Different people whom I met

As a girl who has never had a chance to live away from parents (except for my vacations to my grad mother’s house) living on my own for a month was a big deal. Living with three girls from three different countries, in a foreign land, in a stranger’s house with a family with whom I couldn’t have any form of verbal communication was strange for me. The way they eat, the items they eat (though it was only rice, noodles, egg, boiled vegetables for all 3 meals) their living style was all so different.

Before I get into all stories I will say about my house there, the people of the house, the participants whom I lived with. I lived in one Mr.Sukhir’s house. His parents, his younger sister, a young guy and a little boy and I still don’t know how he is related to that family. 3 participants lived with me, Melissa the Indonesian, I Ching, from Hong Kong, So-Jin South Korean. I shared my room with I Ching.

So-Jin was the most grown up kid I have ever met. So innocent and pure at heart. She was the eldest among us. If she had class if the school we all woke her up in the morning. On her days off we woke her up for each meal. But I don’t know what it was about her that no one felt it bothersome. She was princess #2. (oh yeah we had many princess and queens in our group and I was princess #3) and everyday during our meeting So-Jin used to draw cartoon faces of everyone. My job was to guess who it was.

Coming to the next person in my room, I Ching, she is the most matured 20 year girl I have ever met. Her clarity of thoughts, respect for culture, taking up responsibility for her faults were so deep within her that it would take sometime for a person to appreciate her. She was very meticulous and planned. I haven’t met anyone so planned about their future.

Finally, Melissa the girl from Indonesia. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about her is her addiction to take a shower… her routine was to wake up in the morning, take a shower, after work, take a shower, before meeting take a shower. Worst part is she asked every one of us to take a shower that many times, of course I Ching and I didn’t listen to her, but still… well, I know only that much about her, it was so hard to figure out what she thought.

So, there I was, with three girls who were so different from each other. Yet trying to somehow understand each other… it was interesting to live with people so different. It was more interesting to notice that we still tried to be nice to each other and had respect for the other’s feelings.

Mr.Sukhir was my host. (The name of the villager whose house we stayed in). And we called the lady of the house, house mother. He spoke very little English but we never spoke much. He had stores. We usually asked him to put credit (top up) in our sim card. The maximum conversation I had with him was, I used to give him the money and show my number, he would do the recharge and look at me questioningly and I used to smile and say, thank you I got the credit and I usually got a smile for a reply. One day, after two week of stay there, I managed to speak to my host family somehow without our translator. (Melissa, the Indonesian in our house translated for us). I bought an English to Indonesian book, it was similar to our “learn to speak Indonesian in 30 days”. So you can imagine. We somehow managed to have a conversation. And to my surprise I found out that the young girl in my house was married to that young guy. And like two typical teenage girls we both once argued about those two. She told me they were married and I wouldn’t agree.

The father of my house owner always tried to have conversations with us. And that day he told us to go back home safely and to take good care of ourselves. And he asked to study well. He said few other things that I couldn’t translate. I felt so bad that I couldn’t understand him. Getting such love and care from a complete stranger was the last thing I expected there. And I was so glad that we weren’t strangers anymore. At that point I Ching and I felt that language should never have been a problem. We should have tried more that one month to talk to him… well, am glad I at least learnt it now.

The unexpected turn of events:

In continuation of my previous blog on what I did there, I thought I’d also add something about few things that gave me a thrill.

That was my first trip abroad and more importantly, first trip without a chaperon of any age, gender, relation. The taste of freedom was very sweet. But it came along with a price tag- being responsible. Just after ten minutes after landing we were about to be deported. We were made to wait there in the immigrations office when they decided how to “deal with our case”. They were talking about contacting Indian embassy. I should say I was so excited about it. All images of my name appearing in the Indian newspapers flashed across my head.

I still don’t remember how long we waited to be picked up (or to be deported at least!) I hadn’t eaten for a long time. I always have a good appetite and I don’t remember any other time when I actually lost my appetite (even for chocolates). I was wondering how I would face my friends if were deported back to India in the next flight. And my friend next to me was talking something about God helping, I don’t remember what. I was too engaged in my own fantasies. My brain was too occupied in conjuring images after images, scenes after scenes that I forgot to even notice the time. I think we waited for a very long time because I filled up so many pages of my diary out of sheer boredom, anxiety, excitement (yeah I was in a foreign land so a bit of excitement was still left)

I kept looking at every person who crossed us hoping someone would come and say something. It was too frustrating to sit there without knowing what was about to happen. I was always a bit happy that I could speak fluent English and always said I will manage wherever I go. But that day it was of no use. I was surrounded by people who weren’t good at it. To my disappointment none of them understood what I spoke and they decided not to communicate anything to us!!! What a waste it was. I had to break the sentences into pieces and then destroy the grammar so that they’d be able to understand what I spoke but still I got no replies from the officials. I got a curt nod for all the efforts that I put in and they “gestured” us to sit down and wait (for what, they never disclosed).

Then after what seemed to be ages one of our co-ordinators came. He went inside and they spoke few technical stuff and the co-ordinator was probably so good at talking that the immigrations officer called us in (and even smiled) and “told us” he was leaving us under warning and thus we got our visa stamped for 30 days! The catch here is our stay there was scheduled for 34 days!!!

As if all these were not enough, we also had few surprises with our luggage. We didn’t get them. It was nowhere to be found in any of the rooms in the airport. (since we were held up with the immigrations we had to search for our luggage in the room where unclaimed luggage were kept). Our luggage was not there so we lodged a complaint with the air lines people and then left for the resort.

So after all these not too welcoming events I went to exchange my currency. I exchanged a 100$ bill for the Indonesian Rupiah (INR 1=200 IDR approx.) so for my 100$ I got around one million!!! After all those catastrophic events holding such huge amount of currency was a great treat. The millionaire me was then dropped in a warm, nice resort.

Then my first meal there was with few boys from Holland and Indonesia. Since I am a vegetarian I found it hard to order food, not to mention the menu was in Indonesian and I couldn’t understand a word. So we left it to the Indonesians’ choice. They ordered a dish, gadu gadu for me. Boiled rice with boiled vegetables without oil, butter, ghee or any of those fattening delicious items. It was healthy, sans enough salt and spice, some peanut butter in rice added to the flavour… and thus started my stay there for a month.

COP’09 at Sumberyuyu

In the fall, on July 3^rd, 2009 at midnight (technically July 4^th) I took my first overseas flight to Indonesia along with a friend of mine, Naveena to attend the community outreach program of the Petra Christian University, Indonesia. i still remember the Italian guy who was my co passenger in my flight from India to kaulalumpur and the meal was lousy but i dint know then that my flight from Malaysia to Indonesia will be horrible. if i wasn't so many feet above i would have definitely risked a jump.

we saw few western ppl in our Malaysian flight. i had strong doubts they were cop participants and my instincts were right. but few problems awaited us nd we couldn't go to our resort with them. we landed in Surabaya, the capital of east java on the 4^th afternoon. the first trouble was with our visa. we thought we will get a VOA. we paid the fee and got our visa and i thought tat was all. but no. we had more surprises. they refused to stamp our visa cos we weren't there for tourism. (have no clue how they found that out). we were stranded there for hours and i had such huge dreams of what could happen, i never realised my imaginations could go so far!!! the student who came to pick us up was also confused and he took the dutch participants and sent another person for us. and finally we were given a warning (!) and "released". we went with the participants who came from Hong Kong in the next flight. then we were taken to a resort. it was AWESOME. and we were one of the lucky ones who got double bed-room with a royal suite bathroom!!! that was luxury. and the food was jus amazing!!! (well, later u will know why)

The stay in Surabaya was exciting. The nights and the days were busy alike. There were so many malls for the teenagers, islands for the tourists wanting a sun tan, food festival that went on all nights for people with different taste buds. i went out on the same night with the dutch. then mall on the next day. we made friends before u could say the word friend.

On the day of the city tour, on 7^th July, we met all the participants. We were 170 students totally from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Japan, India, and South Korea. We were divided into 10 villages and all the villages were around a town called Kediri. We had team building events for each group and we made friends easily. In our village Sumberyuyu, we were 20 students and one supervisor. Our village had participants from Hong Kong, Netherlands, India, Indonesia and South Korea.

We started for our village with hopes and expectations on the 9^th of July with our supervisor, Mr. Iwan. The village looked like our Indian village. I was reminded of my birth place, Trivandrum when I saw the houses there. They had typical tiled roofs like the houses in Kerala. With so many fields around and so many mountains surrounding the village it was a beautiful sight for the eye.

We were given a budget of 10 million Rupiah. Our supervisor left us at the village and he left for the city. We were given the responsibility and the freedom. We met with the villagers and found out their needs and wants. We walked around the village to see their life style and houses. And finally we came up with projects like building walls to prevent flood, teaching them to make manures with garbage, teaching the kids at the kindergarten (the village had only kindergarten facility), renovating the kindergarten, building play ground for the kids, installing garbage bins for the non organic waste at many places around the village. In building the retaining wall we got the help from the villagers and we only passed the cement buckets for them. As a student of economics, I did the proposal for the project. But, for me the greatest project was the kindergarten renovation. Though I didn’t teach the kids, I was there for the renovation job along with my retaining wall team.

We painted the walls, varnished the desks and made drawings on the walls. And for me, a person who has not done more than 10 strokes with paint brush, these entire painting job was a fun filled memorable experience. Not to mention, the teacher gave us juicy fruits and healthy porridge during our work and at times it acted as incentives, the little boy played Indonesian pop songs in his music system everyday to the extent that all foreign participants picked it up. And as a result we never felt tired at work. Since the project on the garbage involved communicating with the villagers in their local language (Javanese) we dint do much for that. But we all had our hands full.

In contrast to the life in the city, life in the village was a peaceful one. We lived in the villagers’ houses. Four or five lived in one house along with the host family. They provided food for us and took good care. My house owner was an old man. I still remember the day when I spoke to him for an hour. He kept talking in Javanese and I kept talking in English. In our free time we climbed mountains, crossed streams to meet our friends in the next village. During our week ends we went to the town Kediri for fattening; tasty food, sight seeing and a break. I always had troubles finding out the correct food because I was a vegetarian. But otherwise we had a good time on all week ends. In the village we were given rice, noodles, boiled vegetables and fried egg. It was not the spicy Indian food but it was healthy. We liked the tapioca that our house served us. So we learnt how to ask for it and we asked them to make it for us. I shared the room with a girl from Hong Kong. And in my house we had persons from Indonesia, South Korea, Netherlands, and India.

We completed all our projects successfully and we gave a farewell for the villagers on our last night there, 2009-08-19. We ate dinner together with all our host families and it was such a touching moment. They all bade us farewell with streams of tears and hugs. All our resolves not to cry were broken in two seconds. The kids came running out of the school when we got into our car. The kids were so friendly there that none of us wanted to leave them behind. Only after we waved and departed did I realise that those kids didn’t even understand all that we spoke but they were sad that we were leaving. With a heavy heart I left the beautiful, calm village with its loving people behind, recounting all the memories and moments we started for the city.

On the last day we all had our last dinner party and we had our closing ceremony. We had practiced a musical drama from our village in our free time. It was a big hit. And with that I had bid our farewell to the fellow participants. It was the toughest job of all. Everyone were making plans to meet as soon as possible, many were making promises to visit the other person’s country soon. At that moment I wished we were all in the magical world like Harry Potter, being able to travel anywhere, anytime. But I came back to reality and made similar promises.

On the whole, this outreach program has moulded me into a different person. It has taught me how to apply my knowledge, how to adjust with the surroundings and the main things it has taught me how to appreciate what I have, how to work in a team with people who are very different from each other. Even in the absence of supervision we all acted responsibly and I learnt to respect the freedom that was given and use it properly. On the whole it was a very good learning experience that I would like to relive at any point of my life.

my first blog..

hey all.. am poorvaja and calld poorvi by my friends and so i ve calld my blog as poorvis, (s is my initials)

this s my first blog. i should have started blogging when i took up writing. but i was too lazy for that. finally i have started blogging. i wouldnt have started even now if my teacher, Mr.Bala had not asked me to. being the lazy girl that i always am, i kept postponing it. but finally i ve started...

i will start with the recent ones tho.. it is easier that way..