Settling into Udaipur

I’ve started to get pretty settled in to my new life here in Udaipur. Life here moves a lot slower and I think it was helpful that I had that expectation coming in or else I would have been more anxious about my time and frustrated with work. Here’s a quick updated on the various aspects of my life:

Work:
Alvaro and myself were able to pick up right where Ron left off on the microfinance project. We started by creating a standardized exam for the existing accountants because there were concerns that they were not correctly tracking the SHGs (“small help groups” or group of village women). The next steps with this project are to create an auditing system so that the accounting books get checked at least once a year and then to create and implement some performance measurement tools to track how the various groups are doing with savings and loans.

While the project has been pretty interesting, it did not seem like there was enough work to keep two volunteers busy over the upcoming year or so. I asked if there were other projects that I could work on and was given a list of alternatives. One of the projects that seemed really interesting was helping local farmers bring their product (custard apples) to market directly rather than through various middlemen, who take all the profit. I have just begun to learn about the project and will post more about it as it develops.

Trips:
Here are some pictures and quick notes on some of the places I have gone during day trips:

Kumbhalgarh – Remote fort from the 15th century; supposedly, home to the second largest wall in the world; the fort includes some 300-400 temples and has an amazing view of the local area






Ranakpur – One of India’s largest and most important Jain temples; incredible building of white marble with nearly 1,500 intricately carved pillars





Monsoon Palace –19th century palace perched atop a local mountain; beautiful views of Udaipur and great place to enjoy the sun set






Other thoughts:
Seva Mandir – I really like the NGO that I work at. Because the organization is so large, there are many different projects that are going on at any time. It’s cool to see work on something very focused but to be part of a larger vision of addressing many social problems. For example, one of our friends at Seva Mandir who is an employee (rather than volunteer) has worked on a children’s corner in the slums of Udaipur. They were expecting around 30-50 kids to show up for the opening. In a slum of 300 families there are about 750 children and nearly half of them showed up. It was mayhem but the kids seemed to have a great time and the project has been going well since.


Udaipur – The city is small but really beautiful. I am glad I have a small camera that I can take around to snap shots immediately because I see something picturesque almost every day.

Love Nest – I really like the place that I am living. The roommates are great, though Ron left this past weekend. It was sad to see him leave but he is on to bigger and better things and now I have my own room and we converted the extra bedroom into a lounge area. My only complaint is the cold “showers” and the one attempt at trying to get the water heater fixed resulted in a bathroom flooded with boiling water.

Food – Though we don’t cook, we have our go-to restaurants where the owners know us and charge us the “local rates.” The food here is great and although I have been eating a lot, I did one thing I never thought I would do...I joined a gym. I’ve gone four times in the past week but we’ll see how good I am at keeping it up. And my favorite thing so far is the garlic Naan...mmmm, soo good.

Note: I also uploaded more pictures onto Picasa and have included it as a new slideshow. You can either navigate the slideshow or click into the album to check out the other pictures.

Welcome to Udaipur

I arrived in Udaipur last Saturday morning and was fortunate to find out that Seva Mandir doesn’t work on the second Saturday of each month. So the driver took me to the flat where I would be housed with the other Seva Mandir volunteers. The flat (aka “the Love Nest”) has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a small dining area. The flat is nice while never letting you forget that you’re in a developing country, with its non-western toilet (porcelain hole in the ground), cold “showers” (buckets of water), and sporadic electricity outages. It’s definitely a far cry from sitting on my couch, Internet at my fingertips, watching college football on my DVR, enjoying the AC in the summer and the heat in the winter.

I like the housing though and the best part of my living situation is the new friends that come with it. The volunteer coordinator told us that there are almost 600 volunteers that will come through Seva Mandir each year. Some will stay for a few weeks or a couple of months at a time, others for much longer. Besides the Love Nest, they have dorms for volunteers and I believe another flat somewhere else in Udaipur. The Love Nest is supposedly the best accommodations that Seva Mandir offers and currently houses three other volunteers.

The newest guy (besides myself) is Alvaro, or Al. He comes from Spain and will be working at Seva Mandir for the next eight months or so. Right now we are working on the same microfinance project, though that is subject to change over the next month or so. I’ll write more about my work as I figure out what I’m doing. Alvaro has lived in many different parts of the world, speaks very good English, and I’m looking forward to becoming good friends with him in the upcoming year.

The most tenured flat mate is Ron. He has been managing the microfinance project over the last year or so and is helping to transition Alvaro and myself onto the project as he winds down. He is actually leaving in a week or so but has been great in showing us the ropes at Seva Mandir and taking us around and introducing us to Udaipur.

Last but not least is Fiz. (Fiz is short for Fizzy, which I think is a nickname derived from his real name, but I may be mistaken) Fiz has lived in New York and London and has been in Udaipur for the past five months. He is working on a project with youth resource centers in the rural areas outside of Udaipur. He’s also been great with showing us around town and I feel fortunate that he’ll be sticking around for at least another month.

After settling in on Saturday, my flat mates and I went to celebrate Ganesh’s birthday on Sunday. It was a great way to experience both Udaipur and Indian culture, with crowds of people filling the streets, yelling and dancing, throwing colored powder, and just having a good time. We went to the lake where most of the activity was taking place. Basically people (families, neighborhoods or other groups) would get together and make a Ganesh idol, decorate it and throw it into the water. We somehow were able to navigate through the thick crowd of locals, pass the police line, and down to the lake where the idols were being taken by boat to the deeper part of the lake. Fiz “convinced” the police that we were international press so that we could get onto the boats and go out into the middle of the lake. It wasn’t so much that the policeman actually thought we were legitimate press, but I think he was just amused at the four westerners who wanted to go out on the boat. So he smiled, did the classic Indian head bob (mix between a nod and bobble, which means “yes”), and let us on. They even let Ron and myself help throw a large Ganesh idol into the water. Then we all did a dance and headed back to shore.


After walking around some more, Ron and Fiz took us to this great rooftop hotel/bar, where we relaxed, drank some chai, and watched the sun set over the beautiful city. It was a great day and a terrific beginning to my adventures in Udaipur.

Orientation...part 2

Along with providing a solid academic foundation for exploring India, the AIF orientation introduced me to an incredible group of other fellows. While the average age of the group is twenty-five, the work experiences represented in the group are both diverse and impressive. Surprisingly, out of the class of 24 fellows, four graduated from Duke.

My roommate during orientation, Rick, comes from the same background as myself (i.e., investment banking and private equity). Another fellow, Hemant, also had investment banking experience but spent the last year teaching in the Marshall Islands. Except for one other fellow, who worked in marketing for Apple, the remaining fellows are either from the public sector (non-profits/NGOs) or right out of school. While we all have different backgrounds and a variety of opinions on the development space, we all hold the common belief that the world should and can be a better place and are hopeful that the work we will be doing will be a step in the right direction.

Along with getting to know the other fellows, I also developed my first impressions of India through my exploration of Delhi. Upon arriving in New Delhi, we were bused from the airport to the youth hostel, where we were housed during the orientation period. I was surprised at how clean and orderly the city was, thinking that India would be as chaotic as China or Nicaragua. One reason for the discrepancy between my expectations and the actual India that I was experiencing was the hostel’s location, which was near the government centers and the residential areas for many international diplomats. Even so, it was India and there were stray dogs, cows and other animals roaming the streets. During the two weeks, I took every opportunity to try and get out to explore the city. From the beautiful parks to the clean and modern subway, New Delhi really had a lot to offer and I look forward to going back to visit during the year.

During the orientation period, we were given one free day to do whatever we wanted. A few fellows and myself decided to take a trip to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal). It was a really long day but was totally worth it. The day started around 5 am, when we had to leave our hostel for the Delhi train station. We luckily were able to get tickets for the 7 am train but did not get the luxury of seats in the packed train. The whole trip took us about five hours, but as people would get off at their stops, we would be able to find a seat here or there. I found a seat and was able to rest my feet during the last fifteen minutes.

After arriving in Agra, we found out that all the trains returning to Delhi were full. I was actually a bit surprised that they had any limits on the number of tickets sold given how packed the morning train was. We left the station and haggled with some local drivers and negotiated a car to take us around Agra for the day and back to Delhi at night. We were lucky that one of the fellows in our group knew Hindi and was quite the bargainer. We had the driver take us to lunch and then we were off to see the sites. In the afternoon we saw the Agra Fort and “Baby Taj.” We then headed to the Taj Mahal, where we stayed through sunset. It was truly a breathtaking monument. From the first glimpse of the Taj that you get when you walk through the opening gates you cannot help but be in awe of its beauty and magnificence. The paradox is that while it is nearly impossible to take a bad picture of the Taj, no picture is able to fully capture the beauty and grandeur of experiencing the Taj first hand. Enjoying a sunset at the Taj Mahal will be one of my defining memories of my trip to India.

For now, that’s all about AIF and my orientation period. I’ll try and write again in the next week to give my first impressions of Udaipur.

Orientation...part 1

Welcome to my blog. I will try and keep this updated throughout the year as I travel throughout India, learn about the development space in India, and progress in my own project. For many of you who are unfamiliar with the organization that brought me to India, perhaps I should first tell you about AIF and the Service Corps.

AIF is a non-profit that works in the development sector in India, primarily through its partnerships with local NGOs (non-government organizations). The AIF partner NGOs usually fall into one of the three areas of focus: public health, education, and livelihood. Besides providing funding to the local NGOs, AIF also runs two of its own projects, one of which is the Service Corps. The Service Corps consists of twenty to thirty young professionals from the US who spend about a year at an NGO in India. The program basically offers each Service Corps Fellow an opportunity to work at the grass roots level in the development sector, while also providing the host NGO a free volunteer that will hopefully have some relevant skills to aid in a capacity building project. To read more about the Service Corps, here is the website: http://www.aifoundation.org/serve/servicecorps/default.htm

My placement has been with an NGO in the livelihood sector called Seva Mandir. Seva Mandir is based in Udaipur, Rajasthan and works in many different aspects of development. As I get settled into Seva Mandir and develop the project that I will work on over the next year, I will post more information. For now, I will try and give you a quick glimpse into what I have been doing for the past two weeks.

I arrived into Delhi on the first of September and have spent the past two weeks at AIF Service Corps training/orientation. It was a transition period set up to help us get acclimated to various aspects of India and the development space. The majority of the formal orientation time was spent in classes where we had speakers who would discuss the issues facing India. It would be impossible for me to go through all the speakers we met with and the topics that were covered but I’ll try and offer a couple of the highlights. The speakers were all very impressive and included academics, business leaders, government officials, authors, artists, and many inspirational leaders from the development space. The topics that were covered included politics and history, issues related to gender and sexuality, the caste system in India, the Hindu/Muslim conflict, environmental issues, and development under AIF’s three areas of focus.

Along with the lecture/discussions, we also took a few trips “into the field.” This included touring the slums of Delhi, visiting schools out in the rural villages, and meeting with a group of women in a village to see how microfinance has changed their lives. Along with providing great exposure to the development side of India, the orientation also included a private tour of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bollywood dance lessons, and a couple of nice dinners hosted by some of the important leaders in the Indian private sector.

I thought the formal orientation was amazing; AIF did a terrific job connecting us with great speakers who were able to cover a wide range of important and relevant issues. But even better than the lectures was the informal aspect of orientation. This includes getting to know the other Service Corps Fellows and the adventures we had throughout India. I’m going to save this for my next post after I’ve been able to organize and upload some pictures.