Before I went off to orientation I spent a couple of days with family and good friends in Delhi. I had never visited the Bahai Temple but heard it was definitely worth seeing so I checked it out:
And a photo of my lovely cousin Rati, and her two bundles of love, Palak and Aaranya:
After those several days I spent the first month of my time in India at orientation (specifically at ESI, the Environmental Sanitation Institute, near Ahmedabad, Gujarat). It was a month packed (I’m italicizing for a reason) with team-building activities, personal reflection, topical sessions (i.e. education, history), etc. Orientation was a helpful introduction to the program, it prepared me for some of what I was to face during my time here, and it allowed me to meet the other fellows, some past fellows and volunteers, and staff members who provide us with support during the course of the fellowship.
Here’s a tender moment:
From Boston to Bagar
How different my life is from last year at this time. Last year I was in Boston experiencing my first really cold winter (despite it being a mild winter for Boston, it was still a drastic change for me given my Californian roots), working at ACCION; and trying to figure out what the next step was for me career-wise. Now I’m in Bagar (a town no where near as large as Boston but whose residents make me cherish its smallness); attempting to improve my Hindi and pick up bits and pieces of the regional language, Marwari; trying to get a sense of whether I see myself working in the development field for the long haul; and just enjoying the journey!
Let’s start with the name of the town first: Bagar. It’s never spelled one way in English. You’ll see Bagar, Bagad, Baggar, or Baggad; that’s because there’s no letter in English for the rolled (rd) sound in Hindi that’s used at the end of the word. And in terms of population, amenities and infrastructure, I think a lot of people back at home probably picture me in a remote village. Bagar is actually a town of about 15,000 people, equipped with six cell phone towers, three newspaper agencies, and numerous homes furnished with computers. While Bagar is well connected, health care services and awareness of health issues, waste management, and employment opportunities are just some of the issues in which the town could use a boost.
More about my new home: Bagar is situated in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan. The district is one of three in the Shekhawati region and is known as once being the home of a number of large business families like the Maheshwari’s, Mittal’s, and Birla’s. The families all left the region for larger metro cities or abroad but have managed to give back to the area mostly in the form of educational institutions. As such, Bagar is seen as an educational center, being home to a whopping thirty two schools! Unfortunately education has turned into sort of a business so quantity does not necessarily equal quality.
The families that I described above are sort of how we wound up here. Our organization and one of these families, the Piramal’s, made an agreement that we would do development work here instead of them just throwing money at the town and not tackling issues at their roots. So we’re living in the Piramal guesthouse or athithi bhavan, on the campus of the Piramal Boys Secondary School. Our place is more than I could have asked for and we also get the added bonus of eating twice a day at the hostel’s mess hall. The food is plain but nutritious and I love that I don’t have to cook on a regular basis.
The Project
So what did I transplant myself to India for? My project: Grassroots Development Laboratory (GDL). It’s a localized rural development project in which interventions in the computer technology, education, livelihoods, and waste disposal sectors are all applied to a single town. It’s different from what most of the other fellows are doing. Other fellows in the program have been paired up with NGO’s so they didn’t do a needs assessment of the town, city or region where they’re working; the NGO’s had basically done the needs assessment for them. However, my team and I are the first to come here for an extended period of time in this ‘social work’ capacity so we spent a couple of months just on conducting a needs assessment in our respective subject areas. The label ‘laboratory’ in GDL indicates that our project is experimental in nature. That is, we’re trying out different approaches to issues we saw that needed to be addressed. If what we try out works, fabulous. If not, we try again from a different angle. The goal is that our solutions are sustainable (to ensure transformation rather than just short-term change) and replicable in other parts of India.
Who is the “team” and the “we” I keep referring to? Preeti, Ashish, Lakshmi, and I. Unlike most of the other fellowships, ours is unique in that there are several of us in one area. There are also a host of short term volunteers and interns who will be in and out. Here’s an introduction to the main folks:
Meet Preeti (on the right). She just graduated and has created a Parent Teacher Association designed especially for the sixty 6th grade boys of the Piramal Boys Secondary School. Here she is conducting a one-on-one informational meeting with one of the mothers of the boys while the boys on the side are helping translate. Since then (this was back in December), she decided to be an additional English teacher at the school as a means of gaining more credibility with the parents and teachers. She’s always busy meeting and following up with the parents of her students or informing them of new initiatives she’s putting in place (for example, one new idea she’ll be implementing is a summer remedial course for her students to further prepare the boys to enter 7th grade). Preeti’s my sunshine, is always willing to lend a helping hand, and shares my love for American pop music and for the latest Marwari hits!
Here’s Ashish (on the right). He was doing IT stuff at Deloitte for a couple of years and has begun a computer class for twenty four kids in Bagar. As it stands, kids learn about computers here but the curriculum is largely theory based with little application. His class offers each student a computer so they learn by actually doing. The students will have the opportunity to do projects so that they see what the relevance of computers is to their lives and their communities. Here Ashish shaved off his mustache for Preeti for her birthday. While we were (really) grateful for his decision, it was quite a noble deed as he was attempting it grow it long. Ashish brings a needed dose of reality to the team, he’s always looking out for us girls, he’s probably the best brainstormer ever, and you can count on him to see a potential business opportunity in any situation.
Enter Lakshmi (on the right). Lakshmi is a staff member who spends half her time here and the other half traveling and in the office in Ahmedabad. She spent last year as a staff member, mostly identifying different NGO’s throughout India that would be good matches for fellows. She doesn’t have an individual project but provides us with guidance for our projects. Always on the go, Lux is dedicated, a hard worker, and was a great running partner during the Mumbai Marathon back in January. Here Preeti’s feeding her during the mittai scavenger hunt we put together for her back in October.
Here’s Yours Truly plus Preeti. We were messing around and had created gober ludoo’s (cow dung desserts – and yes, it’s a joke). In this shot, Preeti and I were creating two vermicompost beds with gober in our garden (which is located in front of the guesthhouse). I have created these beds so that I’d be able to understand the vermicomposting process firsthand as it directly relates to my project. The compost is created by placing ten to fifteen-day-old gober on a flat surface in a half moon shape, one foot high, one to two foot wide, and of any length (I chose ten feet). After this shape is created, earthworms are placed on top of the gober. The earthworms eat the gober and their excretory matter makes for great fertilizer! Daily watering and raking through the bed every ten days is required. After about sixty days the compost should be ready.I was doing all this because I’m working in the livelihood sector. I saw that unemployment amongst males in Bagar is enormously high. There’s a lot of migration to Mumbai, Dubai, and Europe to find decently-paying work. However, no one ever thinks about the potential that women have to earn for their families. And while women work tremendously hard at home, during the day most are pretty bored and end up using their time unconstructively or just do absolutely nothing. So while I wanted to provide people with opportunities to generate income, I wanted this base of people to be women so that they realize their own capabilities and have a greater sense of hope for the future. Accordingly, I’ve created a self-help group (SHG) of eleven women with the aim being personal and financial advancement of each woman. After exploring various employment opportunities, I decided upon vermicomposting, or the creation of organic fertilizer. As it stands, nearly all farmers in the region use chemical fertilizers. I feel as though the adoption of vermicompost hasn’t been taken up by farmers because of a lack of awareness. So while the women create the compost we’ll also be holding awareness meetings with farmers who will serve as potential customers.
Vermicompost production is best done in a group because it requires more than just one cow or buffalo’s gober and more maintenance than one person can handle. Also, in terms of strengthening each women’s sense of self-worth, I thought the best way to do that in this context is by creating a group of women to take up a livelihood together so that they find strength in their female peers via sharing their struggles and learning and working together, etc. Maybe everyone’s problems won’t be solved but at least the group will be a place where each woman can find at least temporary relief from her everyday worries.
So in case you didn’t figure out, here’s a photo of one of my new best friends since this project began:
Hi, I’m an earthworm or in Hindi, kechua. I’m a pinkish shade, can reproduce on my own (which I do a lot of given good conditions), and live for about twenty days. Radhika’s good to me most days except when she waters me excessively, but hey, I won’t blame her too much, she’s still getting a hang of the process.Okay I’m a real nerd but I love these guys! Anyways, since this point I’ve started holding meetings with the women every week. The women self-selected themselves and now we’re down to a good number of eleven. The meetings exist to build positive group dynamics and to provide the women with information on topics such as health, government schemes, their role in their children’s education, etc. Here is a glimpse of some of the meetings I’ve held:
This was my first meeting. The women whose back is directly toward the camera is Sushila Ji, a woman who has agreed to accompany me to all my meetings to translate my broken Hindi to Marwari.
Here I was giving the women instructions on an activity encouraging them to speak openly about their feelings and the status in their homes and in society. They were pretty responsive and seemed engaged.
Once I felt that the women were prepared to vermicompost and united in their decision to start, I arranged for the building of the shed under which the vermicomposting would happen. A shed is absolutely necessary because the worms need shade and the heat here is very intense during summer months. Here are some shots of it:
Over a month ago.
…and now (including the compost beds)Another of the shed with the net as the roof. It still needs a lot of work to ensure its durability during monsoon season but this is closer to what it will look like when finished. On this morning, the women got together to clear out the grass and weeds and make way for the vermicompost beds.
After the women finished that morning we celebrated with a photo-taking session and a healthy treat (oranges, which some women are holding). To get acquainted with the women of the Ashok Nagar Mahila Mandal (Ashok Nagar Women’s Group, a name they chose on their own) and those whose company I can’t get enough of are: (from left to right) Gita Ji, Meera Ji, Mani JI, Vimla Devi Ji, Meva Ji, Bani Ji, Gyarsi Ji, Vimla Ji, Jamna Ji, Santosh Ji, and Radha Ji.This week the women have initiated the vermicomposting process by creating two beds. In the next ten days or so, eighteen more beds are to follow. While all sounds dandy, challenges will include getting the shed finished (finding people to work on this is sometimes a pain), keeping the women motivated, developing their leadership skills and thinking of ways to make them less dependent on me, ensuring that they maintain the beds properly, and creating a market for the compost via the farmer awareness meetings.
I’ve sort of painted a glamorous picture of my time here but that isn’t so. During this time I’ve also encountered the frustrations of Indian bureaucracy, residents wary of and apathetic about our presence, being a female in this male-centered society, and self-doubt about my own capabilities. And just when things aren’t going my way there’s always the bus ride where I can’t find a seat and I’m standing in someone’s armpit; our electricity goes out when I have a lot of documentation or reports to complete; or I get criticized for my Hindi, my color (turning too dark from the sun), or my weight (some say I’ve put on weight while others feel I look too skinny and weak). All that aside, I’ve come to realize that I can’t take things personally and that I should focus on the strides I have made and on the future.
It’s Not Over!
So you thought you were done reading, eh? Not so, my friends. Well, actually, if you’ve gotten this far, I commend you. In any case, I’ll keep going. In mid-December I met my mom, Nani (grandmother), and Masi’s (aunts) and we went to my cousin Ruhee’s wedding in Nagpur. Attending the event was exciting because I’m close to her and because I was really amazed to see how much Nagpur has developed since I had last visited in 2001. The following are a couple of the functions:
Ruhee and Mohit dazzled the crowd with their impeccable number to a medley of Hindi film songs. It was simply amazing. They’re regular Bollywood stars!
Mumma and I hanging out outside the hotel to get a glimpse of the Baraat.The village in which the women live is where I spent a bulk of my time. I’ve gotten to know quite a few families pretty well so when two sisters got married, Preeti and I attended. The wedding was running really late (three hours, which we didn’t know was pretty customary) so we didn’t get to see the actual ceremony because we had to go, but we had fun getting dressed up:
On January 18th, the four of us headed to Mumbai to run in the Mumbai marathon and to deliver presentations to the Piramal family (in case you forgot, they’re funding our work here). I wasn’t really looking forward to the trip because I had a lot of work in Bagar and felt like it was a bad time to leave. I also hadn’t run in a month and had unsuccessfully tried changing my marathon status to half marathon. So I was going to Mumbai to run in a marathon I knew I wasn’t going to finish. In the end though, delivering the presentation and hearing the others give theirs reenergized me about how far we had come as a group. Often times I get so busy and caught up with the details that I forget about the big picture. As far as the marathon I was doubtful that I’d be able to make it to the half marathon mark but I surprised myself and made it to kilometer thirty (nineteen miles). It was a scenic run complemented by a supportive crowd (even though kids repeatedly called out ‘Auntie!’ to Lakshmi and I causing us major trauma).The best part of the weekend was that I was blessed with the love of my life who I have yet to meet, my new nephew: Rehan Dosaj Batra. If you want your heart to melt, check out the little man below:
Mommy and Baby!
Just chillin!
The proud family!
I'm so stylish I accessorize with mittens!You’re probably on baby overdose by now but thought I’d boast given that he’s so precious.
In terms of work, we also held a 5K race in Bagar for kids aged ten to twelve. Nothing like that had ever been done here and while it was disorganization galore, it happened and kids are anticipating another one sometime in the future. Here are some of my favorite runners who showed incredible commitment to the sport in the weeks leading up to the event:
I’ve summed up my life the past eight months but have left out so much. Everyday is a new adventure, frustration, and finding. There are days when I love this country, moments when I think I my work won’t get done if I only stay here my intended two years, and days when I wish I could transplant myself back home just for an hour to see my family, Rehan, and my friends or even just to drive my car.
In the months prior to my departure, I didn’t know if I could be out here. I worried about not knowing what my long-term goals were, not liking it here, missing the social life I was used to, etc. There were so many unknowns and what-if’s. Even now, just planning for the following day can be overwhelming. In any case, I’m glad I took the risk.
I’m leaving you with this next picture because it is just one representation of why Bagar has such charm: the people!
Until next time or as they say in Marwari: ojju milenge (we’ll meet again)!