5 1/2 months at IICD, then a year of confusion and disarray in India
by Ellen, Canada ellenshifrin@yahoo.ca
INTRODUCTION
Today is July 13, 2001. Just under one year after I heard about IICD, and I rue the day I ever heard about them.
Mid-July, 2000: I start a search to volunteer in India. I have given myself one year to learn how to give 300 percent, to work with people who are less fortunate than myself and the majority of the people I know.
With some nervousness, I followed the web search that led to the organization that would provide the longest period of time in India. And wow, they even had a program before going that would train me to be a “development instructor”, a euphemism for volunteer. On July 24th, 2000 I sat in a small room with Line, a young Danish woman, the director of IICD-Michigan.
As she enthusiastically outlined the program for me I learned that IICD was one of several organizations that feed volunteers to the various projects run by Humana People to People (HPP). Line did not tell me that all the “feeding” organizations are part and parcel of HPP. She talked about how 25 percent of the education is spent on individual learning projects, which can be done alone, or in a group, 25 percent on “activities and courses carried out as a group. Some are preplanned, some the team chooses,” 25 percent of the work is about reflecting on our experiences and what we have learned, and last but not least 25 percent of the education is about language learning. She did not tell me that education itself is only about 5 percent of the program. She did not tell me that 95 percent of my time would be spent taking care of the building, fundraising, cooking, cleaning, organizing for special events like Family Weekend, a trip to Denmark to see the “real reason we were here”, and an Open House for the neighboring community.
There were many other things she did not tell me at that first visit. Ignorance, in this case, led straight to 5 ½ months of hell.
THE BEGINNING
During the first month, a blissfully warm, cornfields-as-high-as-an-elephant’s-eye August, I learned about the Teachers’ Group (TG). At the time I believed it wasn’t a problem. Now, I see it’s a big problem, because at the projects only TG people can be project leaders, a restriction that prevents the right person being hired for the job. It puts inexperienced people in charge, and creates a big mess when problems come up they are completely unequipped to handle.
During the first month I also learned that “education” meant – do-what-you-want-to-do-when-you-want-to-do-it. And if you didn’t want to do it, well, that was fine too. As an “older” person (I’m 54), I wanted to. So I read by myself in my room. I attended the sporadic Hindi classes because, having been to India before, I knew it was important. When everyone else went to Denmark to see the famous Tvind windmill and attend a conference I was pretty sure was going to be ridiculous, I went to Toronto to study Hindi.
As the oldest by far of the students (there was one other woman my age who was going to Zambia), I was pretty isolated. This was a silently but mutually agreed upon situation, as I found it difficult to hang out with the young people and talk about the “hot” young men, and I was amazed to see their lack of curiosity about the country we were going to volunteer in. On their part, they found me controlling, overbearing, and ‘too good’ (read: I don’t drink, smoke anything, or express a sexual interest in the opposite sex). Fair enough. I had relationships with individuals rather than with the group.
ODDITIES
One of the reasons we were at IICD for 5 ½ months, Line told us, was to build a solid team. So it was pretty odd that we did not do one single team-building activity. Oh yes, from time to time we had “building weekends” and “school Fridays”. TGs believe that this is enough to build a team. The current team (July 2001) about to leave for India is 4 people divided into 2 and 2. The 2 groups don’t even talk to each other! So much for team building.
Line didn’t tell me that our teachers would be two young men who had 6 months each of field experience, none of which was in India. She didn’t tell me that teachers don’t actually teach. She didn’t tell me that although drinking and smoking was forbidden, there would be nothing to fill the time with. So young people with a college mentality of ‘when there’s nothing to do, drink’ would do just that. You put 14 young people in a dormitory in the middle of cornfields, don’t give them anything to do, and voilà – they drink, smoke, and watch movies. All on the sly of course, so that when Line finally found out, just before we were going out on what was supposed to be our final fundraising trip, she freaked, yelled at everyone, threatened and then demanded people to ‘fess up. It’s hard to imagine what she expected, given the situation.
Line didn’t tell me that in spite of the theoretical open policy, when it came time for her to be open, this was a different story. She always listened to my suggestions on how to further the cause of education, but at the end she finally said that she doesn’t believe in education. That the philosophy of IICD is, in fact, non-education. As a long-time teacher, I found this offensive. She had strung me along until just before we were about to go to India.
MY RESPONSIBILITY
Why did I stay? Well, that’s a long story. I wanted to go with a group. I didn’t feel confident enough to go on my own. I kept hoping things would change, that at least I would have time to really learn Hindi. I did have the time and space to prepare myself. I read books about development work, about other people’s experiences in the field. I tried to give everyone good food to eat (my responsibility area was food). I became involved with a few people and felt loyal to them. I wanted to see what would happen to some of the young people during their time in India, if they would grow and mature a little. Given what I know now, I’m really, really sorry I didn’t leave after the first month.
MISCONCEPTIONS
Line thought that India is just like Africa. She had never been to India. In fact, no one on the staff had ever been to India. They had all been to either Africa or Central America. They thought that all third world, developing countries are the same. There are so many people from India living in the U.S., you’d think they could bring in some really interesting people to give seminars, workshops, and language instruction. No, they don’t believe in doing anything for the students. If we had wanted that, we should have found out where this was available and then, with no money, tried to become involved with the local Indian community.
Line thought that in India you could ask someone from a local village to translate for us, for free. Now, this is apparently possible in Africa (I say apparently because I’ve never been there so don’t know first hand). In India, young people in the rural villages do not speak English. And they don’t work for free. “Are you SURE?” Line asked me at the end of my stay in India when she came for a 5-day fact-finding mission. By this time I was so fed up all I wanted to say was, “Oh no, I’m not sure. Gee, maybe I missed an amazing opportunity, darn, I should have asked a local boy to translate for me.” Instead I simply said, “Yes, I’m sure.” But I could tell she didn’t really believe me.
That’s because she KNOWS. All the Humana People to People TGs KNOW. They KNOW that what they’re doing is the RIGHT thing. They KNOW that they don’t need to look beyond their woefully inadequate training to the world outside of Humana People to People. They KNOW they don’t need to fill out paperwork. They KNOW they don’t need to be accountable to their funding organizations, the people they are there to serve, or the staff who isn’t white. (Oops! Did I say, “isn’t white”? Why yes, racism. More on that next.) They also KNOW that people learn by osmosis, they don’t need any structured classes. They KNOW staff members will naturally learn how to lead projects and be models for the villages they reside in. They KNOW team building happens as a result of spending a few weekends working on projects side-by-side. They KNOW that drinking is the root of all evil. They KNOW that young people without any experience are more qualified to lead a project than older, more experienced people who don’t happen to be TG. The list goes on . . .
RACISM
Humana People to People (HPP), the “Federation”, has their headquarters in Zimbabwe. Why? Well, it must have something to do with the fact that it’s cheap, that the government welcomes them, and that they can come in there and do whatever they want. They have this huge building that clashes so dramatically with the landscape and the local architecture it’s hard to imagine unless you’ve seen it or the pictures of it. Why? Why Zimbabwe? Why the ostentatious building? Ah, Power! All these white Scandinavians running around lording it over the Africans. They are the ones with power. They are the ones with money. They are the ones with education. They are the ones with know-how. They are there to bring the RIGHT WHITE way of living to the poor ignorant Africans.
It doesn’t work quite so well in India, where the staff is all well-educated young Indians. Even there, however, there is a dramatic difference in the status of white TGs and Indian TGs. Here’s an example:
R, the young Indian man I worked with in Jaipur, is TG. We had applied for and received accreditation from the UN to attend the UN’s General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS in June in New York. We had applied specifically as HPPI – Humana People to People INDIA, because that experience is what we could contribute to the discussion on the Declaration of Commitment and the conference.
As soon as we learned about the accreditation there was a sudden flurry of interest from the Federation and from the country director, H. They were trying to figure out if they could send other people. They even thought about not having me go, but since I had done the work on it, they couldn’t really say no. Finally the day came when money was being handed out for the trip. R received his money, and I received my stipend for the month of July, even though I wasn’t going to be in India, but it was going to cover whatever it could in New York.
I asked if they had made a decision about sending anyone else from the Federation. K, the state coordinator, said, “No, they thought about it, but because funds are low, decided against it.” She told me she had suggested to R that he fundraise the money to go, and she wasn’t sure where this money would come from, perhaps her own pocket. She said all this with a straight face. I actually believed her.
So, R and I get to New York; dip in the Atlantic Ocean, and go to register for UNGASS. The first part goes well – we get our badges with our picture. Then we go to the next counter that will give us the badges we need in order to get into the hall where all the action is – the room where the NGO briefings take place, the gallery of the room where all the official delegations sit and where all the leaders give their speeches.
“Those badges were picked up by two other people from your organization,” we are told. We didn’t get it. It took quite a bit of explanation to sort it all out, but it turns out K had faxed information that allowed two people from Planet Aid or HPP in Zimbabwe to get these passes. Needless to say, R and I were not happy.
That night we met one of the young Scandinavian women who had one of our passes. She was agreeable enough, and offered to meet us in the morning so that we could share the passes among us. In the end the whole special pass event was a non-issue. On the other hand, I realized that this woman had just arrived from Zimbabwe, for goodness sake. How on earth did she get there if there was no money and K had to pay for R out of her own pocket? Not only that, there were two of them there from Zimbabwe. It dawned on me that these women are white Scandinavians – the elite, the ones with connections to Amdi Petersen. R is not. Yet they are all TG. It seems some TG are more important, oops, I mean equal, oops, I mean, well . . .
TRUE STORIES (in no particular order)
Story: H, HPP’s country director for India, never welcomed any of us – 9 volunteers – to India. She neither came to see us nor emailed us. I met her by accident the weekend before I was to leave. By that time her fake charm felt like pure Evil – like the Al Pacino character in the film, The Devil’s Advocate. She is a manic personality who goes around starting things and then dropping them. Development work, anyone?
Story: When the 5 of us who were working in Kutina, the small village that was the headquarters for the Alwar Village Development Project, arrived, no one bothered to welcome us. I later learned that the Project Leader, A, had spoken badly about us, saying outright that we were neither needed nor wanted, and the rest of the staff followed his lead. A few weeks later, when a few of us were going off by bus to the nearest town to check our email, A said, “And I hope you never come back.” The reason we know he said this is because one of the young women in our group was there, and told us how when he said it, the others around (all Indian) fell quiet and lowered their eyes.
Story: M, the young man I worked with in Kutina who was the program officer for HOPE (HIV/AIDS education program), was very agreeable for the first three weeks. He tried to find ways to include me and to find things that I could do without Hindi. We decided I should help him reorganize certain aspects of the program, and teach at the English Medium Schools in Alwar City, the capital of the district. On the surface he seemed interested, and yet he never translated for me. He never tried to include me in the local events. He is the one who, upon hearing that most people who have AIDS actually die from TB, said, “Oh, that’s in Africa. TB isn’t a problem in India.” (Nothing could be further from the truth.)
