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Published: August 23rd 2007
So we had a great weekend last weekend... we decided to go to McLeod Ganj (again!!) rather than stay in Palampur. We left Saturday after lunch, after waiting for the new volunteers to arrive (they all seem nice and waaaay more mellow than the group I came with which is brill!) and had another interesting bus journey there. For most of the way I was sat on one side, beside old lady who chitter chattered Hindi in my ear for most of the way. She couldn't speak a word of English and she spoke so fast that my pitiful Hindi knowledge wasn't suffice for decent communication, though with the odd word we managed to have a "conversation". If you can call it that. On the other side was a young schoolboy who was very polite. He also made conversation, eager to practice his english. His opening line was "What is your country?" I love the way Indians phrase things sometimes!! A favourite question of our girls is "What is your aim?" He soon got off then was replaced by this weird old lady who, as soon as she got on the bus, put her hand down her pants and removed her bus fare from what I am assuming was her smalls. Interesting!! She sat peering over my shoulder as I used my phone and looked at my brick like it was the most sophisticated piece of equipment she'd ever seen. I can understand the fascination people have with cameras or ipods but phones??? Here it's stranger for someone not to have a mobile than to have one! Oh well!!
Our weekend actually was pretty quiet... little bit of shopping and spent most of our time at Nicks eating lol!! We also had another indian cinema experience. We saw that The simpsons was playing at the local "cinema" so we paid our 40 rupees for our ticket which gaiend us admittance to the picture hall - basically a narrow and rickety spiral staircase down to what can only be described as a WW2 bunker. It was a tiny room (about 2m by 6m) with about 12 chairs that were all broken and pretty rank than a nice spangly projector hooked up to a DVD player. The movie was great though, a pirate straight from the Barras complete with folk walking in front of the camera. The best part though had to be the subtitles. Why there were English subtitles on an English movie to begin with is just beyond me but then I just couldn't figure out if they were being serious or not. At times they were kind of correct, others they were waaaaaaaaaaay off and then they were just downright stupid and utterly hilarious at times!!! It was all good though! I felt a little ill on Saturday night so it was fab to sleep in on Sunday morning. The others got up early and went for breakfast but I stayed in my pit!! It was nice actually just to get up whenever and potter about doing my own thing. It's been so long since I slept past 8am. Yes, me!!! The girl who's normally not up before 10am. As well as the long lie it was nice just to have some time to myself for a few hours. That's a luxury I haven't had since being in India. It was torrential rain all day on Sunday though... so much so that we hung out in the hotel for a few hours hoping that the rain was go off enough to walk to Nicks but nooooooooooo!! It didn't let up for hours and hours!! Or at least until we got back on the bus home!!! Oh well, a little bit of water didn't kill anyone... don't really know if that phrase is entirely true in India though!!
Monday feels kinda the same way as it does at home in a strange way... Monday blues, that feeling of having to go back to work!! It's starting to get abit like that here now... we're just living for our weekends away. Not because the work is bad or I'm not enjoying it but because of the stupid "organisation" we work for, Idex. They really do have the cheek to call themselves an organisation that encourages the development of local communities cos they sweet fannie adams to help anyone. They don't care about the communities, they don't care about the volunteers, they don't care about their projects and their project staff all that matters is their profit. Recent events have shown the company in a totally different light and it actually disgusts me. They completely exploit their staff, and us as volunteers not to mention the local people. They rip everyone off, they are extremely corrupt and instead of their profits being used for new resources to help the projects iot's all lining some fatcats pockets in gold. It really frustrates me because we practically had to beg to get a blackboard and chalk for my afternoon class. And don't get me started on computer class. We have 3 computers circa 1998 and 14 girls to teach. They all have basic software which is suffice to teach the girls however the problems begin when the computers start to break down. 2 weeks ago our best computer packed it in and Idex have told us that it's been getting fixed however we've yet to actually get the computer back. Then yesterday another one of them packs it in leaving us with one computer to teach the girls. You do the maths!!! It's not easy at the best of times but now it's just a ngihtmare, we have to send the girls home as they all sit around while one girl at a time completes the task for the day. Idex are not forthcoming with any possible solutions to the problem and don't seem to care. They quite easily could allow the girls to come to camp and use our computers but this is not in line with policy. They could fork out the 100rupees (just over a pound) to take our girls to the internet cafe but again this is not in line with policy. Indians really go overboard on beauracracy and it's frustrating!! Since we've been here due to powercuts, taxi strikes, broken computers we have probably only worked for about 50% of the time we should have. The rose tinted glasses are now well and truly off and at the moment I'm trying to have as little possible contact with Idex as possible. The only peope who work for Idex that I actually trust and respect are Bhagi and the kitchen staff. Oh well Rant over!
We're in the process of planning a weekend away to a place called Rewalshar which is set by a lake an described as a "slice of Tibet" so it should be a nice little place to while away the weekend! Its turning into abit of a hassle as we have to keep quiet about it since Idex aren't organising it for us (therefore aren't pocketing a large percentage of our money!!). If they found out we'd organised it not through them then they would go absolutly nuts!! *frustration*
The new volunteers are all really cool though, we have Richard #2 helping out with computer class. He's really enthusiatic which is exactly what we need as Mags & I are slowly but surely losing every ounce of faith that we'd ever had in the projects and Idex. Even the name itself makes me laugh... Idex stands for International Development Exchange... and I've just visited their website to see that it's described as a "non-profit organisation". What a croc of BS... I know for a fact that Idex makes a profit and I am really regretting going through them now *ANGER!!!*
Need to start being more positive about things as I don't want my experience with Idex to taint my views of India... though they certainly have taught me alot about the way things work in India!!!
That is all
Ali xxxxxxx
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Dad
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Welcome
to the real world - it's just more blatant in places like India where there is a real need. Maybe I'm just an old cynic ! ! ! ! ! ! Focus on the positives 'cos the negatives will still be there long after you've gone somewhere else. Words of wisdom ffom your old man ! Take care xx