Voluntary Fun

Pune, India

In this blog: roaming the countryside, volunteering with Asha Kiran, and a birthday with a difference.

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This follows on from the last blog, where I was in the city of Pune (poo-na) doing a couple of weeks of volunteering with a charity called Asha Kiran.

Sunday 26th January

Dam beside one of the villages I passed through

I'd hired a scooter for the weekend to explore the area around Pune, and having not seen a lot of countryside recently, headed out of town. I stopped briefly on the way at the fairly low key Aga Khan Palace to have a quick look, which in later years was used to imprison Gandhi and his chums - he spent a lot of time in prison for civil disobedience over the years. A few miles later I was out of the city, and into the countryside - sometimes scrubby, and sometimes irrigated with many small farms growing crops and vegetables. It was great to be free from the city, and away from people, noise and chaos for a change. However the downside to being remote was when I realised the scooter was very low on fuel. After a bit of freewheeling and crossing my fingers, I eventually made it to civilisation and breathed a sigh of relief.

The contrast of India - some people living in
makeshift tents, others next door in comfortable flats

I cruised around a couple of small rural villages, where people lived in concrete homes surrounded by makeshift fences and tracks. It was basic, but not the bleak poverty I've seen in parts of many cities. I continued on, stopping to see kids playing cricket on wasteland, and farm labourers living in makeshift bamboo and tarpaulin tents beside the roads. Hearing loud music, I stopped outside what turned out to be a wedding, and upon them seeing me, was ushered into the car park by a group of locals who were getting ready to do the disco for it. I only went into the car park though, not the wedding itself. Rather than just a table with some equipment as you'd normally expect, they actually drive straight into the outdoor venues ready to go with a purpose built disco bus, clad across the front with huge powerful speakers and a DJ inside. Just awesome.

Commonwealth War Graves

Pune was surrounded by various military camps wherever I went, and it turned out to be the largest base that the British Raj had established during their rule of India. India now has a huge military budget, and the camps all seemed to reflect this, being well established and professional. Coming back into the city, I spotted a very well tended area, which turned out to be a Commonwealth War Graveyard. It was very similar to those I'd seen in Normandy when I cycled through six months before, with identical lines of pale sandstone headstones set amongst perfectly manicured grass, commemorating mostly British soldiers who fell in India during the world wars. An unexpected sight for sure. 

Monday 27th

Manish Stroff, director of Asha Kiran

Back to work, sort of. It was week two of volunteering with Asha Kiran (see previous blog for details), and upon arriving at the office I learnt my task for the week. Amongst other projects, Asha Kiran run a community centre in one of the slums surrounding the city, and the director of the charity - Manish - had tasked me with creating the syllabus and all course material for a three-month basic computer course they were soon to be holding. The idea being that these disadvantaged folks would then be able to use their new found skills in their own business, or to help get a job. Whilst I'd initially envisaged my time volunteering to be hands-on in the projects, I soon realised that it didn't matter how I helped, as long as I helped. 

Millions of people across the globe learn how to use a computer, and because of that, initially I was sure I'd be able to just download and adapt a free course that someone else had done, but it turned out not to be that simple. The circumstances were also a little special as well making it trickier, in that the students could be aged anywhere from 8-80, and some of them might only recently be partly literate - the literacy rate in India is only 74%. I got to work and spent the day deciding what I thought they should learn, and started gathering bits of freely available material from across the web.

Tuesday 28th

More of the same, working on the computer course all day. At lunchtime, the five guys in the office all gather round a desk to chat or read the paper. Everyone brings a tiffin lunch - a set of three stacking stainless steel containers, containing different foods such as chapattis (flatbread), curried cauliflower, curried mixed veg, and daal (a type on lentil soup), and shares it round with each other which I thought was nice.

That evening I took advantage of the fantastic cinema nearby again and went to see 'Mandela' which had just come out (though I understand came out in the UK six weeks before). It was a fantastic film, and it was obvious Nelson Mandela had a big heart and gave so much to his country, though had a more chequered early background than I realised. A fantastic, noble guy. 

Wednesday 29th

Great breakfast again in a great local cafe next door to where I was staying, where all the local students and young office workers eat. I had the typical local breakfast of an onion and tomato omelette with toast, followed by an uttappa, which is a kind of Indian savoury pancake with tomato and onion mixed, in served with a spicy dip. Spicy food for breakfast almost seems normal now!

Another day of working on the computer course.

Thursday 30th January

It was the day of my 31st birthday, and I decided to take the day off just because I could. Despite it being completely at odds with the volunteering work I'd been doing, I thought I'd be a bit self-indulgent for the day and loosen the purse strings a little, as well as doing what I love best. So I hired a bike.

After a stop at the office, to use the internet to open my birthday messages and Skype a friend, I pedaled south exploring another part of Pune city. I stopped at the racecourse, a legacy of the Raj era, as there appeared to be a race meet but it turned out to just be a load of locals gathered round a big screen gambling on a race in Delhi. A little further on I turned down a side street into a quiet residential area, and came across some farmers who were herding big flocks of sheep along the road; an unexpected sight given both that there was no fields and I'd seen very few sheep in India so far. Just as I started to ride away again a local, stood there with his two sons who had just finished school, started talking to me in broken English, and after a few minutes he decided to kindly invite me into his home - this seems to be becoming a regular habit. I thought 'why not?', and we walked down a short dirt track to his house which it soon became apparent was on the edge of a small slum. 

I was led inside his house, a hut made from wood and corrugated iron, and whilst being careful not to reveal it, I was quietly pretty shocked. The family of four lived in just one room, which was no bigger than the average British bathroom. There was a set of shelves, a plate rack on the wall, a pile of assorted stuff and a kind of trough-come-wash area. It was all kept clean and tidy, but was no toilet, and they all slept together on a fairly thin stuffed mattress which they rolled out every night. This was poverty. Despite him having a job in security and his wife being a housekeeper for someone, he explained they were very poor and this was all they could afford, at a rent of £20 (2000 rupees) per month. Despite all this, he was extremely hospitable and sent his son to the shop, returning with a bottle of 7UP for me to drink. We chatted for twenty minutes or so, before conversation ran a bit dry and I thanked him and said goodbye. I wanted to give them something, and it didn't look like the boys had much in the way of books, so I gave them the book I was reading, 'What Young India Wants'. This family has virtually nothing but still wanted to share a tiny bit of it, a heartwarming experience.

My birthday summed up

After a nice lunch at India's version of Starbucks - Cafe Coffee Day - I continued cycling, past some tower blocks and a large slum, before coming across a local cricket match in progress with a big crowd lining the oval, so stopped and watched for half an hour. A few miles later I found myself in one of the many large and modern IT parks that dot the city. In the centre of it I was amused to find a nice  green city park which despite being deserted, had Hindi music pumping out through speakers on all the lampposts. Finally back to the upmarket Koregaon Park area where I was staying, I went to the ninth-story rooftop bar of a very smart 5* hotel nearby, and had a beer whilst sat beside the infinity pool in the fading light of dusk, followed by a massage nearby. A brilliant nearby jazz bar was the perfect end to the day, having a huge portion of tandoori chicken pieces whilst watching a brilliant live jazz band. I was surprised though to find I couldn't have a beer, as it transpired it was a 'dry day' for the anniversary of Gandhi's death. They sneaked a vodka into my lemonade anyway! It was of course a little sad not to be able to celebrate the day with family or friends but that of course couldn't be helped, but was still a truly diverse day of poverty and luxury all-in-one that I'll remember for a long time.

Friday 31st

Seasons mall - one of the many in
well developed Pune

It was my final day with Asha Kiran. Having had a few days stuck in the office I took up the chance to visit one of the crèches again. Rajesh took us on his motorbike across town to Cerise, the crèche I'd visited the week before which had a farm next door. On the way we passed many modern IT parks, huge malls, the offices of international companies such as IBM and Microsoft, and top international hotels such as Hyatt and Westin, and even a Premier Inn. Pune is one of India's big outsourcing hubs, where American and European countries get Indians to do skilled rolls such as programming and accountancy at around a quarter of the cost, and consequently is a pretty developed place because of it. Trade and commerce is more effective at lifting people out of poverty than charity, as I've heard said many times recently.

Daft but fun slapping game at Cerise crèche

Teaching anything to young kids of a wide range of ages who don't speak English, turned out last time to be a little tricky. This time at the crèche, I was armed with some ideas for games to play with the kids from my sister, a primary school teacher, and the teacher encouraged me to go for it. I started with a bit of Simon says, followed by a game where you make a rhythm by slapping against different limbs. They really seemed to enjoy a daft game where I got them to run from one side of the room to the other, whilst making the sounds and actions of different animals. It was a fun morning, something I never expected to be doing on this trip, and the kids were buzzing when we left.

Back at the office I finished the slum computer course I'd been working on, and gave Manish all the photos of the projects I'd taken so they can use them for publicity. 

Before I knew it, it was 8pm and the end of my two week volunteering placement. Whilst it had started off a bit slow, it ended up being an interesting, fun and rewarding experience. I was impressed by the efficient bare-bones basis that Asha Kiran worked on, with nothing wasted and favours pulled in wherever possible from local companies. It's sad in many ways that it exists in the first place though - these NGOs/charities are only there because the Indian government is so corrupt, and not able to fund proper infrastructure themselves, whilst many politicians and government workers live comfortable, if not lavish lifestyles on the back of it.

Leaving the office, Manish said to me 'want to drink a beer?', indicating a quick thank you drink, and he told his wife he'd be home in an hour. Four hours, five beers and a meal later we finished up! He even insistented on paying for it all personally. He's a very interesting guy, very aware and open about India's problems, and fascinating to talk with. He told me stories about the problems of child labour which he works to help stop; still a big problem throughout the country. It seems that clothing sweat shops aren't much of a problem now as the government cracked down hard, but other industries still are. I was shocked to hear that fire crackers for example are usually made by children because they have small and dexterous fingers, but is also a very deadly and hidden-away industry.

1st and 2nd Feb

It was the weekend - a concept that I'd long since forgotten existed - every day is the weekend when you travel. But after a busy couple of weeks, I fancied a quiet couple of days, which in truth hardly justify writing about - just listening to some podcasts, going for a couple of walks, some reading and writing, and a trip to the cinema.

Late Sunday night it was time to leave Pune, and I reflected on my two weeks there. Helping other people is supposedly to be an entirely selfless process, but I tend to agree with the notion that altruism can never be entirely selfless. No matter how much many people believe that helping people purely benefits the other party, the reward of satisfaction also benefits the giver as well. For me personally that was true - it was satisfying that people have benefited from my time, even if in a tiny way, but also good to have a couple of more normal and settled weeks for a change.

Disco bus - great idea!

Heading back from work

Farmers at work

Some Richer, Some Poorer

Pune, India

I needed a break. A break from moving every four or five days, from looking at stuff, working out where everything is, planning what to see and do, and from the constant haggling. I just wanted a bit of normality, a bit of purpose and to stay in one place. 

As much as I love travelling, you can have too much of a good thing sometimes. I had a contact who ran a charity in Pune, a few hours from Mumbai, whom I'd met and helped out a few weeks before, so decided a good way to live a bit more normally, be productive and contribute something to this country was to do some volunteering. 

Manish

You see poverty everywhere in India and it makes you feel pretty helpless, and indeed guilty for having so much yourself, a common feeling. Giving money to beggars is pretty unconstructive as I've mentioned before (it creates dependency, there's too many of them to make a difference etc), so I wanted to help in a more constructive way. Asha Kiran, managed by my contact Manish Stroff, is an NGO based in the city of Pune (pron: Poona) that runs a children's hospice, a community kitchen, and a number of crèches on building sites, and seemed like a good organisation to work with. 

Monday 20th January 

Quietly it's a fear many people have, but is one of those things you never expect to happen to you. I got stuck in a lift. 

I'd awoken early at the hotel in Mumbai to pounding techno music - not something you generally hear in India, but this place is full of surprises - and went to leave the hotel in the lift. I descended five floors and thought I'd reached the bottom, so slid across the old-fashioned manual concertina door, the type you'd see in a 1930's movie, to find it was still in fact between the first and second floor. I shut the door again and pressed the button, but nothing would happen. I couldn't go down nor up, and there was no emergency hatch or telephone link. There was however a buzzer you could press to attract attention, but helpfully it was only loud enough for me alone to hear. Thankfully it didn't turn into the disaster that it could have been, and fifteen minutes later the lift miraculously sprung into life again and I was on the way to catch a bus to Pune.

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The journey was remarkably good for a change, taking what's considered a luxury bus along the country's only six lane motorway, passing massive hoardings for luxury housing developments, IPL premier league cricket stadiums and luxury German car showrooms along the way. This was an area with money. Of course, you're reminded straight away that you are still in fact in India, when the bus stops twice on the motorway itself (not even the hard shoulder) to drop people off.

Arriving in Pune at lunchtime, I got a rickshaw to Asha Kiran's office and met the four people working there, who spoke some English but seemed quite shy, apart from Manish - the Indian director of this Spanish-formed charity, who even speaks English with his wife at home. Manish is a top guy, very welcoming and helpful, and after a spot of lunch took me on his motorbike to find somewhere to stay, which ended up being in the house of a family who generally take in long term guests. My thoughts of getting stuck-in with work straight away were quickly dampened when I found out there was nothing to do that day.

Tuesday 21st

After a typically Indian breakfast of an omelette sandwich, a dosa (fermented rice-batter pancake) and of course a chai (masala tea) I walked to the office, based in the posh Koregaon Park district of the city. When I say posh, this was the Beverly Hills of India and I'm not joking. I passed one huge mansion after another, all with security guards and grand entrances - homes of various businessmen and industrialists, including one of the top 500 richest men in the world. It was a very different world to what I'd seen in the past couple of months.

Manish and I chatted about suitable jobs I could help with for the two-week stay, and despite his prior assurances that there was loads to do, it didn't seem like there actually was. My heart sank a little to think I'd given up two weeks of my time and paid up-front for accommodation, 'would this be a waste of time?' I wondered. He soon decided they needed some proper photos on the website; right up my street, so sent me off with Rajesh - one of the guys in the office, to some of the building site crèches they run. 

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Crossing the city on the back of his motorbike, it was apparent that despite being a more affluent city, this didn't stop the traffic from being typically lawless and chaotic. We arrived at a large building site of some part-finished blocks of luxury apartments, and reached the temporary village where the contract labourers were housed. The contrast and irony was immediately apparent - luxury flats being built by poorly paid folks living temporarily in tin shacks. The government requires that facilities are provided for the children of these workers, and for once the law seems to be adhered to even if the crèches are less than basic. The kids seemed happy though, after all they were young enough to not know any different, and after taking a load of snaps I was invited to join in some of their games, one of which was like an Indian version of 'it'.

I went to the cinema that night in a luxury American-style mall nearby and saw a Hollywood movie called Jack Ryan. Once again then cinema was fantastic, as good if not better than anything at home, and a bargain at £1 entry. The movie was excellent, but I was more amused by the strange method of censoring they used. The spoken words in English weren't censored, but the subtitles strangely also in English were. Rather than just putting the normal astrixes in place of swear words though, they replaced them with darned, blooming, fricking and so on, but in a totally illogical order, giving strange lines like 'I wish you'd just gosh off', and 'this is a load of darn' which made me chuckle. Leaving the posh enclave of the cinema I got chased briefly on the way back by three street dogs, then walked past people sleeping rough on the streets. Yep, definitely still in India.

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Wednesday 22nd

The Indian work ethic can be a little different to what I'm used to. The Asha Kiran office starts at 9 - 9.30, but I found myself waiting for it to open until 9.30, followed by half an hour or so of everyone reading the newspapers before cracking on. To be fair, they do work until 6pm or later so it all balances out, it's just a different way.

I visited another couple of building site crèches with Rajesh to take more photos for their website. The big sites appear fairly professionally run, with compulsory helmets being worn, actual portajohns, and proper steel scaffolding instead of bamboo. I was given a chai in the site hut, where the labourers took a break and watched some India vs New Zealand cricket live on the TV. Asha Kiran run a kitchen that delivers meals to all the crèches, so at lunchtime I was invited to join them to eat, sat cross legged (or more like sprawled in my case) on the floor, eating curried veg, rice, curried boiled eggs and a soup with our fingers, ripping off small pieces of roti bread to pick everything up. Messy, for me anyway.

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Thursday 23rd

After another slow morning in the office, doing my own things whilst waiting for a job to do. I later went with Rajesh to a couple of other crèches on these edge-of-town new build sites. On the second site, Rajesh had to meet the site manager so left me with the teacher for an hour, as well as the very friendly construction Camp Manager, Nivrati who bizarrely also taught the kids sometimes. Crèche is a very loose term in this case, as the kids are between three months and eight years, so they're sort of schools really, though without a proper curriculum or qualified teacher. Better than nothing I suppose. I was given the honour of entertaining the kids for a while but it's not exactly my area of expertise; it's been a few years for me since school and there was the obvious language barrier as well so it was a pretty terrible attempt. On the spot all I could think to do, which you'll laugh at, was get them to attempt to sing and do the hokey dokey (I forgot half the verses), sing humpy dumpty by following me, then arrange themselves by height order then age order. The kids once again on the face of it seemed to be happy and well-adjusted despite the basic conditions.

Workers' accomodation

Nivrati then showed me round the labour camp (workers accommodation) which though very basic was clean enough and well run. I spotted a farm next door so persuaded him to take me for a look. On a scrubby piece of ground, and surrounded by building sites on all sides was a shed with a couple of sets of cubicles where about a hundred buffalo were tied to their stalls - it was an urban dairy farm. I was actually surprisingly impressed. They were fed plenty of vegetation of some sort in concrete troughs, they had access to water and the passages were regularly scraped out into a concrete slurry pit. Very interesting, for someone who's lived on a dairy farm much of their life anyway. Buffalo milk actually makes up 54% of India's milk production, the largest producer in the world - interesting article here.

Buffalo dairy farm

We finished up by visiting a community centre that Asha Kiran run in one of Pune's slums. A group of around twenty women were on the last day of a three month free tailoring course that had been organised. Like the few other Indian women I'd met they were fairly shy, but were pleased to show me a selection of garments they'd made, and allowed me to take photos for Asha Kiran. 

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Friday 24th 

An introductory computer course was soon to be starting, and Manish had six or seven second-hand computers in the office that had been donated by local companies, that needed checking and testing before being taken to the slum community centre. So after an hour of this, disappointingly my day was done. 

I hung out for the afternoon to use the internet, and chatted with a pair of Spanish and Portuguese women who came in for a while to see Manish and use the internet, who are former volunteers. One manages a factory nearby that makes labels that go in clothes, and the other works on theatre shows in different parts of the world, and was in Pune for practice and research. Interesting lifes. I told Manish I'd like to really get stuck into something the next week, and he promised there would have more on offer. To be fair to them, two weeks of volunteering isn't really enough to get someone like me established and properly setup, so it was the situation that dictated, more than anything else.

Saturday 25th

View from Parvati hill over nearby Slum. 
Note the satellite dishes - simple relief from
poverty, or unnecessary extravagance? You decide.

Even though I was in Pune for a break from travelling, I couldn't help but see a bit of it, so decided for the first time on this trip to hire a scooter to explore the city. I've ridden one a few years ago on some quiet roads in Thailand and Cambodia, but on the crazy city roads of India, this was a whole different story. All I can say is I got used to it, and survived. I hated it at first I must admit; the other drivers are so ignorant towards each other, but I soon learnt to become ignorant myself. I rode to Parvati Hill, a nice vantage on a hill surrounded by the city. I continued to a nice park, where a women came out of nowhere to try and a red dot on my forehead whilst I sat relaxing, and I saw a guy eating a curry literally out of a clear plastic bag, using just his fingers of course.

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Pateleshwar Cave temple was an interesting stop a bit further on, a rock cut cave temple built by digging a big hole in the ground, then excavating sideways into the hill. Inside, they'd carved out a huge room, leaving moulded columns and shrines - all from the original material without putting anything back. It was very impressive and reminded me a lot of Petra, Jordan where I went a couple of months back.

After more aimless cruising and exploring around the city on the bike, I stopped at one of the big posh malls to see what it was like. It was Independence Day throughout India that day, which didn't turn out to be the celebration I expected, but the mall was packed with people waiting for some entertainment on a stage put on for it anyway, which I must add was terrible. I looked around a huge supermarket briefly, since I'd not actually seen one the whole time in India, and it was based on, and partly supplied by the UK's Tesco, with loads of their products and signs present; a strange sight so far from home. Apart from that it was a typical mall, large soulless and boring, yet I couldn't get over how high quality and well crafted it all was - another world completely compared to the typical street shops and stalls of India. 

More from Pune soon.