IY2 - Our achievement so far

Written by Etta Smylie

The mid phase break from our village provided us with the perfect opportunity to reflect as a group on what we have achieved over the last 5 weeks and make plans for what is now 21 days left in our village.

Our achievement so far

For me personally, my ICS experience has been very different from what I imagined it would be. I will take away so many learnings from this rural community and this is not something that I had expected. 

Life here is very basic but we are continually surrounded by smiling faces, offered food everywhere we go and the village is filled with a sense of community spirit that most of us have never experienced in the UK. The residence of Shyanubhoganahalli are always visiting each other’s houses, meeting outside the two local shops for a chat and when we were building the toilets it seemed like half the village was there to give a helping hand. Comparing this to life in the UK I think we have all learnt a lot from the community here. 

Of all the ICS villages on the 12P programme it seemed that Shyanubhoganahalli  is one of the most developed with 90% of villagers having a toilet before we arrived. This has meant that at certain times during phase I have questioned how much help we can be to this community. However, reflecting at mid phase, I am pleased to report that we believe that the residents of Shyanubhoganahalli have learnt a lot from us living in the community. Firstly, there is no doubt that we provide the locals with a good giggle. Everything we do is still a source of amusement; from the way we sit at dinner to our attempt to speak Kannada. 

As time has gone by our impact has definitely extended beyond this. The fact that 200 people turned up to the health camp we organised shows that there are many health problems present in Shyanubhoganahalli. The doctors were able to give us information on the main health problems here and we will now use this information to plan our education programme for the second half. 

We have already gone into the school to teach about personal hygiene and oral health and this was a great success. During phase one most of our attention was focused on building toilets. We have now completed nine and we will soon be finished building the final toilet for the village primary school. We believe that it is important that each household in Shyanubhoganahalli has their own toilet and our work has made a significant step toward this being achieved. We have felt that each of the beneficiaries were in real need of a toilet. They all helped out a lot during building and they seemed to have really appreciated our work.

Our day at Nagesh’s village

One of the aspects of the ICS programme that everyone has enjoyed is the cultural exchange between the UK and Indian volunteers of our group. Over the last few weeks the UK volunteers have enjoyed hearing how the Indian guys’ home villages differ to Shyanubhoganahalli.

  On Monday we were given the opportunity to visit Nagesh’s village, Halsur. Nagesh has lived in Halsur his whole life. His parents work in agriculture and he has recently completed a degree at Mysore University. When we arrived at Nagesh’s home we were welcomed with chai and delicious onion bargees made by Nagesh’s mother.  After having a look at Nagesh’s family’s land and having a laugh at some embarrassing family photographs we set off for a tour around the village.

 In general I was surprised at how similar the village felt to Shyanubhoganahalli with the brightly painted houses and large patios outside. Like Shyanubhoganahalli Halsur have a holy tree and a temple at the centre of the community. It was interesting to see that the temple was getting ready to celebrate the ayanappa festival that has just finished at our village. Locals fetching water from the hand pumps in brightly coloured pots and women washing clothes by the canal were other sights that we have become used to. However, we were definitely able to observe differences between Shyanubhoganahalli and Halsur. In many ways Halsur seems more developed than Shyanubhoganahalli. Halsur is much cleaner in terms of litter and bins have been provided in the school. The roads were also paved much better and drains were cleaner than those in Shyanubhoganahalli

This has given us an insight into what are Shyanubhoganahalli next stages of development. From our walk around Halsur we also noticed that there were fewer animals. In Shyanubhoganahalli there are definitely more animals than people and animals are the main source of income. For Halsur on the other hand coffee growing and selling teak wood are very important. 

We arranged to have a look around the school which is bigger than Shyanubhoganahalli. As we have experienced in our village the children were excited to have visitors and followed us around with great interest. The school toilet had been built by an NGO ten years previously. It was great to see that a project from an NGO is still being used such a long time after being built and this has made us all very excited about the final toilet we are building for the primary school in Shyanubhoganahalli. At the school we also observed some educational murals and this has given us some ideas for our secondary project.

 At the end of our tour we relaxed by the Halsur lake for half an hour. It was such a peaceful spot with ladies washing clothes and gently flowing river and we were almost falling asleep until Nagesh’s friend bomb dived into the lake and soaked us all. This was our cue to leave and we waved goodbye to Halsur and what has been one of the highlights of our India experience so far.

We have come back to Shyanubhoganahalli after mid-phase with lots of energy and new ideas for our secondary project. Our only concern for this second half is that time will go too quickly.