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