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Week 5: Update from INDIA!!

Hello Everyone 🙂 UF & UTK Project in India has officially completed the 5th week and begun the 6th and final week! We have been working hard in the communities to spread hygiene and sanitation awareness through IEC material and community meeting. We have also spent the last week working on the preparation for the implementation of toilets in the schools in the communities. Below are the thoughts of the intern team!

 

Veronica

I’d like to dedicate this week’s blog post to something that is an essential element to communication: language. This week in the field has been a testament to how language barriers can cause disconnect between intent and impact. Of course I knew that coming to work here in India meant being a whole new country, with a completely different culture, and entirely foreign language. I was comforted by the fact that we would have a translator, but I did not take into account that I had never needed a translator before and much less have ever tried building relationships with others being completely dependent on a translator. There’s only so much I can communicate with hand gestures, smiles, frowns, emotions in my eyes, strange sounds with different tones, mini episodes of charades, and the 10 useful Hindi words I know. Our ability to directly communicate with locals in the villages is very limited. I feel that this has hindered our ability to realize our intended impact because it limited our ability to get to know people

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personally, to know what their concerns and desires were, and to pick up on important cues from background conversations people have amongst themselves. Even though we did have a translator, there are five of us and one of her. She is limited to what she can hear and how much she can translate for the five of us. In terms of intent and impact, we will never know if the purpose and intent behind our words were translated and understood correctly by the local people. We’ll never know if there was some important information that we missed out on because of our language barrier. I’ll always wonder about it and how the project could have unfolded differently if we were able to understand beyond our barrier. I have come to realize that much is lost in translation including details, tones, emotion, and the ability to be personable. Basically, it’s like going to a friend’s family reunion who speaks a different language and has different customs and trying to understand everything and fully participate. You are going to miss things, no matter how hard you try. There is so much more you can take from an experience when you can understand and communicate in the native language. However, this does not lessen the value of this experience because it has made me realize how valuable language is and I have learned to appreciate the success of communicating the simplest of things with much effort. A funny example of this whole disconnect is when an elderly woman at the Baroji village, probably close to 90 years old, kept speaking to us in Hindi at the community meeting and could not comprehend the fact that we spoke a different language and were not able to understand a single thing she was saying to us. She was confused that she had to talk to another person if she wanted to speak to us. It clearly shows that language is such a core element of who we are but people are people and we find our ways to understand each other across race, religion, gender, and generations, and that’s a beautiful thing.

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Natalia

This was our last week in the field and we participated in our final community and school meeting. The communities were informed toilet materials would be arriving within the next week and kept on a single house for security and distribution purposes. Field workers discussed with them that once their pits were built, field workers would assist and assess before moving forward with the construction. Our office printed out all the education communication brochures to distribute both during the meetings and schools. Women revised sanitation materials pertaining to healthy practices and altogether discussed general ideas, questions, and examples of why and when sanitation practices are important. Additionally, we assessed our options for painting a community mural promoting the Swachh Bharat mission. Next week we are presenting our final project along with our findings and recommendations to both the project program as well as future interns of Sehgal.
                                                                               Tommy
This week we had our last field visits and wrapped up everything that needed to get done in the villages. We had some extra time on our last day and ended up taking a small hike up to a waterfall, which turned out to be nonexistent, in one of the villages. The 200 steps up to the top of the mountain gave me time to really reflect on these past 5 weeks, which are steps in their own right to a metaphorical destination, and all that we’ve done and learned in and out of the field with this internship. As we’re reaching the end of our time here, I can’t help but think of all the people we have met and worked with and how much they have contributed to our project and our experience in general. Our supervisors and field workers were a pleasure to work with and offered so much insight on the world of sustainable development. We have all respectively developed personal bonds to the people with whom we’ve shared work hours, long car rides, and countless emails. As I reminisce on the weeks we’ve spent here I can already start to see the lessons I’ve learned and the memories I’ll take away from this experience. Once we reached the top of the mountain we took this group picture and even though there was no waterfall to see the hike up was really symbolic of our work here and a cathartic way to end our experience as a team.
Estefania
Music is a language. It can touch people in ways words never will. For the longest time I had been a little upset that I Displaying IMG_6539.JPGcould not directly talk to people in the villages because I could not speak Hindi. What I failed to realize was that there is a universal language that is just sounds away. As I sat in one of the villages waiting for the a community meeting to start in which sanitation would be discussed, I started to sing and tap on a pile of papers that have been given to me. I was truly just passing time by singing, which I do all the time. Funny enough, I happened to be singing in Spanish, so not even my co- workers understood what I was saying. All of a sudden one of the women sitting next to me handed me a drum. I did not even pay attention to when she had taken the time to bring this drum. Her request then was that I should sing in front of her and all the women that had gathered around. Looking back at this moment I realize that where words fail music speaks. All the feeling of impotence I’d had for the longest time disappeared in one second. Never had I felt so connected to people that are so different than who I am.
Madison
After 5 weeks in India it is a bitter sweet moment as we continue into our final week of the project. We’ve conducted questionnaires, did transect walks, microplanned, held community meetings, talked to the school management, and held workshops for the school kids and now it is all coming to an end. Each and everyone of us have striven to create an impact in these villages and work with the community at different levels. Though we have all had a language barrier and so much gets lost in translation along the way the actions we take are still there.

Displaying IMG_6557.JPGWe have taken actions and steps towards completing the project and open to the developments that we know will continue to arise. During one of our final community meetings I was able to sit on the ground with the different women that were present at the meetings. The women next to me motioned for me to sit on a chair but instead I sat on the ground. She then nodded her head and grabbed my hand in acceptance. I have learned that when I sit on the ground during the community meeting,s in the past five weeks, that I get to feel more that I was apart of the group,. Though during this meeting I was not by the translator to hear the general dialogue of the meeting I was able to see and feel more of the responses of the women and understand what was happening. The women were energetic and participated in the meetings and were curious about the flyers on sanitation and health we passed out. In the second community meeting we held that day I was then able to sit between this teenage girl, a little girl, and this young women. In this situation I felt more part of the meeting then any other previous meeting. I played with the different children that gathered and laughed with the women during the meeting. This elderly women in the village came up to me and sat down to me and started to talk to me. Though I tried to say i didn’t speak Hindi and communicate with my very limited Hindi skills she didn’t quite understand. I continued to smile and understand the best I could and it all ended in laughs with the rest of the women present. The connections we are able to form in the villages can help to spur more of an interest in the project and the implementation of the toilets because of the trust the community have for us and the other Sehgal workers. Though, of course, we have recommendations for how the language barrier should be addressed next year, actions will still be a pivotal part of the whole project. This project experience has been very rewarding and I look forward to the final week at the Sehgal Foundation.
Thank you everyone for reading!! This week we work on our final presentation and logistics for the next year and the continued implementation after we depart.

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