No room for complacency

This has been a great week workwise. Now that I am starting to get used to the way in which people at my organisation work and who’s involved in what, I am able to get into my own working rhythm. I’m certainly kept on my toes and have almost thought that things have moved a little too fast at times. On day two of being at the organisation I was asked by my boss, the Chief Exec, to produce an outline of an advocacy framework for the organisation for the next 2yrs. In week two I presented my ideas so far and was asked to identify which issues the organisation could campaign on and organise a session for all members of the team to share their ideas for campaigns. This week, week three, I held a brainstorming session for the other team members, it went really well and by the end of the session it seemed like there was a clear winner in terms of which issue the organisation could focus their advocacy framework around to start with. For a moment I felt like the model vso volunteer as I’d even used my ‘Participatory Approaches: A Facilitator’s Guide,’ to plan the afternoon’s session.

The last few weeks have been fantastic as it’s been brilliant to start applying my experience of advocacy and campaigning in a different context and see some of what I learnt during my vso training come to life. However, what I’m also starting to learn is that there is no room for complacency and that even when you think you’ve made a breakthrough things are never quite that simple. For example, after my amazing meeting I’d gone away buzzing thinking I was vso volunteer extraordinaire only to be called back a few minutes later. I was told that although it was great that we’d collectively agreed on an issue that the organisation ought to be focusing on, it was still important to think big and not limit ourselves to one issue at a time. This was followed by a long list of proposals that had not even been discussed in the meeting. I think my mouth might have dropped open slightly as it felt like the last two hour session had almost not happened but I also smiled at myself a little for allowing myself to get ahead in thinking that I had everything all wrapped up and that in my third week I’d got the organisation sussed. So at the moment it’s an odd mixture of being kept on my toes and feeling like I must deliver the goods immediately, whilst trying not to get too ahead of myself and learn more about what the organisation already knows and already does and does very well. All the time repeating my mantra of “specific, measurable, achievable, timed objectives” and “impact impact impact,” until I start to sound more like an army general than an NGO worker.

Christmas in Delhi

Our Christmas Tree. A present from the
neighbours.

Christmas Eve

It was 10pm and I was sat watching Bridget Jones’ Diary to get myself in the mood for Christmas when a small face appeared at the window to the flat and then 2 seconds later the doorbell rang. I opened the door. “You come?” This seemed like less of a request than an order so I grabbed my key locked up and followed her to the flat just down the corridor. I was welcomed by a lady in a floor length orange bed jacket who ushered me inside, sat me down and insisted I join them for a drink. Despite the fact that I didn’t quite turn out to be who they thought I was, not my flatmate Zoe, nor the German girl they’d also met before, they still welcomed me and sat me down with a glass of red wine and then proceeded to insist I have some food. This then carried on for the next four hours with yet more wine being poured and more food being offered. They told me about living in Delhi for last 15 years, about our "sneeky landlady", and about their home, Nagaland, in north India. The husband also showed some magazine clippings of the chain of restaurants in Delhi that he manages and said any time I wanted to eat there to let him know. They made me feel so welcome even though they’d never met me before and they reminded me a bit of a north Indian version of my own family, slightly eccentric but determined to make you feel at home, plying you with food and drink and bossing each other around. When at 1.45am I said I really must be going I felt like I’d slightly offended them and was still impressed upon that I really must eat some rice before I go. A slightly unconventional but lovely Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day
One of the nicest things I’ve found about being in Delhi so far are the number of people that invite you round to their house, offer to feed you, treat their friends as your own and offer you protection (my other neighbour and the local shopkeepers). Christmas Day was another classic example of this when another NGO worker invited anyone who didn’t have a place to go at Christmas round to her flat for food and drink. Saved from a day on my own listening to Phil Spector’s Christmas Album on repeat (listening to White Christmas when it's 20 odd degrees outside just isn't the same) and having a Christmas lunch of crackers and jam. Instead I got to spend a very international Christmas Day with other NGO workers and Delhites. Everyone brought some food and drink and even a Christmas quiz which amazingly, given my poor pub quiz track record, I did ok in but possibly only because the quiz had been written by a Brit so a lot of the questions had a British twist to them and I was the only other Brit there. 

Boxing Day

When I woke up this morning to a thick Delhi mist and then thought about everyone at home sitting on the sofa watching Christmas re-runs and eating mince pies and turkey sandwiches, it was very tempting to stay in my pyjamas and shun the outside world in favour of the calm and tranquillity of my flat. However, I had promised myself the day before that I’d do some sightseeing today and as the sun began to appear through the mist I felt too guilty staying in.

What has overwhelmed me slightly since arriving in Delhi is the sheer size of the city and the number of people that inhabit it. A population of 20 million and that’s only the people that are actually registered, with more pouring in on the trains every day. You really feel like the city is set to burst at any stage and at some point it’s no longer going to be able to cope. Grid locked traffic is a daily occurrence with cars, auto-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, people, cows, vegetable carts all trying to squeeze through the same narrow street in two directions. At the same time people are extending their houses outward and upwards to accommodate for the growing number of people and the streets become narrower and narrower. It’s a bit like the scene in the film Labyrinth where Jennifer Connelly is in the maze and every time she turns around someone has put a wall in place of where there was a street just ten seconds ago. In the first week of being here I felt incredibly hemmed in and overwhelmed by the intensity of it all but as I’ve got to know my local area better and start to venture a bit further, like any new city, it becomes a little less daunting and feels less unwieldy. I’ve also started to the use the metro and from my nearest stop, Moolchand, travelling further south to Kailash Colony it travels overground but actually at rooftop height so that you are looking down on the whole city. It’s really quite incredible as you look out on this mish mash of half built tenements surrounding high domed mosques and grand Hindu temples, past slum areas side by side with high rise hotels and brief areas of lush green trees.

Multi-coloured furry jump suits and roof top farms.
Just another day in Old Delhi.

Today I took the metro to Chandni Chowk having decided I was going to visit the Red Fort and the Jama Masquid and explore a bit of Old Delhi for the first time. I tend to get stared at a considerable amount by men and women alike for being a young white western woman travelling around the town on her own. It doesn’t bother me too much as I don’t believe any harm is meant in the staring and I’ve stopped feeling quite so self-conscious. However, being in New Delhi was nothing compared to being in Old Delhi where the pointing and laughing was ten fold and it really felt as though I was the first real white person they had ever seen. I’d partly decided to head to the Jama Masquid as I’d heard that as well as being India’s largest mosque it is quite a quiet place to sit and observe Old Delhi from. Not quite. It turned out I’d hit upon market day so turning away from the Red Fort I was faced with a giant crush of man against rickshaw battling their way down the street. Eventually after much shoving and pushing I sidestepped the crush into the park leading to the Jama Masquid. It was a pretty impressive sight, this enormous temple partly clouded in Delhi mist and surrounded by more market stalls, most of which appeared to be selling multi-coloured furry jump suits for toddlers. That’s the fantastic thing about Delhi, the logical way in which they order their market stalls. If you need a blanket you head for the blanket sellers quarter, for your cooking pot you head to the kitchen equipment quarter and clearly if your toddler is in need of furry green jump suit for those winter months you head to the foot of the Jama Masquid. You can immediately tell the tourists from the locals as they will be asking the egg seller for toilet roll and trying to buy their blankets in the confectionary market.

So I made my way through the market stalls to the steps of the Jama Masquid where it did seem suddenly quieter and more peaceful. I saw lots of people taking their shoes off and walking into the mosque so I started to do the same but my way was barred by an eagle eyed official who was quick to beckon to his friend the ticket seller. Free for locals but RS. 200 entry for foreigners. I decided I’d wait to go in another day as I was happy to observe it from the outside for now and sit on the steps to look out on Old Delhi and the markets. For a good two minutes I was left undisturbed to watch the comings and goings below and the curious rooftop farms with a goat that appeared to be painted yellow all over. It was when I decided to get camera out that a sudden flurry of activity ensued, not of people wanting to be in my photo but wanting to take a photo of me. First it was done quite subtly, a boy pretending to take a photo of his friends but pointing the camera in my direction, but pretty soon they were unabashedly stood right in front of me with their mobile phone cameras clicking away. I then agreed to a request from one to have his photo taken with me as this seemed better than pretending I hadn't noticed the gathering paparazzi. However, this was taken as a mass invitation and people all around who seemed to come from nowhere started sitting next to me and pulling out mobile phone cameras. One boy who spoke English apologised for his friends and said that they didn’t live in Delhi and many of them hadn’t seen a white woman in the flesh before. I’m not sure if this was really true. I didn’t mind the photography too much as I know it was just curiosity but I did feel a bit deflated that the Jama Maquid wasn’t quite the quiet hideaway I’d been anticipating.

The flipside of this bizarre incident however, the laughing and pointing and the overflowing streets, was that when I got back to Mooljand and was walking through the streets of Lajpat back home it seemed so quiet and calm in comparison. I stopped briefly to observe a wedding party that was set up in one of the local parks just as a sadhu walked past who had sensibly adapted his dress for the winter months and was sporting a bright orange puffa jacket to match his orange robes.

First impressions of my placement

The organisation I will be working for over the next two years is an NGO providing advice and support to blind and visually impaired individuals, via its radio show and helpline, mainly in the Delhi area but also in Orissa and parts of the North East of India. The organisation employs about 13 people (including me) and about half of the individuals that work there are visually impaired. This means that as well as the office being set up in a very inclusive way for the visually impaired with all the latest screen reading and audio software (although I have yet to broach the issue of it being at basement level down a series of steep steps which prevents anyone from a wheelchair being able to access the building), it also sensitises the staff that are not visually impaired to the needs and equal capabilities of those that are. Perhaps this isn't something I should be surprised by, but having worked for organisations in the UK that were not inclusive in this way, at least not without some serious nudging, it has been good to see it in practice here.


The broad aim of my placement is to help the organisation to put an advocacy framework in place. One of the biggest differences for me is that unlike some other organisations I've worked for, where I've had to first convince higher management that campaigning and advocacy is something the organisation should be doing before we could even think about going ahead and actually doing it, in this organisations' case they are already a campaigning organisation, just perhaps not in as public a way as they would like to be. Not only do they already provide direct advocacy services through their helpline and radio show but the office itself is an environment where debate is actively encouraged. In this case, rather than having to convince the organisation to take on any form of advocacy or campaigning at all, if anything it's going to be the complete reverse and a case of getting them to be selective about which issues they want take on first. 

Toilet roll and eggs

I’ve officially been in Delhi a week now and I don’t feel like I’ve actually done all that much in terms of how much I would achieve in a normal week in London but in Delhi terms, adjusting to a new lifestyle, a new home, new job, new faces, new food, new language, new sounds and smells, this has felt like cramming several months into one week. Perhaps the oddest thing about it is the jumping back and forth from the world that I’m used to – modern English speaking office, internet access, shopping malls – into the unfamiliar –  the street poverty and small children as young as three that weave through some of the busiest traffic intersections in Delhi to approach your rickshaw and ask you for RS.1 (less than a penny), standing out as a white western woman, new languages, new smells and tastes and sounds. During previous experiences abroad I’ve either been totally immersed in the new world I’m living in to the extent that I have no access to or evidence of the world I’ve come from, or I’ve been lived a relatively similar life just in a different country. Here I haven’t yet worked out how to reconcile living in between the two worlds.


Of course the thing that most people at home seem most interested in so far is how my stomach is bearing up and have I got Delhi belly yet. Those kind of details are not really for this blog but so far my usually cast iron constitution seems to have won through, although I'm sure I'll come to regret saying that later. My main problem is knowing where to go to buy what. My flatmate Zoe introduced me to some of the local stall holders near our flat and explained who sold what - this person for eggs, this person for toilet roll, but last night I still came back with a random combination of crackers, toilet roll and some peanut butter brittle, not exactly the making of a particularly nutritious meal.

Day 2 in Delhi

Making garlands outside Sai Baba Mandir

 So, the difference a day makes.  At least I was a bit less scared of Delhi today than I was yesterday. I couldn’t really say what has changed specifically today except that the more of the city I get to see and the longer I have to acclimatise the less daunting it seems.  I think also that despite being resolved to keep an open mind it still came as more of a shock than I thought it would, the smells, the sheer numbers of people and stray dogs, my helplessness in shops at not being able to speak Hindi, the children begging on the street that relentlessly follow you with their hands outstretched and tugging on your clothes. I knew to expect all of this but there is a big difference between sitting at home reading a book about it and seeing pictures to actually being here and being confronted by it. I thought I’d of known better from past experiences of travelling but every new place is different and sometimes although you expect the unexpected you forget that the situations you expected to find can come as just as much of a shock.  I’m sure tomorrow will be different again but slowly some of my fear seems to be changing to curiosity.

Arrival in Delhi

(AM)

I arrived in Delhi in the early hours of this morning when most of the city was asleep, although I didn’t realise that at the time, so waking up this morning was a bit of a shock. I awoke to the gradually growing surround sound of car horns, motorcycles, cycle rickshaw bells, children shouting to each other in Hindi, air raid shelter sirens (this is what they sound like although I’ve yet to find out what they are for, hopefully not an air raid), dogs barking and birds chirruping with equal enthusiasm. This was at about 7am and it was as if someone had switched on a ‘sounds of Delhi’ soundtrack or taken their finger off the mute button as the noise seemed to go from 0 to 100 instantaneously with a new sound adding itself to the mix every few minutes. Several hours earlier, travelling in the vso car from the airport to my temporary accommodation, it had all felt a bit surreal and as though I could have been anywhere, at least anywhere that is where seeing a troupe of camels being rode by fully robed Bedouins and an elephant with a painted forehead being led down a duel carriageway is not an unusual sight.

Lodi Garden Tombs

(PM)

I’ve been in Delhi for less than 24hrs and I’m feeling a little shell shocked. This place is intense, frenetic and ruthless. I started off the day feeling quite fresh and keen to explore and after getting lost a few times I found Lodi Gardens which are beautiful and a peaceful place to start the day. I sat on a bench and watched a family having a picnic and just listened to them chatting in Hindi to each other for a while then wandered around some of the tombs in the middle of the park. I think by the end of the day though, after experiencing our first rickshaw ride and the chaos of the Delhi traffic and honking horns then crossing the road on foot and physically having to put our hands out to stop the cars in order to get across, the noise and constant activity combined with jet lag slowly wore me down. It was a relief to get back to the Indian Social Institute where we staying and shut out the noise and bustle for a while. I look forward to what tomorrow brings but I think this city could take a bit of getting used to!