Computer classes with no power

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The volunteering got off to a slow start as we were only allowed to work in the mornings for the first week, not quite sure why this was, maybe iDEX didn’t wanted anyone to be over whelmed. But it left some of us completely under whelmed, especially those who left work to come here rather than straight from Uni. It appears we have also arrived, on force, in the middle of school holidays and festival season; in the 3 weeks I am actually in Palampur there are 2 festivals. Some people who are doing a 4 week stint are only doing a total of 24hrs volunteer work, if they only work in the morning. Afternoon work is not compulsory, and you can choose to do workshops rather than volunteer. There are some here who are treating this Programme like a holiday camp rather than what it is, an opportunity to help those less fortunate that ourselves, for example not showing up for their morning classes as they are ‘tired’, hmmm, I think some people have questionable motives, e.g. their CV or Uni applications. I also think iDEX has let us down a bit, most of us had an expectation that a percentage of the money we paid for the Programme would go to community projects or be invested in the works sites we are at, and this is obviously not the case. Some people are also leaving the Programme early, (what, what, what!) this is really disappointing; they are offering various excuses for this. In my book no matter how much iDEX lets you down or disillusioned you may become, ultimately it is the kids you have made a commitment too for the next couple of weeks.

So those are the negatives out of the way. I have decided to stay positive and try and do what I can in the time, and with the resources available. Plus there are many people here for the correct reasons doing a cracking job.

It resulted that I am doing all my volunteer work with a hilarious girl from Germany, Steph. She quit her job and is spending 9 months volunteering in different countries, she has already spent 3 months in Philippines, and after India she is heading to Peru. We run a morning school holiday computer class for girls, we have 6 students. This is the first time they have had this class in the village. Our class is run out of someone’s lounge on two desktops. The power regularly cuts, one class we had to take with no power at all. We really did need to start with the basics, and what completely blew our minds was they had no idea what the internet was! We started with computer parts, what they are used for, turning the computer on, etc. None of the girls could type either. The first thing we did was photocopy a keyboard and glued it to card, this way each girl had a keyboard to practice touch typing. These were a godsend when the power went off, which is frequent in the mountains and during monsoon. This week we have been loading the girls in a van and taking them to town for an intro to the internet. We set them up searching for Bollywood actors and actresses, and they could not believe there eyes, so hopefully we have them hooked. We also set up Yahoo accounts for them, and they were excited about this and spent lots of timing emailing each other and racing across the room to see if it had been received.

The conversational English classes started this week in the afternoon; we had no students on the first day as iDEX forgot to tell anyone… standard. However the past few days we have had 5-6 women, who laugh more than teenagers. We have been doing ‘going to the market’ roll plays, and the women get up and put their head scarves on before addressing the shopkeeper, i.e. us. I found this a rather lovely touch. Today we had buying sweets and cookies with real produce, this was an obvious hit. I trust we will have more students now. Since we didn’t want idle time, Steph and I go from this class straight to the orphanage. It is really up to us what we do there - I have been helping some of the kids with computers. In the spirit of being positive and doing as much as we can, a small group of us decided to paint the orphanage’s computer / recreation room yesterday. It was a festival so we had no classes. The walls were cream and dull, we got our hands on some electric blue paint (power paint, so had to make it from scratch!). The room now has a Mediterranean feel to it. All the window frames, sills and doors are glossy red and on one wall we painted an apple tree and a huge happy sun. It is a very lively room now, but it must be said the apple tree is a bit ‘amateur hour’. I would like to blame the fact we only had big brushes and limited colours, but potentially, it could be because all 5 of us lack any type of artist skills.

All in all, I have enjoyed working with the children and it is nice to be able to teach them new things. Can’t believe the time is up at the end of next week!

We have had a few visitors in our room over the past 2 weeks, 1 x mouse (which I bravely assisted removing from the room) and 1 x monkey. The monkey wandered into our room when we left the door open because it is SO damn damp from all the rain. It actually tried to hold its ground, cheeky monkey.

Photos

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Comments

[justmakebelieve]

hi
Hey, hope you don't mind some random person reading your journal... I came across it , and discovered that I'm doing the same placement as you, though I'm starting in October and doing it for 8 weeks. I don't think you've mentioned anything negative which I havn't half-expected, but nice to be pre-warned! Just wondering whether theres anything you would particularily recommend taking? Or just any advice in general for preparation? thanks Rachael