Dear Future Volunteer

(free-form letter to future volunteers working with AJWS)
August 11, 2008

Dear Future Volunteer,

My name is Lily, and I spent the last year as a World Partner Fellow working with NGO X in Hyderabad, India. As a documentation officer on the ABCD Project, I wrote reports, worked on grants, participated in project planning meetings, launched a resource website, and helped my co-workers to develop abstracts for an international conference.

Its common to hear that India is a place of great extremes... what I didn't realize before leaving was that not only is India home to the extremely poor and excessively rich, mountain deserts and sea-level swamps, multi-million people metropolises and endless acres of tiny farming communities -- its also everything in between. The only things that are difficult to find there are stick deodorant and public trash cans. The ride from the airport to your first destination will probably be the most frightening experience you have -- once you're used to the mad dash that constitutes Indian traffic, malaria and monsoons won't look so intimidating.

As you begin to adjust to the kaleidescope experience that confronts you each day as you leave your home (and often through the walls when you're trying to sleep at night), you'll be able to settle in to your life at work. The most useful thing I did for my own volunteer experience at work was to loosen my concepts of productivity and success -- I counted every friendship, every clear communication with co-workers, every nonverbal interaction with the young children we served and the tea lady who served us, as a success, as something to take pride and comfort in. This allowed me to feel productive right away, even when I was still adjusting to my office and apartment, and accomplishing astonishingly little in the way I was used to counting 'work' after eighteen years of rigorous education and summer research jobs.

Once I had 'adjusted' (always a relative word) to my daily life in India, people began to ask me how I felt I had changed, and the first thing that always came to mind was my capacity for and store of patience: my capacity increased exponentially, but my supply was often scraping bottom. My mother told me she worried that India would make me too 'hard' -- constantly bargaining for each service rendered, coping emotionally with the daily interaction with extreme poverty -- and while I would never pretend that there was anything 'easy' about living in India, I like to think of the experience as a perfect example of 'productive discomfort.' Sometimes its important for us to step outside of the familiar, to take life out of context, in order to gain a clearer of view of ourselves and the world that we live in. Working and living in India is a perfect opportunity to do just that.

Welcome to the rabbit hole. Its a long drop down, but its worth the ride.

Sincerely,

Lily

The Thank-You Letter

('what I learned in India,' written as a closing activity for the AJWS World Partner Fellowship)
June 27, 2008

Dear Reader,

I am writing to thank you ... (this was originally a thank-you letter to financial supporters, but I thought I'd take this chance to thank you for reading!)... and to share with you some of my experiences as a World Partners Fellow. When I arrived in India, over ten months ago, the first thing that I noticed was the sheer number of people, smells, colors, and noises; they intrude on your senses completely and leave you no personal space. India is a country of contradictions and functioning chaos; she teaches you how to move calmly through the morass, and how to distinguish what pieces to hold on to and when to let go.

As a volunteer at my NGO, I was given the chance to live and work in Hyderabad, a city of over seven million in the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India. At work, I was able to expand my knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and the state of the epidemic in India, to work with Indian colleagues on a variety of projects, and to visit the children and families that my program worked to support in rural Andhra Pradesh.

At home in the apartment that I shared with two other WPFs, I learned how to cook authentic Indian and make-shift American food (or authentic American and make-shift Indian, depending on your perspective), to meet friends in the city and to explore Hyderabad’s many strange – and eventually familiar – sights and sounds. I enrolled in dance classes, and continued the study of world dance – Bharata Natyam in particular – that I began as a young child and explored intensively in college. Each Friday evening, my flat-mates and I celebrated Shabbat together – we melded the different traditions we had each grown up with, and created a few new ones.

These lessons – what habits you give up or pressures you give in to, what patterns you hold on to and re-create, which different traditions you adapt to, and which you continue to resist – are what I will take home with me when I fly back to the USA. These observations about another country, and how I chose to live my life and engage with the work of my NGO in that country, are the stepping stones I will use in the coming year, when I return to India and to my NGO to work on new and exciting projects.

As I continue my journey in India and with AJWS, I hope that you will continue ... (to read, and to share your own stories with me). To learn more about my adventures in work and life abroad, feel free to view the photo albums that are linked on the right-hand side of the page. If you would like any additional information about my work during the past year, or AJWS’s programs, please feel free to contact me directly.

Thank you again for your time and your ongoing support.

Sincerely,

Lilliputian