Tvind Alert

A passage to India

51/2months 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.)

The day came when he asked K for funds to open a VCT Center (Voluntary Counseling and Testing Center) on the highway nearby.  She responded by telling him that there were no funds available, and perhaps he could consider opening a burger stand on the highway to raise funds.  When he informed me about this transaction he was very angry.  I suggested that we implement some of the changes I had suggested that didn’t cost anything, like, for example, following up on the local doctors and their HOPE Centers, and creating really well functioning HOPE Clubs in the schools.  He turned to me and said, “No, there will be no changes.  We will just do exactly as we have been doing and nothing more.”  From that moment on M had a radical personality change.  The only times he spoke to me were to bark orders at me.  My hands were tied, and eventually I left the village and moved to Jaipur.

Journal Entry:  February 26:  M was pretty reactionary in a.m., effectively chopping off my hands re my involvement.  . . . Thinking of leaving very seriously. I didn’t come here to help over privileged people learn how to behave with each other. . . . D is totally fed up, F was pretty horrible to him today. To some extent my age protects me, but A doesn’t give a shit so his behavior is the same to all. . . . But it makes it uncomfortable for everyone.

Now, these personality problems will happen.  But where HPP falls down in its responsibility is in their obligation to actually train people to be program officers, project leaders, and area leaders.  Some of that training must include how to work with other people, and in this case, people who are there to help, there from a foreign country, and who don’t know much about either the culture or the work.  But HPP doesn’t do any of that.  I recently had a conversation with R where he said, “If the DI (development instructor/volunteer) is willing to work, and the program officer is willing to include the DI, then it will be okay.  If they have personalities that work well together, then it’ll be a good experience.”  And that is the general HPP attitude.  The only trouble is, work of any kind cannot depend on this.  And there are ways to train people to work with people.  But if you put irresponsible, immature and limited people in charge, give them some darker people to be the boss of, brainwash them to think that they’re really doing it and they are better than most people, well, then, you wind up with messes like HPP.

M left Kutina and his cherished post as programme officer of HOPE.  He went to ‘help’ with a new project in Bihar.  I learned very soon after that M was a problem for everyone, that he had been shuffled from project to project in the hopes that he would fit in somewhere.  He was there by the grace of his brother, a man who is his complete opposite.  Now, why, one might ask, would one with such problems be given the responsibility not only of leading a project but also of having staff for whom he was responsible?  Not an easy question to answer.

Story: As I mentioned earlier, there were three other people from the ‘Federation’ at the UNGASS conference.  On the third day all the NGO representatives from India were to meet with the Indian official delegation, which of course included the ‘important’ people like the Minster of Health and the chief representative from NACO.  Lo and behold who should show up to this meeting but two of the Scandinavian ‘stewardesses (that’s what I called them because their Casa Blanca clothing looked like airline clothing) who weren’t in fact representing India at all, but the ‘Federation’.  They blithely introduced themselves as from Humana People to People India. 

Journal Entry: June 24: but this business with Humana and their sending 2 people who took our secondary passes is a total drag and has R fuming. Me too. Just so much conspiring to make him (and me) feel so thwarted, so abused, so unappreciated, and their agenda is so small-minded. It’s completely frustrating and I hope R will come to the realization that he must get out.  It’s such a relief knowing that I will never do anything ever again to help these assholes.

Story: On December 14 2000 Line gathered all our passports and went off to the Indian Consulate in Chicago.  It was very important that she do it that day because there was a big snowstorm and it made it more martyr-like.  When we had filled out our visa applications, we marked off “other” rather than “tourist” because Line KNEW that we would get a special one-year visa allowing us to do volunteer work in India.  Line returned with our passports with a 6-month tourist visa glued in.  That meant that our visas expired on June 13, 2001.  Unfortunately our flight back, at the end of 6 months of volunteer work, was July 25.  Line said, “Oh, no problem.  The project leader will just take all the passports to the embassy in Delhi and have them extended.”  Which embassy, I wondered, would extend our visas?  First, it is the responsibility of the Indian government, not any embassy.  Second, even if an embassy COULD do it, there were three nationalities among us – U.S., Canada and Japan.  Which embassy would take care of everyone? 

Well, of course no embassy would or could do that.  K, the state coordinator, knew about our predicament within the first month of our being there.  She trusted our Jaipur landlord to fix it up, because he is a ‘well-connected man.’ By May there was still no action.  I checked it out in Jaipur and the officials told me it had to be done in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, or Calcutta.  K assured me X would take care of it.  We still had 6 weeks to go, so I figured I’d give it a chance and went about my work.  On May 28 we were finally called for an appointment in Jaipur with officials and X.  Two of the  DIs were recalled from their travel time to do this.   May is a very, very hot month in Rajasthan.

We went off at about 11:30, with some trepidation because only the two of us who lived in Jaipur had our return plane tickets, which was one of the necessary documents.  The others didn’t know because K hadn’t mentioned it.  We got to the first office, hung around while X pleaded with the officials, showed them our passports, and argued. We were then sent off to another office some distance away at the City Palace.  All 6 of us (3 people had already left), plus X, were in his small car for the ride. 

Upon arriving at the City Palace, we waited at various offices, walked back and forth between them in the sweltering heat (about 48 degrees Celsius), and waited a lot.  At the end of it all, X announced that the right person wasn’t there, and we had to return the next day.  However, I was booked on a train to Ahmadabad, and the others didn’t have their plane tickets, so we put it off until the end of the week.

We decided for Thursday the 31st.  That left us 13 days to get the extension, but only 9 working days, or so we thought.  I returned from Ahmadabad early Thursday morning after one of those nightmare bus rides only to be told that we couldn’t do it that day because X had gone to Delhi and wouldn’t be back until Saturday night.  After spending time fuming, we discovered that he actually returned Thursday night. Friday we all converged at the City Palace again, with high hopes and all the right documents.  Once again the man we needed to see wasn’t there.  We had to wait until Monday.  However, Monday was a holiday, so we couldn’t go until Tuesday.  That left 6 working days.

For all but the bravest among us, that was just too short.  We knew it would take probably at least 3 working days just to find out if we got the extension, and if not, then what?  None of us was interested in the possibility of running afoul of Indian law and staying in the country illegally.  Nor did we relish the idea of packing up and getting on a plane to anywhere on June 13th.  The whole thing was quite fishy as well, because X asked us to lie and say we all worked in Virat Nagar, a project that none of use worked at.  Monday morning we went to Delhi.  I spent hours in the bank cashing a check K had given us to cover the expenses.  We spent hours in the travel agents office – you have to have a confirmed flight out of the country in order to get the extension - waiting to see the right person, only to be told we had to return the next day after they received permission from the U.S. office.  The good thing about that wait was that I met a young man from Brazil who, it turned out, had been planning to volunteer with HPP, and we spoke eloquently and passionately against it.

On the third day in Delhi we finally got our extensions.  All the Americans got 30 days, but the two of us who are Canadian only got 10 days.  This was very disappointing to the other Canadian; I didn’t care, because I was leaving early anyway to attend UNGASS.  But for her it was a big drag because she was supposed to be doing a minimum of 6 months in a developing country to fulfill her academic requirements. 

There’s more, of course, because all the waiting time could have been spent actually doing some work.  The youngsters were very demoralized by that time, having heard about the 73 million kroner lawsuit against Tvind in Denmark.  They spent all the waiting hours in a dark room, telling dark tales, and sharing dark secrets.  It was a tough time.

Line, true to form, never wrote to apologize for the mess.  In spite of the fact that she had been in email contact with a couple of us, not once did she suggest that she was even a little bit sorry for the inconvenience.

Addendum: The one DI who decided to risk everything, did finally get his extension for the full time.  He received his final thankfully positive answer on June13th!

Story: This is a good one.  In the middle of February there appeared in Kutina a group of 7 or 8 young men who were in their first week of being trained as teachers for the new IICD-type school soon to open in Sikkim, India.  They were bright, enthusiastic, and full of ideas.  One of their ideas was to interview us, the DIs. So one evening we all sat down, they with their list of questions, we with our brimming anger.  Basically we didn’t hold back  – and there was literally nothing good.  At one point they asked if we would recommend IICD and Humana to people.  In unison we said “no!”

Now, among this group was a young man named H.  He and P, one of the young women DIs, became friendly and a little flirtatious, nothing anyone would be concerned about in North America.  But there was one young man on staff who was either jealous or, well, I can’t think of any other reason for his behavior.  After about a week the young men left, and went on to the next project.  But H had left behind a few things, and returned the next Saturday for them.  Ah, a perfect opportunity to continue the flirtation!  That evening he and P were chatting in the public area we called the kitchen.  They decided he would go to his room and get some music they wanted to listen to.  She went to her room to get a sweater.  Upon her return to the kitchen, S, the jealous young man, said to her, “Go to your room!  H has gone to sleep!”

She came to my room and we talked at some length about this, trying unsuccessfully to make some sense of it.

Sunday morning we learned from H that when he got to his room to get the cassette, S and V (a young Indian man from the village) had locked him in for several hours.  He was freaked out, to say the least.  All four of us (there was another DI there) went for a long walk, and then he went back to the other project by bus.

A necessary sub-plot: On Friday I had arranged to go to Jaipur on Monday to see a project there.  T (the ‘area leader’ for HOPE) and I were going to go early in the morning.  On Friday as well, P and L (another young woman DI) had also made plans to go to Jaipur with me, as they wanted to see K vis a vis their unhappy situation in Kutina.  So, this was, as far as we are concerned, a done deal. 

Later Sunday evening: I am out in the back, burning garbage.  S comes up to me and says, “You can go to Jaipur tomorrow, but P and L will stay here and wait for A.”  Now, this is a young man, less than half my age.  And he was talking rude.  Nasty.  And I know that he is A’s lackey.  So I assume this order has come from A.  And I’m sure that’s the way he wanted it to sound.  

At this point none of us has anything to lose, so I say, “S, do you realize how strange it sounds when I hear that H was locked in his room last night?” 

“He’s a liar!” S shouts.  Then he goes on to tell me this bulls—t story about how the villagers had threatened to kill H because they didn’t know him and he was walking around “off the property” with P.  From time to time he interjected his story with “He’s a liar!”  I didn’t really know whom to believe, but this was one of those moments when nothing made sense.  As his final coup, S goes and gets V, and says, “Go ahead, ask him if he locked H in his room.”  I just looked at him.  V looked down and said that he hadn’t locked the room.  I felt really bad for him because he is a village boy, and had probably not been asked to lie before.

The ending: I went to Jaipur by myself on Monday, returned on Wednesday, picked up P and L, and went to Jaipur.  They returned to Kutina only to pick up their belongings.  They lasted in Virat Nagar, a compromise project, for about a month.  They then left for their “study tour” and never returned. 

Several months later: R says, “Remember that business with S  locking H in his room?” “Yes,” I say, looking very interested. “Well, it’s true,” he said.  R never told me how he found out. 

FAULTY PREMISES

There are some good experiences in the midst of all this.  And there are some aspects of some of the projects that work.  And in fairness to K, there were moments when I really thought there was some humanity left in her.  However, there are some really awful premises upon which the whole thing is built:

1)      Go to a developing country and have a great experience.  During the whole course of our ‘training’ at IICD there was precious little, if any, talk about what being a volunteer actually means.  

2)      Volunteers have to fight for their place.  Well, I’m sorry, but volunteers are people who are giving their time and money and effort to helping.  They in turn deserve to be helped to do the best job they can do.  That requires someone to actually take responsibility for training them and following up.

3)      Team building takes a long time and there’s not much you can do to help it other than give people a few projects to do together.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Teams can be built in less than a week, but it requires work (gosh) on the part of the people who are facilitating this process.

4)      Education is either lecturing at students from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or providing them with a computer and some really poorly articulated tasks and leaving them alone.  This is actually what they believe.  They, of course, choose the second option.  Because the “movement” grew out of the early ‘70s open hippy dippy approach to education, they are stuck in that mode because they KNOW it’s not important to look around and see what’s happening now.

5)      It’s okay to cheat the government.  Hmm, they are currently being sued for 73 million kroners by the Danish government.  At last.  And I don’t think they’re doing too well in India, from what I hear about their lack of paper-filling-out inclinations.  Hopefully they’ll be abandoned by their chief supporter (an NGO who is helping them get funds into India for the Kutina Project) and it’ll just dissolve.  But what about the people?

6)      Local people need “development instructors” because they are poorly educated and need to learn from the white people.  India has a lot of very educated local people.  They collectively think TG is full of you-know-what, and that HPP is foolish.  They stay because HPP gives them an opportunity they, as untrained people, wouldn’t be granted by any other organization.

7)      Volunteers need to bring $5,000 and fundraise another $6,000 because that’s what it costs to train, vaccinate, provide health insurance, purchase flights, feed, pay rent for a group of DIs.  This is also a bunch of you-know-what.  First of all they don’t train us.  Second of all they have a budget of $3/day for food.  This buys the lowest quality food.  So why are we there?  Why does IICD exist?  Well, good question.  If they don’t train us, why do we need to pay rent and eat lousy food for 5 ½ months?  Why don’t we just get vaccinated and go?  Good question.

JOURNAL EXERPTS

September 16, 2000: There is a deep uncaring about what we’re here for, which is not to learn about the inner workings of Humana and IICD.  That’s a SMALL part.  The BIG part should be about where we’re going and what the possibilities are for us to do.  There’s so much to learn. 

And when Line said to leave this stuff here, and it would be great to learn some Indian songs – well, damnit, she should have done, or SOMEONE should have done some of this research.  All it took was less than a couple of hours.  It could have been so easy and so welcoming for those of us going to India.  The poverty consciousness is so great that all they do is ask for things and depend on others to get them.  Our education is what WE make it – it has nothing to do with them.  It’s actually pretty pathetic. 

February 20:  Started out with M “telling” me what to do – asserting his male-ness, and simply walking out of the room without saying anything.  . . .  The others will come this weekend and we need to plan “a program” – keeping them busy, ourselves. . . . And being jerked around by A with the whole kitchen and money thing. . . .

February 22:  All day driving to in and from Alwar City – felt abandoned by M and A . . . Felt again abandoned by all the staff and came back and hung out with Stacy . . . .I definitely felt quite down after the day and then having all of them not include me, even to translate. So there was nothing I could do but leave. . . .  It makes me want to leave here because I’m more in the way than a help.  

February 25: But there’s so much duplicity! And so much lack of care. And so much mistrust, so much pitting one against the other. . . . how to talk with M who doesn’t like to listen . . . how to avoid A . . .

March 1 and 2:  It’s been a very intense two days. Met with A and at first he was his usual self – challenging us as though we’re kids. It’s so outrageous I can’t begin to express how absurd, demeaning and completely horrible it is. Both P and I laid it out perfectly clearly, but we had to get angry before anything happened. We focused on the effect he has, and about communication and vibes and being able to read what’s going on in spite of not knowing Hindi and trying to bully him into listening to us and trying to remember that he is human too and such a pissy example of it. I think something sank in because he seems to be trying a little harder to be human, normal. You can see it’s a stretch, but I at least appreciate the effort.

M is a total drag. He is the most insecure person I’ve EVER met – he insists that everything must come as an order from him. And he barks out the order like a nasty general that no one likes. He tried to convince me that it’s just the way he is and it’s of course okay, but he takes zero responsibility for the effect and I don’t know if I can continue to work with him. 

March 3 and 4:  So, this really is the end of this saga. I will leave and go and do something real at last. But the leaving is painful and challenging. I have to . . .  remember why I am here on this earth, and it’s not to be part of corruption. I honestly am having a hard time with the fact that I didn’t leave earlier. It doesn’t make any sense. I blinded myself willingly because I wanted something. I wanted to be in India.  . . . I still want to see if something can be worked out, but if not, that’s okay too. Need only to leave this place, these people. Need only to be in a place of sanity. The stories, the lies, the twists, the turns, the lack of trust, the unwillingness to really communicate, the compromise – oh God the compromise . . .

March 5 and 6:  All will be fine – getting out of here, Kutina, and the sickness.  These are basically good guys who simply don’t have a big enough view to be in the positions they’re in, and have messed things up royally. 

I wonder, no, I actually cannot believe what S said is true – that all they care about is the money. They [the families we stay with] are human beings after all.

March 12:  Okay, so I said it very clearly.  What I have learned is that when something smells bad you walk away, you don’t go rooting in the garbage, looking for a small piece of beautiful, complaining all the while that it stinks down here.  . . . A has been his total schmucky self, refusing to look or talk.

March 24:  Long talk with R about what happened in Kutina and with A – he’s adamant that P and L are wrong – and I agree but there’s always 2 sides and no one really knows them both.  K made mistakes too by not trying to find out all sides.

April 1, 2001:  I’m in a state/place again where I know something stinks. It’s at this point that I would say, “I no longer think it’s beneficial in any way to remain” yet now I’m involved with the work.  . . .

April 4, 2001:  Good meeting with the Colonel, but it shouldn’t have happened that way – made us look very unprofessional.  This H character is sounding very sketchy, as P would say.  . . . R is moody but if you just ride it out he returns. But he cannot stand H, and I can understand that. I’m sure if I had to deal with her I couldn’t stand her either. These Humana folks – they’re all simply S.T.U.P.I.D. [Sensitive, Talented, Unique, Person In Demand]. 

April 19, 2001: The only flaw in the day was A showing up.  Almost said hello to him but he looked away . . . There’s still 3 + months to go, perhaps something can be salvaged.

 [Note: A couple of weeks later I finally did say hello to him.  He was so startled he said hello back, but from then on he was on guard.]

April 23:  K is an odd bird. Don’t know how to be with her – try to engage her, but she’s not too interested. It would be tough to be stuck on a desert island with her. She’s into work.

May 1: K was weird today, didn’t want to say hello on the phone, just by-passed me altogether to speak with someone with more authority. Am beginning to feel that same DI thing – the lack of interest, of respect, of care. H hasn’t even set an email of welcome. If I hadn’t begun this conference!

May 21: This is not light and potentially innocent anymore.  HPP is into tax fraud Big Time – as is the only unblinded conclusion one can come to when seeing headquarters at Zimbabwe. . . .

May 22: Am constantly preoccupied with my own lack of courage to have left long ago, and . . . who is culpable, and why they are the way they are. Cause just on their own they’re nice enough, but it really is a case of brainwashing I believe. Again and again I wish I had left, but then I wouldn’t understand with such depth and clarity the nature of the brainwashing.

June 15: After a generally good day, R had a rather noisy silent outburst. I just don’t get how this all works, so I was making mistakes. So he just got fed up and pissed off. So, ow, although I’ve said it before, will simply have to maintain a distance that I don’t want to but I have a hard time trusting him. I shall be simply formally polite and go about my own business. It should be fairly easy, as he’ll be in meetings for the next several days and I’m left to do as I wish. 

June 17: I have to remember that this organization has LOTS of money but they just don’t want to spend it on important stuff like the projects. Instead they spend it on H whipping around the country by air and on Federation –

June 18: Then D helped me finish mailing – God how I wish this weren’t so corrupt. God how I wish Humana had a good name.

And that’s the end.  R and I turned out to be good working buddies but not good social buddies.  The only reason I stayed was because of him and the work, and the fact that he liked to work.  We prepared this statewide NGO conference, and that, I think, is the most important thing I did.  The weird thing is I still feel responsible for it, but R won’t let me have anything to do with it.  I’ve offered to help with computer type things that can be emailed, writing things, but his response is simply “no.”  He has said very clearly he does not want to have any more conversations.  What am I to do?  Give it up, I suppose.  It is too bad, however, that there is such immaturity, such little inquiry into what it means to be together.  What does it mean to be a volunteer?  What does it mean to give?  What does it mean to live in a culture that isn’t your own?  What are the differences that matter?  What are the differences that don’t matter?  There are still so many questions that would be so awesome to explore with people who are volunteering.  And with people who are being paid to do development work also.  I am saddened by the realization of the potential that has no chance to flower.  By the small mindedness of the TG group.  By the fact that the longer one stays TG the less opportunity one has to become whole.  I fear for my Indian TG friends who are still young and who still have some ideals left. 

And at the same time it is such a relief to not be attached to Humana anymore!  Not to have to say, “I’m doing some work for Humana People to People.”  A whole year of compromise – what a waste!  There are two things to do now: 1) by far the more important: get on with the next piece of what my role in this Life is, and 2) as a service to the public, help to expose the corruption and pretense of  IICD and Humana.