| Dear friends,
Hello from India!!!
I have been in Delhi for more than a week already. I have started working and I am now in the office and sending you all a warm warm "hello" from India. I miss you all a lot!
Everything seems to be going fine and I am getting used to the new environment. I am now staying in the AIESEC trainee house in a place called Kalkaji which is located in the South part of Delhi. The trainee house is actually quite nice except that there is currently a rat in our kitchen by random and the power and water would occationally be cut for unknown reasons. Besides, the living condition got improved tremendously after a couple of days of cleaning and cleansing. There are now 6 other trainees staying in the house with me, sharing three bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen and one balcony. Among the 6 other people, 2 are from Belgium, 1 are from Canada, 1 are from Romania, 1 are from Germany and other one is from Mexico. So I am the only respresentative who comes from Asia. I am now sharing a room with the Romanian girl and we are getting fine to each other except that she occationally talks non-stop. So this is about my living here. Actually there are other stories about the house but I would rather keep it at the moment and leave you for a better impression of where I am staying.
So next, it is about my work. I have just started working last Thursday so I am still so fresh to the workplace. Today is offically my 3rd day of work since yesterday was a holiday for the Independence Day of India. I just came to work for the right time becoz in the last week, Oxfam has launched a workshop for implementing their 5 year strategic plan. I came in time for the last day of the workshop and have got a brife idea of their work. The workshop was just amazing as I have never thought that an NGO would actually launch such a kind of business training workshop for their staff. Honestly speaking, I have a very good impression of Oxfam Trust. Actually Oxfam Trust is not quite the same with what you have in mind about Oxfam. It is a very new organization, under the Oxfam International and you can call it the Indian Oxfam. So what it does is what you can expect, quite 'local' and for the local community. Of course, Oxfam Trust is still a very young Oxfam so it is still very small in scale and not many staff are working here. But the director here, at least I think, is very long-sight and forward-looking. So Oxfam Trust is now actually growing and it will later change its name into 'Oxfam India' . So anyway, I am really looking forwards to what I can do here though I know that in the first couples of weeks, I can do nothing but etting to know more about Oxfam. This is so far about my work, I will defintely write you all later when I have something 'concrete' to do.
One last remark is that I am now still sucked in my deep thinking of this country. India is a very extreme society which the rich is really very rich and the poor is really very poor. On one street, you can find the most wealthy people living there with a number of servants working in their houses and owning a number of cars. But on the other street which you just need to take a five minute walk to, you can find the poorest people living in their smelly, crowed slums. The extreme condition between the rich and the poor is still something that I cannot help from thinking days by days. The caste system, the social stratification, and the concept of equality all appear in my mind. I am gald that I can still use some of the sociological senses to help understand the situation but I do not think I can withstand and get used to it.
I will keep on telling you more about India and my life. Do wirte me something too. I miss you all so much!
Love,
Carol
P.S. I have got an India number here. It's + 91 9818116088. If you are kindly enough to pay the IDD bill, please call me since I
am not charged for the incoming calls. hehe :P
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