnic groups; a place that is home to peasant villagers and numerous slum-dwellers whilst having one of the world’s booming economies and being on the cusp of what western standards refer to as...
