Here at last
on Jen's Indian Adventure (India), 15/Dec/2009 17:04, 34 days ago
After a 31 hour train journey (which was meant to take on 24 hours) I arrived in Bhubaneswar at 12.30am last Wednesday 9th December. Thankfully a car had been sent by CYSD, my new employer and my flat mate had waited up to welcome me to my new home.Despite it’s length, the train journey was fine. We never went hungry. No sooner had the train pulled out of Delhi station we were served chai, followed by more chai and a sandwich, followed by dinner, followed 6am chai, breakfast, lunch, afternoon chai and more dinner before arriving in Bhubaneswar. Sleeping on a train was more comfortable than I had imagined it would be. Sheets, blankets and pillows were handed out in time for bed and most people had lights out by 10.30pm. They must have known about the 6am chai. I stayed up a while reading only to be tapped on the shoulder next morning by one of the train staff asking me if I wanted to sit up and take some chai. Naturally at 6am I turned down his very kind offer. And I was so lucky. Despite being told I was on the top bunk of 3, which would have been impossible to reach in a lady-like fashion, none of my carriage compatriots turned up and I had 6 bunks to myself. Lucky me !I’m living in an area called N3 Nayapalli, IRC Village which is a residential area – actually it’s practically the Irish quarter. There are 4 Irish on this small street alone, as well as a Belgian and Italian national. And a few Indians of course.I went into the office on Wednesday afternoon as they had an induction arranged for me over the next few days, during which I had the pleasure of meeting most of the CYSD staff and had briefings from each of the programme managers. The CYSD building is a busy spot as it’s also a conference centre and provides accommodation, so there’s always something going on.I live approx a 40 min walk from the office, and only 10 mins as the crow flies through the lovely botanical gardens. My first attempt to walk home on Friday evening however took me 1.5 hours as I took a wrong turn, and then while walking down one of many wrong roads there was an electrical power cut, so I couldn’t see where I was going. Thankfully I finally found a nice man who pointed me in the right direction. But I did look a bit untidy by the time I got home. Walking on dirt roads in the dark was not as much fun as I had imagined.Unfortunately for me there is only one way in and out of the gardens so I have to walk around it to get to the office. The good news is that I get to pass the best bakery in the city on the way to work and on the way home. It’s the only place for fresh bread so it’s a bonus I have to pass it every day.The Centre for Youth and Social Development has their hands in every pot. They are a 27 year old non-governmental, non-profit organisation working to improve the lives of poor tribal and rural people in the state of Orissa. Currently they are helping 30,000 families in nearly 900 districts across the state. Please see www.cysd.org if you’d like to learn more. I have discovered that most of the senior managers are there since the beginning so I’m sure they’ll have some stories to tell over the next year.My role with CYSD is HR Advisor, and I’m here to help introduce new and refine current HR practices within the organisation, both in head office where I’m based and across the rural sub-offices. I’m joining a team of 2, so I’m sure it will be a busy year. I’ve also been told I’m needed to help the communications team, whichI already think will be great fun.I’m starting to settle into life in Bhubaneswar. It’s nothing like Delhi. Much quieter, only approx 1 million people. And I have yet to see ‘horn’ and ‘no horn’ on the auto rickshaws. Instead they have ‘I love you’ and ‘Peace is Good’ as well as words in Hindi or Oriya. Everyone still insists on beeping, but I don’t notice it as much. The road layout is quite funny and drivers often have no choice but to go down the wrong way of a one-way system.Bhubaneswar is very spread out. To find any selection of shops you have to go in different directions. All a novelty for the first few days, but I’m sure I’ll start to find my way around over the coming weeks. The big adventure this weekend was to find sheets and a blanket for my bed. It proved difficult to get my hands on a sim card when I was told my passport was fake ! Of course it’s not but I will have to get my colleagues to assistme in getting a phone number.Bhubaneswar is known as‘the Temple city of India’. At one point there were over 1000 temples here. I have yet to do the tourist thing and go see some of them, but I have plenty of time for that. It’s only the capital city of Orissa since 1948 after India declared their independence from Britain.It’s definitely warmer here than it was in Delhi by at least 5 degrees on average. The average temperature here for December is 28 degrees, so I’m really looking forward to the summer sun ! It’s not as difficult to get around in this as I thought it may be. I’d say it’s because I arrived into Delhi in the ‘cooler’ month of November and have had time to build up to this. Mind you I could be taking this back from March when it starts heading for 40 degrees.I witnessed my first CYSD intervention this morning and I was amazed by it. Twice a week they run a Village Resource Centre (VRC) in which they have training sessions via video camera to remote areas of southern Orissa in areas such as financial planning, HIV/AIDS and farming methods. This morning I watched as one of the CYSD finance team explained to people in 3 districts the basics of budget planning. Most of the tribal people have never had the opportunity for education and this is a vital part of their livelihoods today. Today most of the‘students’ were tribal or village seniors, who have responsibility for their village budgets but don’t understand how budgets are devised, or how the Indian government allocate money.The trainer can be CYSD staff or an expert from outside. The centre is run by a very efficient lady, Pragna from the MIS department and Manaswini from Communications. Today the teacher was Praves from Accounts. (Yes, before you ask I am having fun with Indian names) It was great to see the volume of questions that came from the group.They can speak to people in 8 villages at anyone time, but only 3 logged ontoday from the villages of Panchapedi, Kinjirhela and Mundaguda all in southern Orissa.I’ll hopefully have more great events to see like that over the next 12 months.Still not quite getting used to seeing cows fight the cars and motorbikes for space on the roads though or the masses of hungry wild dogs. My dog,Bailey,has no idea how lucky he is.