Day 5 - India

Submitted by Sue on November 10, 2005 - 22:27.

Just been told this morning that it’s my blog day. So, we’re all sat in a room that has egg boxes on the walls. There’s a guy that looks like an Indian Billy Connelly telling us about the day ahead, welcoming us. In the background, there’s a guy wailing and playing drums. If I was a fly, I’d head for his space to check out the tunes. It sounds like some good jamming is going on. There are three guys in front of us, but my eyes are drawn to the ‘bearded one’. I can’t tell when he’s smiling, if he’s smiling. His beard is all consuming upon his face, apart from his eyes. A beard and some eyes – that’s him.  His eyes don’t show anything so he’s very difficult to read.

I did yoga this morning and felt wide awake – much needed after the MDF slab we all had the pleasure of sleeping on. The bearded one (actual name, Vasu) is now talking to the other two, translating all that we’ve said. My bottom hurts. I never thought I’d wish for a fatter bum. I’ve crashed now, the yoga buzz has worn off – I wonder if I can write with my eyes shut?

Barefoot College was set up the year after I was born, 1972. It was established by a water-drilling expert called Bunker Roy, who believed that the solution to rural problems lay within communities and not with urban-based professionals. He created an environment where the community gets informal, non-structured, on-the-job training, which it can then use for its own development. From a small campus established in the early 70’s, Barefoot College has grown to 80,000 square feet and consists of residences, a guest house, a library, dining room, meeting halls, an open air theatre, a ten-bed hospital, and numerous other facilities. Drinking water is provided by a 700,000 litre rainwater harvesting tank and most of the campus’s electricity from solar power.

Barefoot is about many things but overall it’s about the people. It’s about teaching and learning through doing. I can relate to that. Their motto is “Where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher.” How true that is of life. Elana (my 4 year old daughter) teaches me as much as I teach her. Teaching and learning is also thinking and feeling. More than just a good academic brain. “Answers to problems in the past will ensure our future.” Now that’s interesting. We say ourselves if something’s not broken don’t fix it. Who’s house is it anyway? If you want to change things, don’t start by going there with preconceptions. One needs to be acquainted with the local way of life. I suppose we’re all agents of change.

The women’s workshops had open space techniques (the women can come in and out as they want, according to where they’re at in their personal development), which is brilliant and still quite new to the UK. Barefoot seemed to be so diverse and have so many projects going on at once, just as we see BabyGroe in the future.

This video about Barefoot College that they’re playing us is really interesting but it’s also really looooong. I’ve managed to go from sitting up to lying down. The women’s bit has finished now and they’re coming together reminded me of what we wanted to do with our BabyGroe conference. A space for like-minded people – people who have different geographical and demographical backgrounds, who all share a common purpose. What’s coming out of this all the way through is that the people come first. What do they want, what do they need. Let’s not guess or say what we think; let’s ask them, find out, and build everything around our findings.

One interesting thing that came out of the video is that I learnt that 86% of the government’s budgets are paid on administration compared to 8% in the voluntary sector. Vasu said that if there’s one argument for the need for the voluntary sector, then that’s enough.

After the video, we’re taken around the grounds and have now seen the engineering bit, the women’s workshops bit, and we’re now sat in the night school / children’s parliament bit. So far, it’s been tough to stay focused, mainly because I’m tired but also the heat and lack of air and no lighting… but on top of that whenever anybody asks as a question, it takes absolutely ages to get it translated before you get an answer. I’m sat on a lovely cushion. A little cockroach type thing strolled up to the edge of it. I kept an eye out in case he made a move for it, but now he’s disappeared. Maybe he’s crawled in my bag.

I can’t believe this place. It’s so organised, so busy without being busy at all. Everyone’s very chilled. A good question was why does the government use Barefoot. And one of the reasons is because they’re already in the community and it’s cheaper for the government to use them than to set up on their own. I’m in the hospital bit just now and have a thousand questions about the midwives and how it all works, but I can’t ask them. It takes too long. They say there’s no post-natal depression – only depression sometimes if they have a girl rather than a boy. Seems they have a lot to learn there, or maybe they just get on with it. I’m not sure how honest the guys have been with their answers. They have said I can email more questions, so if I don’t get more answers from Chetna (another project later on in the trip), I’ll definitely do that. I wonder what the mortality rate is.

Had some rice and apple and chocolate. Managed a bit of Simon & Garfunkle and a 5-minute nap, all in the one-hour lunch break. Thank golly as I was really losing it. It’s frustrating that we only have a day and they want to show us EVERYTHING, which is great but it’s hard to take it all in. You need a good week here to really appreciate all the projects they have. Just to give you an idea: they do women’s workshops, they have a theatre group; they have a crèche project; a night school for kids; safe water stuff; hospital; they train midwives; they make bags and clothes; even recycle newspaper into shopping bags; they make solar panels; they teach locals, disabled people, foreigners; they cook, yadda yadda yadda.

After lunch we went to see the rest of Barefoot that we hadn’t yet seen. Unreal. How they work the logistics, I can’t imagine. I hope BabyGroe is half as successful one day.

Back in the room with Vasu having our question and answer session. When asked about what they’d change if they could start again, he said they wouldn’t change anything: that they’d had a string of successful failures. As long as you learn by failure, then it will always be successful. It’s dark in here. A light is flickering annoyingly. I’m wondering how smart they think we are. Earlier, Salim asked how on earth they clean the solar panels on their roofs safely. He was told, with long sticks.

Billy is easier to read now. A very passionate and a very careful man. He’s really keen to keep in touch with us and share ideas in the future.

We were supposed to leave at 5pm, but our sleeper bus broke down. Still, it gave time for Zulfiqar to teach the children some special words like “diamond geezer” and “come on baby.”

On the bus, as I’m writing this (actually, dictating to Richard, who I find a rather lovely secretary), we break down every now and then, but are getting used to the pace. Hopefully we’ll arrive in one piece and use our imaginations to make the long journey through the night a happy one. Let’s hope it’s a successful failure.

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