Back home, my final blog!

I'm home! I've been back in Ireland for almost a month now. I wanted to write one final blog post, as I have come full circle and felt the need to look back and reflect on the experience..

I left India at the start of January, after ringing in the New Year frolicking in the sea and laughing with friends on Goa beach, underneath a firework-lit sky. From Goa I headed to Mumbai for my flight out of India. It was a very strange feeling to be leaving. I hadn't left the country since arriving as a fresh faced newbie in November 2010, full of anticipation about the year ahead. At Mumbai airport I was feeling nostalgic and a little apprehensive, because I'd become so accustomed to the craziness of India I wasn't sure how I'd cope somewhere else. But it was time to go, and I was excited about the prospect of seeing new countries and cultures. I spent seven lovely weeks exploring a little of South East Asia. I visited my filipina friends (fellow VSO volunteers and my housemates in Bhubaneswar) in their beautiful paradise islands in the Philippines. From there I hopped over to Indonesia where I learned to dive, did yoga and ate great food. I topped off the trip with shopping and more amazing diving in Thailand. It was so great to have a few months of travel and holiday - a nice break after a hectic year of work and life in India, to prepare myself for "the real world".

I was away from home for about a year and 4 months in total but the whole experience feels longer in a way, as there was a whole year between my first application for VSO and the date I flew to Delhi; the months of training, preparation, fundraising and talking about it! And now it's kind of all over!

There are a few questions people keep asking me since I've come back, and that I have been asking myself, so I'll sum up my reflections in the answers below:

What was India like?

Noisy, hot, dirty, intense, shocking, surprising, inspiring, beautiful....

It's a country filled with incredible things to see and somewhere I would recommend people to visit - a country like no other. Mountains, beaches, backwaters, beautiful culture and traditions, yoga and spirituality.

But it's also a country filled with problems. Living in Odisha, one of the poorest states in India, I saw the poverty millions of people have to live in; the immense challenges people with disabilities face on a daily basis; the shocking injustices that Indian girls and women face; and the suffering of animals on the streets, which would break my heart on a daily basis.

It can feel overwhelming, where to start? But thankfully there are people out there working to make things better, and I had the chance to meet many of those inspiring people through my year in India.

What were you doing there, anyway?

I was working as Communications Coordinator with an NGO called Aaina who are involved in disability, women's rights and children's rights. Working in their head office, I advised Aaina on how to improve their communications activities. During the year I helped them launch a new website,  improve their visibility online and on social networks and set up e-newsletters to send to donors and various other stakeholders. I wrote funding proposals and reports, organised workshops and training for local staff members, preparation for the We Care Film Fest and generally tried to help with whatever was going on in the office. When it came to the end of my placement I wished I'd done more - the year really does fly. I felt I should have done more training with the staff from the beginning, but this wasn't always possible as people were overworked and didn't always have time for training and extra workload. So I ploughed on to get the website etc live and now it is up to my lovely fellow Aaina colleagues to carry on the work (I hope you guys are reading this!)

What were the best bits?

- Having a laugh with my colleagues in Aaina: a great young team, who work really hard and always smile and ask me how I am...and what I've had for breakfast. Who taught me what India is all about.

- My daily chats with Tublu: the resident chai-maker in the office. He is deaf and mute and the friendliest, most cheerful person. Through his own sign language he was always telling me the latest gossip from the street. I didn't understand a lot of what he said, but I slowly learned. He always entertained me and inspired me with his constant effort to communicate, even if he couldn't speak, and even if people wouldn't always listen. I learned a little about determination from Tublu.

- The Food: masala dosas, chai, samosas, chili gobi, channa masala, pakoras, and the mangoes, oh dear God the mangoes...

- The Ex Pats. It made a big difference to have a community of other volunteers and foreigners to have a party with, go on trips with and have a moan about India with. Especially my lovely housemates during the year - Jenn, Terri, Juliet and Kate.

- Yoga & Meditation. I'm grateful to India for introducing me to the world of yoga & meditation, which I hope to keep practicing and exploring forever more..!

- Visiting Beautiful Places - especially Hampi, the Himalayas, The Golden Temple and the villages of rural Orissa.

How does it feel to be back?

It's a bit like waking from a really vivid surreal dream. You know the feeling when you are awoken suddenly from a dream, feel disoriented, look around the room and slowly realise, ok this is my bed, my room, I'm home. My time in India is beginning to feel like that - a very long, surreal dream. I had the same feeling while in India - that home was so far away, a different world. When my brother came to visit me in my tenth month I felt relief to see someone in the flesh, just in case I was imagining all those people at home. The two worlds are so different that it's difficult for your mind to comprehend both together. It makes me sad that India is starting to feel so far away, but at least there is email and facebook to keep in touch with Indian colleagues and friends and remind myself that it all really did happen.

Are you glad to be back?

Yes. I was lucky enough to travel for a few months after my placement, which was amazing and a great transition between working and going home. I felt ready to go home and it's been so nice to see my family and friends after so long and I'm still lapping up the comforts of home - my mum's home baked bread and soups, washing machines and dishwashers, hot showers, nice glasses of red wine, the novelty of wearing cosy jumpers and boots..

It's a conflicting feeling of familiarity and appreciation for what I have, yet also sadness and guilt seeing with new eyes how unequal these two worlds are. A reverse culture shock being back in the Western world surrounded by commercialisation, choice, packaging and plastic, which feels alien now, wasteful and in many ways wrong. 

As time goes on I know I will get more and more nostalgic about India, remembering the good times, the food, the people, the excitement of living in a different culture. What my mind may choose to forget (and which this blog and my journal can remind me of) are the realities of living in a developing country and the things that so many people don't have the chance to forget - the painful summer heat & humidity, power cuts, the poverty and inequalities, especially for women with my own experiences of "eve-teasing" etc, corruption and endless bureaucracy and visa sagas, and everyday things like no hot water and having to hand washing everything..

So, yes, I am glad to be back and enjoying the luxuries of home but let's see how long this feeling lasts....in 2 months I might be crying for rice & dal and reminiscing about that familiar visa office..

What are you going to do now??

The big question. I am looking at master's courses in international development and the environment. I may continue to work in communications, ideally within a charity or organisation working for a cause I believe in. In the meantime I'm at home in Ireland and making the most of my free time, including doing a 10-day Vipassana (silent meditation) course in the west of Ireland over Easter (to paraphrase Juliet "you can take the girl out of India, but...")

Are you glad you did it?

YES! Very much so. It was an incredible experience, a year of my life that has given me a new outlook on life and the world I'm living in. I just hope that my work in India had a fraction of the impact that it had on me.

Om shanti.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

Learn as if you were to live forever.”

― Mahatma Gandhi