Debbie's Placement in India 2018

Planes , Trains, and Automobiles This morning Augustine came around again, and he went through first Alex's and then my mid-placement evaluation.  I had already my stuff first thing in the morning, and when Alex was ready Augustine kindly drove us to the nearby train station so that we could catch a train back to Penukonda, and he made sure that we knew which train needed and from which platform before he said goodbye. Arriving at the station According to the ticket, you can report unsavoury situations during the journey... Waiting for the train When the train arrived, there was very little 2nd class general space on the train, and it was just one carriage right near the front. We had to walk much further down the platform than we had realised to get to the carriage, and Alex started to get concerned that we wouldn't make it in tie, and suggested that we got on and walked down inside the train instead. I had been happy to keep walking along the ...

Today was the day we were meeting with Manuela. She had invited us for lunch first, and then she would take us to the disability organisation where she works, Seva in Action. Augustine came around in the morning and we had a bit of a chat. He is having some bits and pieces of work and decorating done at the guest house, and he was supervising this also. Soon it was time to leave for Manuela's house. We caught an auto, and between Augustine's directions, a little bit of Google maps, and asking directions when we got near, we were able to find Manuela's house. Manuela had a beautiful house, and I hadn't realised how much effort would be gone to for lunch. Sunil was also there, and their elder daughter came home from her nearby work as a graphic designer to join us as well. The vegetarian lunch, which included some rice dishes and some homemade pickles/chutneys, was absolutely delicious. We were given some sweets too, including an unlikely-sounding Goan sweet, guava...

Something I have been trying to organise for several days now is to meet up with Augustine for our mid-placement evaluations. I haven't had replies to messages and my phone calls have gone unanswered however. This morning, Rashna said that she and her Alex would be going to Bangalore, so I asked if we could get a lift if I was able to coordinate things with Augustine, and she said of course. Just in the nick of time, Augustine answered my final phone call and said all was fine for us to come, so we had a few minutes to pack our stuff and jump in the car. I also sent a message to Manuela, who we had met when she visited the farm recently, to ask if this Wednesday was any good for meeting up with her and visiting the disability organisation she works for - and again we were lucky with a positive answer. So the morning was a bit of a whirlwind, and a few hours later we were back at Augustine's place in Bangalore. The driving had been pretty swift and I am not the best trave...

Manil needed to go to Bangalore to sort out an administrative issue, and I decided to ask if I could come along to get a change of scenery and to pick to up some knitting yarn as Manil had asked me to knit her a cardigan. Basha, one of the long-term right-since-the-start employees who helps with these matters also came along, and Alex had a few things to pick up so he joined us too. Along with Ramanji the driver, we made a bit of a car-full for the approximately 150km journey to the city in the neighbouring state of Karnataka. We arrived at Manil and Rajan's Bangalore house to unload - and there was a difficult delay when we found that a drainage ditch had been dug along the side of their road, so this trench meant that the cars couldn't get in or out of the driveway... Eventually we were ready to carry on, after Ramanji found somewhere to park the car and Manil ordered a labourer on the drain digging job to create some way for us to at least be able to walk across the tre...

After our trip to Bannerghatta and then getting lunch, Augustine fully introduced us to his friend and former social work teacher Dominic. Originally from Goa, Dominic had taught social work at university before moving back into practice in the field of community development. He had spent most of his community development time working with tribal people of India. These people are indigenous people of India from before the historical human migration of Aryans south into the Indian subcontinent (they also moved west into Europe). The term ‘indigenous’ often has political connotations, so the policy of India is to refer to all Indians as equally Indian and indigenous, and to use the term ‘tribal people’ for the pre-Aryan people. Dominic discussed with us background and experiences, his philosophy and attitudes towards social work, his personal perspective on development work, and probably more that I haven’t recalled. We also discussed religion, Indian food, history, and language, ...

We had Wednesday morning free, and so we all decided that we would get up early and go on an a bit of trip to see something different. Alex had previously asked in Baba’s shop about a National Park that was reachable from Bangalore. Shakeel told us that Bannerghatta National Park was really great, and included a safari experience of Indian animals as well as a zoo. I’m not really a fan of zoos because animals in cages make me sad, but the idea of a National Park and a safari experience did appeal to me. We had been told that it would be easy to book a car to take us, but in reality it was a bit more complex! We didn’t give enough notice to hire a car and driver, so we decided we would try Uber. I was the only person with a functioning Uber account though, and it wouldn’t let me log in because I had a different sim card in my phone that was not associated with my account. My Aussie sim card is back at home, so there was nothing I could do. Luckily we had been told about Ola, anot...

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Once our discussions were finished with Augustine, and we had all been for lunch together, we decided to head out again. I wanted to visit some bookshops and to find some more tops as I deliberately hadn't packed enough because I knew I would need to buy Indian-style clothes once I got here. We came up with a plan of walking back to the photo shop as Alex needed to collect some extra copies, then catching a tuk tuk to visit Ulsoor Lake, which is near to where we are living in the city. The lake was incredibly polluted in the past, with a lot of overgrowth of certain plants like water hyacinth as well. The pollution was apparently so bad in the lakes of Bangalore that sometimes the gases and chemical given off from pollutants and decay were getting trapped in the over layer of vegetation and litter, and sometimes this was causing the lakes to catch fire! While Ulsoor Lake is not terribly clean, it is certainly a lot better than that now. There wasn't much to do at ...