When I first got an email last summer about a volunteering module with a month long volunteering trip I was quite intrigued. I’d never really done any volunteering before but had always wanted to and I really wanted to experience another country and culture so I decided to go for it and I’m really glad that I did!
I was quite nervous before I set out on the trip as I really didn’t know that much about it or what to expect; I wasn’t sure what I would be doing, where I would be staying and I didn’t even know any of the people I was going with as we were from different courses. But nonetheless I was very excited and determined to stick it out no matter what!
Before we went we were asked to choose what volunteering placement we would like to do while in India so I chose to teach English as I’d been considering doing a TEFL course, so thought it might give me some insight into whether to pursue that.
As soon as I landed in India it was clear that there were major differences between England and India just as I had expected. Leaving the airport was pretty much chaos, as all the noises and the heat hit me I really wasn’t sure what I was letting myself in for.
The drive from the airport to our home-stay was a real eye-opener; the roads seem to have no rules as they do over here. Everyone just drives and overtakes wherever they want, they hardly ever use indicators and they just beep constantly to ‘let you know they’re there’. Mixed in with that is the fact that the sides of the roads look like half an English farm with cows, goats and chickens wandering around all over the place and most drivers would rather run a human over than a cow! All in all the Indian roads are a very dangerous place to be and it took me quite a while to get used to it!
While in India we were all placed with families where we stayed and they cooked for us and generally looked after us. I stayed with another student with an ex-principal of a school called Mona and her maid. Mona was a very strict Christian but had never married. We lived about a 5-10 minute walk away from our placement at the Annasawmy School.
We started at our placement the day after we arrived in Bangalore and the school looked very different to an English school. It was a school for children from very poor backgrounds and the children were given a free lunch every day which was the main reason that most of their parents sent them there. There were three of us teaching at the same school; myself, Charlotte and Christianne. For the first few days we were restricted to just watching the teachers conduct their lessons before we actually started teaching ourselves.
Their teaching style was quite different to that over here, mainly they just wrote things on the board, asked the children to repeat it 10 times then write it down in their books. They did not check that the children understood the meaning behind what they were being taught; just as long as the children could recite it they were happy. The class sizes had between 40 and 45 children in each so we decided to divide each class up between us to make it more manageable. We had three classes a day; fifth standard, sixth standard and seventh standard. At first it was quite challenging teaching the children as they were not at the standard of English that we had been led to believe they were at so we really had to start from basics but, by the end of our stay, we could see a definite improvement. I found it really rewarding when I was teaching them something and you could tell at first that they didn’t understand then you could almost see the light come on and they got it.
We worked at the school Monday – Friday from 9am to 3pm so we had evenings and weekends free to spend however we wanted. I did not expect Bangalore to have many bars or clubs since it was so conservative and restrictive in so many other ways but we soon found that there were lots of different bars throughout Bangalore. It was very strange to go out over there though, as everywhere in Bangalore shuts at 11.30pm whereas in England we wouldn’t normally go to a club until about that time.
On one of our weekends we went away to a place called Mysore which is about 150km from Bangalore. While we were there some of us went to Dubare Elephant Camp where I got to bath and ride an elephant which is something I’ve always wanted to do so I was very happy! We also visited various temples and walked down 1000 steps (there seems to be a bit of an obsession with steps leading to temples!)
We spent our last weekend in a place called Hampi which is a historic town about 360km from Bangalore. It is most famous for the ruins and temples which its home to, one of the most famous being the Virupaksha Temple. Hampi was definitely my favorite place that we visited during the trip because it was so chilled out and relaxed. We stayed at a hotel in some huts with bench swings outside which overlooked the river and rice paddies, it was picturesque. I climbed my first mountain while I was there, climbed some more steps to another temple, went on a bike ride, rode on the back of a motorbike and even rode in a coracle.
I was very upset to have to come home from India and really wished that I could have stayed longer. My trip has opened my eyes to a whole different way of life and culture and it’s something I really would like to experience again. I’m very grateful that I was given the opportunity to go on the trip and it’s an experience that I will never forget.
Laura Crimmons
Leeds Business School
BA Public Relations
